New Faculty and Staff Welcomed to the College

This year, the College of Arts & Letters welcomes 24 new full-time faculty and staff members. These faculty and staff members were recognized during the 2022 Faculty Welcome Reception, which was held Sept. 29.

Please join us in welcoming these full-time faculty and staff to the College:

Hanan Aly

Hanan Aly, Assistant Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and American Cultures and James Madison College, graduated with a Ph.D. in English and a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Michigan State University. Her work examines representations of dispossession in Maghrebian and Arab Diasporic literature and film and elaborates typologies and conceptualizations of dispossession within and beyond colonial and postcolonial contexts. She received her M.A. in English from Western Michigan University, following the completion of a one-year Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Alexandria, Egypt, where she taught for years before she moved to the United States.

Delaney Atkinson

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Delaney Atkinson, Secretary III, joined the Office Operations Team in December, supporting Undergraduate Studies, the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, Excel Network, Digital Humanities, and Student Wellness, Success, Recruitment, and Advising, as well as Marketing and Communications, Academic Technology, and, recently, the Department of African American and African Studies. She has a B.A. in Business Administration from Liberty University and previously worked for the Michigan Department of Transportation while studying for her degree. Since December, Atkinson has enjoyed working with the departments, centers, and units within the College to develop a variety of skills and looks forward to continuing to grow in these skills.

Larissa Babak

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Larissa Babak, User Engagement Specialist for the Humanities Commons, holds an M.A. from Michigan State University in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing and a B.A. in Writing from Grand Valley State University. She has an extensive background in instructional design, content strategy, and social media management with experience in museum, nonprofit, and business environments. During her time as a graduate student in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, she collaborated on projects with The Writing Center @ MSU and Sherlockian.net. Additionally, she has taught courses at MSU, Madonna University, and Henry Ford College on first year composition and technical writing.

João Beira

João Beira, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, is a visual artist, art director, and researcher who works on immersive and augmented visualizations. He combines his artistic activity with academic and scientific research using software development for interactive and generative visualizations. He also is the founder and creative director of Datagrama visuals, a collective of International artist-coders that create immersive environments and perform live visuals. Beira has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Mater of Multimedia Arts from the University of Porto, Portugal. His work with multimedia art has been focused on live performance and augmented reality.

Yuval Benziman

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Yuval Benziman returns to the Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel as a Visiting Scholar. In 2015-2016, he was a fellow of the Serling Institute and taught at James Madison College. He is a Senior Faculty Lecturer in the Conflict Research, Management and Resolution Program of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and holder of the Guth-Dreyfus Lectureship for Conflict Resolution and the Law. His fields of interests include conflict resolution, official and unofficial negotiations, cultural studies and collective narratives. Benziman also is a practitioner of the field of conflict resolution.

Beth Bonsall

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Beth Bonsall, Digital Communications Manager for the College’s Marketing team, was hired in spring 2022 to support digital and social media content strategy, story development and writing, and media outreach related to faculty scholarship and research. For 13 years, Bonsall has served in communications and marketing roles at Michigan State University, most recently with the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and prior to that with the MSU Information Technology unit. Previously, Bonsall worked for more than six years in editorial and management capacities for the nonprofit Photo Marketing Association International. She holds a B.A. in Journalism from MSU with focus areas in photojournalism and linguistics.

Scott Borgeson

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Scott Borgeson, Instructor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University. His dissertation was on long-distance compensatory lengthening. He also earned an M.A. in Linguistics from Stanford University and has a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. He has worked as a Teaching Assistant at Stanford since 2013 for several different classes, including Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society; Introduction to Phonology; Crosslinguistics Syntax; The Syntax of English; and Modern Standard Arabic.

Andreas Bouroutis

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Andreas Bouroutis is the Aida Weintraub Finifter Visiting Scholar of the Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel. He came from the Department of Political Sciences at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at Hellenic Open University. His research interests include multicultural societies (Mediterranean port cities) and transnational aspects, state transformation and imperialism (Balkans-Europe), and Jewish communities in Greece and the Balkans. He has published several articles in Greece and abroad about Jewish communities and the Holocaust. His book, Holocaust in Thessaloniki, The Italians and the Jewish Students of Umberto Primo School, was shortlisted for the Greek National Book Prize Award.

