Timothy Melley is Professor of English and Geoffrion Family Director of the Miami University Humanities Center. He is the author of Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Cornell 2000), The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State (Cornell 2012), as well as numerous essays His short stories have appeared in Story Quarterly, Threepenny Review, The Sun, Columbia, Mississippi Review, and Epoch. They have also aired on Public Radio International’s “This American Life” and received mention in The Best American Stories. He is the recipient of the Benjamin Harrison medallion and four teaching awards, including Miami's university-wide teaching prize, the E. Philip Knox Award. He is currently writing about the cultural politics of security.
Ron Becker, Professor of Media and Communication and Strategic Communication in the Department of Media, Journalism & Film and Interim Director for the Humanities Center, studies the relationships among media (especially television), culture, and the politics of sexual identity. He is the author of Gay TV and Straight America (Rutgers 2006) and co-author of Media and Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age (Bedford 2015). His essays have appeared in TheTelevision Studies Reader, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and The Craft of Media Criticism. His current project examines the growing influence of multicultural empowerment narratives in U.S. media culture.
Carolyn Hardin is associate professor of Media & Communication at Miami University in Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. in communication and cultural studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research centers on intersections of culture, economy, and technology in such contexts as the financial crisis, retirement investing, consumer debt, mobile payment technologies, political rhetoric, and television fandom. Carolyn teaches courses on media and technology, consumer culture, and American culture. Her work has been published in American Quarterly, Cultural Studies, and Convergence. Her book on the financial crisis, entitled Capturing Finance: Arbitrage and Social Domination, was published by Duke University Press in 2021.
Stephanie Marlow holds a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Miami University (2016). She rejoined the Miami community in October 2022 as a member of the Humanities Center team and is thrilled to be back at her alma mater. Outside of work, Stephanie enjoys a vibrant life surrounded by her many animals. She spends her free time immersed in reading, writing, and playing Dungeons & Dragons. Her favorite topics of conversation include tabletop RPGs, the works of Cassandra Clare, and stories about her beloved pets. Stephanie will be starting her Masters degree in Student Affairs in Higher Education in Fall 2025.
Lauren van Atta is a second-year doctoral student in English specializing in early modern drama and queer theory. She earned her B.A. from the University of Dayton and her M.A. from Lehigh University. She is currently writing about bodies, reproduction, and queer identity in the writing of early modern authors.
Cody Norris is a first-year doctoral student in English. His research interests include early modern drama, queer theory and sexuality studies, and cultural studies. He earned his B.A. in English and M.A. in writing at Coastal Carolina University.
Lindsay Webber is an undergrad student at Miami University pursuing a degree in Urban Planning and Design with a hope for a minor in Architecture. She started at Miami in 2024 and has three student jobs on campus. Outside of work and school, Lindsay enjoys living in her first apartment away from home with her sister and their two pets.
Mark Curnutte, Assistant Lecturer in Individualized Studies (Western Program), studies race relations, migration, and poverty. He is the author of Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 2019), A Promise in Haiti: A Reporter's Notes on Families and Daily Lives (Vanderbilt, 2011), and a textbook, Social Justice in the 21st Century (Cognella 2025). A daily reporter for 34 years, he contributed to The Cincinnati Enquirer's 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning article, "Seven Days of Heroin," 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.
Elisabeth Hodges is Associate Professor of French and Chair of French, Italian, and Classics. She is the author of Urban Poetics in the French Renaissance (Ashgate, 2008). Her essays have appeared in publications in France and in numerous journals. Her current scholarship focuses on French and contemporary art film with publications on Godard and the television series The Wire, and work in progress on sound in Isaac Julien’s 10,000 waves. She serves as a docent for the Contemporary Art Center and guest curates film presentations for the CAC and the Mini Microcinema. She is currently writing a book on sensory aesthetics in contemporary art films.
Hongmei Li is Professor of Strategic Communication. She studies global communication, advertising, and public relations, with a focus on Chinese media, Asian American communities, and health communication. Her work has appeared in Communication Theory, Public Relations Review, Health Communication, Journal of International & Intercultural Communication, and International Journal of Communication, among others. She is the author of Advertising and Consumer Culture in China (Polity, 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.
Kaara L. Peterson, Associate Professor of English, studies Renaissance medical history, art history, and literature. Her most current publications are Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance, with Amy Kenny (Palgrave Macmillan), and The Afterlife of Ophelia, with Deanne Williams (Palgrave Macmillan). Her essays have appeared in English Literary Renaissance, Renaissance Quarterly, and Studies in Philology, among others, and in collected volumes. She recently held a Plumer visiting fellowship at St. Anne's College, Oxford, and is the recipient of an upcoming Burleigh Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.
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.