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Nevine Abraham is Associate Teaching Professor of Arabic Studies. Her career is defined by a synergy between her scholarly research and publications and her commitment to innovative, culturally immersive pedagogy. Dr. Abraham’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of literary-cultural studies, indigeneity, minoritization, and food studies. Her scholarly work critically examines the historical and political forces, ranging from imperialism to post-independence nationalism, that have marginalized various groups across the Middle East and North Africa. She weaves these themes into the classroom to help students understand the complexities of power, identity, and representation. As the co-author of an interactive documentary on Palestinian and Israeli Food Cultures, and of two Online Arabic Curricula for the Open Learning Initiative, she has used experiential learning and technology to make learning accessible and equitable, and anchor linguistic acquisition in sociocultural frameworks. She strives to transform the classroom into a space where students critically analyze the socio-historical narratives that shape Arab society, cultivate intercultural competence, and achieve linguistic mastery.

Katharine Burns' work in second language acquisition takes an interdisciplinary approach to applied sociolinguistics. She conducts qualitative research on the ideological foundations of language use, with a particular focus on how power dynamics influence language learning. Her areas of research include language ideologies, L2 learner identity formation, language policy and planning, bilingualism and multilingualism, heritage language learning, endangered and minority languages, and L2 learners as emergent bilinguals.

As part of the Applied Linguistics & Second Language Acquisition doctoral program, Dr. Burns mentors graduate students and teaches courses such as Second Language Acquisition: Theories and Research; Language Policy and Planning; Language and Identity; and Bilingualism. She also teaches undergraduate courses in Hispanic Studies—including Using Spanish in Social Contexts—and in the Applied Multilingual Studies program, such as Bilingual and Bicultural Experiences in the USA and Language Diversity and Cultural Identity. Before joining ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV, she taught Spanish both as an additional and heritage language in the United States, as well as English and Spanish as additional languages abroad.

Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, is a Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of the Master’s program in Global Communication and Applied Translation. Herr research interests include Cuban, U.S. Latino, and Latin American Jewish and Sephardic literary and cultural studies.

She is awaiting publication of a monograph titled In Pursuit of 'Whiteness': Racial Impersonation, Performance, and Nostalgia in Cuban Immigrant Theater, under contract with the University of Michigan.  . Her other books include Spanish and Empire, En otra voz: Antología de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos, and Herencia: The Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature. Recent articles include “Latin Place Making in the Late 19th & Early 20th Centuries: Cuban Émigrés and Their Transnational Impact in Tampa, FL”; “Tablas sin fronteras: ‘leyendo a Cuba’ en el teatro cubano de Tampa en los 1920”; and “Language & the Promised Land: Passage & Migration to a 'Third Place.” She is also an active literary translator.

In addition to her work at Carnegie Mellon,, Dr. Dworkin is the executive director of Coro Latinoamericano and President of the Latin American Cultural Union. She is also Co-President of Tampa Lector, a Florida nonprofit organization devoted to promoting reading, community history, and the arts. 

Grounded in a deep belief in the transformative power of art and the humanities to advance social justice and human rights, Anne Lambright is drawn to creative cultural production—literature, film, performance and the visual arts—as sites of resistance, where dominant culture is questioned and alternative visions of individual subjectivity and collective life articulated.

Her research focuses on race and ethnicity in Andean literature and culture, with particular attention to the role of Indigenous and Indigenous-mestizo peoples in Peruvian national discourse and identity. Her first monograph, Creating the Hybrid Intellectual: Subject, Space, and the Feminine in the Narrative of José María Arguedas (Bucknell University Press, 2007), is the first major English-language study of Latin America’s most important indigenista writer. It examines ethnicity, gender and national discourse in the narrative fiction of the Peruvian author José María Arguedas.

Dr. Lambright is also co-editor of Unfolding the City: Women Write the City in Latin America (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), a collection that brings together leading literary scholars to explore how Latin American women writers portray urban life.

