Humanities Center Advisory Board

	Georges Van Den Abbeele, Interim Director Founding Dean, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University For bio, please visit the Humanities Center's Directors and Staff page by clicking here.
	Carla Kaplan, Founding Director Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature 405 Lake Hall c.kaplan@neu.edu Carla Kaplan, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, holds the Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature and writes on modern, African-American, and women’s history and culture. She has published five books, including the award-winning Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters (Doubleday/Anchor) and writes occasionally for such publications as The Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Forthcoming books include Miss Anne in Harlem: the White Women of the Black Renaissance and Queen of the Muckrakers: the Life of Jessica Mitford, both with HarperCollins. Kaplan has been a Resident Fellow at numerous humanities centers and institutes, including the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York City Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. Kaplan has received teaching awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and elsewhere.
	Amílcar Antonio Barreto Associate Professor of Political Science 301 Meserve Hall a.barreto@neu.edu 617-373-2783 Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Associate Professor of Political Science, writes on Puerto Rican politics, Latino politics in the United States, social movements, nationalism and ethnic politics. He has published three books on language, the State, Vieques, the U.S. Navy, and Puerto Rican politics. His fourth book, Nationalism and Its Logical Foundations, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. An award-winning professor, Barreto has been a Visiting Fellow at the Chaim Herzog Center at Ben Gurion University and served as the Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and a Special Assistant to the Dean for diversity matters.
	Elizabeth Maddock Dillon Associate Professor of English 406 Holmes Hall E.Dillon@neu.edu 617-373-4544 Elizabeth Maddock Dillon is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University where she teaches courses in the fields of early American literature, transatlantic print culture, and Atlantic theatre and performance. She is the author of The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public Sphere(Stanford University Press, 2004) which won the Heyman Prize for Outstanding Publication in the Humanities at Yale University. She has published widely in journals on topics from aesthetics, to the novel in the early Atlantic world, to Barbary pirates. She is the co-director of the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College and the former the chair of the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association and. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Early American Literature, American Literature, and PMLA. Her new book, New World Drama: Liberty, Slavery, and the Atlantic Public Sphere, 1649-1849, is forthcoming from Duke University Press and she is co-editing, with Michael Drexler, a volume of essays on early American culture and the Haitian Revolution.
	Laura Green Associate Professor and Chair, Department of English 406 Holmes Hall la.green@neu.edu 617-373-4540 Laura Green received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Educating Women: Cultural Conflict and Victorian Literature (Ohio University Press, 2001); articles published in Twentieth-Century Literature, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and elsewhere; and a completed book manuscript, “Transforming Fictions: Literary Identification in the Novel of Formation.” She specializes in Victorian literature and culture and is also interested in the history and theory of the novel; twentieth-century and contemporary Anglophone realist fiction; and gender and sexuality studies. She is also a co-convener of the Harvard Humanities Center Victorian Literature and Culture Seminar. Professor Green has been at Northeastern since 2001.
	David Lazer Associate Professor, College of Computer and Information Science and Political Science d.lazer@neu.edu Professor Lazer is a member of both the College of Computer and Information Science and the Department of Political Science. Before joining the Northeastern faculty in fall 2009, he was an associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Program on Networked Governance. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. Professor Lazer’s research centers on social networks; governance, or how the patterns of institutional relations yield functional or dysfunctional systems; and technology and its use in communication. An authority on social networks, he has written several papers on the diffusion of information among interest groups and between these groups and the government. He is the co-editor of Governance and Information Technology: From Electronic Government to Information Government and also written extensively on the use of DNA in the criminal justice system.
	Alisa K. Lincoln Associate Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences 316 Robinson Hall al.lincoln@neu.edu 617-373-3485 Bio coming soon.
	Mary Loeffelholz Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of English m.loeffelholz@neu.edu 617-373-4774 Mary Loeffelholz, Professor of English and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and has been a member of Northeastern's faculty since 1988. She chaired the English Department from 2001-2006, served as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Director of the Graduate School in the College of Arts and Sciences from 2006-2007, and was Special Assistant to the President for Academic Affairs in 2007-2008. She was a member of the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee from 1992-1994 and has served in various leadership roles on the Faculty Senate and its committees, with a special emphasis on faculty development and academic leadership. A distinguished scholar of American literature, Dr. Loeffelholz is the author of three scholarly books, most recently From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women's Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2004). She is the editor of Volume D: 1914-1945 of the latest edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature and a two-term past Chair of the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association of America.
	Shan Mohammed Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Health Sciences 316K Robinson Hall s.mohammed@neu.edu 617-373-7729 Shan Mohammed is the Director of the Master of Public Health Program in Urban Health in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. He received his MD degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. After pursuing residency and fellowship training in Family Medicine and Academic Medicine he completed a 3-year fellowship in Developing Leadership to Reduce Substance Abuse with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. His areas of interest in addition to substance abuse prevention include: urban health and human rights, health professional educational reform and the role of the arts in enhancing positive public health outcomes.
