Ferdâ Asya, Ph.D., GSM director, associate professor of English

fasya@bloomu.edu | 111A Bakeless Center | (570) 389-4433

Asya, who has a Ph.D. degree in American Literature from Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., started her graduate studies in English and American literature on a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She lived in France, Nigeria, and Turkey; taught English and American literature and French language in Canada and Malaysia; and traveled extensively in northern and western Europe.

Asya works in the fields of 19th and 20th century American literature, with an emphasis on the turn of the century, the era of realism, naturalism and early modernism. More particularly, she is interested in the social and political approaches to the fiction of this period. Her other academic interests include international literature and literature of the Holocaust. Her current research focuses on the political aspects of the fiction of Edith Wharton and American expatriate writers in Paris. Asya has been the GSM director since fall 2010, as well as the director of the International Studies Living Learning Community.

Christina Francis, Ph.D., associate professor of English

Christina Francis received her Ph.D. degree in 2004 from Arizona State University. In addition to serving as board member for the Gender Studies Minor and the Institute for Culture and Society Board of Directors, she is the faculty advisor to the English Honor Fraternity Sigma Tau Delta and the English Club. She serves on the planning committees for the Mid-Atlantic LGBT Conference and the High School Conference on Diversity.

The courses Francis teaches for the Gender Studies Minor include Feminist Reading of Culture and Popular Literature. Her research focuses on Arthurian literature of the Middle Ages and contemporary Arthurian medievalism. Most recently, she contributed the essays, “Malory’s Bloody Bedrooms” for Arthurian Literature (Boydell & Brewer, 2011) and “Playing with Gender in Arthur, King of Time and Space” for the journal Arthuriana 20.4 (2010).

David Heineman, Ph.D., assistant professor of Communication Studies

David Heineman earned his Ph.D. degree in Communication Studies with a certification from the Project on the Rhetorics of Inquiry from the University of Iowa and Masters and Bachelors degrees in Speech Communication from Syracuse University. He is an advisor to the Bloomsburg chapter of the Lambda Pi Eta National Honor society and an active member of the National Communication Association. He regularly presents his work at international, national, and regional conferences.

Heineman’s primary research interests are located at the intersection of rhetorical theory and criticism and new media technologies. In 2012, he co-authored the book, Rhetoric Online: The Politics of New Media, for Peter Lang Press and he is currently writing a book for inclusion in the Digital Game Studies series by the Indiana University Press. Other recent scholarship has focused on gender in media, the rhetoric of memes, and digital aesthetics. He also has research interests in visual rhetoric, public memory, social movements, the rhetoric of science and technology, media criticism, narrative theory, and political communication. He teaches classes such as Gender Issues in Communication, Media and Visual Culture, Understanding Social Influence, and Examining Communication.

Yahya Laayouni, Ph.D., assistant professor of Arabic and French

Yahya Laayouni received a BA degree in English Literature and an MA degree in Gender Studies at Mohammed Ibn Abdellah University in Fez, Morocco. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012.

His primary field of research concentrates on Beur cinema as an emerging genre and on the construction of subjectivity in Beur films. Part of his work focuses on the issue of gender in Beur films, particularly the representations of women and gay Beurs. His theoretical framework is founded on visual alterity, narrative identity, and theories of subjectivity. He is also interested in francophone Arab-Islamic literature and culture and Orientalism.

Wendy Lynne Lee, Ph.D., professor of Philosophy

Wendy Lynne Lee received a Ph.D. degree from Marquette University in 1992. Her areas of specialization are environmental philosophy, feminist theory, and philosophy of mind. Her publications include several articles and two books, On Marx (Wadsworth, 2001) Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues (Broadview, 2010). She teaches the course, Feminist Philosophy, for the Gender Studies Minor.

Michael Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor of English

Martin's primary interests include the application of ethics to Professional or Technical Communication. He has published chapters in both Technical Communication Quarterly and in an Technical Communcation Resource Book edited by Cynthia Selfe. His dissertation research on Dietrich Bonhoeffer was published in 2008.

Martin is also interested in the role of technology in the writing process and has presented papers at Computers and Writing, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, 4 Cs and GPACW. He is on the Editorial Board of the journal Programmatic Perspectives:Journal of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication. He is just beginning work on a historical, fictional novel about European immigrants during World War II.

Stephanie Shepherd, Ph.D., asst. prof. of Environmental, Geographical, Geological Sciences

Stephanie Shepherd earned her Ph.D. degree in Environmental Dynamics, the study of complex interactions between natural systems and human activity, at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She joined the faculty of Bloomsburg University in the fall of 2010 and she teaches a range of classes in Environmental Science and Earth Surface Processes. Her research is focused on the influence of humans on the hydrology and sediment dynamics of river systems.

Shepherd has had a long-term interest in fighting bias and discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. She actively promotes gender equality in STEM fields and works to recruit both women and minorities to the Geosciences. She is a member of the Association of Women Geoscientist and the Earth Science Women’s Network. She also volunteers as a mentor for undergraduate female geoscience students through MentorNet.

