Meet Emerson’s Newest Faculty: Part 1

A new academic year brings fresh faculty from across disciplines and around the world. Fall 2024 welcomes fiction writers and memoirists, scholars in theatre history and Black studies, professionals in PR and mixed reality media.

Emerson Today invited new faculty (and returning faculty in new roles) to answer a handful of questions about their work and their interests. Look out for Part 2.

Mari Crabtree
Associate Professor, Marlboro Institute
Fall 2024 Courses: African American History (HI211)

Mari N. Crabtree is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research blends Black studies, cultural studies, history, and literature. She seeks to excavate Black life beyond the binary of suffering or resistance by exploring how culture provides a lens for understanding the struggle for Black liberation, but also Black ingenuity, joy, and love.

Her book, My Soul is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching, was published in 2022 by Yale University Press as part of the New Directions in Narrative History series. She also has published essays in Raritan, Rethinking History, Contemporaries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. Currently, she is at work on a book of essays titled Co-Opted: Essays on Black Studies and Ethical Praxis in the Age of Neoliberalism, and a monograph titled Guile: The Pleasures and Political Utility of Subversion in the African American Cultural Tradition.

Before joining Emerson, she taught African American studies at the College of Charleston, and was a visiting research scholar with Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies. She received her AB from Amherst College and her MA and PhD from Cornell University.

What’s the most exciting development/trend happening in your field/medium right now?

What is often referred to as “the resistance paradigm” in Black studies has dominated how scholars have talked about African American life for decades, especially since the 1960s. Initially a corrective to racist assumptions about Black responses to white supremacy (namely, that Black people were passive) and the horrors of white supremacy itself (namely, that slavery and Jim Crow weren’t all that bad), the resistance paradigm centered Black resistance to white supremacy in Black studies scholarship, but also had the unfortunate consequence of limiting our understanding of Black life as either suffering or resistance.

More recently, books by authors like Imani Perry and Kevin Quashie have challenged this simplistic binary by showing the importance of making room in our analysis for Black interiority, joy, love, ingenuity, and laughter. By thinking about the nuances of Black life on its own terms, not just as a reaction to oppression, these scholars have opened up many new areas of inquiry within the field. This more expansive way of talking about Blackness has informed my own research on how Black Southerners lived through and beyond the trauma of lynching, and on the pleasures and political utility of guile in the African American cultural tradition. In particular, they have prompted me to question the notion that “pleasure” and “joy” are reducible to resistance and defiance, even though people do seek out pleasure and joy as an antidote to the harm inflicted by systemic oppression.

What’s the last thing you learned?

I doubt this is actually the last thing I learned, but I recently learned from a friend doing archival research at Brown University that in 18th-century Rhode Island, Black people purchased an awful lot of silk from the Brown family and their business associate, Welcome Arnold. (Yes, that’s the man’s actual name.) What they fashioned out of all that silk remains a mystery, for now.

What do you hope students take away from your classes?

In broad strokes, my goal as a liberal arts professor is to equip my students with the analytical tools to ask the right questions for addressing the enduring problems facing humanity. For example, students in my course, Mass Incarceration and Its Roots, come to understand the critical difference between asking, “How do we make prisons more humane?” and “Why do we, as a society, use punishment as a means to address social issues?” Though both questions reflect a concern for the harm inflicted upon incarcerated people and their communities, only the second prompts deeper analysis of the social processes that not only lead to mass incarceration, but that inform our collective responses to what has been deemed criminal behavior. Asking the right question opens up the possibility of imagining a more just and freer society, for, only when we have imagined what Robin D. G. Kelley has called “freedom dreams,” can we find ways to solve what can feel like intractable problems. Isn’t that why the liberal arts are so critical, now and forever?

Pop quiz: Favorite work of fiction (any medium) and most interesting work of nonfiction (again, any medium).

Picking a favorite work of fiction is next to impossible because I love so many novels, poems, and films, but one novel I recently read and enjoyed enough to write about in an essay and assign in African American History (HI 211) is Percival Everett’s James. If truly pressed, I suppose my favorite works of fiction are Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Jose Saramago’s All the Names. I also love the swagger of Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa’s film, Yojimbo, so I watch that every now and again.

I’m a sucker for a provocative, beautifully written essay that prompts introspection while also holding up a mirror to who we are as a collective and what we can become. The nonfiction I find myself returning to most often are the essays of James Baldwin. I also read a lot of memoirs — pick up Imani Perry’s Breathe, if you can.

