Dr. Olaf Berwald
Dr. Berwald is an Assistant Professor of German at UND (Ph.D. UNC-Chapel Hill, M.A. Eberhard-Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Germany). His book publications include monographs on Renaissance Rhetoric, and on the German-Jewish novelist and playwright Peter Weiss (whose 1965 play "The Investigation," based on court transcripts from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, catalyzed discussions of the Holocaust in Germany), as well as an essay collection on religion, aesthetics, and commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime. Berwald has also written a wide range of articles on ethics, exile, and critiques of mass violence in the works of Hesse, Kafka, Canetti, Nietzsche, Benn, C. Einstein, and Broch. His current research projects include a forthcoming collection of essays on "Global North / Global South Encounters," and a volume on "Black and German Dialogues." His most recent essay on human rights violations is entitled, "Recolonizing Reason: Torture and the Globalization of Indifference."
Contact: Department of Languages (German)
Merrifield Hall Room 13
276 Centennial Drive Stop 8198
Grand Forks, ND 58202
olaf.berwald@und.nodak.edu
Dr. Marcia Mikulak
Dr. Marcia Mikulak is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UND (Ph.D., University of New Mexico University of New Mexico, MA University of New Mexico). Dr. Mikulak is a cultural anthropologist whose work specializes in the cultural constructions of childhood, human rights, violence, and identity. Dr. Mikulak has published articles in peer-reviewed national and international journals and in the proceedings of international conferences. In 2005 she received a $35,000 UND Seed Grant to assess the state of domestic violence in Grand Forks County in collaboration with the Community Violence Intervention Center (CVIC). In addition, Dr. Mikulak is a Country Specialist with Amnesty International for Brazil. Her current fieldwork research includes work on the impact of ‘race’ and racism on street and working youth in Brazil, the Xukuru Indigenous tribe in Pernambuco, Brazil on land demarcations and human rights abuses, and with CVIC on the development of community programs to enhance and improve the life opportunities of domestic violence survivors. Her research with the Xukuru tribe in Pernambuco, Brazil was recently funded by a UND Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences grant. In addition to her work as an anthropologist, Dr. Mikulak has been an accomplished concert pianist with degrees in music performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. She has a number of solo piano recordings to her credit.
Contact: Department of Anthropology
Babcock Hall Room 109
236 Centennial Drive Stop 8374
Grand Forks, ND 58202
marcia.mikulak@und.nodak.edu
Dr. Paul Sum
Department of Political Science and Public Administration
Gamble Hall Room 290R
293 Centennial Drive Stop 8379
Grand Forks, ND 58202
paul_sum@und.nodak.edu
Dr. Rebecca Weaver-Hightower
Rebecca Weaver-Hightower is an Assistant Professor of English specializing in postcolonial studies. Just released was her book Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals and Fantasies of Conquest (Minnesota 2007), an analysis of how island castaway tales presented fantasies that made the expansion of empire more palatable. Her current work, Sorry Deeds, Guilty Dreams: Writing, Remorse and Reparation in the Post-Settler Colony, is a comparative project analyzing Australian, South African, Canadian and U.S. settler literatures for how certain stories helped those cultures to process the guilt from the displacement and oppression of indigenous peoples during colonial settlement. Weaver-Hightower has published on Caribbean, Irish, Australian, African, British and other postcolonial literatures, and she is the Book Reviews editor of The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. She is excited about the opportunities the Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies offers for collaborative work and for bringing the University of North Dakota's attention and resources to fight for global social justice.
Contact: Department of English
Merrifield Hall Room 110
276 Centennial Drive Stop 7209
Grand Forks, ND 58202
rwh@und.nodak.edu
Dr. Jack Weinstein
Doctor Jack Russell Weinstein, Associate Professor of Philosophy, does
research on the intersection of the history of philosophy and contemporary
political theory. His main interest is theories of diversity and justice,
with special attention to education and otherness, human rationality, and
the roles of emotion in moral judgment. He seeks to create a general theory
of human understanding in the midst of difference that internalizes respect
above and beyond a minimalist conception of human or political rights.
Much of his work has focused on Adam Smith, the father of modern economic
theory. Weinstein seeks to show that Smith's political economy is a more
focused instance of Smith's general moral theory, and he uses this
eighteenth century model to build a unified vision of the role of
government, moral growth of citizens, individual rights and liberties, and
cross-group communication within a pluralistic society. He insists that the
cultivation of any one of these spheres necessitates attention to them all
and presents his system as an alternative to the Kantian justification of
human rights and moral virtues that prevails in political philosophy today.
The Kantian version, Weinstein asserts, describe human experience and
conflict in an artificially narrow manner.
Dr. Weinstein has authored two books, three edited collections and journal
symposia, and over two dozen articles and reviews. He has contributed work
for lay audiences to newspapers, magazines, and public radio. He received
his Ph.D. and M.A. from Boston University.
Contact: Department of Philosophy and Religion
Merrifield Hall Room 201
276 Centennial Drive Stop 7128
Grand Forks, ND 58202
jack.weinstein@und.edu
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