Faculty Fellows Profiles

Paula Cuellar Cuellar - Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies

Paula Cuellar Cuellar is a CFD Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. Her research and interest topics include mass violence and grave human rights violations perpetrated in Latin America during the 20th and 21st centuries. Her work focuses on post conflict societies in Latin America and its transitions to democracy, particularly on the right to truth and truth commissions from a gender perspective. Also, she investigates disappearances in Mexico and Central America, predominantly concentrating on how disappearances affect the economic and social rights of the relatives of those disappeared. Finally, she analyses genocide in Central America, especially scorched earth operations as genocidal practices, and its impacts on women and girls. During this fellowship, she is interested in developing teaching strategies that promote equity and inclusion in the classroom, as well as innovative and alternative teaching methods to foster student engagement. 

Keona Ervin - Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Keona Katrice Ervin, Associate Professor and Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, brings expertise in Black Women's History in the U.S., Gender and Sexuality Studies, Black Feminist Studies, US Labor and Working-Class History, Black Social Movements in the US, and US Urban History. For this fellowship, she will develop fresh approaches to course design to enhance inclusiveness and maximize student engagement. She will also study evidence-based teaching models to apply the flipped classroom/laboratory model to humanities courses and expand her repertoire of teaching practices to better adjust to students’ diverse learning styles in real-time. 

Fe McBride - Physics

Fe McBride is an Assistant Professor of Physics. Her research focuses on high-energy astrophysics, including "ghost"-particle production, accretion processes, and relativistic outflows near supermassive black hole systems in other galaxies. She teaches physics and astronomy at Bowdoin since 2022. Before joining Bowdoin, Fe worked as a researcher at Penn State and at the University of Amsterdam. For the Faculty Fellows program, Fe is redesigning the Astrophysics course and hopes to implement more inclusive approaches to grading, as well as active learning methods that increase student confidence and belonging. Further, she is also looking forward to teaming up with colleagues to engage in guided reflection to reflect on the pedagogical methods. 

Mira Nikolova - Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Mira Nikolova ('13) is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She specializes in 20th-century Russian and East European literature with a focus on themes of exile, displacement, and the poetic portrayal of space and place. Mira teaches Russian language courses as well as literature, film, and culture-focused courses in translation. During the Faculty Fellows program, she will be exploring alternative approaches to grading along with ways to create a more inclusive and equitable classroom environment. She will work specifically on redesigning a literature and film course that highlights the lived experience of underrepresented ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. 

Amnon Ortoll-Bloch - Chemistry

Amnon Ortoll-Bloch is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. He teaches courses in introductory and inorganic chemistry. His research strives to elucidate the solution-based crystallization pathways of active pharmaceutical ingredients and materials for environmental and energy applications with the goal of developing predictive crystallization processes. For this fellowship, he is focused on creating supportive, uplifting learning environments that encourages meaningful collaboration among students. He seeks for students taking inorganic chemistry to appreciate the importance of being precise and clear when communicating science while feeling safe and encouraged to keep trying and practicing new skills. 

Lindsey Rapport - Dance

Lindsay Rapport is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance, who teaches studio practice as well as history and theory courses. She earned her PhD in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and her research interests include hip hop culture, popular dance, African American expressive cultures and African diasporic connections, Black liberation movements, and abolitionist and decolonial praxes. Her current research examines vibing in freestyle hip hop dance practices and its potential to challenge and refuse white supremacist and capitalist constructions of subjecthood. Asking what it can mean for us to move and groove together, she places what happens on the dance floor in conversation with the ways we can stand with and move for each other as co-conspirators in social justice work. As an educator, she views the classroom as an activist space, where both subject matter and pedagogical approaches can work towards dismantling unjust systems and structures. She is looking forward to exploring alternative grading possibilities as a Faculty Fellow, hoping to shift student focus away from points and grades and towards knowledge, quality of engagement, and growth. 

