BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Officers
President |
Vice President |
Secretary |
Treasurer (interim) |
| Lisa Perry Term until 10/12 |
Guillermina Walas Term until 10/12 |
Quinn Dombrowski |
Katalin Kádár Lynn |
Board Members
| George Charles Allen Term until 10/13 |
Gary Botting Term until 10/13 |
Susan Roth Breitzer Term until 10/12 |
| Tricia Cusack Term until 10/12 |
Cindy Grisham Term until 10/13 |
Piri Halasz Term until 10/12 |
| Ronald T. Hyman Term until 10/13 |
Andrew Novak Term until 10/13 |
Klara Seddon Term until 10/12 |
| Lilian Tsappa Term until 10/12 |
Michael (Mickey) Poslun
Term until 10/13
|
Ex-Officio
| Ruth Feiertag ex officio, editor of TIS |
Your Officers and Board, 2010-2012
President
Lisa Perry
Lisa Perry holds an MA in History and MA and PhD degrees in Heritage Studies from Arkansas State University, as well as undergraduate degrees in Management and Mining Engineering Technology. Following a successful fourteen year career as an engineer, she returned to college to complete graduate work in the humanities. Previous work in the non-profit sector includes nearly two years as director of a state AIDS hotline and eighteen months as executive director of a regional historical society.
She is currently engaged in research and writing about labor issues, African American studies, and Appalachia. Her research is published in Great American Lives: African Americans (Salem Press) and United States at War (ABC- CLIO); her book, Images of America: Floyd County was published in May 2010. Her dissertation, Memory, Identity, and Paternalism: Creating an Appalachian Camelot, is in process of being edited into book form. She also presented research and represented NCIS in April 2011 in Innsbruck, Austria at the conference Heritage of Mines and Mining, co-sponsored by Leeds Metropolitan University and the History Department at the University of Innsbruck.
Vice-President
Guillermina Walas
Originally from Argentina, Guillermina Walas received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999. She has published Entre dos Américas. Narrativas de Latinas en los ’90s (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000), a poetry book (Fecundiciclos, 2006) and numerous articles on women authors, autobiography, testimonial narrative, migration and identity in peer reviewed journals and books. Former Associate Professor of Spanish at Eastern Washington University (tenured 2004) and a Visiting Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, she became an independent scholar in 2009, after moving with her family to the Seattle area. Dr. Walas joined NCIS in January 2010 and since then she has represented the Council at major international conferences/colloquia in Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina and USA. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary book project about testimonial spaces and media art in Argentina. At NCIS, besides her executive duties, she chairs Members’ Benefits and Resources.
Treasurer
Katalin Kádár Lynn
Born in Budapest, Katalin Kádár Lynn is a political historian specializing in research related to Central and East Europe during World War II and the Cold War. She has a B.A. from the University of Colorado at Denver and a Master’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. Her interest in the wartime and post-war history of Central and East European history prompted her to enroll in the doctoral program at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary where she earned her Ph.D. in 2005. In 2007 Dr. Kádár Lynn and her husband established a foundation in Hungary, Modern Minerva Alapitvány, supporting graduate students in their efforts to publish and publicize their research and writing. In 2011 the President of Hungary awarded her the Gold Cross of Merit (Arany Érdemkereszt) of the Republic of Hungary “for advancing the interests of an independent and democratic Hungary”.
At NCIS Katy has previously served as Treasurer, Vice President, and Membership Chair. In addition, she is a Trustee of the American Hungarian Library and Historical Society of New York City and as a board member of the Hungarian Studies Association, a board member and officer of the Mzuri Wildlife Foundation, and served as Reciprocal Clubs committee chair at the Metropolitan Club of San Francisco. Her community interests include the arts, and because of that, she has also served on the boards of the San Francisco Ballet Auxiliary, the Denver Symphony Association, the Denver, Colorado Mayor's Commission on the Arts, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis Trustees, the Friends of the St. Louis Art Musem and the Women's Board of the National Jewish Hospital at Denver.