Her second monograph, Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru (Liverpool University Press, 2015), received the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize. The book examines how literature and the arts challenge the dominant narrative of peace and reconciliation constructed by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission following two decades of internal conflict.

Her most recent publication,, Yuyachkani’s Human Rights Theater: A Critical Anthology of Five Plays (Modern Language Association, 2025), offers annotated translations and a scholarly introduction to five plays in Spanish and Quechua by the renowned Peruvian theater collective Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani.

A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Dr. Lambright's current projects include a multimedia exploration of Chickasaw storyteller Te Ata Thompson’s global travels—including a year spent in Pittsburgh studying drama at Carnegie Tech in 1921 and a 1937 voyage to Peru—that considers Te Ata’s development as an early, organic ethnographer. She is also working on a book-length study of transnational Quechua cultural networks and global indigeneity.

Christopher Lowy was born and raised in Miami, Florida, completed his graduate work in Seattle, Washington, and spent much time studying and researching in Tokyo, Japan. He teaches courses on contemporary Japanese literature and culture, queer literature, contemporary thought, and literary representations of illness and disease. His research focuses on two main topics: the role of written language in Japanese literature and depictions of HIV/AIDS in Japanese literature from the 1980s and 1990s.

The first project works to bridge the gap between Japanese linguistics and literature by focusing on the role of written language in Japanese fiction. Dr. Lowy explores the diverse ways writers and authors use written Japanese in their literature as a means of aesthetic expression. There he establishes the theoretical foundation and vocabulary needed to discuss this phenomenon and provides the first analytical toolkit for examining Japanese language texts. This work is collected in his forthcoming book, co-authored with Konno Shinji, The Architecture of Written Japanese (Hituzi shobo 2026). He also examines the role of Unicode and other digital writing technologies on literature in “Literary Expression at the Ends of Unicode: The Strange Case of EnJoe Toh” (The Journal of Asian Studies, March 2026).

In his second project, Dr. Lowy examines representations of HIV/AIDS in Japanese literature and culture from the early 1980s to mid-1990s. In addition to literary fiction, he surveys and examines early cultural responses to the AIDS crisis from Japan. He is also interested in comparing the early critical discourse on HIV/AIDS to early discourse on COVID-19 and, more recently, monkeypox. Recent articles include “Some Thoughts on AIDS Literature from Japan” (Journal of Waseda International House of Literature 3, 2025) and “Red Hair and Orchids: The Possibility of Reading AIDS in Nakagami Kenji” (Journal of Waseda International House of Literature 4, 2026). He has also published on this topic in various Japanese journals and is preparing a monograph on the topic.

Mame-Fatou Niang is a professor of Global French Studies and the Founder/Director of the Center for Black European Studies & the Atlantic at ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV. She is the author of Identités Françaises (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of Universalisme (Anamosa, 2022). Her recent research examines Black geographies, Blackness in France and the institutionalization of Black Studies.

Dr. Niang is the international curator of the Rio de Janeiro Literary Festival (FLUP), and an artist-in-residence at Ateliers Médicis in Paris, working on a project entitled “Échoïques” (Sounds of Silence). She is a member of the Black|France|Noire Collective and the co-founder of the Global Network for the Studies of Africans and People of African Descent (G-SAP).

In 2015, Dr. Niang co-directed “Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropéennes” with Kaytie Nielsen, a sophomore in her French class. The film follows seven Afro-French women as they investigate the pieces of their mosaic identities, and unravel what it means to be Black and French, Black in France. She served as the Melodia Jones Distinguished Chair of French Studies at University at Buffalo in Fall 2021, and as Distinguished Visiting Professor in French Studies at Columbia University in Fall 2024.

Dr. Niang has collaborated with Slate, Jacobin, and several news outlets in France. She is currently working on two manuscripts: Mosaica Nigra: Blackness in 21st-century France and Alice Diop : French Cinema and the Double Vague.