CLAS Introduces New Chairs and Directors
This article was originally published in the October 2005 issue of CLASnotes.
Jack
Kugelmass is the new director of the Center for
Jewish Studies. He comes to UF this year from Arizona State University
and holds the Melton Professorship at UF and also is a member of the
anthropology department. Kugelmass earned a PhD in anthropology from
the New School for Social Research in New York City, and for a number
of years directed the folklore program at the University of Wisconsin.
He has published widely on Polish Jewish culture, American Jewry,
urban anthropology and other areas of American and public culture.
Dragan
Kujundzic is the new chair of the Germanic and
Slavic studies department. He received a BA from the Department of Comparative
Literature and Literary Theory at Belgrade University and a PhD in
Russian and literary theory from the University of Southern California
in1986. He comes to UF from the University of California at Irvine,
where he served as director of Russian studies and founding director
of the International Center for Writing and Translation. His current
research involves analyzing the empire and vampirism, which he calls
vEmpire. He also is examining Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The
Idiot, as well as the films
of the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and Serbian filmmaker Dusan
Makavejev. He plans to offer an undergraduate course called Vampire
Stories, which will include a reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula and
psychoanalysis, cinema, and post-colonial issues related to the topic.
Milagros
Peña is the new director of the Center
for Women’s Studies and Gender Research. An associate professor
of sociology, she earned her MA and PhD from the State University of
New York at Stony Brook in 1985 and 1990, respectively, and has taught
at UF since 1999. Her research interests include women’s studies,
social movements, race and ethnic relations, and the sociology of religion.
Christine
Sapienza is the new chair of the communication
sciences and disorders department. She received a BA and MA in speech
pathology and audiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo
in 1987 and 1989, where she also earned her PhD in speech science
in 1993. She came to UF in 1993 and is the associate director of UF’s
Institute for Advanced Study of the Communication Processes and a
research health scientist with the Brain Rehabilitation Research Center
at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville. Her research
interests include the study of normal and disordered speech and voice
production in both the adult and pediatric populations.
Kenneth Sassaman is the interim chair of the anthropology
department. He came to UF in 1998, after receiving a PhD from the University
of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1991. His research interests center around
the prehistory of hunter-gatherer societies in the American Southeast,
particularly aspects of social organization, technology and monumentality.
He is well recognized as an expert on the Archaic period in Southeastern
archeology.
Robert Wagman is
the new chair of the classics department. He earned his master’s
and PhD from The Johns Hopkins University in 1984 and 1989, respectively,
and his research focuses on Greek religion, poetry and paleography. Before
coming to UF in 1990, he taught at the University of Virginia for one
year.
Carolyn Wiltshire is the interim director of the linguistics
program. She earned her PhD in 1992 from the University of Chicago and
specialized in phonology, phonetics and Dravidian languages. Before coming
to UF in 1995, she taught at Yale and Brown Universities. Her current
teaching and research involves phonological theory, word structure, phrasal
syllabification, expressive language, and Dravidian and Romance language
phonology.
Jack Kugelmass photo courtesy Jewish Studies; all others by Jane Dominguez