Core Faculty
Core Faculty
Cevasco, Carla
- Carla Cevasco
- Assistant Professor
- carla.cevasco@rutgers.edu
- Office: RAB 203B
- Office Hours: By appointment (Online)
- Phone: 848.932.3484
- Courses Taught:
- 050:223:01 - Learning from the Past: Early America and the 21st Century,
- 050:350:01 - Fest Curation: Curatorial Seminar,
- 050:389:01 - Junior Seminar: Material Culture
Carla Cevasco is a scholar of food, the body, material culture, gender, and race in early America. Her first book, Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast, forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2022, explores how Indigenous peoples and colonial invaders confronted hunger in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is working on a second book about feeding infants and children in early America. She is Co-Director of the New Jersey Folk Festival. She received a Ph.D. in American Studies and an A.M. in American History from Harvard University, and a B.A. in English and American Literatures from Middlebury College.
INTERVIEW with Prof. Cevasco by Amy Clark '17
What can AMS students expect from your fall courses?
In American Folklife: Foodways in Global Context, we’ll be learning about the global history of American food, from sugar and slavery in early America, to the origins of Taco Bell and Fritos. We’ll even be trying some historical food samples! For a final project, we’ll create a digital exhibit about American food.
In Learning from the Past: Early America and the 21st Century, we’ll examine many challenges that Americans faced in early America and continue to face today: income inequality, epidemic disease, climate change, migration and refugees. We’ll ask what we can learn from how people navigated these challenges in the past, and students will write a portfolio of opinion essays comparing the past and present.
Why take food studies courses? Why take courses on early America?
New Jersey is a fantastic place to study food, because of the unique combination of the agricultural identity of the Garden State, indigenous foodways, and immigrant food traditions. Food is such an interesting subject because it is both necessary for survival and an important part of culture and identity. Food is really huge in American culture right now, and connects to many fields of study—politics, medicine, etc.—which means it’s a great topic for public humanities projects.
Many of the challenges we face today have their origins in early America. Often, people hear “Early America” and think of the Founding Fathers: a small, elite group of white men. But actually, early America was the most diverse place on the planet, where people from the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and even East Asia came together under circumstances of colonialism, war, and slavery. It was a really violent, challenging time that helped form the United States today.
Your research concerns indigenous peoples in the northeast region of what is now the United States of America. What is unique about your focus within the field of Native American studies?
I’m very interested in the vast bodies of knowledge that Native peoples had (and continue to have) about the environment and medicine. Because Europeans wanted to take Native land and exploit Native people, Europeans have often disregarded these knowledges. But indigenous strategies for surviving hunger, for example, remain really relevant in a world where 800 million people are food insecure.
Do you have any possible public history and/or digital projects on the horizon?
A colleague and I are filming a Youtube video about ceramics and the human body with the Chipstone Foundation, which is a material culture research center in Milwaukee. We hope that the video will inspire teachers, students, and curators to think differently about material culture and the history of the body. It’s a sequel to a pedagogical video we made about furniture back in 2013. Look for the new video sometime this fall!
What is your vision for the New Jersey Folk Festival?
I’m excited to become part of such an important Rutgers American Studies tradition. In my new role, I’m looking forward to maintaining what NJFF does so well, featuring a broad range of performers and tradition bearers, while expanding the festival in new directions, from new themes to food options.
Any early colonial cuisine that you'd recommend?
Colonial American food was pretty gross—people had very different tastes than we do now, and they also didn’t have much in the way of refrigeration, so they ate a lot of rotten food (although they did develop many technologies for preservation, such as pickling). But I’ve had rum punch based on colonial recipes, and that tends to be tasty.
Are you doing anything fun this summer (2017)?
Getting to know New Jersey by eating lots of delicious Jersey produce and cycling on some beautiful bike paths, including the Delaware and Raritan Canal trail.
Last book you read for pleasure?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I picked up because of its Rutgers connections.
What's your go-to karaoke song?
Can’t answer that one with dignity.
Favorite comfort food?
Baked ziti.
What can you cook really well?
When I was a kid, I won a few blue ribbons at the county fair for brownies.
Last movie you saw in theaters?
I’m more of a TV person. Right now it’s Game of Thrones and Insecure.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I grew up on a fruit and vegetable farm so I have a green thumb.
Where do you get your news?
NYTimes, The Guardian, and Twitter.
Favorite class you took in undergrad and why?
Oh, that’s a hard one. American Women’s History with Amy Morsman opened my eyes to histories I had not known about before, which really transformed my understanding of American history as a whole. In an environmental studies class with John Elder called Farm Stories, we read literature about farming before interviewing local farmers and mounting a multimedia exhibit about their experiences. I loved having the chance to apply what I’d learned in the classroom, out in the wider community.
What's the best advice you've ever gotten?
When faced with a seemingly impossible task, break it down into smaller pieces and attack them one at a time.
Sweet, Jameson
- Jimmy Sweet
- Assistant Professor
- Js2626@amerstudies.rutgers.edu
- Office: 203A
- Office Hours: T 2:30PM - 3:30PM W 12:45PM - 1:45PM
- News Articles:
- Bringing a Native American Perspective to American Studies
- Courses Taught:
- 050:200:01 - Topics: Native American New Jersey,
- 050:248:01 - Native American Experience,
- 050:376:01 - Native American Lit. in English
Jimmy Sweet (Lakota/Dakota) specializes in Native American and Indigenous studies with a concentration on interactions between American Indians and Euro-Americans. His current book project, “The ‘Mixed-Blood’ Moment: Race, Law, and Mixed-Ancestry Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest,” analyzes the legal and racial complexities of American Indians of mixed Indian and European ancestry with a focus on kinship, family history, land dispossession, and citizenship. Sweet is dedicated to Indigenous language revitalization and preservation. His research is driven by a need to understand the full effects of American colonialism on Indigenous Americans and how those consequences influence Native people today, doing so with the hope of contributing to the continued fight for Indigenous sovereignty and the healing of Indigenous communities.
