Brian Gilley, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, holds a Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma (2002), and he is also a faculty member in the ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies Program at UVM. Dr. Gilley's research focuses on the theoretical and cultural themes of social acceptance, particularly as it relates to issues of gender, race, and ethnicity. His recent book, Becoming Two-Spirit (forthcoming spring 2006, University of Nebraska Press), documents the ways two-spirit (gay) Native American males challenge their alienation from mainstream Native and tribal society. Exploring relationships among power, difference, and agency, this research investigates the ways in which two-spirit men actively construct their cultural and social identity in response to historic gender ideology, contemporary popular gay culture, tribal identity, and mainstream ideas about Indianness. Dr. Gilley is currently conducting research on HIV/AIDS among Native American communities in the western United States. Hopefully his findings will influence HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and help to modify public policy to more closely mirror the cultural values of tribal communities and Native peoples in general.

Sarah Betzer, Assistant Professor of Art, is an art historian whose work concentrates on eighteenth and nineteenth-century France. After receiving her B.A. in art history and English at Wellesley College, she completed a Master's degree at the Courtauld Institute in London. Sarah came to UVM from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she taught for three years. The recipient of grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Getty Research Institute, Sarah earned her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, with dissertation work that focused upon portraits of women by J.-A.-D. Ingres and his students. Sarah is the author of "Ingres's Second /Madame Moitessier/: 'Le Brevet du Peintre d'Histoire,'" published in Art History in December 2000. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on female portraiture, gender, and academic theory in the circle of Ingres.

Nancy Dwyer, Assistant Professor of Art, has been exhibiting worldwide for 25 years and is known for her witty word sculptures and paintings. She writes, "I think of the word as the perfect vehicle for driving into that loaded territory that lies between the private and the public, the objective and the subjective, the image and the abstraction."

Professor Dwyer received her BFA from SUNY at Buffalo, and her master's degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. She is the recipient of several grants and awards, including a sponsored projects grant from NY State Council on the Arts, an individual artist's grant from the NEA, and a Pollack-Krasner Award. In addition to numerous solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Milan, and Paris, she has shown her work in major museum exhibitions. These include the 1987 Whitney Biennial, "Word As Image," which traveled nationally, and "Bad Girls," curated by Marcia Tucker, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. She currently has pieces at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College.

Professor Dwyer has completed several public art commissions in Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and in Europe and is most recently the winner of a competition to produce a large-scale sculpture at the new terminal at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. She is currently designing functional elements for a new rapid transit line in Cleveland.

Jane Kent, Assistant Professor of Art, previously taught at Princeton and Brown University, The Cooper Union School of Art, and most recently at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She teaches printmaking and drawing.

Professor Kent graduated from the University of the Arts and continued her studies at the London College of Printing. She has shown her work extensively, most recently at the Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, and the Paul Morris Gallery, New York. Her collaborative artist book project with the writer Richard Ford entitled "Privacy" was shown at the Hirschl and Adler Modern Gallery, NY, and at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Miss. Her most recent artist book project with the writer Susan Orlean is entitled "The Orchid Thief Reimagined." She is currently working on a third artist book project, again with Richard Ford.

Dr. Kent 's work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; The Brooklyn Museum; The New York Public Library, Spencer Collection; The National Gallery; and The Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections, among others.

She is a recipient of a several Yaddo Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Fellowship Grant.

Sara Helms Cahan, Assistant Professor of Biology, received her B.S. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University at Tempe. She did her postdoctoral work in Switzerland, where she worked with Laurent Keller at the University of Lausanne. Her area of interest is evolutionary ecology, and she is recognized for her studies of hybrid zone dynamics. Dr. Cahan has considerable teaching experience and will be offering courses in biology at several levels, including courses in her specialty of behavioral ecology.

 

 

Michael Faletra, Assistant Professor of English, received his Ph.D. from Boston College in 2000, having done his undergraduate work at Boston University. He taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for three years before coming to UVM. His dissertation, "Matters of Britain: Narrative and Colonization in 12th-century England," looks at the emergence of Arthurian romance as an instrument of Normal colonialism—that is, he takes a post-colonial approach to medieval England.

