Dr. Abdelghany is originally from Lebanon. She receivied her PhD and MA in French Literature from Boston College and her Licence de Litérature from the Lebanese University. She specializes in the intersection of the Orient and 19th-Century French Literature. Her research focuses on the intertextuality between Balzac's novels and the Arabian Nights, Alf Layla wa Layla. She is also interested in the study of languages and cultures. She teaches Arabic and French courses at all levels. At Babson, she created Arabic Cinema and Culture , a very popular course among students.

Dr. Abdelghany has conducted research on pedagogy, intercultural competency and community development, and has presented papers regularly at the annual meetings of MaFLA and ACTFL. She has also participated at literary national and international conferences such as Society of Dix-Neuviémistes and Nineteenth Century French Studies.

She is currently a Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at Babson College.

Kimiko Abramoff received a Master's degree in English Literature from Assumption College in Massachusetts as well as a Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language from St. Michael's College in Vermont. She has been teaching Japanese language and Culture at Babson College for several decades. Abramoff recently completed a Japanese audio language program, Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur Japanese 5, as a course writer.

Dr. Alex Adamson is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Babson College.

Dr. Adamson's areas of specialization are in social and political philosophy, Latin American and Caribbean decolonial philosophy, and queer and feminist philosophy. They have written on Rosa Luxemburg's and C.L.R. James's critiques of imperialism and political economy as well as the decolonial feminism of María Lugones and Sylvia Wynter. Their current research focuses on decolonial critiques of political economy, scholar-activism, and queer and trans philosophy.

In their spare time, Dr. Adamson is a jazz aficionado and an upright bass player.

Meghan Allen teaches courses in Elementary and Intermediate Spanish at Babson. She has previously taught courses at M.I.T. and Boston College. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Latin American literature, and her research interests include 20th century Latin American literature, postcolonial theory, and photography-embedded fiction.​

Olivia Baldwin is a visual artist whose practice interweaves painting, drawing, and sculpture. She teaches painting at Babson College. Her work has appeared in exhibitions in Austria, Italy, and throughout the United States: Zürcher Gallery (New York, NY), A.I.R. Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Boston University (Boston, MA), One River School of Art + Design (Allendale, NJ), Miami University (Oxford, OH), Jane Lombard Gallery (New York, NY), and elsewhere. Alongside her studio practice, Baldwin has organized and curated numerous exhibitions and multidisciplinary programs in New York and Connecticut, including Dusklit Interactive Art Festival. Baldwin's research has been supported by residencies, fellowships, and grants from Ox-Bow, Vermont Studio Center, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, the Wood/Raith Living Trust, Assets for Artists (MASS MoCA), and the University of Connecticut, among others.

Stephen Bauer teaches Arts and Humanities Foundation courses, an intermediate literature class on "The Short Story," and an advanced liberal arts elective in "Writing Creative Nonfiction." He has served as the Assistant Director of Business Communication in Babson's MBA Programs and the Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program. Professor Bauer is a novelist, essayist, and short story writer; his work has appeared in American Fiction, Sewanee Review, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best of Prairie Schooner: Personal Essays. His recent essay -- "Seasons of Violence, Seasons of Grace" -- was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Doug Breault is an artist, designer and independent curator who divides his time between Boston and Providence. His work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at various institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts, Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, and the Bristol Art Museum. He received his MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University focused on the intersection of photography and painting.

Miranda Chen-Cristoforo teaches Chinese language courses at Babson College. Her research focuses on developing proficiency-based materials for introductory Chinese and using web-based and distance learning technologies to enhance Chinese language pedagogy. She has been teaching in the field of Chinese language and culture for over 20 years at various schools including MIT, Harvard University, Wellesley University, Tufts University, the Middlebury College Language School, Washington and Lee University, and Tunghai University. She has published two books, Close the Deal: Advanced Chinese for Creative and Productive Business and Taiwan Today: An Intermediate Reader. She was awarded the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Award by the Harvard-Radcliffe Undergraduate Council and the Harvard University Certificate for Distinction in Teaching.

Professor Dietrick teaches intermediate and advanced literature courses such as Business and American Drama, Modern Drama, and The London Stage. Professor Dietrick's research deals mainly with literary representations of business and economic life. He is the author of the book Bad Pennies and Dead Presidents: Money in Modern American Drama. Additionally his work has appeared in journals such as American Drama, Twentieth-Century Literature, and the Journal of International Women's Studies.