Karime Castillo - Anthropology

Karime Castillo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2021. She teaches courses in archaeology of the recent past and the cultural area of Mesoamerica. Her research focuses on the production of glass in colonial Mexico. She is designing a course on archaeology of Spanish colonialism with an emphasis on decolonization. Over the course of this fellowship, she hopes to develop teaching strategies that promote equity and inclusion in the classroom, as well as active-learning activities to foster student engagement. 

Eric Chown - Digital and Computational Studies

Eric Chown is the Sarah and James Bowdoin Professor of Digital and Computational Studies, a program that he co-founded in 2019 after spending twenty years in the computer science department. He was awarded an NSF CAREER grant in 2002 for his work on spatial cognition, and in 2007 he led Bowdoin’s RoboCup team to a world championship in the Standard Platform League where autonomous robots compete in soccer. His new book, with co-author Fernando Nascimento, is entitled “Meaningful Technology: How Digital Metaphors Change the Way We Think and Live” and will be out in January, 2023. As a faculty fellow he is working on finding ways to make his teaching more inclusive and to explore alternative models of grading. 

Alison Riley Miller - Education 

Alison Riley Miller is an Assistant Professor of Education and learning scientist who conducts design-based research around learning environments in the context of pre-K – grade 12 STEM education. Her research focuses on students’ engagement with scientific and engineering practices (modeling, data analysis and interpretation, evidence-based argumentation, etc.) and on the teacher professional learning that supports those opportunities for authentic science learning. She is particularly interested in teaching and learning around models and visualizations in the context of Earth and Environmental Science. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Miller taught for nine years at the secondary level and that experience informs her research interests in science teaching and learning, modeling and visualization, and teacher education. She is currently redesigning her course on Science Education and looks forward to developing assessments that encourage student choice, collaboration, and authentic engagement in both formal and informal science learning environments. 

Brian Purnell - Africana Studies and History

Brian Purnell is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History. He teaches and researches the history of cities and civil rights in the United States. He lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife Leana and their children. For this fellowship, he is focused on creating accessible, flexible, democratic, demanding and intense learning environments that value the individuality of each student and enable all students to grow beyond their previous knowledge and experience to attain new skills, data, and methods through which to apply their learning through their lives. 

Mileidy Varela Madera - Physics

Mileidy Varela Madera is a Lab Instructor in the Physics Department and joined Bowdoin college in 2021. She is interested in implementing learner-centered practices for her Introductory Physics Labs that effectively develop understanding, skills, and confidence in her students. She envisions that students can polish their observation, patience, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills by creating challenges in the lab. She wants to be part of the team that encourages or motivates students to love science and to break the stigma that science is abstract and for select people.    

Túlio Zille - Government and Legal Studies

Túlio Zille is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Government and Legal Studies. His research and teaching interests span topics in Development, Post- and Decolonial Studies, Political Ecology, Indigenous Thought, Critical Theory, and Social Movements. He also has a parallel interest in the politics of humanitarian interventions, and in Feminism and Queer Theories. His work focuses generally on Latin America and the Global South (broadly construed to include people of color in the North). During this fellowship, he is interested in exploring alternative, more inclusive approaches to grading, as well as classroom practices that foster discussion and community in larger enrollment classes. 

Kacie Armstrong - Psychology

Kacie Armstrong is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology. Her research explores the emotion of nostalgia and the development of face perception, with a particular focus on the processing of facial expressions across racial groups. She is also co-editor of a new book called Teaching Gradually. As an educator, her teaching practices are grounded in civic engagement as she guides students in using the power of prose and dialogue to drive social change. During this fellowship, she is excited to translate her teaching philosophy to the lab setting and to develop authentic assignments that motivate meaningful student collaboration among students of all backgrounds. 

Aliosha Barranco Lopez - Philosophy

Aliosha Barranco Lopez is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2021. Her research focuses on the rationality of beliefs and the possibility of beliefs that are neither rational nor irrational.  She is designing a new course on the moral and political responsibilities we have (if any) as epistemic agents, to be offered in Spring 2022. During her time in the Faculty Fellows Program, she will create assignments that are designed to meet each of her students in their academic development.

