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Reniqua Allen is a Ph.D. student in the American Studies program. A native of New Jersey, she wants to focus her academic work on the African-American middle class in the tri-state area. She is also interested in studying the intersection of race and identity, youth culture, media, and social and political movements in the United States in the 20th and 21st century.
Reniqua also works as a freelance journalist for several print and television outlets, including the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Before coming to Rutgers, Reniqua earned a B.A. in political science and journalism from American University in Washington, DC in 2003. She also received a Master's degree in political science from American the following year.
M. Alsiadi is the Coordinator and head instructor of the Arabic Language and Cultural Studies Program at Rutgers-Newark. He is a recipient of the award for Outstanding Teaching Effectiveness by the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Rutgers University-Newark (2007) and he has received the Faculty Academic Service Award from the Office of the President, Rutgers University (2006;2007).
Alsiadi is also a composer/conductor of classical Arabic music, and he plays the oboe and the lute professionally. He earned a B.A. from the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus , Syria , where he taught music composition, theory, and practice, as well as Arabic culture and history. As a new doctoral student, Alsiadi's research interests include issues related to Arab-American identity post-9/11; the impact of East-West relations on contemporary Arabic music and literature; and the use of Islam to democratize groups and nations.
Having earned her M.A. in English from Rutgers Newark in 2001, Roseanne Alvarez returns "home" as a first-year Ph.D. American Studies student pursuing interdisciplinary work with an emphasis on public scholarship. Roseanne developed her interdisciplinary interests in American popular culture, literature, and Gender Studies as a tenured faculty member at Brookdale College, where she currently holds the dual titles of Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies Option Director.
An active participant in regional and national Women and Gender Studies associations, she now serves as the communications coordinator for the NWSA's Women of Color Caucus. Her research interests include immigration, nationalism, and surveillance culture; cultural materialist feminisms with an emphasis on intersectional and global analysis; and articulations of transformative praxis/radical pedagogies in shaping public scholarship initiatives in higher education.
A native of Staten Island , NY , Thomas had a very successful career on Wall Street during the 1980s. He left the financial world to start his own business. He purchased and operated his own clam digging boat in Raritan Bay . After several seasons on the bay, Thom decided to seek a college degree enrolling in The College of Staten Island (CUNY) where he earned his AA, and BA in history with honors. Thom then went on to earn his Master's degree in history while at CUNY. Currently Thom lectures on American history and American government at Union County College.
Taylor Black is certainly glad that he was brought up in North Carolina, especially since he lives in New York City. Living up north since he was eighteen, Taylor spent a few years working in progressive political movements before burning out and turning to the academy. At Hunter College Taylor majored in Black and American Studies. He graduated in the spring of 2007, and was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa. After that, Taylor directed the eighth annual Queer CUNY Conference: The Twilight of Queerness. He continues institutional work as the grad assistant for the Women's Studies Program.
Mr. Black also spends part of his days educating the students at The Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn. This is his first year as a Ph.D. Student at Rutgers. His work is anchored to concepts of sexual citizenship, queer subjectivities, perversity and competing nationalisms. Most significantly, Taylor has written and presented some of his ideas about white male sex predators and how they are figured into a contemporary American sex panic. He is also beginning to think about homonationalisms in the 2008 presidential election.
Raised in the great white Northwoods of Wisconsin, Paul Heideman received his B.A. and M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on the relationship between Black radical movements and cultural production. Paul=s thesis was an examination of how African Americans interpreted the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and how their interpretations affected events from Red Summer to the Harlem Renaissance. His other research interests include Marxist philosophy and literary theory, urban history, African American art and the American War in Vietnam, and the politics of science fiction.
Jaehyun Jeong is a first-year Ph.D. student in American Studies Program. She earned her MA in Comparative Literature from Seoul National University ( South Korea ). Her research interests include: identity issues in Asian American literature including identity as both individual and collective, narrative and subject formation, and the relationship between literature and politics.