Dr. DiSabato has taught writing and literature at various New England colleges, including Boston College, Northeastern University, Saint Anselm College, Keene State College, and Framingham State University. Before becoming a college instructor, Dr. DiSabato honed her teaching skills as an interpretive naturalist, leading nature walks and staffing nature centers in Ohio and Massachusetts. Dr. DiSabato publishes a weblog, Hoarded Ordinaries, which showcases her nonfiction essays and digital photography. In addition to teaching at Babson College, she is a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen. Dr. DiSabato lives in Newton, Massachusetts with a husband, two dogs, and a herd of cats.

Dr. Donovan-Condron teaches intermediate literature, rhetoric, and foundation courses in Arts and Humanities. Her research interests are an interdisciplinary mix of literature, history, and material culture. Areas of particular interest include urban identity in the early nineteenth century, the gothic novel, women's writing, consumerism and consumption in literature, Southern Gothic, and fairy tales. In the summer of 2013, she was selected to be a summer scholar in the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar "Reassessing Romanticism." She is currently part of a team that is producing a digital archive of nineteenth-century writer Mary Russell Mitford's works and correspondence.​

Jordan Escobar teaches Research Writing at Emerson College. He has previously taught composition at Emerson. He has published writing in numerous journals across the country and has received a fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Professor Escobar has earned his Bachelor's of Science in Animal Science from California Polytechnic State University and his Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Emerson College.

Kristi Girdharry is the Director of the Writing Center and an Associate Teaching Professor in the Arts and Humanities division where she teaches courses on writing, tutoring, and social media. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of English at Johnson & Wales University where she also taught courses on communication skills and advanced research methods. She holds a PhD in English with a focus in Rhetoric and Composition from Northeastern University. Much of her scholarly and pedagogical interests come from work with community sites and partners. Stemming from her role in the creation of an oral history project and digital archive built to capture the ephemera following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, her dissertation—“Composing Digital Community Spaces: Design and Literacy Practices in/of the Archive”—offered a case study of a crowdsourced archive meant to simultaneously memorialize and historicize the events. She has published and given talks on aspects of this work ranging from understanding who participates in these types of story-sharing spaces to examining the linguistic practices of such story sharers, which show interesting markers of race, class, and inclusion/exclusion. In addition to also working on scholarship related to teaching and tutoring, she is a co-editor for the Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition Series, which offers a current snapshot of the exigent themes, trends, and ideas within Writing Studies and also contextualizes each piece with activities and discussion questions to help aid in professional development conversations for instructors who may not have the means or time to attend the conferences and keep up with all recent scholarship.

Professor Graham (she/her/hers) is an ethnomusicologist who teaches "Memory and Forgetting" (AHS foundation), art music appreciation, African American music, global pop, and music traditions from around the world. She served as President of the Society for American Music 2017–2019 and is now Past President (2019–20). Her book Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry was published by University of Illinois Press in March 2018, and was named a Choice top academic title for that year. It also was honored with the American Musicological Society's American in Music Culture Award (2019), which recognizes the best writing on music in American culture. Her articles on spirituals and blackface minstrelsy have been published in journals, books, the Grove Dictionary of American Music (2nd ed.), and The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (revised 2013). With vocalist Chad Runyon she produced and recorded twelve songs by black entertainer Sam Lucas. Before joining the Babson faculty in 2011, she founded the graduate program in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Davis, and had visiting appointments at Davidson College, the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the Music Academy of the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Current Project: Bent Victorians: Obsession in Victorian Literature and Culture, which claims that obsessive narrative structures within Victorian literature result from the tension between realism's representational goals and its narrative objectives.

Steve Holley is a music educator/bassist/author living in Boston, MA. Steve holds a Ph.D. in Music Learning and Teaching from Arizona State University as well as a B.M. and an M.M. in Jazz/Classical Bass Performance from the University of Memphis.

As a teacher, Steve previously served as the Producer for the Commercial Music Program at the Kent Denver School outside Denver, CO, for nineteen years. During his tenure, the R&B, soul, salsa, and jazz bands of the CMP were recognized by DownBeat magazine's Student Music Awards fifteen times. The bands performed hundreds of gigs in the U.S. and abroad, held standing gigs at local clubs, performed on dozens of radio and television broadcasts, recorded at some of the most hallowed studios in the country, and performed with dozens of Grammy-caliber artists.