Secretary
Quinn Dombrowski
Quinn Dombrowski is the manager of the Scholarly Technology Central Information Technology group at the University of Chicago, where she received an MA in Slavic Linguistics, in addition to a Master's of Library Science from the University of Illinois. Her research interests range from medieval Russian dialectology to the sociology of university library graffiti and the transformative impact of technology on humanities scholarship. Since 2008 she has been involved with Project Bamboo, a Mellon-funded effort to build infrastructure for humanities scholarship, where her responsibilities included documenting, publishing and analyzing data from a series of workshops with scholars from around the world. She is currently the technical lead for DHCommons, a humanities-focused directory of projects and potential collaborators that will be launching at a 2012 MLA pre-convention workshop. Her website is quinndombrowski.com.
Board
Michael (Mickey) Posluns
Mickey Posluns has been writing on First Nations modern history and parliamentary history for forty years. He worked with Akwesasne Notes, a journal for Native and natural peoples in the 1970s. He also wrote and published a biography of George Manuel, the first president of the National Indian Brotherhood (Collier MacMillan, Don Mills and Free Press, New York, 1974).
His master’s thesis for the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University chronicled the campaign to undermine the work of the Commons Committee on Indian Self-Government and was entitled The Bureaucratic Response to the Penner Report (1994). In 2002 his doctoral dissertation was on the testimony of First Nations leaders about self-government before parliamentary committees in the 1970s. This was published under the title The Emergence of the Vocabulary of First Nations’ Self-Government (Routledge, NYC, 2006).
In 2010, he began work on a research Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto; the thesis for this degree is on the allocation of burdens of proof in litigation between First Nations and the Crown. Michael continues to consult with the Assembly of First Nations and regional First Nations organizations.
George Charles Allen
George is a vocal supporter of early musical education and currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Pakachoag Music School of Greater Worcester (MA). He is Chair of the school's Marketing Committee and is on the Strategic Planning Committee. George is a self-taught classical pianist and gives many recitals of solo piano works each year, most notably the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His current media projects mirror those of British philosopher Bryan Magee: the popularization of philosophy through quality TV and radio broadcast. He is presently writing and co-producing a series of musical and philosophical discussions to appear on WCCA-TV Worcester in the Fall of 2012.
A recipient of the Evangelos and Theodora Drapos Scholarship, he received an AB degree (magna cum laude, 2008) in Comparative Literature, Classics and Philosophy from Clark University. He spent a year and a half studying Ancient Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh as a PhD candidate before returning home to found the Worcester Regional Flight Academy, where he holds several executive positions.
George has wide-ranging interests in music, Literature, comparative religion, mythology and the history of philosophy. He has an especial interest in early Greek philosophy (ancient cosmology, astrology and astronomy, harmony theory of soul/cosmos, philosophy of time), and the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. He also has keen interest in the life and philosophy of Giordano Bruno and Friedrich Nietzsche. Current scholarship interests include research upon Heraclitus' conception of Fire and Logos, a translation and commentary of Plotinus' Ennead 2.3 "Are the Stars Causes?", and will soon publish a collection of essays and reflections entitled Portrait of a Philosopher as a Young Man: The Musings of a Wandering Scholar. His web site is www.georgecharlesallen.com.
Gary Botting
Gary began his writing career as a journalist with South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and later joined the editorial department of the Peterborough Examiner under publisher Robertson Davies. After contributing to and editing various literary journals he published the first of several collections of poetry in 1969. He earned an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Memorial University of Newfoundland (1970), and a Ph.D. in English (1975) along with an M.F.A. in playwriting (1982) from the University of Alberta. He taught English and creative writing in Alberta for 16 years at the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, and Red Deer College.
