Helaine and Stanley Miller Award for Outstanding Teaching

The Helaine and Stanley Miller Award for Outstanding Teaching goes to Scott Pinkney, Professor in Performing Arts, who has created the lighting for more than 450 productions in a career spanning more than 45 years. He “is a tireless student advocate. We couldn't ask for a better mentor or professor, one who makes us feel supported in taking risks and following our dreams while steadying us and helping us on to the right track to realize them.”

Dr. Amer Latif is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in comparative religion and Islamic studies. Broadly speaking, his research revolves around issues involved in the translation of cultures. Having grown up in Pakistan and with an undergraduate degree in Physics, Dr. Latif thrives on studying and creating containers that are capacious enough to hold seeming contradictions such as science and religion, East and West.

Dr. Hawkins is an expert in social marketing and Critical Race Theory (CRT); his current research operates at the intersection of intercultural and health communication focusing on (1) ending police brutality and (2) increasing authentic white Allyship. As a staunch social justice advocate and critical scholar, Dr. Hawkins is committed to using his educational privilege to uplift our most systemically disenfranchised populations. In addition to his research, Dr. Hawkins is a nationally recognized debate coach; he is one of the few coaches in the country with multiple debate (IPDA ’13, IPDA ’19) and speech (AFA ’17-duo, PKD ’19-duo) national championships.

Kimberly McLarin’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, The Washington Post, Slate, the New England Review, The Sewanee Review, The Boston Globe, The Root and other publications, and been listed in Best American Essays 2017 and Best American Essays 2018. She is a former staff writer for The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Associated Press. She appears regularly on the Emmy-Award winning show Basic Black, Boston's long-running television program devoted to African-American themes, which airs weekly on WGBH-TV.

Nejem Raheem brings over 15 years of experience as an environmental economist to Emerson. His expertise is in economic analysis of natural resource and environmental issues, focusing on ecosystem services and traditional or indigenous economies. In addition to Emerson, he has taught economics at Kinship Conservation Fellows and the University of New Mexico. He is currently working on a project with scientists from the USGS, the Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society to examine the effects of long term drought on human communities.

Laura Glufling-Tham’s clinical and teaching experience is in the area of adult neurogenic disorders, including aphasia, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, cognitive-linguistic impairments, and dysphagia. She teaches the on-ground Clinical Methods III course related to professional issues in adult medical settings and diagnostic tests as well as the Cognitive-Communicative Disorders course which covers three acquired neurogenic disorders, including Right Hemisphere Damage, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Dementia. She divides her time between teaching and serving as the Director of Clinical Education where she oversees the clinical placements of both the on-campus and on-line graduate students in the Speech@Emerson program.

Tim's exhibit designs have been installed in The Museum of Science of Boston, The California Museum of Science, The Franklin Institute, The Chicago Museum of Science, The Ohio Center for Science and Industry, The Science Museum of Minnesota and The City Museum of Saint Louis. Tim is also the recipient of a Regional Emmy Award, and he was the art director for a film documentary that went on to win the National Golden Eagle Award.

Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann's research focuses on theories of aesthetic and intellectual transformation through travel, translation, intertextual influence, and exchange. Her research interests also include avant-garde literature, literary magazines, the socioeconomic contexts of literary publishing and circulation, anticolonialism, critical race studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

David Kishik's latest book, The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City (Stanford University Press, 2015), is a study of a text that was never written. A sequel of sorts to Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, it is dedicated to New York, capital of the twentieth century. Part sprawling literary montage, part fragmentary theory of modernity, part implosive manifesto on the urban revolution, The Manhattan Project paints the city as a landscape built of sheer life, set somewhere in between heaven and hell, the private and the public, the real and the ideal.

Tulasi Srinivas's research and teaching expertise is in the areas of globalization and the anthropology of the urban and religious life of South Asia. She is interested in the various practices of modern Hinduism. Srinivas's research and teaching interests include the history of anthropology, political and social theory, religion, theology and the visual arts; the global flow of intellectual and cultural movements; and material studies. Her publications are of both academic and general interest. All explore the links between intellectual life and modern Hinduism.

Dr. Nelson teaches in the areas of theatre education, playmaking, and multicultural education at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has taught drama and theatre K-12 in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and her research interests are focused on using Applied Drama and Theatre for meeting best practice in multicultural education with at-risk urban youth.

Dr. Grossman teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on subjects ranging from language development to neuro-anatomy and neurogenic disorders. She divides her research activities between Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School Shriver Center, where she holds an appointment as adjunct assistant professor, and is always happy to involve students in her research at either campus.