Shimelis Beyene

PhD. Washington University St. Louis (1998) Research interests: Mechanisms of and factors affecting hybridization between anubis and hamadryas baboons in Ethiopia, wildlife and human conflict in agropastoral setting, and community-based natural resource management.

(sbeyene2@unlnotes.unl.edu)

Dawne Yvette Curry

Dawne Yvette Curry (dcurry2@unl.edu) was born in Virginia and raised in rural Kilmarnock near the Chesapeake Bay. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Spanish and International Affairs from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1990. She then attended Ohio University, where she earned a Master's in International Affairs/African Studies in 1996. In 2006, she earned her Ph. D. in African History at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. As a doctoral student Dr. Curry has won numerous national fellowships to conduct research in South Africa. Her list of honors includes the Social Science Research Council Pre-Dissertation Fellowship and the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

In the spring of 2006, Dr. Curry joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as an Assistant Professor of History and Ethnic Studies. Her research interests include resistance and protest struggles in 20th century Africa, but particularly South Africa. She is currently working on an article that analyzes the use of space in the 1946 Alexandra Squatters' Movement.

In her free time, Dr. Curry likes to travel, read, write poetry, and take photographs.

Lory Janelle Dance

Lory Janelle Dance received a B.A. degree in Government in 1985 from Georgetown University and the M.A. from Harvard University in 1991. In June of 1995, she received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard. She has worked as an instructor in the Social Studies and Sociology Departments at Harvard. She is presently employed as an associate professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. During the Spring semester of 2008, Dance will join the faculties of the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dance's areas of interest include the sociology of education, urban sociology, youth cultures in cross-national comparisons, U.S. "race" and ethnic relations, intersectional and critical theory, and qualitative methods (with an emphasis on ethnographic research). Her most recent research project, funded by a fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is a study of promising practices in schools in Sweden and the U.S. with a high percentage of immigrant students. The title of this cross-national comparative NSF study is the Children of Immigrants in Schools (Richard Alba, SUNY-Albany, PI). Dance is a member of the Swedish research team; the other nations included are the U.S., Great Britain, France, Spain, and Holland. Her most recent U.S. research, funded by a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, was conducted on site at two inner city schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She interviewed students, teachers, and community members to better understand the impact of small learning communities on ninth grade educational performance.

As a 2003/2004 Fulbright scholar, Dance spent the Spring semester of 2004 teaching at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. As a result of her Fulbright, she was invited back to Sweden during the Fall semester of 2004 to work as a guest researcher at Kalmar University in Kalmar, Sweden. While in Kalmar, Dance conducted pilot study on national belonging and ethnic identity among ethnic minority teenagers in Sweden funded by a grant from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. Dance currently holds a visiting scholar position at Kalmar University College and spends summers and semester breaks in Sweden.

Dance has authored several academic papers. She has also published articles and a book titled, Tough Fronts: The Impact of Street Culture on Schooling (Routledge, 2002). Book manuscripts in progress include: At Risk Near Harvard U. Working Class Teens and the Teachers They Love, and Black Strawberries: Teenagers, School Reform, and Urban Change in North Philly. She has been a guest lecturer and speaker at many universities in the United States, as well as at Universities in Germany and Sweden.

Kwakiutl Dreher

Dr. Kwakiutl L. Dreher (kdreher2@unl.edu) is Associate Professor English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in English from the University of South Carolina-Columbia and her Master's Degree from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Dreher received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Riverside.