Kathryn Gerry - Art History

Kathryn Gerry is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, offering classes on medieval art produced in Europe and neighboring regions. She works to integrate her teaching with campus collections, and has taught several courses centered on the exhibition New Views of The Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Her research focus includes manuscripts and works of art associated with the cult of saints produced in the North Sea Region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Before coming to Bowdoin in 2018, Kathryn worked at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and taught at the University of Kansas and the Memphis College of Art. Kathryn is participating in the Faculty Fellows program to experience opportunities for guided reflection on her teaching practice, and collaborate with colleagues from multiple disciplines in developing teaching practices and models that can work for all students and enrich her pedagogical work in art history.

Sean Lutz - Chemistry

Sean Lutz is a visiting assistant professor of inorganic chemistry.  He is a computational inorganic chemist by training but an educator at heart.  He is teaching courses in introductory and intermediate inorganic chemistry.  Over the course of this fellowship, he is interested in developing strategies for more inclusive and engaged classrooms.  Furthermore, he would like to explore various techniques for “ungrading” in order to reduce the achievement gap for students and include activities that explore the social impact of chemistry into the course material.

Irina Popescu - Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies

Irina Popescu is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. She joined Bowdoin in 2018. Her research focuses on the intersections between cultural studies, human rights, and gender, women, and sexuality studies in the Americas. Her courses use innovative practices such as mindfulness, performance, and movement exercises to support students’ diverse learning backgrounds and interests. She is redesigning her course on Latinx Activism in the U.S. for the Spring of 2022 to include a more collaborative curriculum involving guest speakers and performers. During her fellowship she hopes to expand on constructing and promoting an inclusive and equitable classroom environment and teaching practice.

Audrey Shakespear - Visual Arts

Audrey Shakespear is a stone carver and designer currently working as a visiting assistant professor in Visual Arts, Sculpture. Working across a variety of physical and digital media, her studio practice centers on carving stone objects as an entry-point and anchor for a larger conversation on how we form our understanding of reality. Her work is a study on the beauty of possibility inherent in digital communication and design, and a meditation on the core connection humans have to the solid materiality of our physical world. During this fellowship, she will focus on her spring advanced sculpture course, in an effort to design an inclusive experience where creative production, conversation, and readings are tethered together in a dynamic and productive format.

Javier Cikota – History and Latin American Studies

Javier Cikota is an Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies.  He joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2018.  He is a historian of Modern Latin America, with a special interest in state formation and nationalism, race and belonging, the history of family and gender.  In the fall of 2018 he is teaching a seminar on “deviancy” in Latin America, and a course on Revolutions which includes a large role-playing component to give students the possibility to embody historical actors at critical moments during revolutionary periods. During this year-long fellowship Javier will focus on deploying interactive activities (role playing/ simulation/etc) to build equity. 

Page Herrlinger – History

Page Herrlinger is Associate Professor of History. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1998. Her research focuses on the intersection between religious belief and everyday life in modern Russia, especially the relationship between faith, class, and gender.  She is designing a new lecture course on women in modern Europe to be offered in Spring 2020, with an emphasis on learning through visual culture (art, photographs, posters, and film). During her fellowship, she will be exploring new techniques to help foster an inclusive, collaborative learning environment in class, while working to design on-line activities to inspire students to engage with - and learn from - each other outside the classroom as well.

Adanna Kai Jones (aka Dr. J) - Dance

Adanna Kai Jones (aka. Dr. J) is an innovative educator, who values any chance to critically grow and expand her pedagogy. She received her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and her BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts—Rutgers University. Thereafter, she performed in professional dance companies based in NYC, including Souloworks with Andrea E. Woods. Currently, her book project uses multi-sited, transnational ethnography to track the ways in which Caribbean dance and dancers play an integral role in the support and preservation of contemporary Caribbean identity politics within the US. Overall, she is excited to be a B.C.L.T. Faculty Fellow, especially because it gives her the time and opportunity to curate a course that intentionally promotes and supports students with diverse learning backgrounds and skills.

