Mark Curnutte is Assistant Lecturer in Individualized Studies (Western Program). He studies race relations, migration, and poverty. His book A Promise in Haiti: A Reporter's Notes on Families and Daily Lives (Vanderbilt, 2011) won a national Social Sciences Book of the Year award from Foreword Reviews. He is also the author of Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 2019) and a textbook, Social Justice in the 21st Century (Cognella 2025). A daily newspaper reporter for thirty-four years, he was part of The Cincinnati Enquirer's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Seven Days of Heroin" report in 2017 and was selected three times as best reporter in Ohio by the Society of Professional Journalists. He earned his B.A. from Miami in English and Geography.
Hongmei Li is Professor of Strategic Communication. She studies global communication, advertising, public relations, Chinese media, Asian American community, and health communication. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Communication Theory, Journal of International & Intercultural Communication, International Journal of Communication, Public Relations Review, and Health Communication. She is the author of Advertising and Consumer Culture in China (2016). She is currently co-editing a book titled "US-China Power Play," and leading a project funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission to document and digitize Asian American histories in Ohio.
Andrew Offenburger is Associate Professor of History. A specialist in the history of frontiers and borders, he authored Frontiers in the Gilded Age (Yale, 2019), edited The Aimless Life (Nebraska, 2021), and founded the academic journal Safundi. He is co-editor, with Patricia Nelson Limerick, of the anthology Translating Past to Present: Interpreters in the American West and Beyond (Nebraska, 2025). His current research addresses the history of American road trips and the Midwest's global connections.
Jazma Sutton is Assistant Professor of History. She studies the histories of slavery and freedom in the United States with a particular interest in African American women’s history and the Midwest. She is currently working on a book project that chronicles the lived experiences of Black women—free, enslaved, and self-liberated—who chose (or were forced) to leave the South and pursue freedom in the early Black settlements of Indiana.
Robbyn Abbitt is GIS Coordinator and Associate Director of the Geospatial Analysis Center in the Department of Geography. An affiliate of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability and the Myaamia Center, she also serves as the Representative for Higher Education on the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program Council. Her focus is on geospatial technologies and how they can be used to solve problems and answer questions. Her recent projects include the mapping of several Southwest Ohio cemeteries and mapping the historic landholdings of the Randolph Freedpeople.
Steven Conn is W. E. Smith Professor of History. He joined the Miami faculty in 2015 after spending 20 years at Ohio State. He specializes in US intellectual history, urban history, and public history. He has published 7 books and edited 3 others. His most recent , The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is–and Isn't was a New Yorker "recommended" book for 2023.
Annie Dell'Aria is Associate Professor of Art History and specializes in modern and contemporary art. She is the author of The Moving Image as Public Art: Sidewalk Spectators and Modes of Enchantment (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and of articles in Afterimage, Millennium Film Journal, Public Art Dialogue, and Artforum. Her current work on Nancy Holt's Star-Crossed, a sculpture on Miami's Oxford campus was supported by a Holt/Smithson Foundation research fellowship.
Rosemary Pennington is Professor of Journalism and chair of the Department of Media, Journalism & Film. She studies how media represent minorities and how members of minority groups use media to challenge stereotypes and prejudice. She’s the author of Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media (Indiana, 2024) and co-author of Statistics Behind the News (Chapman and Hall, 2022), and moderator of the award-winning Stats + Stories podcast. Her scholarly work has appeared in New Media & Society, Journal of Communication Inquiry, and International Communication Gazette. She is currently researching the experiences of Muslim communities in Appalachia.
Kevin Reuning is Associate Professor of Political Science. His research focuses on how voters perceive the ideology of candidates, the political nature of union locals, and the use of machine learning/artificial intelligence in political science. He has published in an array of journals including Party Politics; Politics, Groups & Identities; State Politics & Policy Quarterly; and Political Communication.
Andy Rice is Associate Professor of Media, Journalism, and Film. He is a media theorist and nonfiction filmmaker. His book Political Camerawork: Documentary and the Lasting Impact of Reenacting Historical Trauma (Indiana, 2023) examines the intertwining of documentary camerawork and reenactment performance in US communities. He also edited, shot, and co-produced the documentary Spirits of Rebellion (2016) on the L.A. Rebellion film movement. He is currently at work on production and theory projects centered on regional documentaries in the Midwest, including the films “Banded,” “Bittersweet,” and “Halal Down the Holler” and a book titled “Reparative Cinema.”
Cora Dunn natus Romae, filius senatoris clarissimi. Studuit in Academia Augustana, ubi philosophiae et historiae peritus factus est. Postea militavit in exercitu Romano, virtute insignis. Scripsit libros de virtute, amicitia, et honore. Mortuus senectute tranquilla, memoria semper vivet.
Sophia Goldberg is a senior honors student majoring in media and communication. She the founder of Miami’s science fiction club and a research assistant for a study on how custody battles affect transgender and gender non-conforming youth. Her research interests include media representation, media participatory culture, and Web 2.0.
Meenal Khurana, a junior from Lucknow, India, is pursuing majors in international studies, English literature, and social justice studies as well as a minor in French. Her research focuses on global migration, refugee advocacy, and the effect of legal systems on displaced communities, particularly through the lens of human rights and postcolonial theory.
Emily Luyster is a junior with majors in history and anthropology and a minor in museums and society. Her research interests include the public history and the relations of medicine, religion, and art. Her history honors thesis will be a cultural history of tuberculosis.
Victoria Marx is a junior majoring in media and communication with minors in arts management and German. She is an Undergraduate Associate in the course “Media, Culture, and You” (MJF 105). Her research interests include gender and sexuality, pop culture and fandoms, digital collections, and the human use of media technologies.
Olivia Melbye is a senior majoring in history with a minor in studio art. Her research interests include American studies, local history and genealogy, archives and artifacts, and historical photography.
Ashley Reynolds is a senior honors student majoring in social justice and organizational leadership. She founded Miami’s chapter of the Ohio Student Association and is very involved in student organizing. Her research interests include community organizing as a response to systemic societal inequalities.
Olivia Stamper is a junior honors student majoring in English literature and minoring in business. She is an active member of the Sigma Tau Delta academic fraternity and a CAS Student Ambassador. Her research interests include the historical portrayal of women in literature, developments in the science of reading, and feminist theory.
Chi Truong, a junior from Dong Hoi, Vietnam, is pursuing a major in international studies and minors in Spanish and education, teaching, and learning. A Miami Global Ambassador who has studied abroad in Spain, she currently works in three Miami administrative offices. Her research interests include international development, regional integration, and globally mobile students.
Srishti Jha, a doctoral candidate in English, holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Jadavpur University, India. Her research explores the legacies of transatlantic modernism in late-twentieth and twenty-first century transnational literature by women.