New full-time faculty welcomed

Emerson is welcoming 15 new full-time faculty members across various departments to begin the 2013-14 academic year.

“These new faculty members are experts in their fields and will be an integral part of Emerson’s future,” said Michaele Whelan, chief academic officer. “We are excited to welcome such talented individuals to our community and look forward to their many contributions in teaching, research, as well as their creative and professional activities.”

Melissa Baroni
Artist-in-Residence
Performing Arts

Melissa Baroni (B.S. Skidmore College, M.A. Lesley University) is an actress and voice teacher. She has been trained by world-renowned voice teacher, Kristin Linklater, and is a Designated Linklater Teacher. As part of her Linklater training, Baroni has studied nationally and internationally with many of the most prominent master teachers in voice and Shakespeare. Baroni is also on the faculty at Shakespeare & Company and teaches regularly in their intensive training programs. She has previously taught in the Music Performance Department of The Boston Conservatory.  Melissa teaches and coaches locally at companies including Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Actor’s Shakespeare Project, New Repertory Theatre, Lyric Stage Company, Stoneham Theatre, and Wheelock Family Theatre. She has acted locally at such companies including Gloucester Stage Company, New Repertory Theatre, and Stoneham Theatre. Melissa is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association, and the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.

Lindsey Beck
Assistant Professor
Communication Sciences and Disorders

Lindsey Beck received her B.A. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College in and her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale University. In her research, she examines how people initiate, develop, and maintain close relationships. For example, some of her current research on relationship maintenance processes investigates how the interplay between newlywed partners’ relationship styles shapes their physiological, behavioral, and psychological responses to stress. She uses diverse methodologies to investigate these topics, including developmental approaches, biological methods, field studies, true experimental designs, longitudinal methods, and daily-report studies. Her work appears in several peer-reviewed journals, including Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Journal of Family Theory and Review. Her research has been recognized by the International Association for Relationship Research Dissertation Award, the Yale Psychology Department’s Zimbardo Prize for Dissertation Research, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Graduate Student Poster Award. Her teaching has been recognized by the Yale Psychology Department’s Kessen Award for Excellence in Teaching. She teaches courses in social psychology and introduction to Psychology.

William Beuttler
Assistant Professor
Writing, Literature and Publishing

Bill Beuttler teaches courses in magazine writing, editing, and publishing. Before joining Emerson, he spent the previous three years covering jazz for the Boston Globe and teaching journalism at Boston University.

His more than two decades of magazine work include stints as a senior editor at the Discovery Channel, Men’s Journal, and Boston Magazine, and as an associate editor at Down Beat and American Way magazines. He has also written for Atlantic Online, Best Life, Chicago Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Playboy, GQ, National Geographic Traveler, Cooking Light, American Health, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. His assignments have taken him to Cuba, the Moroccan Sahara, and the Mall of America, and have brought him face to face with artists and writers including Saul Bellow, Sonny Rollins, and John Kenneth Galbraith.
Beuttler, a Chicago native, broke into journalism as a police reporter at the legendary City News Bureau of Chicago. His first teaching job was as a visiting professor of magazine journalism at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. He also spent a summer at the American University of Beirut supervising a journalism program designed by journalist and former hostage Terry Anderson.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Assistant Professor
Writing, Literature and Publishing

Benoit is the author of two books published by Simon & Schuster. America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, is a narrative account of three years in the lives of eight addicts—and a larger exploration of addiction in America. American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life, is a collection of his previously published writing.Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a writer with The New York Times Magazine, where he began in 2002. He has published dozens of features and cover pieces for the magazine, immersing himself inside the lives of fraternity brothers, openly gay middle school students, men on the “Down Low,” young same-sex couples in Massachusetts, addicts trying to drink themselves to death, and gays trying to go straight. The former editor-in-chief of the Boston-based Good Men Project, Benoit’s writing has also appeared in Sports Illustrated, The New Republic, Details, The Advocate, Slate, Salon, Spin, and The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. 

A graduate of Northwestern University, Benoit has taught magazine and nonfiction writing at Northeastern, Tufts, and The College of Wooster, where he served as the Merton M. Sealts Jr. Writer-in-Residence. He has been awarded fellowships by The MacDowell Colony and the Alicia Patterson Foundation and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, Anderson Cooper 360, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation and Here & Now.

