Faculty from three ACM colleges have been appointed to visiting faculty positions in spring 2016 on the Botswana: Development in Southern Africa and London & Florence: Arts in Context programs.
Constance Walker, (English, Carleton College) will serve as Program Director in London, Andrew Whitfield (music, Luther College) will serve as the Affiliated Scholar in Florence, and Emily “Molly” Margaretten (anthropology, Ripon College) will lead ACM’s program in Gaborone, Botswana.
Students visiting the Tower of London on the London & Florence: Arts in Context program.
Photo courtesy of Charlotte Lee
All three professors have experience at their respective program locations, as well as teaching and research interests that will broaden and strengthen the programs’ curricular offerings for students, according to Joan Gillespie, ACM Vice President and Director of Off-Campus Study.
“Between teaching and conducting research, Molly Margaretten has spent five of the last 13 years in Africa, most of that in Southern Africa,” Gillespie said. “She was superb as Program Director for the ACM Tanzania Program two years ago, and we’re fortunate she will be back with us in Botswana.”
“Constance Walker has regularly taken groups of Carleton students to study in London,” Gillespie continued, “so she really knows how to leverage the city’s unique resources to give students a rich academic experience.”
As a performing opera singer as well as a scholar, Andrew Whitfield will add a different dimension to the program’s exploration of the arts in Florence, Gillespie noted. “Where better than Italy, where opera has been the soundtrack of daily life for centuries, to have Andrew’s perspective to complement the expertise of Program Director Jodie Mariotti and the rest of our on-site staff,” she said.
ACM faculty can apply for visiting positions on consortial off-campus study programs in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the U.S. Responsibilities of the positions vary depending on the programs’ local staff and affiliations, and may include teaching courses, supervising student projects, organizing field trips and volunteer activities, and program administration.
Molly Margaretten
Emily “Molly” Margaretten, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Ripon College
- Faculty Program Director, Botswana: Development in Southern Africa, Spring 2016
- PhD, Anthropology, Yale University
- Areas of interest: Global health, Sub-Saharan Africa, youth cultures, gender and sexuality, kinship studies, urban anthropology, transnationalism and migration
- Ripon profile and her personal website
From her own graduate fieldwork in South Africa to teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to leading students on off-campus study, Molly Margaretten has been active as a scholar and teacher in Africa. As Faculty Program Director for the ACM Tanzania Program in fall 2012, she handled many of the same duties in teaching, mentoring student projects, leading group travel, and program administration that she will take on in Botswana.
Margaretten’s ethnographic research in South Africa has spanned the past decade and her forthcoming book, Street Life Under a Roof: Youth Homelessness in South Africa, is based on her scholarly work on urban youth. Her interest in migrant Tanzanian women in South Africa has led to another research project on the transnational flows of capital – including the politics of marriage and debt patronage – between Eastern and Southern Africa.
For the ACM program, she plans to teach a course on Health and Development in Southern Africa, which will present students with case studies, guest speakers, and site visits addressing topics such as colonial and postcolonial epidemics, environmental change and disease, reproductive health and sexuality, clinical tourism, and the effects of neo-liberalism on African health care systems.
Constance Walker
Constance Walker, Professor of English, Carleton College
- Visiting Faculty Director in London, London & Florence: Arts in Context, Spring 2016
- PhD, English, University of Pennsylvania. Area of specialization: English Romanticism.
- Carleton profile and bio on the ACM website
During more than 30 years as a member of the English department at Carleton College, Constance Walker has taught a wide range of courses, mainly in British literature and drama, covering topics in areas such as fiction, essays, poetry, theatre, comedy, interpretation, and rhetoric.
She has extensive background teaching in London, having led five Carleton-sponsored off-campus programs there. Her approach has been to engage students not just in the study of British theatre, but also in the exciting experience of living in a diverse, historic city. As a result, Walker has developed contacts within the theatre community and is familiar with the London’s geography and neighborhoods, theatre companies, and cultural resources.
On the program, she will teach London Theatre and Theatricality, a course in which students will explore both theatre productions and the ways in which London itself functions as a theatrical space, calculated for political, economic, and aesthetic display. The class will attend plays at a variety of venues, engage in discussions with actors and directors, and analyze the means and ends of theatrical performance.
Andrew Whitfield
Andrew Whitfield, Associate Professor of Music, Luther College
- Affiliated Scholar in Florence, London & Florence: Arts in Context, Spring 2016
- DMA., Vocal Performance, Louisiana State University
- Courses: Voice, Opera Workshop, Introduction to Opera Performance, Song Literature (Italian, Spanish, German), Introduction to Musical Styles
- Luther profile
A baritone soloist with a passion for opera, Andrew Whitfield is an active performer, stage director, and teacher at Luther College. Due to his focus on teaching studio voice and opera workshop, in addition to courses for both music majors and non-majors, he regularly interacts with students in a variety of settings – individually, in small groups, and in larger classes.
Whitfield serves as co-director of the International Music Festival of the Adriatic in Duino, Italy, a three-and-a-half week chamber music festival each year for strings, piano, voice, and composition that is co-sponsored by Luther. He also has studied Italian language, traveled elsewhere in Italy, and co-taught a course in Germany on J.S. Bach.
Since opera had its birth in Florence, it will be a particularly appropriate location for Whitfield to engage his extensive knowledge of the art form in broadening the students’ perspectives and understanding of the city’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. Opera – which integrates poetry, drama, music, visual art, and dance – will be Whitfield’s lens for investigating the intersection of the arts with specific time periods in Italian history and specific Italian cities.
Links:
- Botswana: Development in Southern Africa
- London & Florence: Arts in Context
- Visiting Faculty Positions – Available positions are typically posted each year in December
