Susan E. Alcock
Director, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World; Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology; professor of classics; professor of anthropology. Research interests include archaeologies of landscape, memory and imperialism (with an emphasis on the ancient Mediterranean and ancient Western Asia); her experience in regional field projects has also led to a concern with issues of landscape and site preservation and presentation. research page
Karen Allen Baxter
Managing Director, Rites and Reasons Theatre, Africana Studies. Baxter produces all the theatres programs and productions, including The Black Lavender Experience – Theatre and Conversation Sparked by Queer Playwrights of Color; and the Africana Film Festival. She studies the West African language, Bambara and works with the Trilateral Reconnections Project, University of Cape Town, SA/Brown/University of the West Indies and Fitna Yellen, Mali. Baxter also teaches a course, Art and Civic Engagement that explores public art, communities, social and cultural identity, democracy and power structures. research page
Betsey BIggs
Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies
My body of work explores relationships among music, sound, image, and place. In some ways I consider myself a professional wanderer: I collect scraps of sound and narrative fragments from around the world, and deconstruct and arrange them in ways that I hope are evocative. By slowing down, clarifying, and reworking these sonic (and sometimes visual) fragments, I try to recreate my experience of place in highly abstract ways. Many of my projects consider the ways that sound can be used in public art to intensify the public's engagement with the physical, social and emotional spaces around them, as well as their own creativity. At a time when technology seems to seductively and incrementally envelop each of us in a solipsistic bubble, I believe we must learn to use it as a means of connection – to ourselves, to our communities, and to our world at large. More about Betsey Biggs
Craig Dreeszen
Consultant, author, and adjunct lecturer in American civilization. He works nationally to provide solutions through strategic planning, program evaluation, training, organizational development, and meeting facilitation for nonprofit organizations, foundations, and public agencies. Teaches in cultural policy planning. more about Craig Dreeszen
caroline frank
Visiting lecturer in American Studies. Research interests are Early American and global history; material culture studies; and historical archaeology. She completed a dissertation in American civilization entitled "China's Object and Imaginary in the Making of an American Nation, 1690-1790," which won the 2008 Gabriel Prize in American Studies. She teaches courses on material culture and the China trades. She codirects the Greene Farm Archaeology Project in Warwick, RI, and is beginning a related project on Native American enslavement in southern New England.
Gayle Gifford
Adjunct lecturer in public humanities. Her interests include organization and revenue development within small to medium-sized nongovernmental organizations; nonprofit governance, especially the complex responsibilities of citizen volunteers; meaningful public engagement in collaborative policy-making; and strategic alliances and management. more about Gayle Gifford
Elliott Gorn
Professor of American Studies and history. Research focuses on the United States from the early nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. He writes on the history of popular culture—through topics such as sports, crime, and labor organizing—and has paid particular attention to how class and gender shape cultural forms. research page
Gavin Hogben
Gavin is a practising architect and teacher, whose research explores the frontier between architecture and digital media, and traces changing concepts of body and place in today’s hypermediated universe. View Gavin's research page.
Stephen Houston
Professor of anthropology. Interests in Classic Maya civilization, architecture, ancient literacy, decipherment, the origins, development, and extinction of writing systems, and the comparative study of royal courts. research page
Jane Lancaster
Historian and writer of Brown's 250th anniversary history. Teaches on local history.
more about Jane Lancaster
Steven Lubar
Professor of American civilization and history. Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center and the master’s program in public humanities. Writes on American technology and invention, the history of museums, and museum practice. research page
Patrick Malone
Professor emeritus of American Studies and urban studies. Interested in museum interpretation, historical preservation, material culture studies, the urban built environment, the history of technology, and industrial archaeology. He is presently working on a book about waterpower in Lowell, Massachusetts. research page
Richard Meckel
Associate professor of American studies. Historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who explores the state’s relation to children and families especially in the areas of health and health care. research page
Ron M. Potvin
Assistant director and curator at the John Nicholas Brown Center and adjunct lecturer in American studies. Teaches on historic house museums. more about Ron Potvin
molly rice
Playwright and adjunct lecturer in American Studiesn. Teaches on site-specific theater.