What do you love to do when you’re not working? 

I love visiting the ocean, especially early in the morning when my only company is the sea birds. I find that its vastness and its sublime (but also treacherous) beauty put life’s little difficulties into a more manageable frame.

Laurie Mazza
Assistant Professor, Visual & Media Arts
Fall 2024 Courses: Foundations: Practice (VM131)

Laurie Mazza teaches in the area of game development and immersive experiences. Her teaching focuses on game engines and tools, scripting for non-programmers, and using technology to enhance creative practice. Mazza’s work explores the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and other immersive technology to create interactive experiences and improve development pipelines, while understanding the relationship between humans and technology.

She has consulted on multiple interactive mixed media projects for various STEM clients, and had the privilege of working on Rigs of Color, a team dedicated to creating revolutionary rigs to address the lack of diversity present in animated media. She holds degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Game Development, Design, and Computer Science.

Alden Jones
Assistant Professor, Writing, Literature and Publishing
Fall 2024 Courses: Topics in Literature: Queer Literature (LI204); Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction (WR316)

Alden Jones is the author of the memoirs The Blind Masseuse and The Wanting Was a Wilderness, and the story collection Unaccompanied Minors. She is the editor of Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing, forthcoming from Blair in 2025. Her short works of fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Boston Globe, The Rumpus, BOMB Magazine, New York Magazine, The Cut, The Believer, Agni, Post Road, The Barcelona Review, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Iowa Review, and the Best American Travel Writing.

Her awards include the NYU Fellowship in Fiction, the New American Fiction Prize, two Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Emerson’s Alan L. Stanzler Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her books have been finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, two Lambda Literary awards, and the Edmund White Award for Debut LGBTQ Fiction. She recently was awarded a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship for travel to Cambodia and Vietnam, where her next book is partially set. She has taught at Emerson since 2000.

What’s the most exciting development/trend happening in your field/medium right now?

My PhD is in Creative Practice, an emerging field within art-based research, including creative writing. In creative practice, one’s research questions are answered in the creative process itself; art-making is the research. As we come to terms with the ways AI will change creative writing, I think we’ll turn our attention more and more to the creation process. I’m excited to see how creative practice as a discipline will grow in the next decade.

What’s the last thing you learned?

I’m trying to learn Khmer, the language spoken in Cambodia, a few Khmer words at a time…

What do you hope students take away from your classes?

Whether they are creative writing or literature classes, I want my students to be more in love with reading after my class than they were before. I hope all my students leave my class with both an understanding of the state of the literary industry, and a secure belief that no matter what happens in the industry, the pleasure we take in telling, writing, and reading stories will survive as long as humanity does.

Pop quiz: Favorite work of fiction (any medium) and most interesting work of nonfiction (again, any medium).

No one has ever knocked Toni Morrison off her throne as far as I’m concerned — she’s been my favorite writer since high school. Song of Solomon is my personal fave. Lately, I’ve been doing a deep dive into documentary film footage of Cambodia and Vietnam from the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’m interested in the overlap between documentary filmmaking/photography and research-based nonfiction writing.

What do you love to do when you’re not working?

Spending time with my kids and the rest of my family. Traveling. Provincetown beach walks with my dog, Indiana Jones. I’m lucky to have a job that involves the things I love: writing, reading, and communing with smart and thoughtful people.

Kevin Mercuri
Executive-in-Residence, Communication Studies
Fall 2024 Courses: Tactical Writing for the Public Relations Professional (CC347); PR Campaigns/Capstone (CC474); Public Relations (CC648)

Kevin Mercuri ’91, MA ‘93 is the CEO and founder of Propheta Communications, a full-service public relations agency based in New York City. He has more than 25 years of experience in public relations and related disciplines, with a career that ranges from boardrooms to basement start-ups to the nation’s capital.

Prior to founding Propheta, Mercuri served as Senior Vice President for 5W Public Relations, where he played a key role in the agency’s ascension from a bootstrap start-up to an Inc. 500 company. His additional leadership experience includes Edelman’s PR21 and other noteworthy agencies. Prior to working in New York, Mercuri led public affairs campaigns in Washington, D.C. for the Internet Alliance, the Interactive Gaming Council, AIDS Action Council, and other special interest groups.

He holds a BSSp in Communication, Politics and Law, and an MA in Political Communication from Emerson, where he has taught as an affiliated faculty member since 2023.

