Joseph Ametepe, Associate Professor, Physics

Joseph Ametepe received his B.Sc. (Honors) from the University of Science and Technology in Ghana, M.S. in Mathematics from Hampton University, and M.S./Ph.D. in Applied Science from the College of William and Mary. Joseph teaches Physics and Astronomy courses here at Hollins University. His current research is directed at developing and using high powered ultraviolet (UV) light sources in killing bacteria/viruses in drinking water. He jointly owns two United States patents with the College of William and Mary on ways of inexpensively generating UV light sources for various biological/medical applications. For sports and fun, Joseph trains in Taekwondo, plays soccer, and loves learning about different people and cultures.

Jeanette Barbieri, Visiting Assistant Professor, Political Science

Jeanette Barbieri received her B.A. from Hampshire College, her M.A. from King’s College, University of London, and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Her research interests include political theories of culture and communication, identity politics, visual culture and contemporary China. She has spent half or so of her time since college abroad in the UK, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, where she now spends her summers. Whenever possible, she enjoys peering at contemporary art and hiking her way through wildlife reserves or cultural heritage sites.

Sandra Boatman, Professor, Chemistry

Sandra Boatman grew up in Tampa, Florida, and played a lot of tennis before she went to Rice for her B.A. in chemistry. She received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke and spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow in biological chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. She then came to Hollins, where she has taught various chemistry (and biology) courses for a long time. Her research interests include synthesizing new organic compounds and studying the forces that hold viruses together. She still plays tennis and has also taken up golf. Besides enjoying playing in the lab with her students, she likes to cook, watch football, basketball, and softball, and play with her dogs. She loves Virginia, but she is as far north as she ever wants to go.

Jon Bohland, Assistant Professor, International Studies

Jon Bohland received his B.A. from James Madison University, his M.A. from Syracuse University and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. His primary academic interests lie in international relations theory, critical geopolitics, collective memory, social and political theory, and popular culture. His current research focuses on the way in which the myth of the “Lost Cause” continues to shape the historical and political consciousness of many Virginians. At Hollins he teaches courses in geography, international studies, and political science, focusing on the role of memory, nationalism, and popular culture. In his “free time,” he coaches soccer at a local high school and listens to indie and alternative tunes.

Jen Boyle came to Hollins in 2003. She completed her M.A. in Comparative Literature and Ph.D in English at the University of California, Irvine. Jen has published articles and book chapters on new media and film, early modern literature and science, as well as contemporary digital culture, embodiment, and sexuality. She is completing a book, The Anamorphic Imaginary: Perspective Media and Embodiment in Early Modern Literature and Technoscience. She is also collaborator-author of new media art installations, including "The Hollins Community Project" in collaboration with Virginia Tech. During 2006-07, she was the Carol G. Lederer Fellow at the Pembroke Center at Brown University and has held a fellowship at the Folger Institute and been a scholar in residence at the Dibner Library in Washington D.C. She enjoys every kind of music under the sun, California-like weather, and exercising with her overactive and socially challenged dog, Kirt.

Professor Bratic came to Hollins in the fall of 2006 after receiving his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Ohio University. Prior to coming to the United States, Dr. Bratic lived in the Czech Republic where he graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogy and Philosophy at the Palacky University. He is originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he began his research on the role of the media in conflict and peace. He has published journal articles and teaches about how media can help promote peaceful transformation of violent conflict across the world.

Jeffrey Bullock joined the Hollins faculty in 2004.  He began his performing career with the North Carolina Dance Theater following his graduation from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He continued with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. He toured the U.S. and Europe with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. He earned his M.F.A. in Choreography from the University of Iowa and taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Iowa before coming to Hollins. He has also been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival since 1988. 

Donna Faye Burchfield, Professor, Dance

Donna Faye grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, copying everything she saw on "The Lawrence Welk Show" until the age of six when (at last) she began her formal study of dance.  Fort Worth, Texas, offered an incredible home to her for seven years, where she received both her B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees under the direction of Jerry Bywaters Cochran at TCU.  As a graduate student, she attended the American Dance Festival in 1982 where she is now the Dean of the School and Artistic Director of the Hollins/ADF M.F.A. program.  She has traveled to many far away lands seeing, making, teaching, and discussing dance.  Donna Faye came to Hollins in 1993 and continues to find magical ways that dance fits right into the landscape and "body" of the campus.  www.hollinsdance.org!

Dan Derringer, Associate Professor, Chemistry

Dan Derringer received his B.A. from Kalamazoo College and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. He has taught at Hollins since 1990. His favorite courses are General Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Learning Navigation Skills, a unique Short Term course in which students learn to do navigation planning for a 50-nautical mile trip in a small aircraft and then fly the trip with him in a plane he co-owns. Dan’s research involves making and studying new compounds of rhenium, the last naturally occurring element to be discovered. Dan enjoys spending time with his family and tooling around in his 1953 Piper Super Cub.

Caren Diefenderfer, Professor, Mathematics

Caren Diefenderfer received her A.B. from Dartmouth College and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She encourages students to travel to “mathland” to be creative, solve problems and experience the joys of n-dimensions. As Chief Reader for AP Calculus, she has been the leader of 850 adult math geeks who spend one week at “summer camp” grading AP Calculus exams. She holds six swim records at Castle Rock pool, but her sons will readily explain that she is the only swimmer in her age group. She loves to play bass drums with the Bahama Mamas, a female steel drum band, and performs a rockin’ “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Jan Fuller, University Chaplain, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies

Jan Fuller is a native of Beirut, Lebanon, a Hollins alumna, and a survivor of three middle east wars. Perhaps that is why she believes that no life experience is wasted and why she is interested in mysticism. She earned graduate degrees from Yale University and Wesley School of Theology. She spends most weekends at baseball tournaments with her 14-year-old son Sam.  They live on campus and can be seen being walked by their noble and goofy dog, Rey. Jan studies world religions, especially Islam, the Bible, grief, and spirituality.