As a bassist, Steve has recorded on over 100 studio projects and has played over 10,000 gigs across the world in every style of music imaginable.

As a writer, Steve authored the book Coaching a Popular Music Ensemble: Blending formal, non-formal, and informal approaches in the rehearsal and co-edited Action-based Approaches in Popular Music Education—a text featuring chapters from 26 experienced popular music educators discussing their teaching approaches to the popular music learning space.

Currently, Steve serves as the President of the Association for Popular Music Education. Steve and his family recently moved to Boston, MA, with their two rescue Boston Terriers, Matilda and Clementine.

Saskia Kusnecov is a Research and Instruction Librarian for Horn Library, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Arts and Humanities division. She holds a Master's in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University.

Dr. Leonard teaches Rhetoric 1 and 2, Arts and Humanities Foundation courses, and, at the Intermediate level, Curiosity in Literature and Lively, Literary Massachusetts. She has written on Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and extensively on the role of curiosity in Gothic novels. Professor Leonard is currently publishing her first children's book on diversity in families (forthcoming Winter 2015-Spring 2016). She is also working on her book of creative non-fiction tentatively titled From the Kernel to the Cob, from which she has read selections at Babson's Waterline Series and at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA. Professor Leonard is the editor of the poetry collection Love Me Like That by Massachusetts poet Jeanette Winthrop (forthcoming Fall 2015). Prior to coming to Babson, Dr. Leonard taught writing and literature at Brooklyn College and Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. At Brooklyn College, she was also the administrator of the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Studies as well as the Service Learning program. Professor Leonard received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in English and American Literature from New York University, and a B.A. in Sociology and a Certificate in Women's Studies from Douglass College, Rutgers University.

Julie Levinson is Professor of Film, former Chair of the Arts and Humanities division and former Associate Dean of Faculty at Babson. She teaches courses in film and cultural history. Previously, she taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)., Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Rencontres Cinematographiques Franco-Americain in Avignon, France. She holds a PhD. in Film and Literature and an M.S. in Film from Boston University, as well as a B.A. in Theatre Arts and English from Cornell University.

In addition to her academic appointments, Levinson was the Curator of Film at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Director of Programming at the Boston Film/Video Foundation, and Curator/Producer of Mixed Signals cable television series for the New England Foundation for the Arts. She has curated film series for several other organizations including the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Celebration of Black Cinema, and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College. She has been a panelist for, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and the New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont Councils on the Arts. She frequently serves as a film festival judge and an editorial consultant on documentary films.

Levinson is the author of The American Success Myth on Film (Palgrave MacMillan), editor of Alexander Payne: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi) and co-editor of Acting, a volume in the Behind the Silver Screen film history series (Rutgers University Press). Her published work in journals and edited collections has focused on a wide range of topics including genre and gender, documentary film, narrative theory, and metafiction.

Stephen J. McElroy is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of First-Year Writing. He specializes in composition theory and pedagogy, multimodal production, digital composing, and assemblage theory. His work has appeared in Computers and Composition, Kairos, and Enculturation, among other venues. His 2017 collection, Assembling Composition, co-edited with Kathleen Blake Yancey and published in the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series by NCTE, examines the relationship between assemblage and composing in theory, in the classroom, and in the world. For his 2014 Kairos article, he and his coauthors Michael Neal and Katherine Bridgman received the Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Production/Scholarship Award. Before joining Babson, Stephen directed the Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio at Florida State University, where he previously earned his PhD, and taught courses in FSU's Editing, Writing, and Media major and College Composition program. He also holds an M.A. in English from Belmont University and a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from the Gordon Ford College of Business at Western Kentucky University.

​Weston previously taught courses in Composition, Creative Writing, and Literature at Saint Anselm College, Colby-Sawyer College, the University of New England, Southern Maine Community College, and Chemeketa Community College. He has prior work experience as a corporate attorney and an advertising copywriter.​