She conducts research in African American literature, including auto/biography, film, visual, and popular culture, and mass marketed popular literature. She published Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography with SUNY press in 2008. In summer 2010, she presented her work on her maiden international tour of Dancing on the White Page in Europe, at the following universities: the University of Lausanne and Nêuchatel in Switzerland; the University of Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse, France; the University of Ca' Foscari Venice, Italy; and the Utrecht-the Netherlands. She has published "A Eulogy for Tyrell Musgrove: The Disremembered Child in Marc Forster's "Monster's Ball" in Film Criticism; "It's My Body and I'll Show It If I want To": The Politics of Language in the Autobiographies of Dorothy Dandridge, Diahann Carroll, and Whoopi Goldberg." The Popular Culture Review; book reviews for the Quarterly Review of Film and Video: Paula J. Massood, Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003; Melvin Donalson, Black Directors in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas, 2003; and Judylyn Ryan, Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, P, 2005; and, encyclopedia entries: "Lena Horne" and "Ethel Waters." in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. New York: Oxford UP, 2008; "Elizabeth Nunez" in A Feminist Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Beaulieu. Westport: Greenwood, 2006; and, "Children" and "The Oprah Winfrey Book Club" in A Toni Morrison Encyclopedia. Ed. Elizabeth Beaulieu. Westport: Greenwood, 2003.

A performer, Dr. Dreher has guest performed in the Lincoln area community as poet for the National Council of Negro Women and African American Creativity Forum, song stylist for "Live the Dream" Martin Luther King Birthday Celebration" and "A Taste of Harlem." She wrote and performed Tea & Temptation, an Intimate Musical at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and the Lincoln Community Playhouse. She also wrote and performed Kwakiutl's Set: An Evening of Jazz at La Carousel Lounge in Atlanta, Georgia, and Another Set ... Another Story for the Angels Theater Company Summer Stock 2." She produced her one-woman show "In a Smoke-Filled Room" in Riverside, and the play was selected as a finalist for production by the Women's Theater Initiative-Cincinnati, Ohio. She directed Crowns ... The Musical at the Lincoln Community Playhouse in 2009.

She also is former Editor of the NAACP-Lincoln Branch newsletter, and former member of the Lincoln Arts Council. She has served on the Lincoln Community Playhouse Reading Committee.

Jeannette Eileen Jones

Jeannette Eileen Jones (jjones11@unlnotes.unl.edu) received her B.A. in History, with minors in Philosophy and Political Science from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. She earned her Master's and Doctoral degrees in History from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She joined the UNL faculty in 2004 and is currently Assistant Professor of History and Ethnic Studies (African American and African Studies). Her teaching specializations are in African American history and the history of pre-colonial Africa. Her research focuses on American cultural and intellectual history, with emphases on race and representation in science, film, and popular culture.

Department Homepage

Patrick D. Jones

Patrick Jones (pjones2@unl.edu) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.A. in "American History, Politics and Society" from Kenyon College in 1993 and his Ph.D. in modern U.S. History and African American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. Jones researches, writes and teaches about the civil rights/Black Power era, America in the 1960s, race relations, urban inequality, social movements, electoral politics, African American experience in the "Jazz Age," and post-WWII American popular culture. Harvard University Press published his award-winning book, The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee, in 2009. Tim Tyson called the book "...a riveting new story of the civil rights movement in America, a tale on par with Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery in its power and importance" and Jeanne Theoharis has written, "The Selma of the North provides a devastating rebuttal of many of the conventional narratives of the civil rights movement." Jones is currently editing a collection of essays that explore the relationship(s) of music to the civil rights and Black Power era and working on a new monograph that looks at the contested meanings of civil rights and Black Power in Cleveland. He is guest-editing an upcoming issue of The Magazine of History on the black freedom movement in the urban North and also collects oral histories with local people about their experiences in the 1960s.

Gregory E. Rutledge

An Assistant Professor of English and Ethnic Studies who specializes in African-American and American literature and culture, Gregory E. Rutledge (grutledge2@unl.edu) received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May, 2005. His research areas and interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American narrative, African "literary" and cultural (dis)continuities in African-American culture, and the American epic tradition, particularly as it manifest itself in literature, cinema, and sports. His scholarship, teaching, community service, and creative writing incorporate his training in literature, Afro-American Studies (M.A., UW-Madison), and law and mass communications (J.D./M.A.M.C., University of Florida-Gainesville). He is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta.

• Department Homepage

Waskar Ari

Waskar Ari (wari2@unl.edu) has a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. His interests center on the changing attitudes of ordinary Latin Americans in the age of sectionalism, segregation, integration, war and revolutions.

