Fall 2023 Leadership Appointments
June 30, 2023
Dean Stephanie Shonekan announces new ARHU leadership appointments.
By ARHU Staff
Dean Stephanie Shonekan is pleased to announce the following new leadership appointments within the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU).
Joseph Ross Angelella is serving as director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House, effective July 1, 2023.
Angelella is a senior lecturer in the Department of English. An award-winning teacher and writer, his areas of discipline are in screenwriting and fiction with emphases in TV and feature films, young adult, literary, historical, horror, science fiction, crime and nonfiction narratives. He is the author of the coming-of-age novel “Zombie” (2012). His short fiction has appeared in various journals, including Hunger Mountain, Sou’wester, The Literary Review, Southampton Review and Coachella Review where his short story “Sauce” won “Best Short Story” in 2012. His original screenplays have won numerous awards, most recently “Best Comedy Short Script” at the Houston Comedy Film Festival in 2020 and “Best Characters in a Screenplay” at the Baltimore Next Media Web Fest in 2022. In recognition of his teaching, he was the recipient of the Professional Track Faculty Teaching Award in 2019. He is an active member of the University Film & Video Association where he will present a paper on “Negotiating Gun Violence in Student Screenplays: Teaching Young Writers to Develop Characters’ Unknown Needs: or How to Fight ‘Cool Characters Wielding Weapons’ with Empathy and Understanding” later this summer at their annual conference. He is currently at work on an alternative history screenplay about an eighth-century Viking warrior out to save the world from a mad Frankish king hellbent on destroying it, as well as a neo-noir crime novel about a retired female getaway driver who is forced to return to the toxic male underworld she left behind to clear her name of a crime she didn’t commit. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and literature from Bennington College.
GerShun Avilez is serving as associate dean for academic affairs: graduate education and strategic initiatives, effective July 1, 2023.
Avilez is a professor in the Department of English and was formerly the associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion in ARHU. An award-winning teacher and writer, he is a scholar of African American and Black Diasporic literatures and visual cultures with a focus on gender and sexuality. He is the author of two books, “Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism” (2016) and “Black Queer Freedom” (2020), and the co-editor of the “Norton Anthology of American Literature, 1945-Present” (2022). He has served as the director of graduate studies and the director of career development for English. He earned his doctorate in English with a certificate in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kelly Blake is serving as assistant dean for marketing and communications, effective July 17, 2023.
Blake is currently the assistant dean for communications at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health (SPH), where she leads marketing and communications efforts to increase the visibility of SPH and demonstrate the impact of the school’s research, education and service activities in advancing public health in Maryland and beyond. Blake has served in communications positions at the University of Maryland since 2005. She is a graduate of ARHU’s English and Women’s Studies (now the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) departments and holds a Master of Arts in publications design from the University of Baltimore.
Audran Downing is serving as associate dean for academic affairs: undergraduate education, effective July 1, 2023.
Downing has served on the ARHU Dean’s leadership team for 23 years and oversees the ARHU undergraduate curricula, Living Learning Programs and the Office of Student Affairs and Career Engagement. Dedicated to developing a cohesive culture of student learning, her approach merges traditional student affairs and academic affairs paradigms, emphasizing connections between the academic, career, cultural and developmental needs of undergraduate students. She has cultivated an environment focused on creating access to a diverse curriculum, domestic and international internship opportunities, study abroad experiences, specialized career development programming and a comprehensive retention initiative to support both at-risk and high-achieving students. Since arriving at the University of Maryland, she has received the Provost’s Commission on Academic Advising “Advisor of the Year'' Award and guided her office to receive the President’s Commission on Ethnic Minority Issues- Office of Student Affairs “Award for Outstanding Service.” She has spearheaded many college and campuswide initiatives, developed numerous regional and national presentations and served in leadership roles on numerous campus and national commissions. She has also supported her staff members who continuously present at national conferences, chair and present at local conferences and win campus and collegewide advising awards. Prior to starting with ARHU, she earned her master’s degree at UMD in the College of Education before serving at Colgate University as the director of the Office of Undergraduate Studies.