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh teaches courses in comparative literature, Middle Eastern studies, world literature, and modern philosophy. He received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University, with an interest in global intersections of the avant-garde, existentialism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. Professor Mohaghegh's scholarly focus is upon tracking emergent currents of thought in the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to exploring the concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, madness, night, and apocalyptic writing. He has published ten books to date, including: The Chaotic Imagination: New Literature and Philosophy of the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Inflictions: The Writing of Violence in the Middle East (Continuum, 2012), The Radical Unspoken: Silence in Middle Eastern and Western Thought (Routledge, 2013), Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism (SUNY, 2015); Born Upon the Dark Spear: Selected Poems of Ahmad Shamlu (translation; Contra Mundum, 2016); Elemental Disappearances (co-authored with Dejan Lukic; Punctum Books, 2016); Manifestos of World Thought (co-edited with Lucian Stone, Rowan & Littlefield, 2017); Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-In-Delirium (MIT Press, Urbanomic/Sequence, 2019); Night: A Philosophy of the After Dark (Zero Books, 2020); Night II: A Philosophy of the Last World (Zero Books, 2022), and; Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-In-Deception (MIT Press, 2023). He is also the co-editor of two book series with Bloomsbury Press--Future Theory and Suspensions--which are dedicated to showcasing cutting-edge movements in literature, philosophy, culture, and art across multiple global regions. He also holds multiple honorary positions, including: Professioral Research Associate, University of London SOAS; Faculty and Dissertation Advisor, The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts; Director of Transdisciplinary Studies, the New Centre for Research & Practice; Founding Director of the Future Studies Program.

Shannon Mooney is an Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Babson College. Prior to joining Babson, Shannon was a visiting faculty member in the English Department at Mount Holyoke College, where she taught courses on contemporary American literature. In 2022, she completed her PhD in English with a concentration in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was also Writing Center Assistant Director and taught in the English Department and Writing Program.

Shannon's research focuses on contemporary multiethnic U.S. literature, with a focus on whiteness and cultural geography. Her current book project examines the emergence of literary and cultural texts set in the state of New Jersey at the turn of the twenty-first century, including works by Philip Roth and Junot Díaz, shows such as The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, and the rhetoric of the state's politicians. She also has scholarly and pedagogical interests in rhetoric and composition and writing center studies. Her research has appeared in Supernatural Studies, New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Sounding Out! The Sound Studies Blog.

Dr. Stephen J. Muscolino is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Arts & Humanities division, where he teaches WRT2000 - Research Writing and WRT1000 - Intensive Rhetoric Writing Tutorial. He is also a Lecturer at Tufts University, where he teaches extensively in the FYWP/Department of English. At Tufts, his taught courses include ENG 1: Expository Writing and ENG 2: Digital Media Cultures. In addition to these courses, Stephen also works as an Instructor of English at the Tisch College of Civic Life (TUPIT), which brings Tufts faculty and students together with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, educators, organizers, corrections staff, and scholars of criminal justice to facilitate creative and collaborative responses to the problems of mass incarceration and racial injustice.

His research interests are an interdisciplinary mix of critical literary theory (contemporary American fiction), with a focus on cultural digitization and social media theory. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow, where he also earned an MSc in Media, Communications, and International Journalism. Prior to coming to Babson, Stephen taught at various academic institutions, primarily in First-Year Writing tracks and English Departments. These include the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the Wentworth Institute of Technology.

Mary O'Donoghue is a short story writer, novelist, poet, translator of Irish-language poetry, and senior fiction editor at the literary journal AGNI. As Professor of English, she teaches writing fiction, literature, and first-year writing classes. In 2023 she held the Charles A. Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University.

Mary is the author of the short story collection The Hour After Happy Hour (Stinging Fly Press, 2023); the novel Before the House Burns (The Lilliput Press, 2010); and the poetry collections Among These Winters (Dedalus Press, 2007) and Tulle (Salmon Poetry, 2001). Her short stories have appeared in many US and European publications: Subtropics, The Common, Granta, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Irish Times, Sunday Times UK, Stinging Fly, Dublin Review, and elsewhere.

Her translations of Irish-language poetry are published in volumes from translations in dual language volumes from Cló Iar-Chonnacht, Bloodaxe Books, and Yale University Press. She has been awarded fiction fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Mary Pinard is Professor of English at Babson College. She earned a B.A. in English and Theatre from Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame, IN), an M.A. in English from University of Chicago, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Vermont College. Professor Pinard's poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals—including The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Georgia Review—and she has been the recipient of several national awards for her poetry. Portal, her collection of poems, was published in 2014 by Salmon Press (Ireland). Her essays on poetics and poets, including Alice Oswald and Lorine Niedecker, have been published in critical anthologies and scholarly journals. More information about her poetry, public readings, and publications can be found at www.marypinard.com. As a member of the Arts and Humanities Division, Professor Pinard teaches courses in foundation humanities, literature, and poetry. She has also served in a range of administrative positions at Babson, including as Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program, Coordinator of the Creativity Stream in the MBA Program, Writing Center Director, and Chair of Arts and Humanities.

