Faculty

Professor Edwards specializes in African-American and African diasporic literature, 20th-century poetry, Francophone literature, translation theory and jazz.

David Johnston's research interests include theories of justice, the liberal tradition of political theory, and the history of political thought.

Jamal Joseph is a writer, director and Professor of Professional Practice at Colubia University School of the Arts in the Film Department. Joseph has written and directed for Black Starz, HBO, Fox TV, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., and A&E.

Sudipta Kaviraj is a specialist in intellectual history and Indian politics.

Rob King is a film historian with interests in American cinema, popular culture, and social history. Much of his work has been on comedy. His award-winning book, The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (University of California Press, 2009), examined the role Keystone’s filmmakers played in developing new styles of slapstick comedy for moviegoers of the 1910s.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE, all out from Wave Books. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Poetry is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Press, 2010), The Blue Teratorn (YesYes Books, 2012), and Matter: A Picturebook (Argos Books, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and Boston Review, among other places. She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney's, 2013) and is a 2013 Bagley Wright Lecturer on Poetry. She holds a doctorate in creativity and education from the University of Pennsylvania and has studied at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Washington University.

Professor Lean is interested in a broad range of topics in late imperial and modern Chinese history with a particular focus on the history of science and industry, mass media, consumer culture, emotions and gender, as well as law and urban society. She is also interested in issues of historiography and critical theory in the study of East Asia.