Fall 2017 Arhu Leadership Announcements
October 10, 2017
New leadership appointments for the 2017-18 academic year.
To: Colleagues
From: Bonnie Thornton Dill, Dean
Date: October 12, 2017
Re: 2017-18 Leadership Appointments
I am pleased to announce the following leadership appointments within the College of Arts and Humanities:
Hayim Lapin is serving as director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, effective June 1, 2017.
Hayim Lapin’s research has been at the intersection of classical Jewish texts, especially legal texts, and social and cultural history. His most recent book, “Economy, Geography, and Provincial History in Later Roman Palestine” (2001), is on the development of the rabbinic movement in Palestine in the third and fourth centuries viewed through Roman provincial history. His current project, drawing on the same body of literature, is a digital scholarly edition of a principal legal text known as the Mishnah.
Lapin is the Robert H. Smith Professor of Jewish Studies and History and previously served as the center’s director from 2006-11. He earned his doctorate in religion from Columbia University.
Trevor Muñoz is serving as Interim Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, effective July 1, 2017.
Trevor Muñoz fosters digital projects that involve close collaboration between librarians, archivists and other digital humanities researchers. As part of this work, he has written, spoken and consulted on the strategic opportunities and challenges of doing digital humanities work within the institutional and cultural structures of academic research libraries.
Muñoz is assistant dean for digital humanities research at the University of Maryland Libraries. He earned an M.A. in digital humanities from King’s College London and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Carol Stabile is serving as chair of the Department of Women’s Studies, effective July 1, 2017.
Carol Stabile researches the history of gender, race and class in media institutions. Her book, “The Broadcast 41: The Television Blacklist and the Anti-Communist War on American Women,” will be published by Goldsmiths and MIT Presses in 2018. Completed with the support of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, the book tells the story of a group of women who were driven from U.S. media industries during the Cold War. She is also the author of “White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture” (2006) and “Feminism and the Technological Fix” (1994). Stabile is managing editor of the Fembot Collective (), an international collective of feminist media activists, artists, producers, and scholars that publishes the academic journal “Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.”
She earned her doctorate in English from Brown University.
Britta Anderson is serving as the director of the Latin American Studies Center, effective July 1, 2017
Britta Anderson analyzes the use of spiritual imagery in Mexican and Chicano literature and culture and how aesthetic work can be a powerful tool for social change. Her current research project explores radical performance art and feminist hip-hop in Ciudad Juárez. Her dissertation, “Borders beyond Borders: Women's Mobility in the U.S. and Mexico,” examines contemporary murals and literature produced on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border that respond to the policing of citizenship and movement.
She received a doctorate in Spanish literature, with a certificate in women, gender and sexuality studies, from Washington University in St. Louis.
Additional New Leadership
The college also welcomes two new associate deans. Professor of Communication Linda Aldoory is the new associate dean of research and programming and Associate Professor of English Ralph Bauer is the new associate dean of academic affairs.
Professors Meredith Gill, William Idsardi and Philip Soergel will continue serving as chairs of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Department of Linguistics and Department of History, respectively. Associate Professor Leigh Wilson Smiley will continue as the director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.
Please join me in congratulating our new leaders in the College of Arts and Humanities. I would also like to take this opportunity to offer my warm thanks to the former directors and chairs: former Director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies Charles Manekin, former Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities Neil Fraistat, former Chair of the Department of Women’s Studies Robyn Muncy and former Director of the Latin American Studies Center Laurie Frederik.