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Meet the Humanities First Advisory Board

The Humanities First Advisory Board is an all-volunteer panel of stellar scholars whose research and teaching interests illustrate the wide diversity of thought represented throughout the humanities. Keep reading to learn more about them. You’ll be glad you did.

Jonathan J. Edwards is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication and Rhetoric at the University of South Carolina. Jon has served as a teacher and communication consultant in academic and professional settings. Since coming to South Carolina in 2010, he has taught courses in public speaking, argumentation, rhetorical theory, and business communication for the Department of English and the South Carolina Honors College. Since 2013, he has led a popular series of workshops designed to help graduate students talk about their research for non-specialist audiences. He also lectures on marketing pitches and professional communication and consults with entrepreneurs on the most effective ways to present their ideas to potential investors.

Jon earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. A published authority on religious movements and political communication, his work has appeared in a number of academic journals. He is the author of Superchurch: The Rhetoric and Politics of American Fundamentalism (Michigan State University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America (Lexington Books, 2020). He currently divides his time between teaching, mentoring, and conducting research for his next book.

Josh Manlove is the Managing Editor for the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education as well as a doctoral candidate in the Urban Education Studies program at Indiana University – Indianapolis.  He has more than ten years of experience working in Higher Education/Student Affairs at both Indiana University and Boston College.  His scholarship focuses on the experiences of multiracial individuals in higher education, coalition building amongst communities of Color, and dismantling whiteness/white supremacy.

Katie Day Good is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication and Affiliate Faculty in American Studies at Miami University. Her research specializes in the history of educational technology, global media and information, and the interplay between digital and material culture. She is the author of Bring the World to the Child: Technologies of Global Citizenship in American Education (MIT Press, 2020) and the recipient of a Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship to Mexico and AAUW Dissertation Fellowship. A former Graduate Writing Fellow and writing coach at Northwestern University, Good is passionate about writing pedagogy, process, and forming supportive communities and spaces for scholarly writing and public humanities.

Meenasarani Linde Murugan writes on contemporary Asian diasporic pop culture for the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Platform. Her most recent public scholarship can be heard and read on the “Coming of Age in 2021” episode of the Embodied Radio Show for WUNC and the book Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America (South Asian American Digital Archive, 2021). Her academic research focuses on television history and theories of race and diaspora. She has recently published an essay on the late 1960s US teen idol stardom of Sajid Khan for the edited collection Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives (ed. Michael Lawrence, BFI, 2020). She also has contributed a piece on Shirley Bassey and the Black Atlantic to The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007 (ed. Jaap Verheul, Amsterdam University Press, 2020). She serves on the editorial board for The Projector: A Journal on Film, Media, and Culture and Velvet Light Trap and is the Television Studies Section Editor for the Open Library of the Humanities. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.

Vanessa Plumly has been an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and Assistant Professor of German at Lawrence University since 2019. She is also an Affiliate Faculty Member in Ethnic Studies. Her research interests are in Black German studies, film and media studies, queer and gender studies, and global studies. She is a Board member of the Black German Heritage and Research Association, co-chair of the Black Diaspora Studies Network at the German Studies Association, review editor for H-Net Black Europe, and series co-editor of Imagining Black Europe with Peter Lang Press.