Dr. Ari is Assistant Professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his BA in Sociology from the Universidad de San Andres in La Paz, Bolivia. He completed his MA in Political Science at UMSA and has published several articles and books in Bolivia, including Historia de Una Esperanza(1994), a book on economic change and the making of new tradition. At the present, Dr. Ari is writing two different books "From the Law of Indies to Indian Law: Deconstructing Peasant Insurgency in Modern Bolivia, 1921-1967," and "Similarities and differences: The making of identity along Bolivian, Peruvian and Chilean borders, 1871-1977 ".

Miguel A. Carranza

Miguel A. Carranza (mcarranza1@unl.edu) is Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies (Latino and Latin American Studies) having joined the UNL faculty in 1975. He received his B.A. from Kearney State College, NE and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. His current research interest focuses on the integration of Mexicano/Latino immigrants into communities in the northern Great Plains region. This research encompasses the factors that influence the 'quality of life' that long-time and recent Latino immigrants experience in these rural and urban communities. He was a founding member of the Midwest Consortium for Latino Research, a partnership of ten Midwestern universities focused on Latino research issues, as well as one of the founding members of the Latino Research Initiative, a university-community collaborative effort here at UNL, whose primary goal is to address the needs of Nebraska's Latino population through research.

Joy Castro

Born in Miami, Joy Castro studied at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and at Texas A&M University . She taught for ten years at Wabash College in Indiana, where she offered courses on Latino/a, Asian American, and African American literature, women's literature, literary modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, and race, class, and gender issues. An award-winning teacher, she publishes articles on innovative strategies for the post-secondary classroom, and her literary scholarship focuses on experimental women writers of the twentieth century such as Jean Rhys, Margery Latimer, Meridel Le Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Committed to broadening the reach of higher education to communities in need, she has offered free courses to at-risk teenagers, low-income adults, retirees, and victims of domestic violence. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poems appear in anthologies and in journals such as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and the New York Times Magazine. Her critically acclaimed memoir The Truth Book ( Arcade , 2005) investigates intersections of ethnicity, gender, class, religion, violence, and the body. In addition to serving on the faculty in the Institute for Ethnic Studies and the Department of English at UNL, she teaches in the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College in Boston.
Personal website: http://www.joycastro.com

Miguel Ceballos

Miguel Ceballos (mceballos2@unl.edu) is an assistant Professor of Sociology and the Institute for Ethnic Studies. He received a B.A. in Chicano Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, an M.A. in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. in Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to coming to Lincoln, Miguel held a National Institute of Aging Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Population Studies Center of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan. His current research interests are focused on the demography and sociology of Latino health and health disparities of ethnic minority populations, the process of migration and acculturation in the United States, and the role of social networks and social capital in U.S.-Mexico migration. He is currently analyzing a National Science Foundation-funded survey, of the Latino community in the Midwest to better understand the effects of the acculturative process on maternal and infant health.

James Garza

James A. Garza (jgarza2@unl.edu) is a native of Laredo, Texas. He earned his Ph.D. from Texas Christian University and joined the Department of History and the Institute for Ethnic Studies in fall 2001. Dr. Garza is a specialist on nineteenth Century Mexico and his book, The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime and Vice in Porfirian Mexico City, 1876-1911 will be published by the University of Nebraska Press. In addition, he has an essay "Dominance and Submission in Don Porfirio's Belle Epoque" due shortly from the University of New Mexico Press in the upcoming volume Men' s Rooms: Masculinity, Sexuality and Space in Modern Mexico. Currently, Dr. Garza is researching the historical impact of Mexican immigration to the rural Midwest for an upcoming issue of Journal of the West and the intersection of popular memory and official history in the South Texas and Northeastern Mexican borderlands. Dr. Garza also teaches several courses on Latin American, Mexican, and Mexican-American history during the year and serves as the History Department's representative to the Academic Senate.