Virginia (Jenny) Rademacher is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Babson College and Chair of the Arts and Humanities Division. She received her PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of Virginia, M.A. in International Affairs & Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and A.B. from Harvard University. She has published widely on genre, identity, and new narrative formats, including the contemporary surge in biographical fiction. Her book Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2022) creates an interdisciplinary nexus, exploring the rich field of biofiction in relation to concepts of uncertainty, speculation, and risk in a post-truth age. She teaches a variety of interdisciplinary and globally focused courses that often draw from her expertise in Hispanic literature, film, and cultural studies. Prior to coming to Babson, she taught at the University of Virginia, Randolph College, and Georgetown University. She received the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015 and the Dean's Award for College-Wide Service in 2022.

Alexander Ruggeri received a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Roger Williams University and an MA in English and American Literature from New York University. He completed his PhD in English at Tufts University in 2021. His dissertation is titled "Listening to Form: Modernism and the Resonant Subject" and examines how modernism conceptualizes listening as a correspondence between literary form and subjectivity. He grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts and is now raising a baby daughter with his wife. He enjoys traditional Greek dance, playing guitar, Dungeons and Dragons, and baking bread.

Alicia Sartori teaches Writing Across Contexts as a part-time lecturer. She also teaches writing at Northeastern University in the NU Immerse program. Her research interests include best practices in developing better writing, and best practices in support for international students on US campuses. She has a personal interest in reading and writing science fiction.

Dr. Seitz teaches Ethics and advanced level philosophy courses, including Social and Political Philosophy; Nature, Technology, and Values; Modern Philosophy; Existentialism; and Aesthetics. One of the faculty leaders of Babson's BRIC Program, he also teaches Russia in Modernity: History, Politics & Culture, in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He is the author of Intersubjectivity and the Double: Troubled Matters (Palgrave), The Trace of Political Representation (SUNY Press), and co-author of The Iroquois and Athenians: A Political Ontology (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield). He is also co-editor of Being in Transit: Thoughts on Travel, Place, and Culture (forthcoming), Living with Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture (Palgrave Macmillan), Fashion Statements: On Style, Appearance, and Reality (Palgrave Macmillan), Eating Culture (SUNY Press), and Etiquette: Reflections on Contemporary Comportment (SUNY Press), as well as numerous articles in the areas of social and political philosophy, continental philosophy, and environmental philosophy. ​

Asiel Sepúlveda teaches classes in art history and visual culture. His research focuses on print media and early advertising in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Sepúlveda has penned multiple essays on Latin American printed arts including the award winning “Humor and Social Hygiene in Havana's Nineteenth-Century Cigarette Marquillas,” published in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.
He is currently editing a book-length manuscript that examines the proliferation of lithographic arts in colonial Cuba, and its role in shaping imaginaries of cosmopolitanism in the Caribbean.

Michaela Spampinato teaches Foundations of Writing II at Babson. She has been a Visiting Lecturer for Framingham State University's English Department since 2018. Before Babson she taught at UCLA extension and Bunker Hill Community College. In all her teaching she aims to emphasize that understanding how a writer tells a story in any form, be it an essay, academic article, short story or novel, leaves a map for readers to follow and apply in their own writing.

Ms. Spampinato received her MFA in creative writing (fiction) from New Mexico State University and her BA in English and Spanish from Wesleyan University. She has written for various online story applications. Her nonfiction essays have appeared in Bay State Parent and The Longfellow Bridge. She is currently at work on a novel.

Stephen Spiess is assistant professor of literature at Babson College. He specializes in early modern English literature and culture, with particular investments in Shakespeare and the interrelations of sex, language, embodiment, and knowledge in the English Renaissance. He is currently completing a book, Shakespeare and the Making of English Whoredom, for Oxford University Press, and co-editing, with Marjorie Rubright, an essay collection entitled Logomotives: Words that Change the Premodern World, which will appear as part of the Early Modern Conversions series at Edinburgh University Press. His new book project, Renaissance Undoing, examines an early modern fascination with, and fear of, "becoming undone." His work has appeared in Shakespeare Survey, Renaissance Quarterly, The Review of English Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, and Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and His World.

Stephen completed his PhD in English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan (2013), where he also received the David & Linda Moscow Prize for Excellence in Teaching English Composition (2010). In 2021, he received the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence in Undergraduate Education. Before joining the Babson faculty in 2017, he taught at Stanford University.