Daniel Pillis
Assistant Professor, Visual & Media Arts
Fall 2024 Courses: Foundations: Practice (VM131)

Daniel Pillis is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist who specializes in performance capture, mixed reality, and interactive computer graphics. Currently, his research is focused on creating novel interfaces that enhance memory visualization. At Emerson, he will lead the Human/Simulation Interaction Lab, conducting creative research that explores the impact of simulations on the nature of the human experience and actively seeking collaborations with students and faculty to develop future projects.

Pillis holds an MS in Tangible Media from the MIT Media Lab, and an MFA in Immersive Media from Carnegie Mellon University. He previously was a student of both Dr. Hiroshi Ishii, a founding figure in human/computer interaction, as well as Dr. Ivan Sutherland, a preeminent figure in computer graphics. Pillis held previous posts as a research assistant at the CMU Robotics Institute, and as a Research Assistant Professor of Immersive Environments.

What’s the most exciting development/trend happening in your field/medium right now?

As an advocate for human-centered artificial intelligence and immersive virtual environments, there is just so much happening right now, it’s difficult to say! I just migrated over to Emerson from the MIT Media Lab down the street, and the most exciting things happening there are new frontiers in human-AI collaboration and the rapid evolution of shape-changing fibers. Two of my colleagues there, Pat Patarunataporn and Jack Forman, are leading these respective fields.

What’s the last thing you learned?

Today, I learned how to calibrate Emerson’s amazing new virtual production facility in Ansin! I am so deeply impressed by it and the resource this medium will offer Emerson students — also, my wonderful colleague, [Emerging Media Lab Manager] Eugene [Kuznetsov], is ensuring we get everything right! We learned how to ensure that the “set extension” — virtual space that expands from the field of view of the motion-tracked camera — can be calibrated to match the physical and tangible display of the LED environment. It has a profound effect on your sense of presence to see yourself somewhere else, and to see that the virtual space continues beyond the space you’re in. 

What do you hope students take away from your classes?

For me, learning technical skills is the foundation, but the real deeper and more difficult life skills are what I believe enable people to succeed. Learning to get along with your team – no matter who is on your team, showing true compassion and empathy to others, failing and persevering in the face of loss, and constantly pushing the boundaries of your own mind are the most crucial, critical skills — also, time management, of course!

Pop quiz: Favorite work of fiction (any medium) and most interesting work of nonfiction (again, any medium).

Such a difficult question. Can I just pick Sunset Boulevard for both? Parts of it are based on fact!

What do you love to do when you’re not working? 

If I had a free weekend, I’d be at my favorite place in the world: Mountain Lake in Virginia, a campy and weird resort where Dirty Dancing was filmed!

Bindi Kang
Assistant Professor, Performing Arts
Fall 2024 Courses: Global Perspectives in Theater (TH203); Stages of Drama (TH215)

Bindi Kang teaches in the area of theatre history and dramaturgy. As a scholar and a dramaturg, Kang’s artistic interest overlaps with her research specializations, encompassing Asian and Asian/American experiences and representation in theatre and performances; theories of theatricality; theatrical practices concerning social movement; performance of everyday life, and especially its intersections with contemporary digital culture.

She has been the Dramaturg in Residence at Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, an Asian/American theatre company in New York City. Her publications can be found in Performance Research and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, among others. She holds degrees from The Graduate Center, City University of New York; Columbia University; and Binghamton University, State University of New York.

What’s the most exciting development/trend happening in your field/medium right now?

In Asian theatre and performance studies, as well as in broader studies on literature, film, and culture, there’s a growing emphasis on the circulation and interconnectivity among different regions, moving away from the traditional nation-state perspective. This shift is particularly exciting because it encourages us to explore cultural exchanges within a non-Western-centered framework, offering new insights into how culture travels and evolves globally.

What’s the last thing you learned?

This isn’t related to my research or teaching, but it’s a new and important realization for me: Next time I take a road trip, I’ll rent a car instead of using my own. It might be easier to get timely roadside assistance on a Sunday morning, in the middle of Iowa.

What do you hope students take away from your classes?

Theatre is all about together-making and community-bonding! My hope is that, regardless of how much my students learn about theatre, they’ll acknowledge their classmates with a nod, wave, or smile when they encounter each other out of the classroom.

Pop quiz: Favorite work of fiction (any medium) and most interesting work of nonfiction (again, any medium).

That’s a tough one! There are so many works of fiction and nonfiction that have resonated with me over time, and it’s hard to pick just one. If I had to choose, I would introduce Heidi Schrek’s What the Constitution Means to Me (fiction, theatre, 2017) and Fuchsia Dunlop’s Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper (non-fiction, book, 2019). 

