Noël Falco Dolan is director for the Learning Communities Program at Villanova University and teaches in the Augustine & Culture Seminar Program. She received her MA in English literature from Temple University and post-MA certificate in English literature from Villanova. Noël enjoys using visual art and performance in her classes, especially with the Art & Culture learning community. In collaboration with the CAVE virtual reality team, she has created a virtual reality Blues Club showcasing the poetry of Langston Hughes.
James Getz is an Associate Professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program. He holds a Ph.D in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. His area of research is biblical and ancient Near Eastern ritual texts, specializing in Babylonian witchcraft and Canaanite necromancy. He is a proponent of using Reacting to the Past role-playing pedagogy and uses it in all his classes at Temple.
Larry Jackson is associate dean of Academic Affairs, Core Curriculum and Undergraduate Programs at Columbia College, where he also teaches Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization. Prior to Columbia, Larry held positions at The New School, New York University and the City University of New York. His writing has appeared in n+1, Diacritics, and the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and he serves on the advisory board of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. Originally from Philadelphia, Larry was the first in his family to attend college. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from The New School for Social Research, where he also received two master’s degrees (in Philosophy and Liberal Studies); he received his bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Skidmore College.
Dustin Kidd is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Intellectual Heritage Program. He studies stories and storytelling in a range of forms: art, popular culture, social media, and activism. Kidd examines how issues of identity shape who gets to tell stories in American culture, particularly in terms race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability.
Website: www.dustinkidd.net
Michelle M. Pinto is an Assistant Professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program. She received her Ph.D. in History & French Studies from New York University and is now engaged in a book manuscript project on the decolonization of French Africa in the twentieth century entitled “France and the Construction of African Nation-States: Africanization in Postwar French Africa, 1946-1966.” This research cuts across European history, African/African diaspora history, and global history. Pinto has taught interdisciplinary core curriculum courses at New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Temple University.