Presenters

Linda K. Allison
Rice University
After 40 years in finance, Linda K. Allison is enjoying Act II as a writer, photographer, and explorer. Her writing has been published in Moon Park Review, the Bluebird Word, Pile Press, two anthologies, and elsewhere. You can find her photography in Burningword Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, Sunlight Press, and soon in Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Linda lives among the trees with her partner in The Woodlands, Texas.

Josué N. Arredondo
San Diego State University
Josué Arredondo is a recent graduate of San Diego State MALAS program. He lives in San Ysidro, CA a stone's throw from the US / Mexico Intl. border. He teaches English at a few nearby colleges in San Diego.

Bevin Carnes
Johns Hopkins University
Claire Bevin Carnes graduated from the Master of Liberal Arts program at Johns Hopkins University in 2023. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Computer Animation from Ringling College of Art and Design which she earned in 2007, after which she worked at the major Hollywood film studios including Disney Animation Studios, Sony Pictures, and Marvel Studios. She has always had an interest in the artistic, cultural, and political ramifications of new technologies.

Michael Carter
University of Memphis
Michael Carter holds a B.A. in English Literature as a graduate magna cum laude from the University of Kentucky.  Carter holds a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University, where he was a Dean's Scholar.  He also attended Vanderbilt Divinity School as a visiting scholar during his studies at Emory.  Carter is pursuing a PhD in Liberal Studies at the University of Memphis, where he teaches as an adjunct faculty member.  He has also been hired to the faculty of Northwest Mississippi College as a Philosophy Instructor.

Cathy J. Carter
Indiana University
A member of the University of Louisville's (UofL) Human Subject Protection Program office for twelve years, Cathy currently serves as an IRB coordinator responsible in part for providing educational programs for both the biomedical and social/behavioral/education IRBs at UofL, while also serving as a member of both IRBs. She has held the Certified IRB Professional (CIP) designation, recognized internationally as a sign of competence in the field, for the past nine years. 

Joshua Chambers
Johns Hopkins University
Joshua Chambers is an active duty Force Reconnaissance officer in the US Marine Corps with several deployments to Afghanistan and throughout the Indo-Pacific. He attended Saint Louis University as an undergraduate and the US Army's School of Advanced Military Studies for postgraduate studies. He is also completing postgraduate studies at John Hopkins University.

Sophie Ying Chen
Southern Methodist University
Sophie Ying Chen holds a Doctor of Liberal Studies from SMU and two MFAs in Visual Communication Design and Painting. With decades of higher education experience, she currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Active in academia, she publishes articles and artworks both domestically and internationally. Her research focuses on informal public art as a means of constructing social relations.

Stephanie Cotton Chretien
Rice University
Stephanie Chretien is a native Texan with maternal roots that trace to Washington-On-the-Brazos hence the interest in history and social justice.  She is a graduate of Spelman College/BA in Economics, and an MLS at Rice University. Her early career was in the field of mainframe computer technology that afforded opportunities to travels to Bangalore, India; West Africa (Benin and Ghana) as well as the Caribbean and cities in the United States. 

Carla Marian Cuevas
San Diego State University
Carla Marian Cuevas (they/she) holds a B. A. in Philosophy and a B. M. in Music Performance and is pursuing a M. A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences. As an artist, their interests are in experimental music and multimedia interdisciplinary arts. As a philosopher, her interests lie in existentialism, aesthetics, and continental philosophy.

Anika Dane
Wesleyan University
Anika Dane, MALS '19, is an academic, advocate, and mentor. Her educational background is in the arts, social sciences, and feminist studies.  Anika's research interest is in the intersection of pop culture and mental health. She studies the portrayal of trauma and recovery in mainstream media and the complexities of narrative therapy in practice. Anika works for the College of Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan University, supporting multiple departments and programs.

Ann Marie Dell
Southern Methodist University
Ann Marie earned her Doctorate of Liberal Studies from Southern Methodist University in December 2023. Her area of concentration is the Holocaust, and her dissertation was entitled, "Profiles in Justice: The Men and Women of the Office of Special Investigations."  She is a docent educator and professional development facilitator at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. 