Before joining the faculty at Rutgers, Sweet was a Henry Roe Cloud Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University and served as managing editor of NAIS: The Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association from 2012 to 2017. He received his B.A. from the University of Tennessee, his M.A. from Montana State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, all in history.
Kennedy, Maria
- Maria Kennedy
- Assistant Teaching Professor and Co-Director of the NJFF
- maria.kennedy@rutgers.edu
- Office: 203D
- Office Hours: By Appointment
- News Articles:
- Professor Kennedy Discusses Christmas Traditions
Maria Kennedy is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Folklore in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University and is the Co-Director of the New Jersey Folk Festival.
Maria received her PhD from Indiana University’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in 2017. Her dissertation, “Finding Lost Fruit: The Cider Poetic, Orchard Conservation, and Craft Cider Making in Britain” examined the interplay of cultural heritage and environmental conservation in rural Britain. She continues her ethnographic research on the craft cider revival in North America, with interests in the adaptation of agricultural traditions to contemporary issues of conservation and economic development in rural America.
Dr. Kennedy studies the theory and practice of public folklore and humanities, their genres of representation, and their institutions, with a focus on performance theory, festival genres, and anthropology of media. She has worked as the Folk Arts Coordinator at The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, where she directed the Old Time Fiddlers Gathering and Folk Arts Festival and curated exhibits on Jewish foodways and African American history, as well as programs on agricultural heritage and Finnish American music. She has also worked at Traditional Arts Indiana and WJFF Radio Catskill, and has thoroughly enjoyed research, employment, and fieldwork at wineries, vineyards, and orchards.
Chan-Malik, Sylvia
- Sylvia Chan-Malik
- Undergraduate Director
- Associate Professor
- sc1219@amerstudies.rutgers.edu
- Website: Visit Website
- Office: RAB 203C
- Office Hours: On Leave
- Phone: 848-932-3356
Sylvia Chan-Malik is a scholar of American studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and Religious Studies. Her research focuses on the history of Islam in the United States, specifically the lives of U.S. Muslim women and the rise of anti-Muslim racism in 20th-21st-century America. More broadly, she studies the intersections of race, gender, and religion, and how these categories interact in struggles for social justice. Sylvia is the Faculty Director of the WGS Social Justice Minor.
She is the author of Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color and American Islam (NYU Press, 2018) which offers an alternative narrative of American Islam in the 20-21st century that centers the lives, subjectivities, and voices of women of color. In it, she brings together the stories of African American women and their engagements with Islam as social protest religion and spiritual practice; encounters between “Islam” and “feminism” in U.S. media and popular culture; the cultural production and political expressions of South Asian and Arab American Muslim women during the late-20th century; and finally, the diverse experiences of U.S. Muslim women in post-9/11 America. Through their stories, the book tracks Islam’s shifting meanings in women’s lives and in national political and cultural discourse, and situates issues of race and racialialization—and in particular, logics of anti-blackness, xenophobia, orientalism, and white nationalism—as critical determinants of women’s experiences of being Muslim in the U.S.
She speaks frequently on issues of U.S. Muslim politics and culture, Islam and gender, and racial and gender politics in the U.S., and her commentary and writing has appeared in venues such as NPR, Slate News, The Intercept, Middle East Eye, Daily Beast, PRI, Huffington Post, Patheos, Religion News Service, and more..
Dr. Chan-Malik teaches courses on race and ethnicity in the United States, Islam in/and America, social justice movements, Islam and gender, feminist methodologies, multiethnic literature and culture in the U.S., and 20-21st century U.S. history. She is also a core faculty member in the American Studies department, and is affiliate graduate faculty for the Department of Religion.
Her next two projects examine histories of Sufism and whiteness in the United States and the role of religion and spirituality in Ethnic Studies discourse and U.S.-based social justice activism.
She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2009) and an M.F.A. from Mills College in Creative Writing.
For more information on Dr. Chan-Malik’s research, teaching, and speaking engagements, please visit: https://sylviachanmalik.com/.
Masur, Louis P.
- Louis P. Masur
- Board of Governors Professor
- Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History
- lpm42@amerstudies.rutgers.edu
- Website: Visit Website
- Office: RAB 202
- Office Hours: T 10:00AM - 12:00PM, and by appointment
- Phone: 848-932-3498
- News Articles:
- Scholars Talk Writing: Louis P. Masur,
- Springsteen at 70: Remembering When The Boss Rocked New Brunswick ,
- What Abraham Lincoln can teach us about resilience in the face of crisis
- Courses Taught:
- 050:210:01 - The American Dream,
- 050:225:01 - Thought and Society in the American Past,
- 050:495:01 - Honors in American Studies
Louis Masur is Board of Governors Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. He is a cultural historian whose publications include books on Lincoln and the Civil War, capital punishment, the events of a single year, the first World Series, a transformative photograph, and a seminal rock ‘n’ roll album. His most recent work is The Sum of our Dreams: A Concise History of America (2020). Other books include Lincoln's Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion (2015), Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (2012), and The Civil War: A Concise History (2011). Masur’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Slate. He approaches culture as a text that must be unpacked and his courses draw on a range of primary sources—novels, memoirs, essays, images, movies, and music—and take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of American culture. Masur has been elected to membership of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Society of American Historians. He can be reached at
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