Faculty Spotlight 2022-23
Faculty Spotlight: Faedah Totah
Written by Samaneh Oladi Ghadikolaei, Assistant Professor, School of World Studies
At Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Faedah Totah is a dedicated scholar juggling her complex intersectional identities as a Palestinian-American scholar. Her commitment to VCU’s advancement is reflected in her role as the Coordinator of the International Studies program at the School of World Studies. Engaging in critical pedagogical praxis as a specialist in Middle Eastern studies, Faedah commits to building authentic relationships with her students and mentoring them through complex and contested sociopolitical issues....
Faculty Spotlight: Melis Hafez
Written by KT Shively, Associate Professor, Department of History
As the VCU community wrestles with ongoing violence in the Middle East, we are extremely fortunate to have Melis Hafez as a member of the history department. Melis is a specialist on the Ottoman Empire—a multi-ethnic polity that stretched across what is today called the Middle East and the Balkans—in the long nineteenth century. Her deeply-researched first book, Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021)....
Faculty Spotlight: Ana Edwards
Written by Daniel Sunshine, Postdoctoral Fellow, History Dept., and Associate Director, Health Humanities Lab
Ana Edwards has been championing the preservation of Black history in Richmond for more than two decades. She is the founder and chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, a group that convinced the city to save Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground, the original Black municipal cemetery in Richmond. Formerly desecrated by a parking lot, the burial ground is being restored to a place of remembrance under her leadership....
Previous Years
- Jayme Canty, PhD, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
- Emilie Raymond, PhD, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History
- Judy Twigg, PhD, Professor, Department of Political Science
- Catherine Sutton, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
- Mariam Alkazemi, PhD, Associate Professor, The Robertson School of Media and Culture
- Mary Caton Lingold, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of English
- Chioke I’Anson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies
- Dr. Chris Cynn, PhD, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies
- Dr. Andrew Crislip, PhD, Blake Chair in the History of Christianity, Department of History
- Dr. Grace Gipson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies
- B. Ethan Coston, PhD, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies
- Dr. David Wojahn, PhD, Professor, Department of English
- Mar Gongora Davis, PhD, School of World Studies
- Dr. Andrew Murphy, PhD, Department of Political Science
- Dr. Karen Rader, PhD, Department of History
- Dr. Adam Ewing, PhD, Department of African American Studies
- Dr. Jesse Goldstein, PhD, Department of Sociology
- Dr. Catherine Ingrassia, PhD, Department of English