Laura DeSisto, Ph.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Laura DeSisto is the MLA Program Director and a senior lecturer at JHU. Her research explores existential questions concerning the human condition; the relationship between aesthetics and hermeneutics; critical pedagogy; and the importance of the liberal arts in higher education.

Hana S. Elysia
San Diego State University
Hana S. Elysia is a professional dancer turned writer with a keen interest in the dark and whimsical. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Confluence, Trembling with Fear, pacificREVIEW, and others. She was named the first-place winner of the Duality: Creative Nonfiction contest in Cleaver Magazine, as well as the 2023 Creative Writing Award in Confluence. More of her work can be found at hanaselysia.substack.com.

Thomas Finser
Johns Hopkins University 

Thomas Finser is a graduate student in the MLA program at Johns Hopkins University. He has a passion for history and finance. Residing in El Paso, Texas, his life is further enriched by his wife, Armida, and their seven-year-old son, Alexander. Thomas is the founding principal and chief investment officer of Cimarron Capital Management, LLC, an investment advisory firm specializing in original bottom-up research and custom portfolio construction.

Matthew Louis Garrell
Dartmouth College
Matthew is an award-winning Instructor at Manchester Metropolitan University where he teaches about the practical uses of AI in critical and creative writing. His research created novel uses for AI in university education. Those findings are currently being used to teach instructors at Dartmouth College. Matthew earned his MA in Creative Writing from Dartmouth, a certificate in Creative Writing from Oxford, and a BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in Psychology from Emerson College.

Gregory George Guthrie
Georgetown University
Greg Guthrie has held positions at the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) US Department of Commerce, Library of Congress and the World Bank, taught the course 'Environmental Issues in the Mediterranean" at Georgetown University where he wrote his thesis: "Labor Unions: Champions of Social Justice".  Currently, he is with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the US Department of Commerce. He is a native Oklahoman. He is President of Local 1627 of the National Federation of Federal Employees at NTIS. 

Taylor Hahn, Ph.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Taylor Hahn is the MA in Communication Program Director and a senior lecturer at JHU. His areas of research include argument, debate, civic engagement, and the roles and trajectories of higher education in contemporary society. 

Austin Caldwell Haigler
North Carolina State University
Austin C Haigler is a current third-year PhD student in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) program, as well as an alum of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program at North Carolina State University. 

Daniel (Danny) Kistner, DLS
Southern Methodist University
Daniel (Danny) Kistner is the Lead Coordinator of Fire Programs Outreach and Education with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, a position held since December 2023, and chair of the Human Factors Subcommittee of the Fire Service Cancer Alliance. Danny retired in 2023 after 40 years in the fire service, the last 14 as the fire chief. Daniel was conferred a Doctor of Liberal Studies degree from Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX and Masters of Science from Oklahoma State University. 

Jué Lin
Stanford University
Jué Lin is a student in the Stanford University Master of Liberal Arts program. Her research interests include transnational experiences, focusing on Chinese American history, immigration, and assimilation. She values all aspects of human experiences, the current and the past, the here and there, the human and all to which it belongs.

Carlos Littles
Johns Hopkins University
Carlos Littles is a researcher whose interests include popular culture, Native American history, and existential philosophy. He earned his B.A. in Philosophy and History from Old Dominion University and M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He currently is a faculty member at Virginia State University

Thor Madsen
Reed College
Thor is a graduate student at Reed College and creative strategist. Communities living across actual and imagined worlds inform his approach. Thor's disciplines include improvisational theatre, multimodal ethnography, and narrative construction and diffusion.  Before Reed and ThinkResults, he was at Gartner, Inc. and PwC Consulting. Thor has performed at Chicago's Second City, Players Workshop, Improv Playhouse, and Portland's Deep End. He instructed at Columbia University and earned his BA from DePaul University.

Robert Mason
Stanford University
Robert Mason received his Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford in 2013. Currently, he is a Senior Administrative Law Judge at the California Public Utilities Commission where he serves on the committee considering the admissibility of Generative Artificial Intelligence evidence. He is the judge assigned to the Commission's proceeding regarding the regulation of autonomous vehicles.

