Dora Ahearn-Wood | Spanish and Portuguese

Kelsey Taylor Alexander | English, Rhetoric Program

Kelsey Alexander is an English PhD candidate in Rhetoric with a minor in Cultural Studies. Her research revolves primarily around rhetorical economies and social movements, specifically the ways our notions of a neoliberal work ethic evolve in response to dominant ideologies during sociopolitical and economic upheaval.

Ali Mohammad Alsmadi | Spanish and Portuguese

Ali Mohammad Alsmadi is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington, with a minor in Cultural Studies. His research examines Spanish Muslim literary texts, culture, and identity in late medieval and early modern Iberia, focusing on how these works reshaped Iberian intellectual life and articulated the voices of marginalized communities. He will defend his dissertation, El poema de Yuçuf: A Study of Aljamiado Literature and the Voices of Mudéjar and Morisco Iberia, in June 2026.

Alex Brannan | The Media School

Alex Brannan is a PhD candidate in The Media School. He has previously earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin. His current research focuses on contemporary film criticism and reception on online platforms. He has also published work in the areas of horror studies and humor studies, with a specific focus on genre hybridity. He has in-class teaching experience in the areas of film studies, introductory media skills, and media literacy.

Justin Bonthuys | The Media School

I am a PhD student in the Media School beginning in the Fall of 2022. I hail from Johannesburg, South Africa, where I began my undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand before moving to the U.S in 2015. I hold BA and MA degrees in Critical/Cultural Media Studies from the University of North Texas and specialize specifically in Cinema and Television Studies.

I am particularly interested in Genre Studies, Star Studies, Film History, LGBTQ Media and Minority and Transnational cinemas. I believe that my background as a ‘foreign’ audience for Western media allows me to see intricacies and ‘strangeness’ where these might not otherwise be seen by intended audiences and, as a gay man, I also view texts critically through a queer sensibility. My time at the University of the Witwatersrand also gave me experience with drama and theatrical movements, opera, and the fine arts, as many of their core theory classes were more generally designed for students from across the School of Arts.

My master’s thesis focused on how Melodrama and the melodramatic mode have been adapted within contemporary cinema as both a means of commenting on prior LGBTQI representation and of exposing mainstream audiences to the issues still faced by many within this spectrum. It can be viewed at https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1833511/.

Arthur "AC" Carlson | English 

Arthur “AC” Carlson is a Ph.D. candidate in rhetoric in the Department of English. Their research interests are at the intersection of rhetoric, culture, and media. Before coming to IU, AC earned an MA in English Literature and BAs in English and Theatre from Northern Arizona University. AC’s dissertation project explores imagination and rhetoric as co-constituting capacities. They look to discourses of space exploration and future imaginaries to examine the role of imagination in making different (if not always better) futures. When not researching, AC works as an academic advisor and enjoys spending time with their cat, Geoff. 

Hrishita Chatterjee | English

Hrishita (Rish) (she/they) is a third year PhD student in English with a minor in Cultural Studies. She works with Indigenous memoirs i.e. personal testimonies that situate the self within different power structures operating within specific indigenous societies. She is especially interested in the role of elders especially grandmothers in indigenous communities in fostering the community's well-being. Her research methodology is derived from an interdisciplinary combination of autobiographical theories, cultural, feminist, postcolonial as well as age theory.  

Renissa R. Gannie | English 

Renissa R. Gannie earned her BA in English Literature with distinction in History from the University of Denver, where she also completed her MA in English Literature with a focus on Native American Literature. She is a PhD Candidate in English at Indiana University, specializing in Victorian literature and Anglo-Caribbean studies, with a focus on indentured labor.

Her research examines nineteenth-century representations of indentured labor across administrative archives, literary texts, and visual culture, with particular attention to the British Caribbean. Her dissertation project, Accounting for Indenture in the Victorian Anglo-Caribbean, investigates how Victorian narrative forms register coercion while allowing imperial systems to persist without structural disruption.

Fabiola D’Angelo | The Media School

Bruno Dariva | The Media School

Sujin Jung | Art History

Jung Sujin is a Ph.D. student in Art History whose research focuses on the intersectionality of contemporary art, race, class, gender, and ecology. She has experience as a curator, writer, and exhibition coordinator at private and public art institutions in Korea and Australia, including the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. In 2021, she curated a group exhibition titled "Sailing Stones in Death Valley" at the George Paton Gallery in Naarm/Melbourne. She has also contributed articles to various magazines and journals, including un Magazine, Art Basel, and Ocula magazine. She has participated in several curatorial and writing workshops, including the Next Generation Korean Art Curator Workshop (Boston, 2022) and the Busan Biennale Curatorial Workshop (2022). In 2022, she won first place in the 5th Gravity Effect Art Criticism Competition.

Mallika Khanna | The Media School

Maximilian Majak | English

Brief bio: Max is an M.A./Ph.D. student in Rhetoric. He is interested in “Cultural Mummification” and the politics of representation, Dramatic Studies, Genre in the Digital Age, Martial Arts Studies, and public facing academia. Before coming to Bloomington, He received a B.A. in English and Creative Writing at NYU.

Ibrahim Odugbemi | The Media School

Ibrahim Odugbemi is a PhD candidate in Media Arts and Sciences. He received an MA in African Studies from Indiana University-Bloomington, and an MA and a BA in English (Literature) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research bridges Global South cinemas, African cinema, cultural studies, literary studies, print and audiovisual media. He has taught African Studies, worked with global media platforms, and led creative and knowledge-based initiatives in Nigeria and the United States.

Jordan Ogle | English

Jordan Ogle is a Ph.D. candidate in English and an Associate Instructor of Composition. His research considers modern and contemporary live performance—from the poetry reading to performance art to stand-up comedy—and returns repeatedly to the question: what does the audience want of the artist, now face-to-face, and how does the artist conceive of the audience’s desire (and in turn, reveal to us something of their own)? His dissertation, Desiring Audience: Intimacy, Alienation, and the Aesthetics of the Real in Postwar American Performance, traces this question across the work of Anne Sexton, Hannah Wilke, and Richard Pryor. 

Zikai Pang | The Media School

Zikai Pang is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests lie in film theory and philosophy. Currently, his work focuses on urban space in contemporary Chinese cinema.

Adriane Pontecorvo | Folklore and Ethnomusicology

Adriane Pontecorvo is a scholar and practitioner of community radio. Her research explores broadcast media geographies in the United States. She has been a volunteer at WFHB Community Radio in Bloomington since 2011.

Caro Reed-Ferrara | The Media School

Tess Rhian | Musicology

Ahmed Tahsin Shams | The Media School

Ahmed Tahsin Shams is a doctoral candidate in Media Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests span environmental media, ecodocumentary, and critical pedagogy, with a focus on more‑than‑human image practices and elemental witnessing in the (post)Anthropocene.

Jordan Strauch | English

Jamie Theophilos | The Media School

Jamie is a doctoral candidate who studies issues of surveillance, privacy and safety. Their dissertation is on an internet history of doxing. 

Laura Tscherry | English

Shu-Jung Yang | Geography

My work examines how Cold War geopolitics, economic development, and political regime transformation in Taiwan shaped transportation planning and everyday practices toward a contradictory transportation landscape, where there have been the dominance of cars and motorcycles, the sidelining of bus networks, and yet the favoring of metros at the same time. It attempts to illuminate not only how Cold War geopolitical and economic development continues to influence transportation planning but also how democracy manifest in everyday transportation choices.