Faculty & Staff
Media and Cultural Studies faculty include media and film studies professors assigned to the department as well as professors in disciplines in the divisions of Humanities and Social Sciences and other interdisciplinary departments who teach cultural studies, film studies, humanities, and media studies. Faculty are engaged in active research programs that may offer opportunities for student assistance or collaboration.
MCS Faculty
- Morgan Adamson
- Professor and Chair
- Focuses on film and media theory, documentary and avant-garde cinema, critical theory and cultural studies, film and video production, and critical political economy
- madamson@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6639
- John Kim
- Associate Professor (On leave fall 23)
- Is a theorist and practitioner of new media, who has published widely and created interactive installations and projects at museums and galleries around the world.
- jkim5@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6788
- Tia-Simone Gardner
- Assistant Professor (on sabbatical 23-24)
- Is an artist, educator, and Black feminist scholar from Fairfield, Alabama. Working primarily with photography, moving-image, and drawing, her practice is deeply grounded in interdisciplinary strategies that activate ideas of ritual, iconoclasm, and geography.
- tgardne1@macalester.edu
- Michael Griffin
- Associate Professor (NTT)
- Focuses on issues of representation in media, film and journalism. Publications address representation in visual journalism and documentary, and media treatments of social identity, community, environmental issues, and war and conflict.
- mgriffi1@macalester.edu
- 612-998-3512
- Brad Stiffler
- Assistant Professor (NTT)
- bstiffler@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6730
- Howard Sinker
- Visiting Instructor
- sinker@macalester.edu
- Katie Thornton
- Visiting Instructor
MCS Emeritus Faculty
- Leola Johnson
- Associate Professor Emeritus
- johnsonl1@macalester.edu
- Clay Steinman
- Professor Emeritus
- steinman@macalester.edu
MCS Staff
- Jeremy Meckler
- Visiting Instructor, Media & Cultural Studies; Department Coordinator, Media & Cultural Studies; Grant Coordinator & Editorial Manager, Mississippi River Open School for Kinship & Social Exchange; Grant Coordinator CollectED
- jmeckle1@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6340
- he/him/his
Contributing Faculty
- A. Kiarina Kordela
- Professor, German and Russian Studies
- Director of the Critical Theory concentration, focuses on philosophy, intellectual history, critical political economy, psychoanalysis, comparative literature, political theory, film theory, and biopolitics
- kordela@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6524
- David Martyn
- Professor, German and Russian Studies
- Focuses on comparative literature, literary theory, culture from the 18th century to the present, philosophy, and literature written in German by “foreign”-language authors
- martyn@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6547
- David Chioni Moore
- Associate Professor, International Studies and English
- Literary interactions in the Black Atlantic world, notably Africa, the Caribbean, and African America; post-colonial and/as the post-Soviet; comparative literature; cultural theory; globalization.
- mooredc@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6242
- J. Andrew Overman
- Harry M. Drake Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Fine Arts
- Archaeology, Ancient Middle East, Ancient Religions
- overman@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6375
- Khaldoun Samman
- Professor of Sociology
- Focuses on world historical-comparative and urban sociology, globalization, sociology of religion, and modes of identities in the Middle East
- samman@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6845
- Sonita Sarker
- Professor Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English
- Feminist and literary theories; cultural studies of globalization as it intersects with nationalism, democracy, and imperialism; “minoritized” literatures, with a transnational comparative basis in Western Europe and Asia.
- sarker@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6316
- Beth Severy-Hoven
- Professor and Chair of Classics
- Roman History, Gender & Sexuality in Ancient Italy, Roman Archaeology
- severy@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6721
- Joëlle Vitiello
- Professor, French and Francophone Studies
- Focuses on 20th-21st-century French and francophone literature and culture; Haitian literature and culture; French and Francophone Cinema; Postcolonial identities; Immigration; Violence in France and the francophone world.
- vitiello@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6412
- James Von Geldern
- Russian and International Studies, and Chair of Russian Studies
- Russian and Soviet popular culture and cultural history; comparative studies in revolutions and commemoration; international law and legal frameworks; cultural studies.
- vongeldern@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6568
- Chris Wells
- Professor of Environmental Studies, Associate Director of the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching
- Environmental history
- wells@macalester.edu
- 651-696-6803
- Alix Johnson
- Assistant Professor of International Studies
- Digital infrastructure and information technology; spatial politics; surveillance; empire; ethnography
- ajohns39@macalester.edu
- Carnegie 407