Full-Time Faculty

Pamela Beattie

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities
Chair of the Department of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, University of Toronto

Research Interests: Medieval studies with a primary focus on thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century religious and intellectual history; medieval literature; medieval Iberia; Ramon Llull; interfaith dialogue and polemic; crusade and mission

Office: Bingham Humanities 303A

Phone: (502) 852-8336
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Simona Bertacco

Simona Bertacco

Professor of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, Universitá degli Studi di Genova

Research Interests: Global humanities; postcolonialism; women’s and gender studies; translation and multilingual literatures

Office: Bingham Humanities 303A

Phone: (502) 852-7161
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Hilaria Cruz

Hilaria Cruz

Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities (Linguistics)

Education: PhD, University of Texas at Austin

Research interests: San Juan Quiahije Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico; automatic speech recognition for endangered languages; verb morphology; language documentation; verbal art; language variation

Office: Bingham Humanities 201B

Phone: (502) 852-8820
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Mike Hagan

Associate Professor (Term) of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, University of Louisville

Research Interests: Pop music and culture; postmodern and poststructuralist Philosophy; Deleuze; comparative philosophy (East–West)

Office: Bingham Humanities 200D

Phone: (502) 852-6045
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Ann C. Hall

Ann C. Hall

Professor of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, Ohio State University

Research Interests: Drama; performance; popular culture; film; feminism; cultural studies; writing plays, poems, and short stories

Office: Bingham Humanities 303D

Phone: (502) 852-7134
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Felicia Jamison

Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities and History

Education: PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Research Interests: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American history; public history; public humanities

Office: Bingham Humanities 214A and Gottschalk 103A

Phone: (502) 852-3620
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Michael Johmann

Associate Professor (Term) of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, Indiana University

Research Interests: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American culture, with particular focus on literature, film, crime, sports, and popular culture

Office: Bingham Humanities 302D

Phone: (502) 852-6230
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Photo of Dr. Katie Klinekopf

Katie Kleinkopf

Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, University of Tennessee

Research Interests: Late antique Christianity; early Syrian and Egyptian Christianity; asceticism; new materialism; women and gender studies; landscape studies

Office: Bingham Humanities 330D

Phone: (502) 852-0489
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Photo of Dr. Brandon McCormack

Michael Brandon McCormack

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities and Pan-African Studies
Chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies

Education: PhD, Vanderbilt University

Research Interests: Black religion and cultural studies; the prophetic tradition in black religion; black moral panic; cultural productions of the hip-hop generation; African American religion; religions of the African diaspora

Office: Strickler 438

Phone: (502) 852-5505
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Picture of Maryam Moazzen

Maryam Moazzen

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities
Director of Undergraduate Studies

Education: PhD, University of Toronto

Research Interests: Islamic intellectual and cultural history; classical through modern Middle Eastern literature; Shi‘ism; Sufism; and Shi‘ite higher learning from 1800 to the early twentieth century

Office: Bingham Humanities 214B

Phone: (502) 852-3054
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Picture of Ranen Omer-Sherman

Ranen Omer-Sherman

Professor of Comparative Humanities
Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies

Education: PhD, University of Notre Dame

Research Interests: Diasporic and transnational identities in literature; the literature of “passing”; graphic novels, memoirs, and comics; ethnic American Literature; Jewish American literature; Holocaust narrative; Israeli and Palestinian literature; utopianism and the kibbutz movement

Office: Bingham Humanities 203B

Phone: (502) 852-6842
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Picture of Natalie Polzer

Natalie Polzer

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, University of Cambridge

Research Interests: Jewish religion and culture; women in religion; feminist theology; theory of religion; Bible and biblical Judaism; rabbinic texts and culture; Holocaust commemoration and ritual pilgrimage

Office: Bingham Humanities 200E

Phone: (502) 852-3406
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Picture of Patrick Pranke among studens

Patrick Pranke

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities
Vice Chair of Comparative Humanities

Education: PhD, University of Michigan

Research Interests: Burmese Buddhist history and popular religious traditions; Hinduism and Indian folk traditions

Office: Bingham Humanities 200F

Phone: (502) 852-7140
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Thomas Stewart

Associate Professor (Term) of Comparative Humanities (Linguistics)

Education: PhD, Ohio State University

Research Interests: Linguistic morphology (word structure and word relationships) and its interactions with other components of grammar; how languages change over time, on their own and through influence from other languages; Scottish Gaelic

Office: Bingham Humanities 203A

Phone: (502) 852-0610
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Picture of Karl Swinehart

Karl Swinehart

Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities (Linguistics)
Director of Graduate Studies

Education: PhD, University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests: Applied and educational linguistics; social inequality and the semiotic dimensions of its mediation; indigenous language politics in Bolivia, focusing on Aymara language media; bilingual education and language policy in Scandinavia (Norway) and the United States

Office: Bingham Humanities 213B and 200G

Phone: (502) 852-1298
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Emeritus and Retired Faculty

Terry Burden
Riffat Hassan
Arthur J. Slavin
Mary Ann Stenger
Michael Williams
Elaine O. Wise