LaGuardia Faculty Mentors welcomed Graduate Fellows to observe one of their their courses in the Fall semester, and worked with the fellows during pedagogical seminars, workshops, and individual meetings to help fellows design their own versions of the course, which they taught the following Spring semester and the following year.
Professor Jessica Boehman, Faculty Mentor 2017-2018
Jessica Boehman, Associate Professor of Art History and Fine Arts in the Humanities Department at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, received her B.A. in Studio Art from McDaniel College (’99), her M.A. in Art History from Penn State University (’02) and her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania (’09). Dr. Boehman has taught in private and public colleges throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, and was a Fulbright scholar to Italy (Rome) in 2006-2007. Dr. Boehman currently teaches both Studio Art and Art History in a joint Fine Arts department that specializes in both fields. Also an illustrator, Dr. Boehman has also developed the Illustration program at LaGuardia.
Professor Cheri Carr, Faculty Mentor 2017-2018
Cheri Lynne Carr is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. A graduate of the University of Memphis, Dr. Carr’s research focuses on Ethics, Feminism, Philosophy for Children, and Kant and the German Enlightenment. Her forthcoming book, Deleuze’s Kantian Ethos: Critique as a Way of Life, explores the potential for a new form of ethical life based on the ideal of critique as the self-perpetuating evaluation of values (Edinburgh, 2017). She is currently working on developing a Philosophy for Children outreach initiative at LaGuardia and co-editing a volume on Schizoanalysis and Feminism that calls on the legacy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari for new conceptual alliances to aid in the revitalization of feminist practices (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Professor Leigh Garrison-Fletcher, Faculty Mentor 2017-2019
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher is an Associate Professor of ESL and Linguistics in the Department of Education and Language Acquisition at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she focused on second language acquisition. Her research interests include the role of students’ home language(s) in second language learning, the acquisition of second language literacy, and the assessment of multilingual students. Her work also addresses best pedagogical practices for multilingual students.
Professor Jason Hendrickson, Faculty Mentor 2018-2019
Jason Hendrickson is Assistant Professor in the English Department at LaGuardia Community College. He received his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2015 with a focus on literature and culture. His dissertation, Race Patriots: Black Poets, Transnational Identity, and Diasporic Versification in the United States Before the New Negro, examines how African American poets preceding the Harlem Renaissance invoke the African diaspora as a means of resistance and freedom within their work. His scholarly interests include hip-hop studies, race and language, gender and higher education, and nineteenth century African American poetics.
Professor Ana María Hernandez, Faculty Mentor 2016-2017
Ana María Hernández (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, New York University) is Professor and Director of Latin American Studies and Spanish Translation at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. She specializes in speculative fiction and the connections of literature to film, art and music. Her publications have focused on Julio Cortázar, Horacio Quiroga, Felisberto Hernández and Nicolás Guillén. Her recent publications include an annotated edition of Fantoches 1926: Folletín Moderno por Once Escritores Cubanos (Stockcero, 2011), an anthology of tales by Felisberto Hernández, Las Hortensias y Otros Cuentos (Stockcero, 2011), and an annotated edition of Cirilo Villaverde’s anti-slavery novel, Cecilia Valdés o La Loma del Ángel (Stockcero, 2013). Dr. Hernández is a fellow of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the Graduate Center. With Raúl Rubio she co-edited the arts section of the Handbook on Cuban History, Literature and the Arts (2014), edited by Mauricio Font and Araceli Tinajero of the Bildner Center and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She participated in the CUNY Humanities Alliance Project as a mentor in teaching contemporary Latin American literature.
Professor Jacqueline Jones, Faculty Mentor 2017-2018 & Faculty Mentor Liaison 2018-2020
Jacqueline Jones is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. She earned her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in African American Studies in 2010. Her research interests include 20th and 21st-century African American literature and media studies, Black Women’s Literature, and Literature of the Civil Rights Era. Publications include “It Still Matters: The Cosby Show and Sociopolitical Representation on Television (The 25 Sitcoms that Change Television, ABC-CLIO 2018), and “We ‘the People:’ Freedom, Civics, and the Neo-Slave Narrative Tradition in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean” (Modern Language Studies, Summer 2016).
Professor Demetri Kapetanakos, Faculty Mentor 2016-2017, Faculty Mentor Liaison 2016-2018, and Professional Development Coordinator 2017-2019
Demetri Kapetanakos is an Associate Professor in English at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. Since taking a seminar titled “The Black Atlantic” during his senior year in college, his research interests have focused on the theory and praxis of the African Diaspora. He did his Master’s work in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College. His dissertation work at the CUNY Graduate Center interrogated the African American roots and routes of Black British Cultural Studies, particularly the work of Stuart Hall, Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy and Isaac Julien. His first article explores the representation of urban space in Isaac Julien’s 1989 film Looking for Langston. Currently he is working on a project that looks at the embrace and limits of multiculturalism during the Cool Britannia moment in millennial Britain. He has been at LaGuardia since 2010, having taught at Queensborough Community College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and New Jersey City University. He has also served as a Graduate Writing Fellow in the Latin American and Latin@ Studies program at John Jay. At LaGuardia, he has taken on a leadership role in various college initiatives such as the ePortfolio program and the Collegewide Common Reading. He is very proud of his role in the first year of the Humanities Alliance Mellon program as mentor to two wonderful fellows and as the program liaison between LaGuardia and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He looks forward to continuing his work with the Humanities Alliance in the upcoming year.
