Seven Faculty Members Receive Tenure 

Faculty members across all three schools recently were promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.

While each academic department has its own specific criteria for faculty promotion, scholarly, creative, and professional work that “effectively communicates … is original and/or innovative … demonstrates breadth and depth … is externally validated through evidence of a juried or critical review process … and is recognized in or makes a significant contribution to the discipline” are considered general criteria for promotion, according to the Emerson College Faculty Handbook.

School of the Arts

Dana Edell (Performing Arts) has produced and co-directed more than 80 plays and seven albums of music written and performed by teenage girls and nonbinary youth addressing social justice issues, and has taught theatre in K-12 public and private schools, adult prisons, and youth correctional institutions across the Northeast and California. At Emerson, she teaches acting, applied theatre, and theatre education.

Ian McManus (Marlboro Institute) teaches courses in behavioral economics, international politics, and global studies.  He studies welfare state politics, social inequality, gender equality, economic crises, labor markets, European politics, and the political economy of technology. McManus was an LSE Fellow in Social Policy at the London School of Economics, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon, and was a visiting scholar at the Free University of Berlin.

School of Communication

Sharifa Simon-Roberts’ (Communication Studies) work centers on television, new communication technologies, and culture, specifically related to traditionally underrepresented groups, including women, Caribbean immigrants, and Black audiences. One of her educational goals is to empower students to be thoughtful creators and critical consumers of media; she teaches courses in intercultural communication and pop culture.

School of Film, Television and Media Arts

Award-winning filmmaker Maria Agui Carter has written, directed, and produced both dramatic and documentary work as a former in-house producer for WGBH-TV, Boston’s Public Television Station, and founder of Iguana Films. Among her many films is Rebel (2014), based on the memoirs of a Cuban woman soldier in the American Civil War. She teaches film production and the business of media.

Hanadi Elyan is a filmmaker whose work delves into the social issues facing marginalizing communities through a female lens. Her independent film work has focused on breaking stereotypes, particularly of Arab women, and earned her recognition from the Producers Guild of America, the Tangiers Film Festival, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers, among others. She teaches courses in directing.

Filmmaker Joe Maggio has written and directed numerous award-winning films, including his debut feature, Virgil Bliss (2001), which was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards; Milk + Honey (2003), Paper Covers Rock (2008), Tribeca Film Festival Best Narrative Feature nominee The Last Rites of Joe May (2011), and Supermoto (2016). His most recent work in post-production, follows a Bigfoot hunter. He teaches directing.

Hunter Vaughan is an environmental media scholar and cultural historian who studies the relationship between media technologies, social justice, and the environment. The author of several articles and books, including Where Film Meets Philosophy (2013) and Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (2019), he was a co-founder of the Journal of Environmental Media. He teaches media criticism, environmental media, and ecocinema.