Patricia Hammer, Associate Professor, Mathematics

Trish Hammer is a self-professed cool math geek, believing that math is the neatest subject on Earth.  Her love of math began in high school when every time she tried to read a required English text, she fell asleep!  Trish earned her Bachelor's of Science, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in applied mathematics from Virginia Tech before joining the Hollins faculty in 1990.  Her teaching and research interests focus on the presence of math in the everyday world around us with recent work involving generation of fractal movies and fractal music.  Away from work, Trish is an improving runner, swimmer and cyclist who enjoys time just hanging out with her husband, three kids, and two dogs.

Nancy Healy is a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She taught public school for 12 years (grades 1, 2, 4, 6 and English and Math) before returning to receive her M.A.L.S. degree from Hollins College. She has been teaching at Hollins since 1983 and loves her job. In addition to her fascination with technology, she enjoys knitting, gardening, music, cooking, and chocolate. She shares life with her husband, Bo, and with their two fur children, Tucker and Grace.

Pablo is an avid listener of keyboard music composed by J.S. Bach. He is also extremely passionate about hanging out with family and friends. Food, good wine, and teaching economics are three other processes that lift up his spirit. Pablo claims his olfactory sense has improved in recent years. He firmly believes that on a “good day” he can tell red Bordeaux apart from a Ribera del Duero. Beware, however, that Pablo isn’t willing to gamble on this act. Economics has taught him several lessons, among others: Turning down bets  – including fair bets! Prior to his arrival at Hollins in the fall of 2007, Pablo spent three years at Saint Mary’s College, in Indiana, where he taught several courses in economics and served as faculty coordinator of a short-term study/travel course to Mexico City. Pablo has conducted research on ecological economics and the economics of environmental and natural resources. He is currently interested in topics of financing for development in Latin America and in community-based conservation strategies from a developing country perspective. Pablo earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Notre Dame. He enjoys traveling and gets a kick out of spontaneous events.
 

Joe Leedom, Professor, History

Joe Leedom grew up amid the wilds of southern California and the rich urban environment of Wyoming before attending the University of Wyoming as an undergraduate and receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  His research interests lie in the areas of medieval law and society.  He has been at Hollins now for over 25 years, where he teaches a variety of courses on really old stuff. 

Lawrence Wayne Markert completed his B.Phil. and D. Phil. at the University of Oxford. He also holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. He has published several chapbooks of poetry, including Riddle and Incest and The Widow Poems, along with articles and books dealing with the literature and culture of Britain and the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Arthur Symons: Critic of the Seven Arts, and The Bloomsbury Group: A Resource Guide. He is currently working on a study of the poetry of W. H. Auden and the literature of the 1930s in Britain.  Wayne enjoys playing the guitar, 6-string and 12-string acoustic, and growing tomatoes. He enjoys eating the latter, too.

Thorpe Moeckel, Assistant Professor, English

Thorpe Moeckel received his B.A. in English and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College, where he was president of the outing club’s paddling program and co-founder of the Bowdoin Surf Club, which made annual fall break treks to ride the gnarly point breaks of Nova Scotia. He worked for many years as a guide on rivers and trails throughout the mountain states of the U.S. before earning his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. He is obsessed with water and the ways it shapes and is shaped, and he writes because it is the closest thing to being in a small boat in a remote canyon, and he teaches because it is the closest thing to being in a small boat in a remote canyon with other people in small boats or even the same boat. His favorite name for a rapid is El Horrendo.

Julie Pfeiffer, Associate Professor, English

Julie Pfeiffer is chair of the department of English and Creative Writing and a member of the Women's Studies Council.  She received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.  She is editor of the journal Children's Literature and writes about the ways that gender structure is exposed and reinforced through literary texts.  She lives with her family (including three children and four cats) in Salem, VA, and loves working with women of all ages, going to the beach, and training for triathlons.

Alison Ridley, Dean of Academic Services; Associate Professor, Spanish

Alison Ridley grew up in Europe but completed her university studies in the United States.  She received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Spanish from Michigan State University, where she specialized in the literature of the Golden Age. Her current research interests include Spanish drama and contemporary Latin American literature. Since arriving at Hollins in 1991, she has taught language, culture, and literature courses, as well as Business Spanish and a Short Term service-learning course on Appalachia. She has led two Short Term trips to Mexico and Costa Rica and is passionate about introducing students to different cultures, languages, and ways of life. When not at work, she enjoys reading, gardening, hiking, working out, eating chocolate, and spending time with her husband and two dogs, Oliver and Wendell.

Bob Sulkin, Professor, Art

Bob Sulkin grew up in North Carolina and received a B.A. in History at the University of North Carolina and an M.A. and M.F.A. in Art at the University of Iowa. He has exhibited his own photography widely and loves sharing his passion for things visual with others. Since he arrived at Hollins in 1980, he has taught an array of courses in photography, all within the fine art context, and all within the context of empowering others to interpret their world through their unique voice. His passions are playing with his two sons, art, jazz, and if pressed, he’ll confess to a weakness for Carolina basketball.

Melody Zobel, Lecturer, Theatre

Melody Zobel received her B.A. from Pepperdine, her M.F.A.  from U.C.L.A., and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She was a member of the theater department at Virginia Tech before joining the faculty at Hollins in 2006.

When I learned I could actually make a living in a field where the most important word is "play," I said "sign me up." Tell me a good story, sing me a song, fill up my eyes with exciting images, and I'm one happy guy. Give me a chance to share it with others, and I'm ecstatic! (Oh... I also really like great chocolate chip cookies.)