Jennifer Kosak- Classics

Jennifer Kosak  is an Associate Professor of Classics. She specializes in Greek language, literature and culture, with particular research interests in Greek tragedy and epic poetry, Greek medicine, and gender in the ancient Mediterranean world. As a faculty fellow, she is interested in learning new ways to create an engaged, dynamic classroom environment in which students participate actively in their own learning. She will focus especially on her Ancient Greek Theater course, in an effort to find ways to develop an inclusive experience in which students of diverse backgrounds connect to the material and grow intellectually.

Willi Lempert - Anthropology

Willi Lempert is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College and has conducted over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Broome and Balgo with Goolarri and PAKAM media organizations. Through collaboration on production teams, he aims to understand the social life of Aboriginal filmmaking to better understand the relationship between Indigenous self-representation, sovereignty, and everyday life. His research engages the paradoxical relationship between the production of films that vividly imagine hopeful and diverse Indigenous futures, and the defunding of Aboriginal communities and organizations. He is especially excited to develop a collaborative curriculum for his spring course on the anthropology of gesture. 

Dharni Vasudevan - Chemistry and Environmental Studies

Dharni Vasudevan is a Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies.  Her research is concerned with the fate of pharmaceuticals and pesticides in the natural environment. Specifically her research group focusses on how these chemicals interact with mineral surfaces in soils and aquatic environments. Dharni team-teaches Introduction to Environmental Studies and Perspectives in Environmental Science.  She also teaches Environmental Chemistry, and advanced courses on the environmental fate of chemicals.  During this fellowship, she would like to design ways to enhance the level of engagement in the Environmental Science course by leveraging active learning approaches to reach all students irrespective of their academic interests, background and experience.  Further, she would like to create mechanisms to continually self-reflect and identify pedagogical techniques that create an inclusive classroom dynamics.

Ericka Albaugh- Government and Legal Studies

Ericka Albaugh is an Associate Professor of Government. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2008. In the fall of 2019 she taught two courses titled “Buried Treasure, Hidden Curse? Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa” and “States of Language and Languages of States”. Her research takes her to Africa, where she studies language politics and development. She works frequently with maps, and she is introducing mapping technologies and more active learning for students in her courses.

James Broda - Mathematics/QR

James Broda is the Assistant Director of the Quantitative Reasoning Program in the Center for Learning and Teaching. He joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2017. Dr. Broda's research examines the rich interplay between deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems. He has applied his research to problems in genetics, medical imaging, climate change, and disaster ecology. Dr. Broda taught a first-year seminar, Educated Guessing, as well as a course on quantitative reasoning in the fall of 2018. As a faculty fellow, he is interested in promoting critical discourse in the classroom through the quantitative analysis of social and economic justice.

Jeff Christmas- Music

Jeff Christmas is an Adjunct Lecturer of Music. He joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2015. In addition to teaching music theory Jeff is a baritone vocalist who enjoys a variety of styles—having sung opera with Boston Lyric Opera, Knoxville Opera, and Greenville Light Opera Works and also singing with everything from an Americana Trio (The New Vernacular, Knoxville, TN) to a Synth Pop Piano Rock band (Hudson K, Knoxville, TN). He regularly performs around Southern Maine as a vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and pianist. He taught a course on the Fundamentals of Music, Applied Voice lessons, and two musicianship labs in the fall of 2018 and integrated more culturally and musically inclusive class activities.

John Fitzgerald- Economics

John Fitzgerald is the William D. Shipman Professor of Economics. He joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1983. His current research focuses on empirical models of intergenerational links in health and income. He enjoys teaching courses in public economics (government taxing and spending), evaluation methods, microeconomics, and econometrics. In the fall of 2018 he taught “Economics of the Public Sector” and “Microeconomics”. During his fellowship he worked on ways to address the heterogeneity of student backgrounds in his classes.

Anya Golovkova- Religion

Anna A. (Anya) Golovkova is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Religion. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2017. Fall 2018, she taught a course titled “Introduction to the Study of Religion.” In addition to introducing students to diverse lived practices and ideas that have been associated with the term “religion,” she encourages them to critically reflect on their presuppositions as to what religion is (or ought to be). The course uses two Reacting to the Past role-playing games, in order to examine central topics for the academic study of religion in specific contexts. Golovkova is a scholar of Hinduism and Buddhism. Her book project, A Goddess for the Second Millennium, provides the first comprehensive study of the early history of the worship of Tripurasundari (the Beautiful Goddess of the Three Cities). Her second project examines later transformations that reshaped this tradition into what it is today: a devotional Tantric (i.e., esoteric) and Vedic (i.e., orthodox, socially normative) system of worship with a major role in institutional and devotional Hindu practice.

