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Dr. Damien Pfister

Director

rhetorical theory, digital media studies, culture and technology, public deliberation

Damien Smith Pfister began teaching in DCC in Spring 2023, and was hired as program director in May 2023.
 
Dr. Pfister is curious about the manifold intersections of rhetoric and digitality. An Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, Pfister has written about the early years of the blogosphere, connections between ancient rhetorical theory and digital networks, the deliberative implications of widespread image manipulation, and, in a current book project, the cultural impact of wearable computers. Pfister received a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009, and has taught at the University of Maryland since 2016. In his spare time, he makes hyperlocal, artisanal hot sauce and coaches youth sports in Howard County.
A photo of Dr. Jessica H. Lu, smiling and wearing a blue shirt, standing in front of greenery.

Dr. Jessica H. Lu

Associate Director

care-centered pedagogy, critical digital humanities, textile crafts, rhetorical history & practice, argument design and logic

Jessica H. Lu (she/her) joined the Design Cultures and Creativity (DCC) staff in 2019 as Associate Director and served as Interim Director for the 2022-2023 academic year. She is also an adjunct professor in the Master's in Communication program in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Having earned both her Ph.D. in Communication and Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Maryland, she has had the distinct pleasure of teaching undergraduates in College Park since 2011.

Trained as a rhetorical critic, she is concerned with how we can practice radical care for past, present, and future humans—especially those whose lives are shaped by precarity and state-sanctioned violence—in the ways we use language and other creative practices to design and destroy our worlds. She examines, in particular, the ideas and rhetorical practices that form, advance, and disrupt racist logics in public and political discourse in the United States. Her work has been published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs and Information, Communication & Society, and she is a co-author of Doing Black Digital Humanities with Radical Intentionality: A Practical Guide.

Jessica's work and teaching is further positioned at the intersections of African American rhetorical history, archives, and digital humanities. As a former Postdoctoral Associate and, later, Assistant Director of the first African American History, Culture, & Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum) team at the University of Maryland, she has provided mentorship and instruction in digital skills (including scholarly text encoding, critical cartography, network analysis, data modeling, feminist design, and data visualization) to graduate students, faculty, and community activists.

Jin R. Choi

Graduate Assistant & Instructor
transnational mobilities, racial rhetorical ecologies, Asian diaspora, citizenship and globalization
 
Jin (she/her) is a Ph.D. student and Flagship Fellow in Communication at the University of Maryland studying Rhetoric and Political Culture, paired with a Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities certificate. Jin obtained her B.A. in Sociology and Communication Arts at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Jin's current research centers around examining how our identities fluctuate as we move in and out of different rhetorical ecologies. She is interested in transnational mobilities and the subsequent rendering of raced and gendered bodies, currently exploring historical and contemporary rhetorical ecologies for Asian women in the United States. 
 
As a creative, Jin has experience in branding, design, and photography. She is a big fan of interdisciplinary, hands-on, creation-oriented learning that invites students to think and imagine beyond boundaries. She holds belonging in communities in South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the US. 

Ananya Kaipa

Graduate Assistant & Instructor

product design, UX research, heuristics, qualitative research, information architecture, design thinking, design for accessibility

Ananya Kaipa (she/her) is a graduate student at the College of Information at the University of Maryland (iSchool), studying Human Computer Interaction.

She has an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design and a Diploma in Data Science. She worked as a UX designer at Dell Technologies for two years. Her experience in the industry taught her the importance of evangelizing design as not just a process, but an ideology. She’s now pursuing a Masters degree to deepen her understanding of how humans interact with the world—digital or otherwise.

As a personal endeavor, Ananya is trying to understand how many design rules can be broken, while still keeping the sanctity of a product intact. She wants to challenge the status quo of what’s considered a usable product and why.

A photo of Jonathan Reyes, smiling.

Jonathan Reyes

Graduate Assistant & Instructor

Filipinx American Studies, Asian American Literature, postcolonial theory, globalization

Jonathan Reyes (he/his) is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned Bachelor's Degrees in English and in Computer Engineering from the same university in 2015 and worked as a Firmware Engineer before returning to UMD for graduate study. Jonathan’s dissertation examines the ways that Filipino American literature is intertwined with Philippine Anglophone literature and the Philippine diaspora. He is particularly interested in the ways that these literary traditions contend with U.S. empire—both present and past—and with the metafictional techniques authors use to depict the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship. Outside of graduate work, you can find Jonathan biking, hiking, and/or posting pictures of his dog, Pepper.

CLIFF BAKALIAN

Faculty

epistemology, meta-ethics, programming languages

Cliff is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. His studies in computer science are focused on how programming languages are used to communicate between programmer and computer. His studies in Philosophy focused on meta-ethics and how we determine our thoughts.

Dr. Grant Bollmer

Faculty

digital cultures, history and theory of technology, media archaeology, social media, videogames, psychology and psychoanalysis, the occult

Grant Bollmer (he/him) is an Associate Research Professor in the Communication Department at the University of Maryland. He has written extensively about a wide range of topics related to digital media and culture, including the history of networks, the economics of influencers, empathy and virtual reality, and techniques of measurement in the psychology of emotion. Grant received his Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, and since then he has taught at a range of universities around the world, including Massey University in New Zealand, the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland, both in Australia, and NC State University in North Carolina.

