B.A., Simon's Rock Early College; M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of Minnesota; Ph.D., University of Illinois

Melinda Russell brings to Carleton a rich background in ethnomusicology, focusing on a variety of musical traditions in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Dr. Russell has published articles on reggae and musical taste, on the Macarena craze of the 1990s, and on choral music in an Illinois city, and coedited the books Community of Music and In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation. She was formerly the Book Review Editor for the journal Ethnomusicology. Professor Russell has articles forthcoming in publications of the College Music Society, the European Association for American Studies, and Sociology of Music Education.

Tami is available to assist American Studies faculty and majors Monday-Friday between the hours of 9am-4pm during the academic year.

B.A. in English, Yale College; M.A. and Ph.D. in English, University of Michigan

Director of American Studies from 2007-2010.

Nancy Cho teaches courses in American literature and drama, American Studies, and Asian American literature.  Her primary area of research is American drama and performance, particularly the work of playwrights of color during and after the Civil Rights Movement.  She has published articles on the theater of Chay Yew, Anna Deavere Smith, and Lorraine Hansberry, and is currently researching the staging of cultural memory in the plays of Alice Childress.  For the American Studies Program, Professor Cho teaches courses on immigration and Asian American Studies. 

Adriana arrived at Carleton after teaching at the University of New Mexico and the University of Arizona. Her teaching and research interests include U.S. Latino literature (especially poetry), Latino Studies, the intersections of race, gender, and ethnicity in various genres of cultural expressions. She's hard at work on the topic of Latina feminine beauty in literature and the mass media.

B.S in English Education, University of Minnesota; M.A. and Ph.D. in Secondary Education, University of Minnesota

Deborah Appleman received her doctorate in English Education at the University of Minnesota in 1986. At Carleton she is the Hollis L. Caswell professor of educational studies and director of Carleton's Summer Writing Program, a three-week program for high school juniors and seniors). She also teaches the English section of Carleton's summer workshop for teachers, the Summer Teaching Institute. During 2003-2004 she is serving her second year as mentor for Carleton's second group of Posse students from the Chicago area. Professor Appleman's primary research interests include multicultural literature, adolescent response to literature, teaching literary theory to secondary students, and adolescent response to poetry. She was a high school teacher for nine years. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on adolescent response to literature and she co-edited Braided Lives,a multicultural literature anthology published by the Minnesota Humanities Commission. Her most recent book is, Reading for Themselves: How to Transform Adolescents into Lifelong Readers Through Out-of-Class Book Clubs. She is also the coauthor of Teaching Literature to Adolescents with Richard Beach, Susan Hynds, and Jeffrey Wilhelm. Her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents was published jointly by Teachers College Press and the National Council of Teachers of English and is widely used in methods classes across the country.

B.A., Yale University; M.A. and Ph.D., Harvard University

Director of American Studies, 1972-1992.

Interests include American social, cultural, material, architectural, and intellectual history. Clark teaches courses on immigration and ethnicity, the Gilded Age, reform movements, intellectual history, and material culure.  In addition to his American History textbook, The Enduring Vision, written with Paul Boyer and others, he has written Henry Ward Beecher: Spokesman for a Middle-Class America, The American Family Home, 1800 - 1960, and has edited, Minnesota in a Century of Change.

B.A. and M.A., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Director of American Studies, 2004-2007.

Professor Keiser received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. His research focuses on progressive politics in America's big cities. In 1997 he published Subordination or Empowerment? which analyzed the formation and disintegration of coalitions that advance African-American political empowerment. He coedited Minority Politics at the Millennium, which was published in 2000. His current research examines the relationship between cities and suburbs in the current era. Prof. Keiser teaches the introductory course on liberty and equality in America, as well as courses on urban and suburban political economy, poverty and public policy, and the Presidency.

B.A., Amherst College; M.A. and Ph.D., Rutgers University

Director of American Studies, 2001-2004.

Michael Kowalewski joined the Carleton faculty in 1991 after teaching for several years at Princeton University. He has a special interest in regionalism and "place" in American art and culture. He was the creator and director of the only American Studies off-campus program to date: "Visions of California" (offered in 1995, 1998, 2001 and 2004).

A.B. in American History and Literature, Radcliffe College; Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, Harvard University

With a joint appointment in English and American Studies, Beth’s teaching interests include colonial, early national, and 19th century American literature, history and art history. She teaches a seminar in American Studies on The Sublime in America. An “old hand” at Carleton (she came in 1989 as Dean of the College), she is “new” to the classroom in 2003 (though she taught for years at Harvard University and Bryn Mawr College).

B.A., Carleton; M.A., M.Div., and Ph.D., Harvard University

Michael McNally teaches courses in American religion and culture and Native American religious traditions. His special interests include the tradition and history of Minnesota's Anishinaabe Ojibwe community, Native American Christianity, and lived religion in America. He is author of Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (2000), editor of Art of Tradition: Sacred Story, Song, and Dance among Michigan's Anishinaabe (2006), and a number of book chapters and journal articles. His current research projects explore, on the one hand, aging, eldership, and religion in the Ojibwe tradition, and on the other explore the intersection between law, "religion," and Native American traditions.

B.A., Lincoln University; M.A., University of Missouri; Ph.D., Brown University

Professor Williams' teaches African American history, and his primary teaching interests include 19th c. slavery studies, social and intellectual history, black conservatism, and cultural studies. Secondary teaching interests include the Black Atlantic with emphasis on Ghana (Gold Coast) and the United States, and the Concord intellectuals. Research interest George S. Schuyler (1895-1977). Bibliography. Created and leads Carleton's Ghana Program: Ghana program.

B.A. in Classics, Bowdoin College; M.A. in Latin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Ph.D. in Early American History, Rutgers University

Interests include Colonial America, Early Modern Atlantic World, Age of Revolutions, the Early Republic, women, race & gender in American history. Bibliography.

B.A., University of Wyoming; M.A., University of Oregon; Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Director of American Studies, 1997-2001. Emeritus

Interests include British History, American West, Environmental History, and American Indian History. Bibliography.

CVEC  2012   Plains Indians in the 19th Century

A.B., Princeton University; M.A.T., Wesleyan University; Ph.D., Yale University

Director of American Studies, 1993-1997. Emeritus

Professor Tisdale has taught modern and contemporary British and American literature, specializing in poetry, memoir, and fiction.  Among his interests are immigration, and the topics of race and ethnicity, including African American and Native American history and literature.