New Faculty Profiles

Hired as a full professor in the Department of English, Frederick Aldama (Ph.D., Stanford University) specializes in Latino/a Studies, with additional expertise in sexuality studies, postcolonial theory, and ethnic studies. He has published three books, including a critical biography of the Chicano writer Arturo Islas (2004), and Brown on Brown: Queer Representations in Chicano/a Literature and Film, which has just been published by the University of Texas Press. He has two books in production (Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Chicano/a Authors and Writers and Meditations and Remediations: Humanities, Politics, and Society in the 21st Century), another in contract, and is currently working on a monograph that will provide new approaches to teaching Latino/a literature.

A new assistant professor in the Department of History, Kate Haulman (Ph.D., Cornell University) specializes in early American history. Her current research deals with the politics of fashion in 18th-century America. This project has received broad support, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to conduct research at the Winterthur Museum and Library in Delaware. Haulman has taught courses on "The Age of the American Revolution," "Faiths in Early America," and "Women and Gender in Early America." Her next project will be a cultural history of marriage in early America.

Tom Hawkins (Ph.D., Stanford University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Greek and Latin. His research focuses on ancient Greek invective literature, from the ribald comedy of classical Athens, to satirical critiques of the Roman Empire, to the aggressive language of Christian doctrinal debates. He is currently teaching a graduate seminar on Greek satire under the Roman Empire and an undergraduate course on Greek and Roman drama. Hawkins has published an essay on Aristophanes' Lysistrata and will be participating in an international conference on archaic invective to be held in Greece in October.

Ben McCorkle (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is an assistant professor in the Department of English (Marion campus). His areas of specialization are rhetorical history and theory, visual culture, and new media studies. He has presented and published papers on the effect of new technology, especially computers and visual media, on literacy and writing. McCorkle is an associate editor of the forthcoming composition reader, Rhetorical Visions: Reading and Writing in a Visual Culture, and he wrote the instructor's manual for the recent visual cultural reader, Convergences, which will be used in college classrooms. He was a Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellow in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech in 2003-04.

Cynthia Selfe (Ph.D., University of Texas), a leading scholar in the field of rhetoric and composition, has been hired as a full professor in the Department of English. Her specialty is computers and composition, a relatively new field that she has helped to define with her nine single or co-authored books, nine co-edited books, and more than 70 articles. Among her many contributions and accomplishments, Selfe has chaired the College Composition and Communication Conference, served on the leadership team of the National Council of Teachers in English, and been a keynote speaker at conferences around the world. She is also a founding editor of the journal Computers and Composition.

Holding a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Departments of Geography and Women's Studies, Mary Thomas (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) focuses on feminist geography and theory, youth and girls, race and racism in the U.S., sexual practice, and space and identity. She has published several articles on "girl culture," notably, "Girls, consumption space, and the contradictions of hanging out in the city" and "'I think it’s just natural': The spatiality of racial segregation at a U.S. high school." Thomas has taught courses on cities and social difference, social geography, and feminist geography. She has been the recipient of several fellowships and grants, including an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women.