Dawn Burns

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Dawn Burns, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, brings 25 years of experience to the First Year Writing Program, having recently taught at Ivy Tech Community College. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has been recognized by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and the Ohio Arts Council with an Individual Excellence Award. Burns is the author of Evangelina Everyday, published in 2022 by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Cornerstone Press. She is committed to writing and storytelling as acts of personal and social change both in and beyond the classroom.

Michael Copperman

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Michael Copperman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, taught writing to low-income, first-generation students of diverse backgrounds at the University of Oregon for 16 years before coming to MSU. At the University of Oregon, he worked to implement anti-oppressive pedagogies, serving as the Composition Department’s Culturally Responsive Teaching Fellow and winning the University’s Herman Award for Specialized Pedagogy. His prose has appeared in Oxford American, The Sun, Boston Review, Creative Nonfiction, Salon, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Waxwing, and Copper Nickel, among other magazines, and has won awards and garnered fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Oregon Literary Arts, and the Oregon Arts Commission.

Everardo Cuevas

Everardo Cuevas, Instructor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC), will receive his Ph.D. in Writing and Rhetoric from Michigan State University in December 2022. He also has a master’s degree from MSU in Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy from the WRAC Department. During his time as a graduate student at MSU, he has worked as a Research Fellow, a Graduate Assistant for the First-Year Writing Program, and a Graduate Coordinator for The Writing Center. He is a member of the Michigan Indigena/Chicanx Community Alliance and the Indigenous Graduate Student Collective.

Ben Davis

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Ben Davis, Advisor for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, has a Ph.D. in German with graduate certification in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to MSU, he served as Visiting Assistant Professor of German and Director of Undergraduate Studies in German and Global Languages and Communities at UNC-Greensboro. His research interests explore connections between Early Modern German Studies and Queer Theory and Performance Studies, with an emphasis on gendered resistance in seventeenth-century Silesian drama. He has taught all levels of German and a wide variety of Cultural Studies courses. His broad service record includes academic advising, curriculum development, study abroad programs, undergraduate research, grant activity, and event programming.

Tania de Sostoa-McCue

Tania de Sostoa-McCue, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, teaches First-Year Writing and has served in coordinator roles with the MSU Writing Center. Her work poses the questions: What does queer do? What can queer do? Her dissertation project, (de)(anti)(intra): Queer Self-Storying as Embodied, Community, and Theory-Building Processes, constellates a theoretical framework by braiding together queer and cultural rhetorics, feminist theory, and Indigenous methods and weaving the stories of three queer writers. de Sostoa-McCue also served as Editorial Assistant for the College Composition and Communication journal and has presented at several conferences.

Benjamin Goodwin

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Benjamin Goodwin, Instructor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, worked for nine years in the Literacies and Composition Department at Utah Valley University (UVU). Beginning as an Adjunct teaching the Pre-Core Reading and Writing course, he worked his way up to Lecturer, then Professional in Residence, and eventually became the Lead Instructor and Designer for that course. He earned UVU’s first Faculty Excellence Award given to a non-tenure track faculty member. He graduated with a B.A. in Secondary English Education from Elon University in North Carolina and earned an M.A. in Writing and Rhetoric from Michigan State University.

Leanne Kent

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Leanne Kent, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, has joined the faculty of the First-Year Writing Program. She has a Ph.D. in Applied Philosophy from Bowling Green State University, specializing in ethical theory. She began her teaching career at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin. After a hiatus from academia, she returned to teaching and taught writing and humanities-based classes to STEM students at MSU’s Lyman Briggs College. She enjoys community-engaged interdisciplinary work, having previously served on a hospital ethics committee. She is interested in and continues to develop capacity in community-engaged learning.

Youngeun Kim

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Youngeun Kim, Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, was a Lecturer for the University of Sheffield, England; the International School of Urban Sciences at the University of Seoul, South Korea; and Department of Korean as a Foreign Language at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea, prior to coming to MSU. She also was a Lecturer from 2015-2019 for the Center for Korean Language and Culture at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea, where she also earned her Ph.D. in Korean Language and Literature.