Erika Nyhus- Psychology/Neuroscience

Erika Nyhus is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2013. Her research interests involve the neural processes involved in higher-level cognition, including executive functioning and episodic memory. In the fall of 2018, she taught Cognitive Neuroscience and integrated more student-led, active learning. She also designed 3-D models of a brain for every student in the course and utilizing technology allowed her students to view the skull of Phinneas Gage which is on display in Boston, Massachusetts.

Emily Peterman – EOS

Emily Peterman is an Associate Professor of Earth and Oceanographic Science. She joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2012. Her research uses petrology, mineralogy, geochronology and geochemistry to quantify the timing and rates of metamorphic recrystallization, deformation, melting, and other aspects of crustal evolution. In the fall of 2018, she taught “Investigating Earth”. She designed the course to create a greater sense of belonging, to better engage her students, and to reduce the achievement gap for students through the use of selective study guides.

Patrick Rael- History

Patrick Rael is a Professor of History. He joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1995. a specialist in African-American history and the author of numerous essays and books. His most recent book, Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (University of Georgia Press, 2015), explores the Atlantic history of slavery to understand the exceptionally long period of time it took to end chattel bondage in America. Through a long collaboration with Bowdoin’s Information Technology Division, Rael has explored the uses of technology in teaching history from his online simulation of the fugitive slave experience to creating historical maps using GIS. His online writing guides have assisted student writers for fifteen years. He has written extensively about teaching, has contributed to the development of African-American history curricula, and led seminars and workshops on teaching American history in primary and secondary schools. In in the fall of 2018 he taught “The Civil War Era” and “Historical Simulations”. His project focused on increasing engagement and skills required for success in college.

Stephanie Richards – Biology

Stephanie Richards is a Lecturer in Biology. In the fall of 2018 she taught a course on “Cancer Biology” for non-science majors, and “Scientific Reasoning in Biology” which is an introductory biology class. Her project focused on reducing the achievement gap and building the skill level of all students in the course in addition to promoting science as a part of students’ everyday lives.

Barbara Sawhill - Hispanic Studies

Barbara Sawhill is a Lecturer of Spanish. She returned to Bowdoin in 2017 after having taught at Oberlin College (Oberlin OH) for almost 20 years. Her interests include language pedagogy, student-centered learning, language technology and learning, open educational resources for language education and the importance of teaching listening in the 2nd language classroom. In the fall of 2018 she taught “Elementary Spanish I” and “Intermediate Spanish I”. Her project addressed the strengths and needs of heritage language speakers in Spanish classes and reimagined how languages are taught in the undergraduate classroom.

Jay Sosa- GSWS

Jay Sosa is an Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on sexuality, statecraft, and public culture in São Paulo, Brazil. His current book project, Participatory Desires, examines how demands for LGBT political recognition in media, protests, and government institutions have served as a catalyst for broader shifts in Brazil’s ideological spectrum. Jay teaches courses on biopolitics, neoliberalism, public affect, and queer theory, as well as identity based social movements, democratization and human rights throughout the Americas. He taught a course on “Sex and State Power” and “Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies” in the fall of 2018. His project focused on including more experiences and perspectives of transgender people and women of color in the global South.

Julia Venegas - Hispanic Studies

Julia Venegas is a Lecturer in Spanish. She works with students of Spanish to support them on their path toward proficiency and intercultural awareness, guided by her longstanding belief in the power of language learning to encourage intellectual exploration and strengthen achievement in all fields of inquiry. In the fall of 2018 she taught “Accelerated Elementary Spanish” and “Intermediate Spanish”. Her project focused on clear communication about expectations and learning goals for the course to improve achievement and retention.