William (Bill) Evans

Faculty

music technology applications, recording studio techniques, music composition and choral music

William C. Evans (he/him) teaches Elements of Music Composition for Non-majors and Music Media for the School of Music (MUSC). He is also the Director of the University of Maryland's Music Technology Lab.

Evans’ expertise in music technology is sought after as he serves in an advisory capacity to
music software and hardware companies and presents workshops in music applications for
music associations. He has served as a guest conductor and choral clinician in Quebec,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland. He has served as guest conductor of the
Towson University Vocal Jazz Ensemble and as a guest lecturer in music technology at the
Catholic University of America.

His professional vocal experience includes performances in local opera and musical comedy companies as well as concert performances. These companies include Wolf Trap Opera, Cedar Lane Stage, Pennsylvania Opera Festival, Laurel Oratorio Society and the Annapolis Chorale.

Dr. Shari Feldman

Faculty

singer, storyteller, cantor, community organizer, grant writer, and collaborative artist

Shari Feldman (she/her) is twice a Terp, having recently earned her Doctor in Musical Arts degree in Vocal Performance from the School of Music and a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the School of Public Policy. Previously, Dr. Feldman was the Director of Admissions and Academic Advising for the University of Delaware School of Music, where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music. She sang with Opera Delaware and Baltimore Concert Opera and served on the Board of Directors and as a ringer for the Choir School of Delaware. 

Dr. Feldman currently supports her musical passions by singing for Riderwood Jewish Community, teaching music classes through Prince George’s Community College, and working as Education Program Manager for Washington Performing Arts. A long-standing affiliation with Source Song Festival has fostered her love of collaborative arts which motivates her work as co-founder and soprano for the Evelyn Duo. This ensemble’s mission overlaps with her research, which focuses on feminist art song literature and song performance filtered through a  21st century digital lens.

In her spare time, she reads like a fiend, procrasti-bakes cookies, solves jigsaw puzzles, and stresses about writing bios in the third person.

Dr. Alexis Lothian

Core Faculty

feminist, queer, and trans social movements; speculative fiction, media, and fandom; histories of online community 

Alexis Lothian (she/her) is Associate Professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and has been teaching classes in DCC since she joined the University of Maryland in 2014. Lothian is an interdisciplinary scholar of queer and feminist media and cultural studies; her research centers on speculative fiction, digital media, and online fandom and their relationships to gender, race, and disability justice. Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, Lothian moved to the US in 2006 to get her PhD at the University of Southern California after studying at the University of Edinburgh and University of Sussex. She is a longtime participant in feminist science fiction and transformative works fandom and a vidder, although most of her non-work time at present is spent caring for her two young children.

 

E. Brooke Phipps

Faculty

rhetorical theory, digital media studies, social movements, platform studies

Brooke (she/her) is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Maryland studying Rhetoric and Political Culture (COMM), and completed the Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities certificate in 2022. Brooke obtained her M.A. in Communication Studies from Colorado State University. Brooke's research analyzes how persuasive rhetorical forces and technologies influence our abilities to understand the world around us. She brings a mixed methods approach to her scholarship, ranging from discursive analysis and criticism to field methods such as digital ethnography.

As a content creator and a public scholar, Brooke has experience in graphic design, video editing, live broadcasting, and social media strategy. Brooke spends her free time working for several podcasts focusing on women & BIPOC voices in technology spaces as a freelance content manager (and occasional guest). When she isn't working, she's likely playing board games or cuddling her cats Pabu and Momo.

Anat Szendro Sevilla

Faculty

creativity, visual communication, print design, graphic design, branding

Anat Szendro Sevilla is a Visual & UX Designer and an instructor. She is interested in the intersection of visual arts, UX design, creativity, and teaching. Her training brings together academic studies and professional experience in visual design. She completed her Bachelor of Design from Israel’s leading art and design university, The Bezalel Academy. She gained her Master’s in HCI from the University of Maryland (UMD) College of Information Studies in 2022.

Anat has worked in the visual design industry for more than a decade. Her professional experience spans big advertising firms like TBWA to small branding companies. In 2017 she opened her studio, TukTuk Design, leading design processes and UX/UI projects for various clients.

Victoria is light skinned, and has shoulder length dark curly hair. She wears clear glasses and looks off into the distance, trying not to giggle.

Dr. Victoria Van Hyning

Faculty

crowdsourcing, cultural heritage, archives, digital humanities

Victoria Van Hyning is an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies (iSchool) at College Park. She has a background in medieval and early modern English literature, digital humanities, and cultural heritage crowdsourcing and publishes in these areas. She is a co-founder and Director of the Center for Archival Futures (CAFe), and the Recovering and Reusing Archival Data or RRAD Lab at UMD where she focuses on community cultural heritage, crowdsourcing, and data reuse. She was awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services Early Career Grant in 2022 for her project "Crowdsourced Data: Accuracy, Accessibility, Authority (CDAAA),” to investigate the challenges and sociotechnical barriers that libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) face in integrating crowdsourced transcriptions of cultural heritage materials into their discovery systems. She is the former Humanities PI of Zooniverse.org, and a former Senior Innovation Specialist and Community Manager for Collections and Data for the crowdsourcing project By the People at the Library of Congress. She is the author of Convent Autobiography: Early Modern English Nuns in Exile (OUP: 2019), and articles about crowdsourcing, information science, and English literature.