Meet Our Alumni!

Graduate alumni of our
M.A. and Ph.D. programs

Afsane Rezaei
Alana Kumbier
Amy Welling Gregg
Andrew Culp
Bishal Karna
Brian Michael Murphy
Caroline Toy
Cristina Benedetti
Damon Berry
Dan DiPiero
Drew Lyness
Eleanor Paynter
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Enrico Zammarchi
Gabriel Piser
Ilana Maymind
Joanna Spanos
Kate Dean-Haidet
Kati Fitzgerald
Kay Clopton
Lindsay Bernhagen
Michael McVicar
Nicholas Flores
Peggy Reynolds
RaShelle R. Peck
Rachel Wortman Morris
Rebecca A. Adelman
Ricky Crano
Rita Trimble
Saeed Honarmand
Sandra Garner
Seth Gaiters
Seth Josephson
Zeynep Aydoğdu

Explore Alumni Stories Afsane Rezaei

In this issue

Image of Rebecca Adelman looking out a window

Rebecca A. Adelman

Rebecca A. Adelman completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2009 and was formerly Professor and Chair of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.…

Zeynep Aydoğdu

Zeynep Aydoğdu completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University in 2019. After graduating, she worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of…

Cristina Benedetti

Starting in 2019, Cristina worked as a Folk & Traditional Arts specialist with the Ohio Arts Council. In 2021 she began working predominantly on the partnership with the Central …

Lindsay Bernhagen

After graduating with a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2013 and spending the next few years working as an instructional consultant at the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Ohio…

Ohio State Marching Band doing Script Ohio

Damon Berry

Damon Berry completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2014 and joined St. Lawrence University in northern New York in the Department of Religious Studies as a visiting professor that same year.…

Kay Clopton

Kay Clopton is an Assistant Professor and Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian at OSU where she is the librarian for the Departments of History, Philosophy, Anthropology, and the John Glenn…

Ricky Crano

Ricky Crano received his Ph.D. in 2014, with a dissertation, directed by Philip Armstrong and Brian Rotman, on the role of postwar neoliberal social thought in the formation and maintenance of late…

Andrew Culp

Andrew Culp (MA 2009, Ph.D. 2013) is a Professor of Media History and Theory and Program Director of the MA Aesthetics and Politics program (starting Spring 2023) in the School of Critical Studies…

Kate Dean-Haidet

Kate Dean-Haidet has worked since graduation in 2012 as an Integrative Mental Health Advanced Practice Provider at OhioHealth Hospice & Palliative Care, an end-of-life care program and practice…

Dan DiPiero

Dan DiPiero is a musician and about to start a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in their Conservatory of Music and Dance. Previously, he taught as a…

Kati Fitzgerald

Kati Fitzgerald is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wittenberg University. She recently completed a postdoc at Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music, where she worked on developing her book…

Nicholas Flores

Nicholas Flores who goes by "Nic", graduated with a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies from OSU in 2019. Nic’s dissertation titled, “PrEParing and Producing the Queer Medical Subject: An Ethnographic…

Seth Gaiters

Seth Gaiters (2021) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion & Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Most recently, it was announced that Seth received a…

Sandra Garner

Sandra Garner graduated with her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2010 and joined the American Studies program at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) that year. She is a past Heanon Wilkins fellow at…

Amy Welling Gregg

Amy Welling Gregg completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2017 and is a proud alumna and faculty member of The Ohio State University. She has taught in the Department of Comparative…

Saeed Honarmand

Saeed Honarmand is a senior lecturer and coordinator of the Persian department in The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. Previously…

Seth Josephson (2018) is Adjunct Faculty in Comparative Studies at OSU and works as an Information Services Specialist at the Whetstone branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library. In 2022, his first…

Bishal Karna

Bishal Karna has been working since graduation as an Assistant Professor for the Department of Religious Studies at Nazareth College of Rochester, New York. Bisjal is grateful that he gets to study…

Alana Kumbier

As Alana was completing her doctoral work in Comparative Studies, she started her first job as a librarian, and she has been pursuing a career in librarianship since that time. She now works as a…

Drew Lyness

After completing his Ph.D. in 2014, Drew moved to British Columbia and took an academic teaching position on the small satellite campus of Thompson Rivers University in the town of Williams…

Ilana Maymind

Ilana Maymind completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2011. Since 2015, Ilana has been a lecturer at Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Religious Studies,…

Michael McVicar

Michael McVicar is an Associate Professor in the Religion Department at Florida State University. In 2015, he published his first book (based on his dissertation Comparative Studies), Christian…

Art exhibit in the Wexner Center for the Arts

Brian Michael Murphy

Brian Michael Murphy is dean at Bennington College, and the author of We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). His poems and essays…

Eleanor Paynter

Eleanor Paynter works in critical refugee studies, focusing on Africa-Europe mobilities and precarious migration to and through Italy, and work that puts the Mediterranean region in conversation with…

RaShelle R. Peck

RaShelle R. Peck (Ph.D.) (she/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She was a Postdoctoral Associate in the…

Gabriel Piser

After defending his dissertation, “Appalachian Anthropocene: Conflict and Subject Formation in a Sacrifice Zone”, Gabriel accepted a position with the Prison Ecology Project where he helped…

Peggy Reynolds

Peggy Reynolds is an artist/philosopher whose work explores issues related to posthumanism, affect, and mediology. Since receiving her Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Studies, she has…

Afsane Rezaei

Afsane Rezaei completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2020 and joined the Department of English at Utah State University as Assistant Professor of Folklore and American Studies. Her…

Elo-Hanna Seljamaa

Elo-Hanna Seljamaa is an Associate Professor at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu, Estonia. She continues to explore issues pertaining to ethnicity,…

Joanna Spanos

Joanna Spanos received her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in 2013. Since then, she has worked as an Academic Advisor in Ohio State’s Arts and Sciences Honors Program and is now serving as the program’s…

Caroline Toy

Caroline is currently Learning Experience Designer in the Center for Learning & Teaching and Adjunct Professor in the Core Division at Champlain College in Burlington, VT. Her move into faculty…

Rita Trimble

Rita Trimble teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she has been since graduating. Her program, Women's and Gender Studies, has merged with the Black World Studies program. As of this year,…

Rachel Wortman Morris

Rachel Wortman Morris is the Director of the Future Skill Initiative–Talent & Employability program at Microsoft. She was one of the creators behind the Microsoft Learn for Educators program and…

Enrico Zammarchi

Enrico Zammarchi defended his dissertation in November 2019, titled “My Style is Strictly Italo”: A History of Italian Hip-Hop; this work is the first project to look at Italy’s recent…