Gary has been on the boards of many organizations across Canada. He was founding President of the Alberta Publishers Association, President of the Faculty Association of Red Deer College, President of Kaleidoscope Theatre in Victoria, B.C., Executive Vice-president of the Association of Alberta College Faculties, Vice-president of liaison for the Calgary Region Arts Foundation, Vice-president of Central Alberta Theatre, Secretary of the Victoria-Haliburton Press Association, and Secretary of Open Theatre in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He was also producer and Playwright in Residence of People & Puppets Incorporated and Edmonton Summer Theatre, and Editor-in-Chief of Red Deer College Press.
After attending law school in Calgary, he was called to the British Columbia bar in 1991. His practice focused on major crimes, extradition and appeals. Awarded several prestigious scholarships and fellowships, he received his LL.M (1999) and Ph.D. (2004) from University of British Columbia, where he was a University Fellow and founding Paetzhold Fellow and Honorary Research Associate until 2008. He was a Visiting Scholar and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle for four years until he resumed the practice of law.
Gary has published some 30 books and written as many plays for production, several of which won literary awards. His most recent books include four editions of Canadian Extradition Law Practice (Markham, Ont.: LexisNexis, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012), Wrongful Conviction in Canadian Law (LexisNexis, 2010), and Halsbury’s Laws of Canada: Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance (LexisNexis 2011)
Gary joins our board as the representative of our Canadian affiliate the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars: CAIS.
Susan Roth Breitzer
Susan Roth Breitzer completed her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2007, and is currently revising her dissertation, “Jewish Labor's Second City: The Formation of a Jewish Working Class in Chicago, 1886-1928,” for publication. She has published essays in History Compass, the Indiana Magazine of History, and Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts. She has presented papers at meetings of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, and has currently helped organize the first NCIS-sponsored AHA panel. As a member of the NCIS Board of Directors, she currently serves on the Member Benefits Committee and as Chair of the Member Affiliates Committee. She has taught United States and world history at Fayetteville State University, and is currently teaching at Campbell University, Fort Bragg Campus.
Tricia Cusack
After working for many years in full-time university teaching, Tricia Cusack is now an independent scholar, with occasional part-time teaching at the University of Birmingham (UK). She holds a BA Hons from the Open University and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. Her research spans art history, cultural geography and nationalism theory, and it explores connections between national identity, place, and visual art. Publications include Art, Nation and Gender (co-edited, Ashgate, 2003), Riverscapes and National Identities (Syracuse University Press, 2010) and articles in a range of academic journals. Her work on the emergence of the seaside in Ireland has appeared in the Journal of Tourism History with another article due in Nineteenth Century Studies. An edited essay collection Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge (Ashgate) is forthcoming in 2012. Still on an aquatic theme, Dr. Cusack is currently working on another edited collection, Representations of the Ocean as a Social Space. She chairs the TIS editorial advisory committee.
Cindy Grisham
Cindy Grisham worked for seventeen years in the field of law enforcement and criminal justice, then returned to college to pursue a new direction. Wanting to make a difference in the rural communities she had spent her life in, she looked for a graduate program that was interdisciplinary in nature and would allow her to look at issues from a variety of viewpoints. She is currently ABD in Heritage Studies at Arkansas State University and expects to complete her dissertation on an Arkansas Delta community by the summer of 2012. She holds an M.A. in Political Science as well as Heritage Studies from Arkansas State University, and has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Missouri State University.
Her research interests lie in rural communities, historic landscapes, and rural foodways. She is also currently collaborating with another scholar on African American juke joints in Arkansas and the ways they function in the community. She is excited about pursuing a position on the NCIS board in order to assist other independent scholars in completing research, locating sources of funding, and receiving proper recognition from the academic community.