Seth Rockman
Assistant professor of history. A scholar of the Revolutionary and Early Republic United States with a particular interest in the intertwined histories of slavery and capitalism. His work explores labor, race, and social welfare as they relate to American economic development. research page
Patricia E. Rubertone
Professor of anthropology. Interests include historical archaeology, ethnohistory, culture contact and colonialism, landscape and memory, material culture, Native North America, and New England. research page
Ian Russell
Co-PI of Urban Cultural Heritage & Creative Practice International Research Project, and Curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University. Interests include working with artists to creatively activate heritage and public spaces through contemporary and collaborative arts practice and the application of new media in the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors. He teaches on cultural heritage, material culture, and museum interpretation practices. more about Ian Russell
Kerry Smith
Associate professor of history. Teaching and research deals in part with the social histories of disaster, natural and man-made, in modern Japan, and with their representation in public memory and memorial spaces. research page
Kevin P. Smith
Deputy director and chief curator at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Interests include the ethics and practice of interpreting and working with ethnographic and archaeological collections and with their producers, source communities, and descendants for mutual benefit and the public good. Archaeological research focuses on issues of the anthropology of law and the integration of political and economic processes in the coalescence of early states.
Susan Smulyan
Professor of American studies. Author of two books: Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), she has published a range of articles and book reviews in both the scholarly and popular press. In addition, she has worked on three large web projects: Whole Cloth: Discovering Science and Technology through American History; Freedom Now!: An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University; and Perry Visits Japan. She is a cultural historian, teaching courses in popular culture, advertising history, radio, digital scholarship, and American studies methods. research page
Emily Stokes-Rees
Postdoctoral fellow in museum anthropology. Her research involves a comparative study of the role of new national museums in postcolonial Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau, addressing topics such as architecture and identity, writing the ‘national story’ in the postcolonial world, and the material representation of ethnic and indigenous minorities. Recent publications include Recounting (Hi)Story: Constructing a National Narrative in the Hong Kong Museum of History and We Need Something of Our Own: Representing Ethnicity, Diversity and National Heritage in Singapore. She teaches on museums and national identities.
Anne M. Valk
Associate director for programs at the John Nicholas Brown Center. A historian by training, her interests include oral history, local history, women’s history, and African American history. She has worked extensively on community oral history projects in the Midwest and the South, examining experiences of immigration, industrialization and deindustrialization, and racial segregation.
more about Anne Valk
Ray Williams
Former Director of Education at the Harvard Art Museums, Director of Education and Academic Affairs at the University of Texas' Blanton Museum of Art
C.D. Wright
Professor of English. Interested in fertile poetic constructions—the search for models in my terms becomes a search for alternatives. Restless in process and stable in sensibility, I am looking for a way to assist both myself and my students in addressing the commonly acknowledged challenges and crises of our time. I am convinced that we can enlarge the forum without compromising the immanent subtleties of any specialized practice. I have recently initiated a course called “The Documentary Vision in Recent American Literature.” I hope to continue to develop this course with the collaboration of students and faculty in disciplines that can elaborate upon its possibilities. research page
Samuel Zipp
Assistant professor of American studies. Urban and cultural historian with interests in the cultural, intellectual, and political history of the built environment, United States history since World War II, and nonfiction writing for the public. He has written essays, editorials, and reviews for a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baffler, Metropolis, Cabinet, and In These Times. research page
Janet Zweig
Senior critic at Rhode Island School of Design. She is currently working on several public art commissions around the country from Seattle to Queens. Interested in the history, theory, and practice of public art, and the ways it can generate civic discourse and participation. Teaching a course that brings RISD and public humanities graduate students together to collaborate and to share resources.