Faculty & Staff

FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Peter Bacon Hales holds degrees in American literature, photography, and American Civilization from Haverford College and the University of Texas at Austin. He has written three major books on American Culture -- Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape, and Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project - as well as numerous smaller books, monographs and essays on the contemporary American downtown, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, modernization and American culture at the turn of the century, computer games, television, popular music and the like. Atomic Spaces, a cultural history of the Manhattan Project, America's World War II-era atomic bomb program, was the winner of the 1997 Hoover Book Prize and the runner-up for the Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians. A Professor and University Scholar in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he has been Director of the American Studies Summer Institute since 1992.

Dr. Chris Messenger, a Professor in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a supervising faculty member with specialization in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and in popular culture. The author of two highly acclaimed studies of sports and play in American fiction (1981 and 1990), Professor Messenger has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1976. His most recent book is The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became Our Gang, published in 2002. He has taught English as a second language in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and he was director of Undergraduate Studies in English at UIC from 1985-1989. In 1998, he was a featured visiting scholar in Estonia under the auspices of the USIA. Dr. Messenger has run seminars for university instructors on the creation and teaching of introductory literature courses.

Dr. Stan Howard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePaul University and founder and President of the Lake Effect Men's Club, a mentoring organization serving African-American young men. A specialist in the area of American Constitutional law and statutory employment law, his interests are multi-disciplinary, ranging from class, race and gender inequality to political philosophy. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at DePaul, which include such courses as Equal Protection of the Laws, African-American Political Culture, and Criminal Justice, Dr. Howard is completing the manuscript of a book-length study exploring the ways the concept of race has impacted past and present supreme court constitutional and statutory construction in the United States. His recent publications include two articles entitled The Strategic Ambiguity Principle of American Equality Restores Conservative Bush Dynasty; and Race-Neutrality and Colorblindness, and African-American Reparations.

Sharon Holland is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published in the fields of African American, Feminist and Queer Studies and is currently at work on a second book project, ŒBetween Fabrication and Generation(s): Biology, Sex (Acts) and Habitual Non-Belonging. This monograph on the word "generation(s)" cuts in two directions, calling attention to materiality and biological (re)production. The relationship between the material and the biological immediately brings to mind women's narratives and women's bodies. In this respect, the book investigates the phenomenon of women's narratives and how modernism / postmodernism negotiates such an investigation. In addition to this critical project, Professor Holland is the author of Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity, which won the Lora Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association in 2002. She has also completed a novella, How Bubba the Socrates Got to be Neither.

STAFF BIOGRAPHIES

Neil McCarthy completed his Masters in Modern European History at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a minor focus in Latin American History. Neil has been a coordinator with SUSI in 2002 and 2003 while he was a graduate student at UIC and on leave from Mundelein High School where he is a teacher of American History. Neil returned to teaching at Mundelein in the Fall of 2003. Fortunately for the Institute, Neil returned in the summer of 2004 and will once join the Institute in 2005. Neil has attended numerous overseas universities and has worked and traveled throughout the world. His travels have taken him to South & Central America, Western & Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Mary Niemiec, Consulting Administrator, is the Executive Director of External Education. She was the very first Associate Director of the SUSI, in 1993, and has been intimately involved with the Institute since its birth.

Joan Oyama is the Interim Associate Director for Administration for the Office of External Education (ExEd) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Responsible for the logistics and organization of previous SUSI institutes, Joan began her career at ExEd in April 1998 as a project coordinator. She now has oversight responsibility for professional development programs as well as operational and administrative functions. 2005 marks her fourth year working with the Institute.

Janette Salamanca is a project coordinator for the Office of External Education (ExEd) at UIC. She joined the ExEd team in 2003 after completing a Bachelor's of Art in History with a minor in Spanish from Concordia University Wisconsin. In the past she has aided in the coordination of the UIC Blended Learning Initiative and the 2004 and 2005 Sloan-C Workshops on Blended Learning and Higher Education.  This will be her first year working with the Study of the U.S. Institute.

Renee Welch joined UIC as a project researcher in 1996 providing project management and leadership in the coordination of research based projects for the College of Education. Dr. Welch currently works for UIC's Office of External Education as Senior Program Coordinator, responsible for faculty support and the development of online courses and oversight of professional education programs. She holds a doctorate of philosophy degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a certified Master Online Instructor.