A former high school World History and Urban Studies teacher, John Johnson has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Rutgers University. While earning his Master's, he studied the agency of black elders in American cities, as well as post-Reconstruction violence. For the last four years John has worked as a guidance counselor in Paterson, New Jersey. He developed and coordinated programs that helped students see themselves as self-conscious agents of change in their communities. John is still connected to Paterson through volunteering his time to cultivate relationships between undergraduates at Rutgers and middle school students in Paterson in order to enhance life outcomes.
A Ph.D. student in the American Studies program, John's research interests include: property ownership and participation in civic discourses in urban centers; black folk culture and modernity; history of black children; and the sundry meanings of brown skin in black, Latino, and Asian cultures.
As a performing singer-songwriter, Samantha independently released four critically acclaimed albums and spent ten years touring extensively throughout North America . Retired from Rock ‘N' Roll and working as a voice actress for radio and television, she graduated magna cum laude from the City College of New York's Center for Worker Education with a BA in Liberal Arts and was honored with the Edward Rivera Award in Autobiographical Literature for a memoir-in-progress of life on the road.
She joins the American Studies department with a focus on America in its Global Context and her areas of interest include symbolic representations of “American-ness” at home and abroad, perceptions of foreign cultures in American life and the role of language in shaping identity.
Sheila Moreira is currently pursuing dual degrees in both the American Studies PhD program and the Political Science Masters program. Before coming to Rutgers, Sheila earned a BA in English, with a minor in Women's Studies, from the College of New Jersey ; she then attended and graduated Magna Cum Laude from American University , Washington College of Law in 2003. Since earning her J.D., she has been practicing civil law in both New York and New Jersey, concentrating mainly on family law, immigration law, and trial litigation.
She has also volunteered with various non-profit groups monitoring election law compliance and securing individuals' voting rights on election days. Her research interests include Constitutional law and the democratic process, immigration and naturalization policy, gender studies – particularly domestic violence and feminist legal theory, education as a human right, and comparative social movements.
After graduating from the Institute of Audio Research in New York City where he studied audio engineering, Christopher went on to earn both Bachelor's and Master's degrees as a scholarship recipient at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. In addition to guitar studies with Mark Delpriora and David Starobin, he studied composition and orchestral conducting.
On top of solo and chamber ensemble performances on the classical guitar throughout the tri-state area, he regularly performs on both the electric guitar and as a drummer/percussionist. In the recording studio, Christopher often serves as both session musician and producer. As a music educator for over ten years, he maintains a large studio whose students have gone on to study with international artists such as Elliot Fisk and Scott Tennant.
Jonathan Perez received a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College and an M.A. in English at the University of Virginia where he published his thesis on the historical representation of the Harlem Renaissance. His area of concern is citizenship, aesthetics, and the 19th and 20th century cultural formations that give literature meaning.
He is also studying biocultures, specifically 19th and 20th century discourses of medicine, science, and literature; and American cultural studies, including interdisciplinary sociobiological cultures and evolutionary studies. He was an intern at The Atlantic Monthly and was a presenter at Dartmouth College Seminars, The Futures of American Studies. He currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor at Essex County College.
Evelyn Rodriguez received a Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from Monmouth University, where she had earned her B.A., and decided to continue her education in the field of American Studies. Her research interests include the immigration of Spanish-speaking people to the United States, race and ethnicity, and women's and gender studies. She worked on a paper for her graduate studies at Monmouth University where she examined gender differences in the assimilation of Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans into American culture.
Sean Singer is a Ph.D. student in American Studies. He earned his B.A. in English with Honors from Indiana University and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. His first book Discography (Yale University Press) won the 2001 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, selected by W.S. Merwin, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the recipient of an artists = grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
His poetry, essays, reviews, and creative nonfiction has appeared in Salmagundi, Iowa Review, Guernica, New England Review, and many other literary journals and anthologies. He has taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing at Binghamton University, Hunter College, Stern College, Hartwick College, William Paterson University, Northern Arizona University, and Barnard College. His research interests are Cultural History and Artistic Production, especially jazz history and research.
