Africana Studies

Faculty

 

Angela Siner, Director of Africana Studies
Angela Siner Director of Africana Studies at UToledo

Angela M. Siner (M.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette) is the director of The University of Toledo Africana Studies Program and director of the Anthropology Program in the Sociology and Anthropology Department. Ms. Siner’s areas of interest include African history (pre-colonial and post-colonial), Black history, Black intellectual history, the Black family, the Black church, and Black women in America.

Email angela.siner@utoledo.edu
 
Affiliated Faculty

Asma Abdel-Halim Department of Women’s and Gender Studies

Asma Abdel-Halim
Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
College of Arts and Letters

Email asma.abdel-halim@utoledo.edu

Asma M. Abdel Halim (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is associate professor of women’s and gender studies. She graduated from the School of Law at the University of Khartoum in the Sudan with an LL.B. Honors in common law and Shari’a, Islamic law; she also earned a master’s degree in commercial law. Her research focuses on Muslim women’s rights in Africa with a focus on feminism, women’s issues, legal and human rights under socio-cultural and religious mandates. She is currently interested in researching Sudanese laws from a feminist perspective, tracing in particular the evolution of laws that affect women’s rights.

Lesley M. Berhan, Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, College of Engineering

Dr. Lesley M. Berhan
Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
College of Engineering

Email lesley.berhan@utoledo.edu

Lesley Berhan (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is currently the associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and community engagement for the College of Engineering and an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at The University of Toledo. Her research in engineering education focuses on issues related to student success, equity, access, and broadening participation in engineering. She joined the UToledo faculty in 2004. 

 

Ben Davis, College of Law

Ben Davis
College of Law

 Email ben.davis@utoledo.edu

Law Professor Emeritus Ben Davis (J.D., Harvard University) has published dozens of articles on a wide range of topics related to international and domestic arbitration, online and offline dispute resolution, public and private international law, national security law, and contracts. He teaches in contracts, international law, international business transactions, commercial law, alternative dispute resolution, and international and domestic arbitration.


Rachel Dudley, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, College of Arts and Letters

Dr. Rachel Dudley
Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
College of Arts and Letters

Email rachel.dudley@utoledo.edu

Rachel Dudley (Ph.D., Emory University)  is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at UToledo (WGST).  Previously, she worked as the Program Coordinator and Advisor for the McNair Scholars Program at Cornell University. Dr. Dudley’s research interests pertain to histories of slavery and medicine and—more broadly—to contemporary gender, race and health humanities topics.  She has published articles in Disability Studies Quarterly, Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal and Humanities.  Dr. Dudley’s book chapter entitled, “Black Feminist Fieldnotes: On Designing an Online, Health Humanities Course in WGST” will be published in Health Humanities in Application.  She also serves as a Co-PI for a National Endowment of the Humanities Grant, creating a health humanities minor at UToledo.

Kimberly Mack, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts and Letters

Dr. Kimberly Mack
Department of English Language and Literature
College of Arts and Letters

Email kimberly.mack@utoledo.edu

Kimberly Mack (Ph.D., UCLA) is Associate Professor of African American literature and culture at the University of Toledo. She’s the author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), which won the 2021 College English Association of Ohio’s Nancy Dasher Award. Her in-progress book projects, The Untold History of American Rock Criticism and Living Colour’s Time’s Up (part of the 33 1/3 book series), are under contract with Bloomsbury. Kimberly’s scholarly and public-facing articles have appeared, or are forthcoming, in African American Review, Popular Music and Society, Journal of Popular Music Studies, AMP: American Music Perspectives, Longreads, No Depression, and elsewhere.

 

Shingi Mavima, Department of History, College of Arts and Letters

Dr. Shingi Mavima
Department of History
College of Arts and Letters

Email blessing.mavima@utoledo.edu

Shingi Mavima (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor in the history department. He specializes in contemporary Southern African history with a focus on the colonial and postcolonial periods, with additional scholarly interests in African literature and popular culture. His peer-reviewed publications include “Bigger by the Dozens: The Prevalence of Afro-Based Tradition in Battle Rap", "A Historiographical Interrogation of Literature and Discourse on the Gukurahundi Massacres (1982- 1987)”, “Stories of Struggle: The Intractability of Early African Fiction from Nascent African Nationalism in Rhodesia”, and, most recently, “Raising her bones: Contextualizing the politicization of Nehanda’s legacy in the post-Mugabe era.”