Professor Swanson teaches courses in African American literature and culture, international literatures, and human rights. Named one of the top 50 US Business Professors of 2020 by Poets & Quants, Dr. Swanson was awarded the Joyce and Andy Mandell Endowed Professorship in Literature and Human Rights in 2023. Voted Professor of the Year by the graduating classes of 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2019, she has been recognized with the Faculty Scholarship Award, 2012; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, 2012; the Lewis Institute for Social Innovation Changemaker Award, 2012; the Nan Langowitz Women Who Make a Difference Award, 2007; the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2006; and the Faculty Innovators Among Us award, 2004. She also held the Mandell Family Foundation Term Chair from 2007-2012 and from 2019-2023.

Dr. Swanson speaks and writes about how literature and film contribute to cultures of human rights or their violation, with a particular focus on centering the voices of survivors of torture, slavery, and racial injustice. Author of Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights (Rutgers University Press, 2007), Dr. Swanson co-edited with Alexandra Schultheis Moore the volumes Theoretical Perspectives on Literature and Human Rights (Routledge 2011), Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern Language Association Press, 2015), and Witnessing Torture: Perspectives from Torture Survivors and Human Rights Workers (Palgrave, 2018; 900K downloads and counting...). Most recently, she and Dr. Moore co-edited The Guantanamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath al-Alwi: Deaf Walls Speak, a collection that explores the prison artwork and experiences of detainee al-Alwi, who remains imprisoned until today, although he was cleared for release in January 2022.

Dr. Swanson has worked extensively on the issue of modern slavery and human trafficking, serving as Board Member and Co-Chair of the international NGO Historians Against Slavery from 2012-2020, and as Board Chair for the NGO Made By Survivors (now Her Future Coalition) from 2008-2016. She has worked directly with survivors of slavery, torture, and incarceration in India, Nepal, and the US. Dr. Swanson served as a Commissioner for the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission from 2007-2009, and as Chair in 2010. She currently sits on the Board of My Planet Alliance, a global climate action crowd-sourcing initiative, and In 2019, she launched the Diversity, Equity, and Belonging Consultancy Jane's Way, LLC with partner Jane C. Edmonds, Babson College Vice President for Community Outreach and Programming.

Samantha Wallace is an assistant teaching professor of English at Babson College. She specializes in feminist theory and contemporary fiction and media, with a focus on representations of sexual and gender-based violence. Her current book project argues for the value of uncertainty to feminist theory as a way of acknowledging the complexities of these representations and pursuing modes of speech beyond the narrow strictures of the judicial. Her work has been published by Feminist Theory and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Forthcoming work includes an essay on Jean Toomer's Cane in the edited collection #MeToo and Modernism for Clemson University Press.

Samantha completed her PhD in English Language and Literature at the University of Virginia in 2021, where she taught before joining the Babson faculty in 2022. She teaches a variety of interdisciplinary and multimedia-based courses in areas such as expository and research writing; women and literature; and global cultural studies.

Beth Wynstra teaches courses in Dramatic Literature, Theater History, Acting, and Public Speaking. She holds a Ph.D. in Theater Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a certificate in Directing from the Yale School of Drama. Beth is the Faculty Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching at Babson.

Beth's book Vows, Veils, and Masks: The Performance of Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill (University of Iowa Press, Theater History and Culture Series) was published in 2023. She has lectured on O'Neill at prominent regional and professional theaters across the U.S. and has written extensively on the playwright's life and works. Beth serves on the board of the Eugene O'Neill International Society.

In 2019 Beth won the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence and the PRIDE award for significant contributions in creating a community that values, supports, and celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals and allies. In 2023, Beth won the Babson Scholarship Award for Multidimensional Research.

Beth regularly directs plays and musicals at Babson and is the Founding Artistic Director of The Empty Space Theater. In 2022, she directed a world premiere production in Kansas called Heart/Roots: Wabaunsee County, written by her Babson colleague Mary Pinard. In her free time, Beth enjoys swimming, going to the theater, traveling, and spending time with her husband Brandon and her daughter Alison (8).

​Elizabeth Young earned a B.A. in English from Boston College and an M.F.A. in Writing from Lesley University. Her novella, Dump & Chase, was published in 2012 as part of the North American Open Door series promoting adult literacy. She teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Emmanuel College and Lesley University.​