Michael Fitzgerald, History Department, is director of ARMS and also the director of the Africa and the Americas concentration. Professor Fitzgerald teaches African American and Southern history, especially the Civil War Era. His scholarly specialties include Reconstruction and emancipation, and also Garveyism in the Twentieth Century. Professor Fitzgerald was raised in Los Angeles and did his undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA.

 

Jan Allister

 

 

 

 

 

Jan Allister, English Department, teaches courses in writing, journalism, children's literature, and linguistics. She has worked as a legal editor, newspaper reporter, and technical writer (for Microsoft and Minnegasco), and published personal essays and numerous encyclopedia articles on children's and adult literature. 

In the chIldren;s literature class, students are assigned readings by diverse American authors (ex. Woodson. Soto, Jimenez, Levitin, Munoz-Ryan, Anaya) and/or books whose main subject is race, ethnic or religious discrimination, sexuality, ability, or gender, as well as classic books from what is called the Golden Age of children's literature. Students learn to be on the alert for subtle (or not so subtle) instances of embedded racism, classis, sexism and other exclusive or prejudicial attitudes in children's books and young adult literature.

Students seeking ARMS credit can do a major on American multicultural issues in children's fictiion, poetry, or nonfiction. 

 

Carolynn Anderson



 

 



Carolyn Anderson, Sociology/Anthropology department,
teaches courses about Native Americans and indigenous peoples. Her research interests relate to the Dakota people in Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Manitoa.

She is currently completing a book on the Prairie Island Dakota who live near Red Wing, Minnesota.

 


 

 

 

 

John Barbour, Religion Department, is especially interested in the religious significance of the literature by people of color in the United States.

He has taught a course on "Religious Autobiographies by Multicultural Americans" both on campus and at Chicago's Newberry Library. Works such as Toni Morrison's "Paradise" and Louise Erdrich's "Tracks" are usually part of his course, "Religion and Literature."

 

heather campbell

 

 

 

 



Heather Campbell, Education Department, teaches the English as a second language (ESL) licensure courses including an ARMS class focused on issues facing ESL students and teachers. Prior to teaching full time at St. Olaf, Professor Campbell taught English as a foreign language in Slovakia, ESL in St. Paul, science in Minneapolis, and directed the St. Olaf Upward Bound program. Urban education and educational opportunity are two areas of particular interest to Professor Campbell.

 

Mary Carlsen

 

 

 

 



Mary Carlsen, Department of Family and Social Service/ Social Work Program, teaches courses in social welfare and social work which examine the impact of social welfare policies and programs on diverse communities and individuals. The courses emphasize how people who experience oppression and discrimination can become empowered and work for social change. Mary's earlier research interests included the impact of HIV/AIDS in the lives of African-Americans; her current interests include cultural differences in grief, loss, and end of life care.

 

David Hagedorn

  

 

 


David Hagedorn, Music Department, he teaches percussion, jazz studies, and world music. He studied African drumming with Abraham Adzenyah at the Banff Centre for Fine Arts in Canada, was a charter member of the Lila Muni gamelan at the Eastman School of Music, and studied Cuban hand drumming and Brazilian samba with Michael Spiro and Dane Richeson at Bjorklunden in Door County Wisconsin. He has "one album under his own name, SolidLiquid on artegra recordings", recorded with the George Russell Living Time Orchestra on Blue Note Recordings, jazz singer Debbie Duncan on Igmod Recordings "Pete Whitman's X-tet on artegra recordings T"he Phil Hey Quartet on Artists' Quarter recordings", and also with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on Teldec Recordings. Hagedorn regularly performs in the Twin Cities with jazz groups such as the Phil Hey quartet, "Pete Whitman's X-tet", "The Out to Lunch Quintet", Apex, Meantime, Low Blows, and the JazzMn Orchestra.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joan Hepburn, English Department, graduated with a doctorate from Brown University, and taught in an array of institutions, including Fordham University. She has been a member of the English Department of St. Olaf since 1987 where she has taught and directed programs on and off campus, African and the Americas, American Racial and Multicultural Studies, and Ghana and Namibia among them. Off campus, she has led Theater Interims to South Africa and to New York, in Contemporary and West African Drama in English these being her fields of study.

 

Judy Kutulas

 

 

 

 

 

Judy Kutulas, History Department, teaches history, American Studies, Media Studies, and Women's Studies. Professor Kutulas is also currently the director of  the St. Olaf Women's Studies program. Because most of her classes focus on 20th century American history and culture, most are also about multcultural issues. Her publications include The American Civil Liberties Union and the Transformation of American Liberalism (Univerty of North Carolina Press, 2006), The Long War: The Intellectual People's Front and Anti-Stalinism, 1930-1940 (Duke University Press, 1995), and many articles on media. Her current project, an exploration of 1970s popular culture, will examine, among other things, the cultural moment when Americans think they embrace "diversity." 

 

Matt Rohn

 

 

 

 



Matthew Rohn, Art & Art History Department, teaches courses mostly about art and visual culture since 1900. He helped launch the American Conversations program.

His scholarship and teaching has long explored the interplay among cultural concerns (including race and gender), social norms and resistance to those norms, and the visial imagination.

He grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, went to George Washington University in Washington D.C. (where he had the joy of interning at the Smithsonian's newly founded, neighborhood-based, Anacostia Museum) he did his graduate studies at the University of Michigan.

 


Mark Schelske


 

 



Mark Schelske, Education Department.
Teaches multicultural education extensively and is heavily involved in campus diversity initiatives.

 

Mary Titus

 

 

 

 


Mary Titus, English Department, teaches courses in American literature with a special interest in the literature of the American South, as well as issues of race and gender in American culture. She teaches in Women's Studies and in the American Conversation program and directs the Center for Integrative Studies.

Mary was born in Washing, D.C. and raised in New York, and did her graduate work at the University of North Carolina.

 

Steve Hahn

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Hahn, History Department, specializes in Native American and Colonial American History. He is currently completing a manuscript on the Creek Confederacy in the 1600 and 1700's. Professor Hahn is a recent graduate of Emery University and on sabbatical this year.

 

Bruce Nordstrom-Loeb

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce Nordstrom-Loeb, Sociology/Anthropology Department, teaches courses on race and class in American culture. He has lived on several Indian reservation in Montana and Colorado in the past, and was involved in a summer civil rights project in Alabama right after college in the 1960's. Bruce and his wife Barbara live in souht Minneapolis, and have been enjoying the foods, theater, and conversation that can be found in immigrant neighborhoods, including the new Midtown Global Market on Lake Street. Bruce and Barbara have led two St. Olaf abroad programs in recent years, Term in the Middle East in 2000 and Term in Asia in 2004-2005.