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School of Languages, Cultures, and Race College of Arts and Sciences

Graduate Faculty Research Areas

Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo

9/11 cultural and rhetorical production, race and racism in U.S. popular culture and film, body theory, and contemporary continental philosophy

Professor of comparative ethnic studies and American Studies and Culture, Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo’s research and teaching interest areas span 9/11 cultural and rhetorical production, race and racism, U.S. popular culture and film, body theory, contemporary continental philosophy, and the modern global food system and food justice. Email her at bloodswo@wsu.edu

Joshua Bonzo

German, second language acquisition and pedagogy, Germanic linguistics

Associate Professor of German and American Studies and Culture, Career Track, Joshua Bonzo’s research interests focus primarily on foreign language writing and how output is influenced both autonomously as well as by instructional convention. His studies include extensive backgrounds in second language acquisition and foreign language pedagogy. Bonzo is also deeply interested in comparative and historical Germanic linguistics. His publications have focused most recently on both student writing production and teacher writing training and methods. Email him at joshua.bonzo@wsu.edu.

Samuel Ginsburg

Caribbean and Latinx Fiction, Afrofuturism, and Technology and Popular Culture 

Assistant Professor Samuel Ginsburg specializes in 21st century Caribbean and Latinx science fiction, looking at how authors, filmmakers and artists have negotiated histories of techno-colonialism and techno-authoritarianism. He also does research on Afro-Futurism, Cold War rhetoric and literature, eco-criticism, and the intersections between technology and popular culture.

Lisa Guerrero

African American literature, satire and humor, black masculinity, race and commodity cultures

Associate professor of comparative ethnic studies and American Studies and Culture, Lisa Guerrero’s research and teaching interest areas include African American masculinity, literary traditions/movements, satire and humor traditions, race and American popular culture, cultural studies, commodification of racial identities/representations, gender and sexuality, ethnic studies, and intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in social identity formation. Email her at laguerre@wsu.edu

Michael Hubert

Spanish, second language acquisition, Spanish linguistics, translation studies

Associate professor of Spanish and American Studies and Culture, Michael Hubert’s general areas of research interest include second language acquisition with special emphasis on language production, second/foreign language teacher training, Spanish phonetics, phonology and dialectology, Spanish applied linguistics, translation studies, and the teaching of translation in society. Professor Hubert’s current projects include a longitudinal study of the development of foreign language speaking and writing proficiencies among university students, a survey of foreign language learner avoidance strategies and the instructor practices that enable this behavior, and a study of the reasons why foreign language students abandon their studies before completing the university major or minor. Email him at michael.d.hubert@wsu.edu.

David Leonard

Race and popular culture, cultural politics of sport

Professor of comparative ethnic studies and American Studies and Culture, David Leonard’s research and teaching interest areas include African American studies, video games, popular culture/racialized representations, comparative ethnic studies, cultural politics of sport, race and sport (NBA), black popular culture (film, television, and hip-hop), social movements, black freedom struggle, and the prison industrial complex. Email him at djl@wsu.edu.

Xinmin Liu

Chinese, ecocritical studies of literature, art, and culture, Chinese literature, culture, and films

Associate professor of Chinese and American Studies and Culture, Xinmin Liu’s teaching and research are chiefly cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, dealing with subjects of ethical, aesthetic and environmental importance. Author of many published journal articles, he has given numerous lectures at academic and professional meetings, and his book on themes intersecting personal growth, education and ethnic and cultural identities of modern China is under contract with Brill. He has lately undertaken ecocritical studies of literature, art and culture in the context of the global development. His recent publications have focused on the dynamic process interfacing the human subject with local communal living and biophysical environs. Email him at xinmin.liu@wsu.edu.

Carmen Lugo-Lugo

Latina/o Studies, Race Relations, 9/11 cultural production

Professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies and culture, Carmen Lugo-Lugo’s research and teaching interest areas include Puerto Rican and Latina/o studies, race and gender in popular culture, Latina/o literature and constructions of ethnicity and gender, colonialism/imperialism and empire, post-9/11 cultural and rhetorical productions, and race relations in the United States. Email her at clugo@wsu.edu

Vilma Navarro-Daniels

Spanish, political, social, cultural, and economic transformations and their literary and cinematic representations

Associate professor of Spanish and American Studies and Culture, Vilma Navarro-Daniels’s research interests bridge the different fields she holds a degree in: literature and film studies, social sciences, philosophy, and pedagogy. Her scholarly work focuses on the relationship between political, social, cultural, and economic transformations and their literary and cinematic representations. She has published on Peninsular Spanish novel, short fiction, film, and theater, as well as on Latin American film and popular culture related genres such as TV series and comics. Her approach to literature, film, and other cultural products includes theories about gender, ethnicity, human rights, religion, dictatorship, transitions to democracy, late capitalism, and genres, among others. Email her at navarrod@wsu.edu.

Rory Ong (Emeritus)

Rhetoric, race and ethnicity theory, cultural and critical theory, Asian American literature

Rory Ong Associate professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies and American Studies and Culture graduate faculty, Rory Ong’s teaching and research interests intersect rhetorical studies, race and ethnicity studies, cultural and critical theory, with globalization, transnationalism, and diaspora studies.  Dr. Ong teaches undergraduate coursework in Ethnic Studies, Asian American Studies, as well as graduate coursework in American Studies.  His research has been concerned with the production and intersection of knowledge within racial, gendered, historical, social and political contexts.  His work considers the entanglements of complex social locations with uneven power dynamics that often dominate, regulate, and make everyday life contradictory. Email him at rjong@wsu.edu

John Streamas

Racial politics of time and space, social justice

John Streamas. Associate professor of comparative ethnic studies and American Studies and Culture, John Streamas’s research and teaching interest areas include ethnic studies; Asian Pacific American studies and literature; Trans-Pacific cultures; nuclear politics and Pacific wars;  Pacific Islands cultures;  race and depression; theories of race and ethnicity and technologies of time and space; racism; poverty; narrative; and social justice. Email him at streamas@wsu.edu.

Xach Williams

Assistant Professor of comparative ethnic studies and American Studies and Culture, Xach Willams’s research and teaching interest areas include the effects of anti-black racism, segregation, and exclusion on the development of the Pacific Northwest from the midnineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, highlighting the contributions of Black communities to the development of the PNW over time.