Kara Shultz, Ph.D., professor and chair of Communication Studies

Shultz earned her Ph.D. degree in Speech Communication from the University of Denver and joined BU's communication studies department in 1991. With a focus in leadership and public advocacy, her teaching and research interests include the analysis of role of rhetoric in constructing representations of diverse cultural identities.

In addition to teaching core communication courses in Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, and Intercultural Communication, Shultz regularly teaches the following courses in the Leadership and Public Advocacy track of the major: Understanding Social Influence, Community Leadership, and Issue and Image Campaigns. In addition she has taught honors seminars in Free Speech and Community Values and Language, Culture, and Society.

Her research primarily examines the rhetoric of social movements and other forms of marginalized discourse; analyzing representations of gender, race, ethnicity, class and cultural identities in public discourse; and reconciling rhetorical theories from diverse cultural traditions, ranging from ancient to contemporary times, and demonstrating their relevance to civic life in our mediated society.

Her latest research projects examine the controversy over the growing popularity of the use of technological innovations to perfect “disabled” bodies through cochlear implant surgery, bariatric surgery, and limb lengthening surgery. She has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to study and has published several essays on the rhetoric of persons with disabilities appearing in the national journals the Quarterly Journal of Speech and The Howard Journal of Communications and in the edited volumes Conflict and Diversity and Handbook of Communication and People with Disabilities.

Shultz has presented papers on a variety of communication topics at national and regional conferences. She has served on the editorial board of Communication Quarterly and chaired the Rhetoric and Public Address and the Voices of Diversity divisions of the Eastern Communication Association. She has been both a leader and an active member of the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Committee (T.A.L.E.), the Women’s Studies Minor Advisory Board, and the Ethnic Studies Minor Advisory Board. She has served on the Bloomsburg University curriculum, tenure, sabbatical, faculty professional development, and promotion committees.

Julie Vandivere, Ph.D., professor of English

Vandivere's research focuses on modernist women writers between the the wars. Most recently, she is co-editor of H.D.'s previously unpublished The Sword Went out to Sea (University of Florida Press, 2006) and a contributor to a collection of essays on women writers between the wars, Hayford Hall: Hangovers, Erotics, and Modernist Aesthetics. (Southern Illinois University Press. 2005).

She is presently at work on a volume that examines the conjunction between maternity and modernist experimentation between the wars. Vandivere received her Ph.D. in 1989 from Cornell University and was the 2004-2005 Yale Beinecke Fellow. In addition, she is the faculty advisor to the Gay/Straight alliance and the
English Club.

Kelly VanGorden, Ph.D., assistant professor of Exercise Science

Kelly VanGorden received her Ph.D. degree from Springfield College (MA) in Physical Education Teaching and Administration. She came to Bloomsburg University in 2006, and she currently teaches the course, Women in Sport, for the Gender Studies Minor. She enjoys researching and presenting on the female-athlete paradox as well as the double jeopardy faced by women in sport.

Faith Warner, Ph.D., associate professor of Anthropology

Warner received her Ph.D. degree from Syracuse University in Anthropology, with a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies. Warner has researched how Salvadoran refugee women utilized the power of motherhood and the testimonio as a means of social protest against the atrocities of war, specifically torture and “disappearances”. She also received a Fulbright Robles Garcia grant to study gender and cultural differences in adaptation, traumatic stress, and social support networks in a Guatemalan refugee camp in Campeche, Mexico, focusing on Q’eqchi’, K’iche’, Mam, and K’anjobal peoples.

More recently, Warner has been focusing on the feminization of poverty in the United States and gender differences in college students’ expectations for and changing beliefs relating to gender equality and gender roles. She is a member of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She teaches Men and Women: Anthropological Perspectives and regularly mentors students in research that addresses gender issues.

Diana Zoelle, Ph.D., associate professor of Political Science

Diana Zoelle holds a PhD degree (1997) and an MA degree (1993) in Political Theory from University of Maryland, College Park, an MPA (1990) from University of Missouri, Columbia, a BS (1987) in Public Administration from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and an AAS (1985) in Accounting from Butler County Community College. Her areas of specialization are human rights, feminist political theory, normative political theory, and public administration. She has authored articles on women and poverty. Her book, Globalizing Concern for Women’s Human Rights: The Failure of the American Model (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), analyzes and critiques the sociopolitical, economic, and legal systems of the United States.

Her current focus is the investigation of pragmatic approaches to protection of women’s human rights – the linguistic innovations that are the function of the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations. She is currently focused on editing a text that will constitute gendered analyses of the future of development lending to poor countries.

At Bloomsburg, she teaches courses in History of Political Thought, American Political Thought, Globalization and the United Nations, and Feminist Political Theory. From 2008- 2011, she lead the effort, within the Political Science Department, to create and successfully establish the Master of Arts in Public Policy and International Affairs. In 2001, Zoelle founded the Bloomsburg University Model United Nations Student Organization, which she advised until 2011.

Other board members

• Thomas Klinger, Ph.D., professor of Biology