Each year a quorum of faculty members serve on the CHA's Steering Committee. These distinguished scholars and artists drawn from across the university help direct the work of the CHA by reviewing grant and fellowship applications, overseeing the budget, and determining future programming.

2023-24 Members
 

Thomas Andrews

Thomas Andrews

Professor
History
Professor Andrews specializes in the social and environmental history of the American West. Professor Andrews teaches a wide range of courses in environmental history and the history of the United States West, and is passionate about educating current and future history teachers. Some of the courses he offers include "The U.S. Since 1865," "Colorado History," "The American West in the 19th Century," and "Special Topics in American History." Professor Andrews...
thomas.andrews@colorado.edu
Matthew Dockendorf

Matthew Dockendorf

Assistant Professor • Associate Director of Bands • Director, Golden Buffalo Marching Band
Conducting • Music Education
Matthew Dockendorf is Associate Director of Bands and Instructor of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder where he conducts the Symphonic Band, directs the “Golden Buffalo” Marching Band, and teaches courses in music education and conducting. Prior to his appointment at CU Boulder, Dockendorf studied at Michigan State University where he wrote drill and arranged music for the Spartan Marching Band and Spartan Brass. He served as conductor of...
matthew.dockendorf@colorado.edu
Cheryl Higashida

Cheryl Higashida

Associate Professor
English
Cheryl works on ethnic and American literatures, sound studies, and Marxism. Her essays have appeared in American Literature, American Quarterly, and Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans. She is the author of Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left, 1945-1995 (Illinois, 2012). Her current research is on sound technology, social movements, and race in the 20th and 21st centuries. Areas of...
cheryl.higashida@colorado.edu
Carla Jones headshot

Carla Jones

Associate Professor, Graduate Director, Associate Chair
Anthropology
Carla Jones’ research analyzes the cultural politics of appearance in urban Indonesia, with particular focus on femininity, domesticity, aesthetics and Islam.
carla.jones@colorado.edu
Marina Kassianidou headshot

Marina Kassianidou

Assistant Professor
Art and Art History
Marina Kassianidou’s current practice combines painting, drawing, collage, installation, site-specific work, and writing. She experiments with everyday surfaces and spaces, looking for marks that respond to the features of each surface/space.
Marina.Kassianidou@Colorado.EDU
Elika Ortega

Élika Ortega Guzmán

Assistant Professor
Spanish & Portuguese
Élika Ortega's work focuses on digital literature, book studies and reading practices, post-humanism and cultural hybridity. She's currently writing Binding Media: Print-Digital Literature 1980s-2010s, a monograph investigating print-digital works of literature all along the American continent. Élika was the Program Committee co-chair for Digital Humanities 2018 . She is also part of the Committee on Information Technology and TC Digital Humanities both at MLA. You can find more about Élika’s...
elika.ortega@colorado.edu
Beth Osnes

Beth Osnes

Associate Professor • Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Theatre & Performance Studies
Theatre & Dance
Beth Osnes PhD, is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Colorado Boulder, and is an associate of the Environmental Studies faculty. I am a theatre and performance studies artist/scholar who is active in applied performance and creative climate communication. I engage in performance to co-author and actualize an equitable, survivable, and thrive-able future for all life and the ecosystems upon which all life relies. This applied approach...
beth.osnes@colorado.edu
Phaedra Pezzullo

Phaedra C. Pezzulo

Associate Professor
Communication • Media Studies
Associate Professor Phaedra C. Pezzullo’s research focuses on the mobilization of resistance to toxic pollution, the communication of resilience in what she calls “the late age of fossil fuels,” and the advocacy of environmental and social justice. With interdisciplinary training in the humanities and the sciences, she engages ethnographic participant observation fieldwork, qualitative interviews, popular texts across media, news archives, government documents and contemporary critical theoretical perspectives. An award-winning teacher...
phaedra.pezzullo@colorado.edu
Jeremy Reger

Jeremy Reger

Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching
Voice • Opera • Musical Theatre
Jeremy Reger came to the voice department after holding the position of director of keyboard studies and collaborative arts at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. The international performer and educator says although the natural beauty of the region was a big draw, in the end it was the passion of the students and faculty at the College of Music that led him here. “There’s something special going on here,” says...
jeremy.reger@Colorado.edu
Seema Sohi

Seema Sohi

Associate Professor
Asian American Studies
Education Ph.D., University of Washington - History, 2008 M.A., University of Vermont - History B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz - English & History, 1997 Research Interests Transnational political movements, radicalism, Asian American history Seema Sohi is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her book, Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America (Oxford University Press, 2014) examines the radical anticolonial politics...
seema.sohi@colorado.edu
Julia Staffel

Julia Staffel

Associate Professor • Chair, Faculty Steering Committee
Philosophy
Julia Staffel (Ph.D., University of Southern California, 2013) joined the department in Fall 2018. Prior to coming to Boulder, she worked at Washington University in St. Louis and the Australian National University. Professor Staffel specializes in epistemology, with a focus on formal epistemology. She also has research and teaching interests in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, logic, and metaethics. Her work focuses, among other things, on...
julia.staffel@colorado.edu
Ross Taylor

Ross Taylor

Assistant Professor
Journalism
Academic Passion: Engaging with the intrinsic curiosity and drive of students, to help assist them in their pathway into the professional world, while learning and growing along with them. Ross Taylor is an assistant professor of journalism. Previously, he was a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His professional recognitions include National Photographer of the Year, Northern Photographer of the Year, New England Photographer of...
ross.taylor@colorado.edu

Past Faculty Steering Committee Members