Edana Kleinhans-Junghahn

Edana Kleinhans-Junghahn, Instructor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, comes to MSU from Duke University where she was an Instructor of German in the Department of German Studies. She also earned her Ph.D. in German with a designated emphasis in Medieval and Early Modern Literature from the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies, a fully merged graduate program with joint admissions to Duke University and the University of North Carolina. During the Summer of 2021, she was and Instructor of German at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.

Regiane Lima de Paula

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Regiane Lima de Paula, Instructor of Portuguese in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies, began working for MSU in January 2022. Since 2020, she has taught online classes on Portuguese as a Second Language for people preparing for the TOEFL exam. Prior to that, she worked for Mackenzie Presbyterian High School as an English as a Second Language Teacher and as the English Program Coordinator. She was a Lecturer of Portuguese for Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, Brazil, from 2013-2019. She has an M.A. in Education from Mackenzie Presbyterian University and a B.A. in English and Portuguese with a Specialization in Translation from Universidade Ibero Americana in São Paulo, Brazil.

Ashlee Richards

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Ashlee Richards has a background in office operations and office support. She is an Office Assistant in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design and has worked for Michigan State University since 2019, serving as a Clerical Aide from 2019-2020 and then an Office Operations/Professional Aide since 2020. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Spring Arbor University in 2013.

Aaron Schultz

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Aaron Schultz, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, comes to MSU from Oxford College of Emory University where he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy for the past year. Prior to that, he was a Teaching Assistant at Binghamton University for six years. His research focus is on Buddhist Philosophy and Theories of Punishment, Asian Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy, Free Will, Ethics (including medical and environmental ethics), and Logic. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Binghamton University and an M.A. in Philosophy from Kent State University. He co-created and co-hosted a podcast series, Just as it Sounds, that documents the experiences of Ph.D. students and early career academics.

D.J. Selmeyer

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D.J. Selmeyer, Technical Director in the Department of Theatre, brings a wide-ranging and award-winning background in arts and entertainment production to the MSU Scene Shop. His experience includes scenic construction, technical direction, and lighting design for local and regional theaters, houses of worship, touring roadhouses, along with the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League and Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League. Throughout hundreds of productions and events, he has enjoyed working with students and volunteers, helping equip the next generation of technicians and designers. He holds a B.S. in Technical Theatre from Portland State University and an M.F.A. in Theatrical Design/Technology from the University of Montana.

Zoe Wake Hyde

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Zoe Wake Hyde, Community Development Manager for Humanities Commons, has held various research, teaching, and administrative roles across the university sector in New Zealand and collaborated extensively with post-secondary institutions in Canada and the United States. She has been working towards transformational change in education and research publishing since 2015, and, prior to joining the Commons, led projects to develop collaborative open textbook publishing and open humanities research processes with a Canadian nonprofit organization. She holds a master’s degree in Publishing from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Communication Studies (Hons) from Auckland University of Technology.

Vered Weiss

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Vered Weiss is the Serling Israeli Visiting Scholar and The Israel Institute Teaching Fellow at The Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel. Weiss is also a faculty member of the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities. Weiss is co-editor of Tracing Topographies: Revisiting the Concentration Camps Seventy Years after the Liberation of Auschwitz and is co-editing a volume about Israeli culture and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her current research project explores the interplay between the location of marginalized characters and the ways in which narrative empathy is formulated in literature. She is also collaborating on a co-edited volume about Israeli speculative fiction.

Andrew Wingard

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Andrew Wingard, Associate Director of Development, comes to MSU from Youngstown State University where he served as a Development Officer since April 2020 and a part-time faculty member since August 2021. He also was an Assistant Director of Athletics (November 2018-April 2020) and the Manager of Athletic Ticket Sales (April-November 2018) at Youngstown State. Prior to that, he worked for Tulane University as the Assistant Director of Athletic Ticket Sales (January-April 2018) and an Account Manager (October 2017-January 2018). He also has held positions at Texas Tech University, Vanderbilt University, and Western Kentucky University. Wingard has an M.S. in Sports Administration: Intercollegiate Athletic Administration from Western Kentucky University.