Professor Karen Miller, Faculty Mentor 2016-2017
Karen Miller is Professor of History at LaGuardia Community College and in the MALS Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her current project examines the state-sponsored migration of Christian Filipinos into non-Christian areas between 1902 and 1965. It explores the intended and unintended consequences of these programs, as well as the robust resistance they faced from both settlers and non-Christian men and women indigenous to targeted areas. Dr. Miller’s first book, Managing Inequality: Northern Racial in Interwar Detroit (New York University Press, 2014) demonstrates that white northern leaders increasingly embraced egalitarian ideas about racial difference at the same time that they helped implement and maintain social and political practices that promoted racial inequality. Dr. Miller’s articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of American History, The Middle West Review, The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Michigan Feminist Studies, and Against the Current as well as Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Struggles in America. In 2010, Dr. Miller was a visiting scholar at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Michigan. In 2015, she was awarded a Chancellor’s Research Fellowship from CUNY. For the 2016-2017 academic year, Dr. Miller was a faculty mentor for the Humanities Alliance.
Professor Emmanuel Nartey, Faculty Mentor 2016-2017
Emmanuel Nartey, BA (University of Ghana, Legon), Ph.D. (Fordham University), is Associate Professor of Philosophy at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. He also spent one year as a visiting scholar at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Before coming to the City University of New York, he taught at Fordham University. Dr. Nartey specializes in Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Religion. He has published papers on Foreknowledge, Free Will, and Alternate Possibilities, Integrating Science and Religion, Naturalism, the Limits of Science, and the case for Nonscientific Knowledge, Hylomorphism, Philosophical Perspectives during the Middle Ages, Beyond the Secular: Challenges and Perspectives, Omniscience and Free Actions, Descartes and Mind-Body Contemporary Problems. His book, Nature, Mind and Hylomorphism (Springer-Verlag), is forthcoming. He teaches Critical Thinking, Ethics and Moral Problems, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Introduction to Philosophy.
Professor Shannon Proctor, Faculty Mentor 2018-2019
Shannon B. Proctor (Ph.D., Philosophy, Michigan State University 2013) is an Associate Professor in the Humanities Department at LaGuardia Community College. Her scholarship attends to the embodied and interconnected aspects of freedom, temporality, and habits particularly as they relate to addiction and imprisonment. In addition to her research, she is engaged in various public philosophical projects. These include teaching a course on philosophy and freedom at Queensboro Correctional Facility and serving as a co-director on an NEH-funded Summer Institute on Incarceration and the Humanities.
Professor Joni Schwartz, Faculty Mentor 2017-2018
Joni Schwartz, Ed.D. is a social activist scholar and founder of three adult education centers in NYC. Formerly a research coordinator for the Black Male Initiative (BMI) at NYCT, her research focused on men of color in STEM as well as high school push-outs. She co-produced the documentary “A New Normal: Young Men of Color, Trauma & Engagement in Learning” through a CUNY Cultural Diversity Grant and her second documentary about incarceration/education is in production. An Associate Professor of Humanities at LaGuardia, she teaches communication courses including: Fundamentals of Communication, Online Public Speaking and Non-Verbal Communication. Dr. Schwarz has published three book chapters, twenty-three articles and two volumes of New Directions in the Jossey-Bass series, Swimming Upstream and is general editor for Dialogues in Social Justice: An Adult Education Journal. Her recent co-edited book Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens: Counterstories and Counterspaces was published this summer 2017 by Lexington Press.
Professor Eduardo Vianna, Faculty Mentor 2016-2017 & 2018-2019
Eduardo Vianna is Professor of Psychology at LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the Graduate Center after completing his medical studies followed by a residency in child psychiatry in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Building on recent advances in Vygotskian cultural-historical theory, especially the Transformative Activist Approach, his research and publications focus on the intersection between teaching-learning and development. Dr. Vianna has carried out research in various settings that serve underprivileged populations, including in a child welfare program, a substance abuse recovery support program, and public schools. Dr. Vianna has won several awards, including The CUNY Graduate Center President’s Dissertation Scholarship and the 2010 Early Career Award in Cultural-Historical Research awarded by the Cultural-Historical Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. His current research focuses on applying critical-theoretical pedagogy to build the peer activist learning community (PALC) with underprivileged community college students, which was recently featured in the New York Times.
Professor H. Alex Welcome, Faculty Mentor 2018-2019
H. Alexander Welcome is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at LaGuardia Community College. His work revolves around the dynamics of alienation, the specifics of the racial wage paid to white people, the social nature of existential experiences of time, and how all three of these aforementioned elements emerge in the stand-up comedy of Richard Pryor and Jackie “Moms” Mabley.