Yi Ting Huang is serving as director of the Maryland Language Science Center, effective July 1, 2023.
Huang is an associate professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (HESP). An expert in language processing in adults and children, she has applied this expertise to multiple populations and societally important problems, including the relationship between language learning and poverty, cochlear implant users and children learning language in the more isolated setting of a pandemic. Huang has led several interdisciplinary projects and is the principal investigator of a University of Maryland Grand Challenges team project on “Fostering Inclusivity through Technology” that aims to improve remote work experiences for autistic individuals. During the pandemic, she spearheaded KidTalk, a project that studied young children’s pandemic language experience, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Huang is also a co-principal investigator on the NSF-funded project that established the Language Science Station at Planet Word Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, she is a longtime member of the Maryland Language Science Center and the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. She received her doctorate in developmental psychology at Harvard University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in cognitive psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Damien Pfister is serving as director of the Design Cultures & Creativity living-learning program, effective July 1, 2023.
Since arriving at the University of Maryland in the fall of 2016 as an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Pfister has established a strong record and reputation as a student-focused scholar and educator, with particular expertise in the intersections of rhetoric, technology and digital networks. He is the author of “Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics: Attention and Deliberation in the Early Blogosphere” (2014) and co-editor of “Ancient Rhetorics + Digital Networks” (2018). A former member of the board of directors for the Rhetoric Society of America, Pfister is currently the reviews editor for Rhetoric Society Quarterly. With Casey Boyle and Michele Kennerly, he co-edits the new “Rhetoric + Digitality” book series for the University of Alabama Press. Currently, Pfister is devoted to finishing his latest book project, titled “Always On: Fashioning Ethos After Wearable Computers,” which explores the rhetorical and cultural implications of wearables. He earned his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.
Jordana Moore Saggese is serving as director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, effective July 1, 2023.
Saggese is professor of Art of the United States and most recently the interim chair of the Department of Art History & Archaeology. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on critical expressions of Blackness. Across Saggese’s research projects there is an investment in the line between popular culture and critical culture. This investment manifests in the subjects and methodologies of her research, which draw equally from visual culture studies and the traditional history of art, as well as in the dissemination of findings across both academic and general audiences. Her third book “Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation” will be published by Duke University Press next year. She earned her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Karin Zitzewitz is serving as chair of the Department of Art History & Archaeology, effective July 1, 2023.
Zitzewitz is a specialist in the modern and contemporary art of India and Pakistan. An art historian, anthropologist and curator, her latest research is collected in “Infrastructure and Form: The Global Networks of Indian Contemporary Art, 1991-2008” (University of California Press, 2022). Her earlier books are “The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India” (Hurst/Oxford, 2014) and “The Perfect Frame: Presenting Indian Art: Stories and Photographs from the Kekoo Gandhy Collection” (Chemould, 2003). Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the European Research Council, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Fulbright program. Zitzewitz recently joined UMD from Michigan State University, where she was a faculty member in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. She received her doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 2006.
Additional Leadership Announcements
Harold Burgess’ appointment has been extended as director of the College Park Scholars-Arts program.
Samuel Kerstein’s appointment has been extended as chair of the Department of Philosophy.
Randy Ontiveros’ appointment has been extended as director of Honors Humanities.
Trevor Parry-Giles’ appointment has been extended as associate dean for faculty affairs and research.
Mary Ellen Scullen’s appointment has been extended as director of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
Please join Dean Shonekan in congratulating the new leaders in ARHU. She extends her thanks and appreciation to GerShun Avilez, who served as associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion for one year; Ralph Bauer, who served as associate dean for academic affairs for six years; Curlee Holton, who served as director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora for 11 years; Jessica Lu, who served as interim director of the DCC living-learning program for one year; Jaqueline Mueck, who served as interim director of the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House for one year; Colin Phillips, who served as director of the Maryland Language Science Center for 10 years; Jordana Moore Saggese, who served as interim chair of the Department of Art History & Archaeology for one year; and Rika Dixon White, who served as acting assistant dean for Marketing and Communications for one year.