J Gordon Mitchell, MLA, SMSgt (ret)
Johns Hopkins University
J Gordon Mitchell is a former school board member, classroom educator (military and civilian), and first-generation college graduate.  He holds a Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) degree from Johns Hopkins University, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern New Hampshire University, and an Associate of Applied Science degree in Education and Training Management from the Community College of the Air Force. J Gordon is a decorated military veteran who served as a Military Training Instructor and Senior Enlisted Advisor and is now a staunch advocate for public education.

Kendra Murphy
University of Memphis
Ms. Kendra Murphy is an Associate Professor of Teaching and undergraduate advisor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis. She earned her BA Sociology at the University of Central Arkansas in 2003 and her MA in Sociology at the University of Memphis in 2007. She is currently enrolled in the Doctor of Liberal Studies program at the University of Memphis with research interests in statistics, statistical literacy and health decision-making.

Dr. William "Memo" Nericcio
San Diego State University
William "Memo" Nericcio, a Tejano Cultural Studies Professor from Laredo, Texas, began his career as a Latin Americanist focused on novels of the 20th century by Carlos Fuentes, Rosario Castellanos, Julio Cortázar, and Gabriel García Márquez. From his first Assistant Professorship at the University of Connecticut he moved to SDSU in 1991, where his work has expanded into critical studies of film, mass culture, television, and cutting-edge Latinx fiction. With a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, Nericcio presently directs the MALAS Cultural Studies MA @SDSU and also runs SDSU Press, the oldest independent scholarly press in the California State University system. His latest book, co-authored with Frederick Luis Aldama, Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen, appears December 2019 from the Ohio State University Press.

Bonnie Palos
San Diego State University
Bonnie Palos is a first generation Mexican American. She is also a first generation Masters degree holder in her family in pursuit of a Doctorates degree. She was born and raised in the bordertown of San Ysidro, splitting her culture between Tijuana and San Diego. She is interested in researching Cultural and feminine identities within Latin American Horror and horror inspired film and literature. 

Carson Poole
San Diego State University
Carson Poole is a recent graduate of the MALAS program at San Diego State University. She is currently working on research regarding the preservation and archival practices of nonphysical art and other visual media.  

Fergal Purcell, DLS
Southern Methodist University
Fergal Purcell earned his Bachelors of Science from the National University of Ireland, masters from Southern Methodist University and University of Texas at Dallas. After 35 years in the telecommunications industry, in software development, sales, customer support, and sourcing, Fergal completed his Doctorate in Liberal Studies at Southern Methodist University with a dissertation examining expressions of antislavery sentiment in the early Spanish Empire.

Julia Shiller
Georgetown University
Julia Shiller is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine. After immigrating to the United States, she started a small consultancy business focused on project management, business development, and marketing. Fascinated by the interdisciplinary nature of liberal studies, she is pursuing a doctoral degree in liberal studies at Georgetown University. Julia is employed as a statistician with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She has several publications. Her hobbies include piano, painting, and sailing. 

Chandini Shirupalli
University of Pennsylvania
Chandini has a Master's in Liberal Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Communication and Human Resource Management from Rutgers University and has work experience in communication, research, film, media, and business. 

Evan D. Shulman
San Diego State University
Evan D. Shulman is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist exploring the intersection of technology, creativity, consciousness, and cultural transformation. He studied Cognitive Science, Human Complex Systems, and Computing at UCLA, and he has over a decade of interdisciplinary professional work, spanning Google, the Centre for Social Innovation, impact startups, as well as a tech agency, sustainability branding agency, and climate solutions media studio. Evan is now at MALAS at SDSU continuing to pursue these interests. 

Lynette Yetter
Reed College
Lynette Yetter is a U.S. acculturated panpipe-playing Buddhist lesbian artist descended from Algonquian Indigenous Peoples and Celtic Indigenous Peoples. She shares her time between Portland, Oregon and La Paz, Bolivia. Her published works include poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, journalistic articles, and peer-reviewed science and multi-disciplinary academic papers. She's a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, and a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation finalist. She played panpipes on the Academy Award nominated documentary Recycled Life. www.LynetteYetter.com