His teaching interests include history of the English language, medieval literature, and Old English language and literature. He also teaches courses for us in Arthurian literature and "modern medievalisms," or modern-day adaptations of medieval texts.

Greg Druschel, Assistant Professor of Geology, received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Delaware 's College of Marine Studies.

Dr. Druschel is a microbial geochemist interested in the ways microbes affect chemical cycling of elements such as sulfur and iron in a variety of different environments. His team works with microbiologists to determine how changes in the chemical or physical environment affect the community of microorganisms present. Microelectrodes are designed, tested, and used in the field to determine, in situ and in real time, how the concentrations of different chemical species change. Such chemical changes are often indicative of microbial activity,

Several students have been working with Dr. Druschel on projects based in Yellowstone National Park, tidal flats near Woods Hole (MA), and St. Albans Bay (VT), applying these microelectrodes to probe the relationship between microbial life and geochemistry. At Yellowstone and elsewhere, such efforts may help to identify new geochemical environments that may exist in very confined spaces, and perhaps lead to the discovery of novel organisms. Similar testing may also tell us more about the governing processes that can release significant amounts of phosphate into a water body and drive algal bloom activity.

Dr. Druschel is also working closely with Donna Rizzo in Civil and Environmental Engineering to develop modeling tools for determining what parameters most significantly impact microbial communities and their overall ability to transform chemical species in the environment, a critical piece of information as we learn more about how to best use microbes for contaminant remediation.

Jacqueline Carr, Assistant Professor of History, received her Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. Professor Carr's research and teaching areas are Colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early Republic. Her interests focus on the formation and development of community institutions, urban life, women, family, multiculturalism in early America, religion and society, and the social history of the American Revolution. Her book, After the Siege: A Social History of Boston 1775-1800, was published in 2004 by Northeastern University Press. She is currently researching two new projects concerning eighteenth-century life. One focuses upon working women in Boston and the other on women, family, and community in northwestern Vermont between 1763 and 1800.

Paul Deslandes, Assistant Professor of History, received his B.A. from Trinity College in Hartford, CT and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920, (published in 2005 by Indiana University Press). His current research focuses on two subjects: British travel to the Canadian West between the years 1890 and 1950, and the cultural history of male beauty in Great Britain from 1750 until the present. Professor Deslandes teaches classes on British history and culture, the history of London, European imperialism, and gender and sexuality. He joined the UVM faculty in 2004 after spending five years in Lubbock, Texas, where he was a member of the history department at Texas Tech University.

Abigail McGowan, Assistant Professor of History, received her B.A. from Carleton College in 1993, and her M.A. (1999) and Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in modern South Asian history, her research focuses on development efforts in handicrafts in late colonial Western India, exploring how and why crafts came to play such an important role in the cultural politics of nationalism at this time.

Dr. McGowan teaches courses on early and modern South Asia, Gandhi and the politics of non-violence, the Himalayas, and South Asian visual culture. She joined the UVM faculty in the fall of 2004.

Harvey Amani Whitfield, Assistant Professor of History, graduated from Colorado State University in 1997. He completed his graduate work at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Since arriving at UVM, Professor Whitfield has taught U.S. history, African American history, and a seminar about slavery. He recently completed an article that will be published in Left History, which explores identity formation among Black Refugees in Nova Scotia. This summer, he plans to work on his book project, "Blacks on the Border," to be published by the University Press of New England. He enjoys going for walks and spending time with his cats.

Ken Mello is a tenure-track appointment to the ALANA/U.S. Ethnic Studies Program. His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Santa Barbara, with a dissertation titled "Cultural and Spiritual Survival in Indian Maine: Adaptations and Transformations among the Wabanaki Tribes." Ken also holds an M.A. degree in Native American Studies from the University of Arizona. He is from Boston and his undergraduate degree was from Colgate.

Ken comes to us from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and before that, the University of Maine. His research interests include Native New England history, Native American literature, Native American identity issues, oral narrative, environmental philosophies, and the urban Indian experience.

At UVM, Ken is currently teaching Introduction to Ethnic Studies, and a TAP course on American Indian spirituality. In the spring he will be constructing an introductory course on ethnic religious traditions in the U.S., and an upper-level course on sacred space and the environment.