Piri Halasz
A former contributor for Time magazine, Piri Halasz has a B.A. in English from Barnard College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University; her graduate degrees were in modern and American art history. Between 1956 and 1969, she worked for Time, first in research and later as a writer, with the last 30 months writing the Art section. She wrote two cover stories, on “Swinging London” (1966) and Tony Smith (1967). Since leaving Time, she has published more than 200 articles in journals, magazines and newspapers, ranging from The New York Times to the College Art Journal, and most recently, artcritical.com. In addition, she publishes From the Mayor’s Doorstep, an online column/newsletter that also appears in hard copy.http://www.pirihalasz.com She has taught at Columbia, Hunter College, C. W. Post Center/Long Island University, and Bethany College (WV). Her books: A Swinger’s Guide to London (Coward McCann, 1967) and A Memoir of Creativity: abstract painting, politics & the media, 1956-2008 (iUniverse, 2009). The latter won a gold medal in the category of Writing/Publishing from the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Award. Dr. Halasz is a member of NCIS Board of Directors contributing mainly and strongly on the area of Members´ Benefits and Resources.
Ronald T. Hyman
Ronald T. Hyman retired after forty years of service as professor emeritus at Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, New Brunswick, NJ in the department of Educational Theory, Policy, and Administration. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Miami. In addition to a M.A.T. from Vanderbilt University where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow, he holds an Ed.D. from Columbia University, as well as a J.D. from Rutgers. He is the author or co-author of over fifty books, including Strategic Questioning and the School Administrator (1979), Faculty Supervision Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1986. His most recent book on education is titled Death Threats by Students: The Law and it’s Implications (2006). Since he retired from teaching he has followed his “passion,” the study of the Jewish Bible, publishing extensively, principally in the Jewish Bible Quarterly.
Ronald will serve on the NCIS board representing the Princeton Research Forum, one of our most vibrant and active affiliates.
Andrew Novak
Andew Novak is an attorney based in Washington, DC. He received his law degree from Boston University and a Master's in African politics from the London School of Oriental and African Studies. His scholarly interests are interdisciplinary, spanning legal, political science, and history fields, and he is published both in student-edited law reviews and peer-reviewed social science journals. Because of his historical research experience using archival documents and primary sources and his more traditional legal research experience using cases and court decisions, he has a broad understanding of the barriers facing independent scholars in different contexts.
Klara Seddon
Klara Seddon is Research Director for the Institute of Cultural Research, NY, an independent scholarly research organization. She received her Master’s degree from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in New York City. Klara is a contributor to Critical Studies in Expressive Culture, a multidisciplinary consortium of scholars researching intersections between expressive culture and critical social theory, and co-organizer of the 2011 conference at Hunter College CUNY, Radical Aesthetics and Politics: Intersections in Music, Art, and Critical Social Theory. Her research interests are in the areas of material/visual culture, women’s studies, digital culture, and food studies in East Asia. Klara is the author of the blog, the five o’clock teaspoon, featuring analysis of contemporary and historical foodways. Her current research looks at women’s fake food hobby crafts in Japan and Korea. She has served on the NCIS Board of Directors since 2010, actively working on Membership and Members’ Benefits and Resources.
Lilian Tsappa
Lilian Tsappa holds a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Masters and Bachelor's degrees in French from Florida State University, and a DEUG in Lettres et civilizations étrangères from Université Paris VII, France. Her professional experience includes positions in the Diplomatic Service, and in Public and International Relations. She has taught modern languages, comparative literature and literary theory, and geopolitical history in academic institutions in the US and Europe. Her research focus is interdisciplinary and aims to bridge the ancient and the modern, the exoteric and the esoteric. Her academic interests include the relation between tragic conflict, ethical responsibility and the philosophy of power; ancient Greek and Egyptian Mystery Schools; mystical theology and religious iconography of the East and West; and indigenous healing practices and traditions. Dr. Tsappa is the author of www.alchemeia.com, a website dedicated to the improvement of contemporary life through synthesis and integration.She currently resides in the Bay Area of Northern California and for NCIS, she is a contributor to Membership and Member Affiliates Committees.