Executive Committee
Humanities Institute Executive Committee
2021-22 Committee Members
Lindsay Brandon Hunter
Term: January 2020-23
Assistant Professor of Theatre & Dance
Lindsay Brandon Hunter holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from UCLA, where she was awarded a 2012 teaching fellowship from the Colloquium of University Teaching Fellows and the 2011 Aaron Curtis Taylor Memorial Scholarship. Her current research project focuses on performances of authenticity and realness in intermedial theater, reality television, and immersive and pervasive gaming. Her published work includes a chapter on alternate reality gaming in the forthcoming Framing Immersive Theatre and Performance (Palgrave) and essays and reviews in Text & Presentation and Theatre Survey. She is also a past editor of UCLA’s Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment and Technology. Details>>
Ruth Mack
Term: January 2019-May 2022
Associate Professor of English
Ruth Mack is Associate Professor of English and the author of Literary Historicity:
Literature and Historical Experience in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2009). She holds a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University. Details>>
Karin Michelson
Term: August 2021-24
Professor of Linguistics
Bio forthcoming.
John Opera
Term: January 2020-23
Assistant Professor of Art
In his photo-based work, John Opera combines a deep interest in the visual characteristics of natural and scientific phenomena with a rigorous experimental approach to the techniques and apparatuses by which photographs have been defined and produced. Opera often returns to antiquated—but by no means exhausted—photographic tools and processes, including pinhole imaging, and more recently the cyanotype and anthotype.
He earned his BFA from SUNY New Paltz (1998) and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005). He lived, worked, taught, and exhibited in Chicago for more than a dozen years. Opera joined the University at Buffalo in 2017. Details>>
Katja Praznik
Term: January 2020-23
Associate Professor of Arts Management
Katja Praznik holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Ljubljana. She teaches courses related to the political economy of the arts, cultural policy, and research in the field of arts management. She is the author of The Paradox of Unpaid Artistic Labor: Autonomy of Art, the Avant-Garde and Cultural Policy in the Transition to Post-Socialism (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2016) and Art Work: Invisible Labor and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (forthcoming with University of Toronto Press). Praznik held an HI Faculty Fellowship in 2016-17. Details>>
Ex officio Members
David Castillo
Director, Professor of Spanish, Romance Languages and Literatures
Christina Milletti
Executive Director, Associate Professor of English
Past Members
(listed in reverse chronological order by term)
August 2018-21
- James Currie, Associate Professor, Music
- Hal Langfur, Associate Professor, History
January 2019-21 [two year term]
- Camilo Trumper, Associate Professor, History
August 2017-20
- Jaume Franquesa, Associate Professor, Anthropology
- Hershini Young, Associate Professor, English [departed UB 2018]
January 2017-20
- Krzysztof Ziarek, Professor, Comparative Literature
August 2016-19
- Martha Malamud, Professor, Classics
- Stephanie Rothenberg, Professor, Art
January 2016-19
- Erin Hatton, Associate Professor, Sociology
- Tamara Thornton, Professor, History
August 2015-18
- Jonathan Golove, Associate Professor, Music
- Marion Werner, Associate Professor, Geography
August 2014-17
- Rachel Ablow, Professor, English [abbreviated term ending August 2016]
- David Schmid, Associate Professor, English
- Gwynn Thomas, Associate Professor, Transnational Studies
August 2013-16
- Amy Graves-Monroe, Associate Professor, RLL
- Carolyn Korsmeyer, Professor, Philosophy
- Justin Read, Associate Professor, RLL
- Teri Rueb, Professor, Media Study
January 2013-16
- Carl Nightingale, Professor, Transnational Studies
August 2012-15
- Carolyn Higbie, Professor, Classics
- Ewa Ziarek, Professor, Comparative Literature
August 2011-14
- Randy Schiff, Associate Professor, English
- Vasiliki Neofotistos, Associate Professor, Anthropology
- John Dugan, Associate Professor, Classics
