The Humanities Institute is pleased to announce new members to our team.

Dr. Paloma Martinez-Cruz is the new Program Director for Latina/o Studies. She also serves as a Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Paloma works in the area of contemporary hemispheric cultural production, women of color feminism, performance, and alternative epistemologies. Paloma reports on her excitement to take over as program director:  "When I think about how to structure our development in a way that is consistent with the transformative project of Latinx studies, I take inspiration from the late Rubén Castilla Herrera (1957-2019) who catalyzed shared models of Latinx leadership in Ohio for the better part of 20 years. Taking a page from Herrera's play book, I'm calling the Latina/o Studies Program steering committee the Latinx Action Circle, and its members this academic year are Inés Valdez, Leila Vieira, César García Hernández, and Nancy Mendoza."    

This academic year, CES has received approval for the hiring of three Latinx Studies professionals. Paloma explains: "Each of these hires will be shared 50/50 between CES and the departments of English, Spanish & Portuguese, and Art History. The Action Circle, and all faculty involved with Latinx Studies at OSU, will have a major role in the recruitment and onboarding of these new colleagues. We will tell these candidates the story of who we are, why we are here, and what Latina/o Studies at The Ohio State University can and should be. This is a serious roll call moment for Latinx scholarship at OSU, and I'm eager to work with all of the colleagues, staff, students, administrators, and community members who bring sincere commitment to the call."

Dr. Leila Vieira is the new Associate Director for the Center of Ethnic Studies and Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her research focuses on placemaking in Latinx communities and their cultural production. She is interested in analyzing the ways in which Latinx folks in the United States (especially in the Midwest) find and create places of belonging, such as engaging in ethnic celebrations in public spaces. Additionally, Dr. Vieira engages in literary criticism of Latinx works by exploring how strategies of placemaking are depicted in literature, film, and theater.

In her role as Associate Director for CES, her main goals are to continue supporting the study and research of minoritized and underrepresented ethnic communities, and to promote the Undergraduate Minors in Asian American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and American Indian Studies. If you have any students that might be interested any of these minors, please send them her way!

Elissa Washuta is the new program director for American Indian Studies. She is also a literary nonfiction writer and an associate professor of English. Elissa is the author of White Magic (2021), My Body Is a Book of Rules (2014), and Starvation Mode (2015), and she is currently at work on a book about money, memes, and virtual game worlds. With Theresa Warburton, she is the co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers.

As a core faculty member of the MFA program in creative writing, Elissa works with graduate students and advanced undergraduate writers in the art of the personal essay, and she also periodically offers a course in Native American literatures. 

Dr. Isaac Weiner is the new director of the Center for the Study of Religion and an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Studies. His research explores the implications of religious diversity for American public life. He has particular interests in the intersections of religion and law and in the study of sound.

Isaac's first book, Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism (NYU, 2014), analyzed the politics of religious pluralism in the United States by attending to disputes about religious sound in the public realm. For the past eight years, he's co-directed the American Religious Sounds Project, a collaborative digital initiative to document and interpret the diversity of American religious life by attending to its varied sonic cultures. He's currently working on a new project that looks to the workplace as a critical site of religious expression and legal regulation. 

This is Isaac's tenth year teaching at Ohio State. He's served as CSR associate director for the last several years, under the leadership of Hugh Urban and Hannibal Hamlin. With undergraduate and graduate degrees in religious studies, Isaac appreciates how the Center fosters opportunities for connection and collaboration among OSU faculty committed to the academic study of religion as a vibrantly interdisciplinary field. He is also excited about the ways the HCC promises to bring scholars of religion into conversation with those affiliated with the HCC’s other centers and initiatives. 

Isaac reports: "This is an exciting time to re-imagine the place of the CSR and the study of religion at OSU, and I look forward to helping to guide that process over the coming years."

Please help us in welcoming these new dynamic leaders!