Monita Mungo, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Arts and Letters

Dr. Monita Mungo
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
College of Arts and Letters

Email monita.mungo@utoledo.edu

Monita H. Mungo (Ph.D., Wayne State University) serves as an associate professor of sociology. As a public sociologist, her research explains the causes of social inequities and their outcomes in the lives of marginalized people and exposes the social institutions that maintain unequal social policies and processes. Her most recent works, “Masks, Mandates, and Mayhem” in COVID-19: Pandemic Pitfalls and Possibilities (2022, Routledge) and “Virus, Violence, and Vitriol: A Tale of COVID – 19” in Sociology of COVID – 19: Social Consequences and Cultural Adaptations (2020, Routledge) examine citizens’ ability to remain safe while navigating a global health crisis. She wrote an op-ed for The Hill explaining the utility of Critical Race Theory to examine race and power in the United States. Dr. Mungo has appeared on a national news show and several local news outlets, including Cincinnati Public Radio, explaining the controversial theory.



Michael Stauch, Department of History, College of Arts and Letters

Michael Stauch
Department of History
College of Arts and Letters

Email michael.stauch@utoledo.edu

Michael Stauch (Ph.D., Duke University) is an assistant professor of history with a focus on the modern United States. His research explores the politics of policing, and the intersection of race, class, and age in urban settings. His first manuscript, entitled The Age of Community Policing, is currently under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press. His publicly engaged work has been published in The Washington Post, and he has presented at national conferences including the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the Urban History Association, the Journal of Policy History, and the Labor and Working-Class History Association. 


 
Part-time Faculty

Malaika-Beauta Bell UToledo Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and adjunct professor of Africana Studies

Malaika-Beauta Bell
Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

 Email malaika-beauta.bell@utoledo.edu

Malaika-Beauta Bell (M.A., The University of Toledo) is a two-time graduate of The University of Toledo. She has been working in the UToledo Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion since February of 2018 and feels lucky to have been able to teach for the Africana Studies Program since fall 2014 as an adjunct instructor. Malaika’s passion is the success of the students that she has the pleasure of connecting with!

 

Jill M. Humphries, Ph.D.,  assistant professor and part-time instructor for Africana Studies

Dr. Jill M. Humphries
Africana Studies Program
College of Arts and Letters

Email jill.humphries@utoledo.edu

Jill M. Humphries (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an adjunct assistant professor and an international higher educational consultant. Dr. Humphries is a 2022 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) College and University Workshop invitee, 2021 Fulbright Specialist Scholar to South Africa and a 2018 Ambassador Distinguished Scholar for Ethiopia. Currently. Dr. Humphries is an international facilitator with the Govan Mbeki Research and Development Centre at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. As a scholar activist she has over 3 decades of engagement in educational and racial social justice work pertaining to Africa and the Black Diaspora. Her research interests include public, private, and nonprofit collaboration, international higher education, transnational political organizing, global racial, gender and sexuality formations, and environmental and legal studies. Most recently, she was featured on Ethiopian National TV for her life’s work and contribution to Pan Africanism.

Edwina Teye, Ph.D., instructor, UToledo Africana Studies Program

Dr. Edwina Teye
Africana Studies Program
College of Arts and Letters

Email edwina.kofiopata@utoledo.edu

Edwina Teye (Ph.D., The University of Toledo) has taught for the Africana Studies program since 2017, where she teaches a course on African Women and the Environment. She graduated from The University of Toledo with a doctoral degree in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences (SISS). She holds a master’s degree in Political Science and another in International Affairs. Her interests center on the intersection of human interaction with the built and natural environment, with specific focus on land uses and the impact on water quality through a social science lens and environmental advocacy through conservation and stewardship.

Tiffany Preston Whitman, Ed.D.,  Director of Student Success Initiatives in the Office of the Provost, University of Toledo

Dr. Tiffany Preston Whitman
Student Success Initiatives
UToledo Office of the Provost

 Email tiffany.whitman@utoledo.edu

Tiffany Preston Whitman (Ed.D., The University of Toledo) serves as the Director of Student Success Initiatives in the Office of the Provost at The University of Toledo. Her areas of interest include African American culture and education and community-based education change. Dr. Whitman is also an At-Large Member of Toledo City Council, where she chairs the Neighborhoods and Community Development Committee and serves on several other Council committees. Dr. Whitman is a proud alumna of The Ohio State University’s African American and African Studies (B.A.) program that inspired her to help others gain a better understanding of the black experience.




 

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Last Updated: 5/31/23