Jose Eduardo Gonzalez

Jose Eduardo Gonzalez (jeg@unlserve.unl.edu) is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Spanish. He received his B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico and his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Comparative Literature from Binghamton University. His current research interest focuses on literary theory and literary history in Latin America. His teaching specializations are in Latin American Novel, recent (end of 20th/21st century) Latin American narrative, Literary Theory.

Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes

Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes (amontes2@unl.edu), Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies, teaches nineteenth-century and contemporary American literatures. In nineteenth-century literatures, she has established a firm tradition of Mexican American studies through her work on the author Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton. In contemporary literatures, she is a scholar of feminist, lesbian, Chicana and Latina theory and cultural studies. Montes also teaches creative writing and publishes fiction. Among her scholarly publications are a co-edited anthology, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, and "Tortilleras on the Prairie: Latina Lesbians Writing the Midwest" (Journal of Lesbian Studies). Her most recently published short fiction includes "Amigdala" in River City Journal, and "R for Ricura, " in Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium. Her current writing projects include a critical book entitled, Corazon y Tierra: Latinas Writing on the Great Plains & Midwest and a collection of short stories entitled, "While Pilar Tobillo Sleeps." She holds a PhD from the University of Denver. Dr. Montes was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.

Sergio Wals

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009
Fields: Political Behavior, Race and Ethnicity, Public Opinion, Political Psychology

Sergio Wals (swals@unl.edu) is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Ethnic Studies (Latino and Latin American Studies) having joined the UNL faculty in 2009. He received his Licenciatura in Political Science from Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in the area of political behavior, including public opinion and political psychology. His current research agenda focuses on topics related to race and ethnicity both in the United States and in Latin America. His dissertation, Immigrants' Political Suitcases: A Theory of Imported Socialization is a study of how immigrants' prior political experiences affect their political assimilation, attitudes and behaviors once in the United States. This project was distinguished with the Robert Ferber Dissertation Award presented annually by the University of Illinois. His research on the emergence of partisan attachments among immigrants to the United States is forthcoming in the Political Research Quarterly.

Donna Akers

Dr. Akers (dakers2@unl.edu) is an enrolled tribal member of the Choctaw Nation and received her Ph.D. in 1997 from The University of California, Riverside. Since then, she has directed the Native American Studies program at California State University, Northridge, and most recently taught for five years at Purdue University. Dr. Aker's book, Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw People, 1830-1860 (Michigan State University Press, 2004) depicts the story of Choctaw survival, and the evolution of the Choctaw people in Indian Territory in the 19th century. Her second book, entitled Grandma Was an Indian Princess, focuses on the day-to-day lives of five Native women and their instrumental roles in the preservation and evolution of indigenous culture. Dr. Akers teaches courses on Native American history and culture, including Native American Women, The Image of Native Americans in the American Popular Culture, Contemporary Issues in Indian Country, and Comparative Indigenous Cultures.

Mark Awakuni-Swetland

As a young boy Mark Awakuni-Swetland (mawakuni-swetland2@unl.edu) was adopted as a grandson by an Omaha family living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Grandpa Charles Stabler (1900-1992) socialized him into the Omaha way of life while Grandma Elizabeth Saunsoci Stabler (1905-1985) taught him the Omaha language. He compiled and published an Omaha vocabulary for Grandma Elizabeth in 1977. He is named into the Inkesabe (Black Shoulder) Buffalo Clan, is a member of the Omaha Tia-Piah Society, and a traditional Hethushka-style dancer.

Awakuni-Swetland completed his UNL B.A. summa cum laude (1994) majoring in Great Plains Studies, Anthropology, and History with a minor in American Indian Studies and a Senior Honors thesis examining the Omaha Dance Lodges of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His UNL M.A. (1996) in Anthropology included a thesis on Omaha language attitudes and abilities of the students at Macy Public School on the Omaha Reservation. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma in 2003 with a dissertation examining the attitudes and actions of key Omaha community leaders towards the Omaha language.