	Richard L. O'Bryant, Director of John D. O'Bryant African-American Institute Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science 377 Meserve Hall obryant@neu.edu 617-373-4397 Richard L. O'Bryant, who received his PhD from MIT, is the Director of the John D. O'Bryant Institute and an Assistant Professor in the Department of the Political Science at Northeastern. He is the author of “Low-Income Communities: Technological Strategies for Nurturing Community, Empowerment and Self-Sufficiency at a Low-income Housing Development” (Kellogg Forum Monograph, 2005) as well as the co-author of "Building Community, Empowerment and Self-Sufficiency: Early Results from the Camfield Estates-MIT Creating Community Connections Project" (Rutledge Publishing, 2002). His research interests include: science and technology policy and politics, urban and regional studies and politics, urban and community technology, and community-based research.
	Uta Poiger Professor and Chair, History Department 249 Meserve u.poiger@neu.edu 617-373-2660 In her research, Poiger examines 20th-century German culture and society in transnational perspective, and makes the study of race and gender central to these explorations. In individually authored as well as in collaborative work, she has consistently crossed national boundaries, addressing questions of Americanization, globalization, imperialism, and the promises and challenges of comparative history. Topics that have particularly engaged her interest include the political and cultural dimensions of the Cold War; consumption and popular culture in different political regimes; the international links and imaginations that have shaped youth cultures; and the relationship of the multinational cosmetics industry to international discourses on beauty and health. Her graduate and undergraduate teaching has included courses on modern European and German history, the Holocaust and comparative genocide, gender and sexuality, and historiography. Recent undergraduate seminars have covered topics such as Beauty and the Body; the Modern Girl Around the World; and Migrations in Europe since 1945.
	Hilary Poriss Associate Professor of Music History 351 Ryder h.poriss@neu.edu 617-373-2440 Hilary Poriss, Associate Professor of Music History, researches Italian opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of 19th-century musical culture. She is the author of Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford University Press, 2009), and co-editor of Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her articles and reviews have been published in 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Verdi Forum, Journal of British Studies and other musicological books and journals. Poriss has held fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and the Gladys Kriebel Delmas Foundation. Her 1999 paper, “Making Their Way through the World: Italian One-Hit Wonders,” won the Paul A. Pisk Prize of the American Musicological Society.
	Ronald Sandler Associate Professor of Philosophy 371 Holmes Hall r.sandler@neu.edu 617-373-3619 Ronald Sandler is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and a researcher in the Nanotechnology and Society Research Group and the Environmental Justice Research Collaborative at Northeastern University. His primary areas of research are environmental ethics, ethics and technology, ethical theory, and Spinoza. Sandler has taught courses on subjects ranging from philosophy of religion to ethics after Darwin and from contemporary moral issues to the history of philosophy. He is an affiliated faculty member of Northeastern University's Environmental Studies and Jewish Studies programs. He was one of four recipient's of Northeastern University's Excellence in Teaching Award for the 2004-2005 academic year. Fields of Special Interest: Ethical Theory, Environmnetal Ethics, Ethics and Technology, Spinoza, Jewish Philosophy
	David Sherman Professor of Accounting 404 Hayden Hall h.sherman@neu.edu 617-373-4640 Professor Sherman's research has long focused on financial reporting, performance measurement/management, and financial literacy issues facing corporate management and Boards of Directors in global businesses. He also actively studies methods to improve productivity in health care, financial services, and other service organizations. His current research focuses on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) impact on managers and investors and Audit committee responsibilities beyond compliance. David is also studying governance issues related to Chinese entrepreneurial businesses that have equities traded on US markets, identifying the paths that increase their likelihood of achieving founder and investor goals. He is an expert on developing and using financial and non-financial measures to evaluate and manage performance. Professor Sherman teaches executive and MBA courses in accounting, control, and global financial statement analysis with a focus on contemporary and international shareholder reporting and financial statement analysis, and financial management of high technology, medical technology, financial services, health care, and nonprofit organizations.
	George Thrush Professor and Director of the School of Architecture 151 Ryder g.thrush@neu.edu 617-373-4637 George Thrush is Director of the School of Architecture at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. His articles include "Ring City: Civic Liberalism and Urban Design" and "Boston's New Urban Ring: An Antidote to Fragmentation". His work seeks to connect transportation, urban design, and civic image in an increasingly privatized economic arena. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Tennessee in 1984, and his M. Arch. from Harvard University in 1988. In 2005, his work was celebrated with his entry into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. His research, practice, writing, and teaching all revolve around contemporary urban issues in architecture. The School he heads focuses on design solutions for Boston's "post-industrial landscape" of former transportation infrastructure and other difficult sites. He is among the primary authors of a comprehensive regional transportation and development proposal for the Boston metropolitan area called The New Urban Ring.