Welcome to New SOLA Faculty 2016-2107

Seven faculty members joined the School of Liberal Arts in the 2016-17 academic year.

Velina Brackebusch’s current research interests are focused on sport for social change/social justice. She looks at how local sport nonprofits impact the communities with which they partner, and the relationship and community-building aspects of local sport programs. Brackebusch is also interested in qualitative research and more particularly ethnographic methods of inquiry. Originally from Bulgaria, Brackebusch loves to spend time exploring the wonders of Northern California with her family and friends. She is also excited to be part of the club tennis team at SMC.

Anna I. Corwin joins the Saint Mary's Anthropology Department after a two-year teaching fellowship at Stanford University's Thinking Matters program. As a linguistic and psychological anthropologist trained at UCLA, her research examines the intersections between aging, embodiment, well-being, social interaction, and language. She has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a Midwestern Catholic convent where elderly nuns report above-average quality of life. Her research with the nuns examines the roles of prayer and social support as they influence the nuns' sense of aging and their bodies.

Joe Drexler-Dreis completed his PhD in theology and religious studies from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), where he was a coordinator of the Centre for Liberation Theologies. He is currently teaching and researching within two broad fields. In the first field, he’s focusing on the question of whether it’s possible for a Christian theological perspective to adequately respond to the matrix of oppressions contemporary social, political, religious, and economic configurations produce. In the second field, he’s focusing on expressions of humanity and reflections on ways of being human that indicate religious orientations within the United States that have either been ignored or have been signified within a Christian or pseudo-Christian imaginary.

Robin J. Dunn is an assistant professor in the Kinesiology Department. She received her PhD from the Ohio State University with a major emphasis in physical education teacher education and a cognate emphasis in youth development. Her dissertation focused on using cooperative activities to develop personal and social responsibility in young children. Specifically, she created and implemented a physical activity program with second- and third-graders, who were underserved children attending a public elementary school. Dunn was successful in determining how the children came to know and understand responsible behaviors.

Mark Alan Generous (PhD, Arizona State University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication. Generous’ research focuses on communicative processes within familial, romantic, and other close relationships. In particular, Generous examines the intergenerational transmission of communicative norms from the family of origin to young adults' close relationships outside of the family. Generous also researches end-of-life communication, as well as communication between teachers and students in the college classroom.

Samantha Nogueira Joyce joins the Communication Department as an assistant professor of Global Communication. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she received her BA in journalism at Universidade Federal Fluminense. Joyce also has a master’s in radio and broadcasting from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in media studies from the University of Iowa. Following graduate school, Joyce worked for five years as an assistant professor of mass communication at Indiana University South Bend. Her courses and research interests include telenovelas, media representation, gender, and television theory and history. She is the author of Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy (2012).

Gabe Pihas transitions this year into a new role as associate professor in the Integral Program. With a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College, an MA and MPhil in Medieval Studies from Yale University, and a PhD in Social Thought from University of Chicago, he taught at the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin, Germany, and at St. John's College in Annapolis before coming to Saint Mary's. An Italianist by training, with specialization in medieval and Renaissance epic, Pihas started a Rome great books/art summer program called the Rome Institute of Liberal Arts (RILA) 10 years ago.