Awakuni-Swetland has been at the University of Nebraska since 1999 with a joint appointment in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies (Native American Studies) where he is developing and teaching a 4 semester series of Omaha language classes with the assistance of local Omaha speakers.

• Department Homepage

Thomas Gannon

Thomas Gannon (tgannon2@unl.edu)
Tom received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 2003, and joined the faculties of English and the Ethnic Studies Institute (Native American Studies) the same year. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River tribe (Mniconjou Lakota). His main areas of academic interest are Native American literatures (particular those of Great Plains tribes), British Romanticism, ecology & animal rights vis-a-vis literature, and critical theory. His recent publications center on the relationship of "birds and Ind'ins " in 19th- and 20th-century colonial discourse. Courses taught include Native American Literature (both 200 and 400/800 levels) and Literary/Critical Theory (both 200 and 400/800 levels).

• Department Homepage

Martha McCollough

Martha McCollough (mmccollough1@unl.edu) received her B.S. from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the PhD from the University of Oklahoma. She is an associated Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies. Her research focuses on strategies of resistance used by indigenous peoples in the Southern Plains during the early colonial era. Her courses focuses on indigenous peoples in the Great Plains and the United States.

Victoria Smith

Victoria AndersonOxendine Smith (vsmith4@unl.edu) earned her B.A. in History at the University of Arizona in 1992 and an M.A. in the American Indian Studies Program at UA in 1995. She went onto receive her PH.D. in History at Arizona State University in 2002. She arrived at the University of Nebraska in 2001, and accepted a position as Assistant Professor in 2002.

Professor Smith is a 19th century Native American historian. Her areas of concentration concern what some have termed "marginal" Indians, as contrasted with tribal histories. Professor Smith is interested in Native Americans who were often found on the front edge of colliding cultures. For example, she has a long-standing interest in Indian scouts and police, Indian captives, intermarried Indians, as well as mixed-blood Indian histories. Professor Smith's first book, a collaboration with Mr. Hollis Stabler, is entitled No One Ever Asked Me: The World War II Memoirs of an Omaha Indian Soldier (Nebraska Press, 2005). Her second book, Captive Arizona: Indian Captives and Captive Indians in Arizona Territory, 1850-1912 is under contract with the Nebraska Press and will be forthcoming in late 2007. Professor Smith is currently the faculty advisor for the University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange (UNITE), as well as the Edgerton Junior Faculty Chair. Professor Smith is a Cherokee and Delaware descendant.

Cynthia Willis Esqueda

Cynthia Willis Esqueda (cwillis-esqueda1@unl.edu) received her BA from Washburn University, and MA and PhD from the University of Kansas. She joined the faculty in 1991 and is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology and Ethnic Studies. Dr. Willis Esqueda is of Cherokee descent and her family resides in and around Vinita, Oklahoma. The research of Dr. Willis Esqueda and her graduate students focuses on the content and expressions of bias against American indigenous populations, particularly in the legal system. Her current research work has investigated conceptualizations of and perceptions about American Indian domestic violence, as well as the ways in which the stereotypes about American Indians can impact governmental resource allocations. She has also examined biased culpability assignment for Mexican American criminal defendants and the origins of such bias. Her teaching includes courses on the introduction to Native American studies, foundational aspects and current issues in social psychology, the psychology of race and ethnic bias, and comparative ethnic studies.

Representative publications:

Tehee, M. & Willis Esqueda, C. (in press). American Indian and European American women's perceptions of domestic violence. Journal of Family Violence.

Willis Esqueda, C. (2007). Racial profiling as a minority issue. In R.L. Wiener, B.H. Bornstein, R. Schopp, & S. Wilborn (Eds.), Legal Decision Making in Everyday Life: Controversies in Social Consciousness (pp. 75-87). New York: Springer.

Willis Esqueda, C., & Tehee, M. (2006). Legal and psychological approaches to understanding domestic violence for American Indigenous women. In M. Freeman (Ed.), Current Legal Problems: Law and Psychology (pp. 257-273). London, UK: Oxford University Press.