Mary Eberhardinger
Lecturer
Communication Studies

After living and teaching in Japan for two and a half years, Mary Eberhardinger joined the University of North Carolina Greensboro Communication Studies Masters Program in 2010 as a Teaching Assistant. After graduation, she moved to Singapore to teach Communication theory courses for State University of New York Buffalo.

At Emerson, she will serve on the Basic Course committee and looks forward to bridging civic engagement, public speaking, and intercultural sensitivity in the Boston area. Mary actively presents and publishes nationwide in her research areas of critical intercultural communication, semiotics, and gender and communication. Mary also assists in the recruitment, interviewing, and training of candidates for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program.

Seung-A “Annie” Jin
Assistant Professor
Marketing Communication

Seung-A “Annie” Jin earned her doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (Ph.D. 2007).
Jin’s main research interests include New Media and Communication Technologies; Consumer Behavior; Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI); and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). She has studied the social psychological effects of emerging media and communication technologies including social media, social networking sites, digital games, and haptic interfaces.
She has published her interdisciplinary scholarship in numerous journals Journal of Communication, Journal of Advertising, New Media & Society, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Interactive Advertising, CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Psychology & Marketing, among several others. Dr. Jin serves on the editorial board for Health Communication Research and Interactive Learning Environments.

Michael G. Keck
Artist-in-Residence
Performing Arts

Michael G. Keck is an actor, writer and composer whose original works have been featured at Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, The Mark Taper Forum, Cincinnati Playhouse, Alliance Theater, Portland Center Stage, and many others. His academic residencies include: New York University’s Tisch School For Performing Arts; Emerson College; DePaul University; University Of Illinois, Urbana; Dartmouth Drama; Stanford University Drama; Duke University Institute For the Arts; Arizona State University; University of Michigan Ann Arbor; and Cornell University. Keck is frequently heard around the country reading short stories on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts- Live from Symphony Space. He has received three Barrymore Award nominations for his work in Philadelphia and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts and Meet The Composer. He serves on the advisory board for Prison Creative Arts Project, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Prison Creative Writing Awards Committee; PEN America Center, NYC.

David Kishik
Assistant Professor
Communication Studies

David Kishik’s work is dedicated to the philosophy of life. He is the author of To Imagine a Form of Life, a series of books that looks for the ways in which the notion of life intersects with other fundamental concepts in diverse fields.

The first volume, Wittgenstein’s Form of Life (Continuum, 2008), focuses on the relationship between language and life throughout Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thought. The second, The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics (Stanford University Press, 2011), revolves around the connections between life and politics in the writings of Giorgio Agamben. The third, unfinished installment is an imaginary sequel to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Dedicated to New York, capital of the twentieth century, it traces the bond between the modern city and modern life.
Kishik has also written many essays on ethics, aesthetics, and politics. He is co-translator of Agamben’s What Is an Apparatus? (Stanford UP, 2009) and Nudities (Stanford UP, 2010). Before joining Emerson College he was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry.

Roxana Maiorescu
Assistant Professor
Marketing Communication

Roxana Maiorescu received her Ph.D. in Public Relations from Purdue University in 2013. She holds a master’s degree in Communication from Virginia Tech and a bachelor’s in Journalism and German from Romania. Her research addresses corporate identification, the use of social media in public relations, and crisis management.

Maiorescu’s work was published by Sage and Oxford University Press, appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Business Research Yearbook and the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research. She presented her work at national and international conferences among with the International Academy of Business Disciplines, the National Communication Association Convention, the International Public Relations Research Conference, and the International PR Symposium BledCom. She received research awards from the International Academy of Business Disciplines and the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.
Prior to joining Emerson College, Roxana taught for three years at Purdue. Her teaching and research are enhanced by her work experience, which includes a four-year tenure at France Telecom’s mobile division, Orange SA in Romania as well as public relations campaigns developed for the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University.