Jason Slesinski is a Master's degree student in the American Studies Department. He earned his B.A. in History with a minor in Latin from Montclair State University. Areas of interest include American political history, immigration, colonial America and the founding generation, and the theory of American exceptionalism as it applies to our social, political, and territorial development. He currently works at a leading New York advertising agency, and in his spare time, he enjoys all things politics, from reading political blogs and news websites, to the abundant writings of Thomas Jefferson and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who have particularly influenced him. Other inspirations include Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Zappa, and Miss Edith Bouvier Beale.
Ayoka Stewart is a writer from Oakland, CA. Her primary interests are art, community building, love, and bringing about social change through education. She has been working with youth in the San Francisco Bay Area for 6 years teaching creative writing and participating in youth advocacy. Her first collection of poetry entitled I Don't Owe You Anything was published by First Word Press in 2001. She holds a B.A. in English and African American Studies from Smith College in Northampton, MA. She was the first student in the history of the Smith College African American Studies department to receive Highest Honors at graduation for her undergraduate thesis and overall work in the major. Her undergraduate thesis, entitled Where Their Hands Are Now: Black Women Writers and the Concern of Audience, explored how Black women writers imagine and converse with audience through the narrative voice of their fiction. The thesis proposed the love letter as a theoretical device for understanding the interaction of readers and writers of writing by Black women.
Ayoka is a pursuing her Ph.D. in American Studies with a research concentration in African American literature and specifically literature by Black women; however she is also interested in cultural and gender studies, performance studies, and feminist thought. She is currently working on her first collection of short stories entitled Love By Numbers.
Larry Ling-hsuan Tung's major research interests include race, identity, and representation; US cultural imperialism and diaspora; as well as media studies and US popular culture. Larry is also an independent documentary filmmaker whose works have been shown in film festivals across North America . His documentary, Daughters form China , won the Best Documentary Prize at the Honolulu Film Festival. A native of Taiwan , he covers the immigrant communities in New York City for the award-winning Gotham Gazette , a news website on public policy. He teaches media production at Kean University where he is an Assistant Professor of Media and Film.
Rosalie Jayde Uyola is a Ph.D. student in American Studies. Prior to attending Rutgers-Newark Graduate School, Rosalie earned her M.Ed. from New Jersey City University in Educational Technology. As a fourth-year Business and Computer Programming High School teacher in Edison, New Jersey, Rosalie promotes technology integration and media studies within the school community through professional development for faculty and academy courses for students. Rosalie grew up in Moscow, Russia and emigrated to the United States in 1991. Earlier educational endeavors include completing a B.A. in Economics and American Studies at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Rosalie is currently studying theories of Race, Ethnicity, and Modern Society with particular focus on Urban Cultures and Artistic Production. Other research interests include: artistic production in media, globalization, folk and oral traditions, immigration law, and music in civic engagement. Rosalie is looking forward to creating more documentaries about the diverse cultures and experiences in Newark, New Jersey. She is honored to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Samantha Johnston on ART FOR ALL: The Special Collections and all of the wonderful contributors from the Newark Art Community and Rutgers University-Newark who made the project possible.
Bernie Williams is a Master's degree student in the American Studies Department. He is attracted to this discipline by the variety of fields available for study. Among his various interests are music, films, history, literature, cooking, and teaching. Bernie is currently teaching English at Hudson County Community College.
Ioana Stamatescu is a Fulbright grantee from Romania. She earned her M.A. in American Studies from the University of Bucharest where she is currently doing a Ph.D. on Readings of Metropolitan Spaces: New York City in the American Contemporary Novel. She is a Lecturer at the Bucharest University of Economics, where she teaches business English, and at the I.L. Caragiale University of Theater and Film, in Bucharest, where she teaches English language and literature. She is also a translator for the Plural review published by the Romanian Cultural Institute. Her research interests include Anglo-American contemporary novel and drama, urban studies, performance arts and visual culture - with special focus on the classic film noir as well as the neo-noir and psycho-noir contemporary productions. Her current research at Rutgers is directed at the relationship between identity construction and the urban environment in American fiction of the late twentieth century. At present, she is also discovering New York City life and a liking for Jazz music and photography.
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