What do you love to do when you’re not working? 

I’m a fan of museums and exhibitions. Also, I like to read, take a walk, jog, and meditate.

Chris Lee
Assistant Professor, Marlboro Institute
Fall 2024 Courses: Cultural Constructions of Identity (IN152); Evolution of Queer Identity (IN230)

Christopher Joseph Lee works and teaches in Asian American studies, trans/queer of color critique, and critical prison studies. Their writing is published or forthcoming in The New Inquiry, Women and Performance, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking.

Beyond their academic roles, they co-founded Queer and Trans Zinefest (QTZ) and, with other arts organizations, has been involved in archiving, distributing, and making zines for over a decade. They currently serve on the board of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), a coalition of Southeast Asian young people, queer and trans youth of color, and survivors of state violence organizing against policing, detention, and deportation.

They have a PhD from Brown University, where they received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. They also hold degrees from Harvard Divinity School (MTS) and Boston University (BA).

Pelin Kivrak
Assistant Professor, Writing, Literature and Publishing
Fall 2024 Courses: Introduction to Literary Studies (LI120); Topics in Global Literature: The Global Novel (LI423)

Pelin Kivrak’s scholarly interests include contemporary world-making, politics of representation, literary theory, the global novel, visual arts, world cinema, digital media cultures, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. Her articles have been published in journals such as Comparative Literature Studies, symploke, and the Journal of World Literature. As a renowned Turkish fiction author, her debut short story collection won Turkey’s national short fiction prize in 2017.

Beyond academia, she is a research associate at RAS, an AI-based media arts studio in Los Angeles, where her curatorial texts for art installations have been exhibited in more than 50 international venues, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, and MoMA.

She holds a BA in Literature from Harvard University and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University. Prior to coming to Emerson, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, and taught in the English Department at Tufts University.

What’s the most exciting development/trend happening in your field/medium right now?

As a comparative literature scholar, I’m excited about new critical theories that explore the interactions between style, aesthetics, and the digital age. Anna Kornbluh’s rethinking of immediacy, for example, examines how contemporary cultural styles emphasize transparency and instantaneity, influenced by today’s fast-paced economies. And how this focus on speed might lead to sacrificing the depth required for meaningful political and social engagement.

Similarly, Michael Dango’s Crisis in Style: The Aesthetics of Repair, examines how aesthetic style manages crisis, with actions like detoxing, filtering, bingeing, and ghosting reflecting trends in contemporary art and literature.

What’s the last thing you learned?

I was reading an essay titled “Stillness” by Anne Carson last week, and discovered that Thomas Edison’s last breath was preserved in a glass tube, which is now kept in a museum in Detroit. Apparently, after Edison’s death in 1931, his son, Charles, noticed several open test tubes in the room where he died and asked the attending physician to seal them.

I am also in the middle of moving, which involved renting a storage unit, and I learned that one out of every 10 Americans rent off-site storage units — the fastest-growing segment of the commercial real estate industry since the ‘80s. It makes you wonder: Are these units just spatial extensions of our elusive memories, or is it excess stuff that can’t really be retrieved into significance? Or both? It’s interesting to think about how this mirrors the way we now store vast amounts of both useful and excess data in the cloud…

What do you hope students take away from your classes?

In my classes, which will primarily focus on modern and contemporary novels, I hope students develop the tools to better understand the complexities of the contemporary world and, more importantly, to exercise empathy. One of my favorite writers, James Baldwin, famously said, ‘You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.’ I want my students to experience such profound connections across time and space that literature can nurture — helping them realize that they are not alone in their struggles or their victories.

Pop quiz: Favorite work of fiction (any medium) and most interesting work of nonfiction (again, any medium).

Favorite work of fiction: It’s a close tie between Anna Karenina and Middlemarch.

Most interesting work of nonfiction: I would choose Alain Resnais’ 1956 ‘essay-film’ Toute la mémoire du monde. It’s a short poetic documentary that offers a fascinating portrayal of the old French Bibliothèque Nationale using a narrative device of following a book from arrival to its delivery to a reader.

What do you love to do when you’re not working?

When I’m not working, you’ll usually find me exploring museum galleries or curating AI art projects. I’m also working on finishing my novel, so I spend a lot of time writing in various coffee shops around Cambridge. I love organizing wine tasting events, too — especially after an unproductive writing day. And being from Istanbul, I can’t resist taking a stroll by the water whenever I get a chance.