Charles E. McCarry
Production Designer-in-Residence
Visual and Media Arts

Charles E. McCarry is a Production Designer for film and television, and has been a Scenic Designer for the theatre. McCarry holds a B.S. from Temple University and an M.F.A from the Yale School of Drama, and is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829. He has taught scenic design at Carnegie-Mellon, Temple University and Barnard College, and film design at New York University. He also taught scenic design and served as Head of Design at SUNY Purchase College Design/Technology program from 2005-2010.

McCarry’s drawings for television and film are featured in Pat Woodbridge’s Designer Drafting and Visualizing for the Entertainment World. His drawings for the Theatre are featured in Lynn Pecktal’s Designing and Drawing for the Theatre and Masters of Modern Costume Design.

Creating the film sequence for the Broadway musical about Hollywood, City of Angels, for Broadway Designer Robin Wagner reignited Charles’ enthusiasm for film design work in the midst of his theatre career. He has contributed to notable films including The Departed, School of Rock, The Producers, The Sixth Sense, Elf, and Wall Street. Other film work includes NY Art Direction for ’42, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Cocktail and many more. His television work includes Ugly Betty, Sex and the City, Third Watch, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order SVU, The Late Show with David Letterman and Ed Sullivan Theatre renovation. He has also worked on Saturday Night Live as well as news & sports productions including ABC World News Tonight and the 2000 and 2004 NBC Olympics coverage.

McCarry was nominated for the 2008 Art Directors Guild Award for Excellence in Production Design for Art Direction of Ugly Betty, and won an award in 2006 for his work on that show. He was nominated for the same award in 2008 for the category Excellence in Production Design for Art Direction of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster.

Charles has been an assistant designer on wonderful Broadway productions including: The Will Rogers’ Follies (Tony Nominee Best Scenic Design and Tony Best Musical), Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (Tony Best Musical), Chess NY (No Tony but Infamous), City of Angels (Tony Best Scenic Design and Tony Best Musical) and many others.

Camilo Ramirez
Assistant Professor
Visual and Media Arts

Camilo Ramirez was born in Santa Monica, California and was raised mainly in Miami, Florida. He received a B.F.A. in Photography from Florida International University and an M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Since 1999 he has taught a wide range of topics in the arts including graphic design, web design and photography at institutions such as Miami-Dade College, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, The New England Institute of Art and Emerson College. He is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Photography and his work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. Camilo currently lives and works Boston.

Christine Skubisz
Assistant Professor
Communication Sciences and Disorders

Christine Skubisz joins the Emerson College faculty from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Research Fellow in Penn’s Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research, she carried out projects funded by the National Cancer Institute in the areas of cancer screening and tobacco control. She has a B.A. from Purdue University, an M.A. from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in communication theory and research.
In her research, Dr. Skubisz studies message design and effects in health contexts. She examines how individuals process and use information to make health-related decisions and how to present health information to facilitate comprehension and use. Most recently, she has developed an interactive decision aid about mammography screening for use in clinical practice. Her research has been published in respected academic journals including Communication Yearbook, Health Communication, the Journal of Cancer Education, and the Journal of Health Communication.

Brenda J. Wrigley
Associate Professor
Marketing Communication

Dr. Brenda J. Wrigley comes to Emerson with 16 years of university teaching experience, most recently at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. She has more than 21 years of professional experience as a broadcast journalist, in broadcast advertising sales and sales management, and in corporate communications management. She is the author of numerous articles in the Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Advertising Education, Public Relations Review, and several other peer-reviewed journals. Her book chapters focus on research in gender and diversity in public relations, public relations management of LGBT-related crises, and crisis communications. She holds an undergraduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a master’s degree in Public Relations and Ph.D. in Mass Communications, both from Newhouse at Syracuse. Her current book projects include a co-authored work on the role of Public Relations in the gay rights movement in the United States, as well as a co-authored work with a former Newhouse colleague on the death of women’s colleges in America. Wrigley’s research and teaching interests include Public Relations management, salary and promotion disparities for women and minorities, and organizational response to marginalized publics. Wrigley holds an Accreditation in Public Relations from the Public Relations Society of America and a Certificate in University Teaching.

Joseph Kolbe and Pamela Larson, both artist-in-residence in Visual and Media Arts, also became full-time faculty members this year.