Meet New Faculty in the Arts and Humanities

The College of Arts and Humanities welcomes the faculty members that joined our college this fall!

Department of English

Amrita Ghosh, Assistant Professor
Amrita Ghosh is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature in the Department of English at UCF. Previously, she was a researcher at South Asian Center SASNET, Lund University in Sweden. She has also worked on a postdoc at Linnaeus University, Center of Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies in Sweden. During the postdoc she worked on emerging literature, films and visual texts on and from Kashmir, representing the conflict in myriad ways. Her monograph on this research project is going to come out soon. Apart from that, Ghosh is the co-editor of the anthology: Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Reenvisioning (2022). This volume encompasses various themes of translation, authorship, the Nobel controversy between the two writers, and also focuses on art, performativity and rethinking modernism in the two iconic writers. Dr. Ghosh has been published in the field of postcolonial and decolonial studies, gender and agency, colonialism and representation, and border studies, especially the Indo-Bangladeshi borderlands and enclaves. Ghosh has a PhD in postcolonial studies and South Asian literature from Drew University, and has been a lecturer at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Christine Kugelmann, Instructor
Christine I. Kugelmann earned her BA in English from California State University – Long Beach, her MA in English from the University of Toledo, and her PhD in Texts and Technology at UCF with an area of specialization in Scientific and Technical Communication and an interdisciplinary study in Instructional Design. She has over 22 years of teaching and course design experience in technical communication, literature, composition, and speech in face-to-face, hybrid, and online modalities. She won the 2021 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach Best Course Design award for her COM 221 HYB Technical Report Writing course. Her research interests include Critical Digital Pedagogy, accessible course design, and technology in the classroom. Her articles include a series on COVID-style teaching published in Inside Higher Ed, a book chapter published in PARS in Practice: More Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors (2020), and “How to Build a Robust Course in Canvas” (2018), and she has presented at national conferences, such as Computers & Writing and the Conference on College Composition & Communication.

Vincent Robles, Lecturer
Vincent Robles teaches technical communication courses for the English department. He has a BA in English from Wayland Baptist University, an MA in technical communication from Texas Tech University, and a PhD in Rhetoric and Professional Communication from Iowa State University. He has publications in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. He primarily researches professional communication pedagogy and marketing communication.

Blake Sanz, Assistant Professor
Blake Sanz is the author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling, a collection of short stories that won the 2021 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was also named a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and shortlisted for Stanford’s William Saroyen International Fiction Prize. His short stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Joyland, Ecotone, Puerto del Sol, and other literary magazines. He and his writing have been featured in Poets & Writers, Writers’ Digest, Electric Literature, and other national forums. He is originally from Louisiana and now teaches fiction at UCF.

Pavithra Tantrigoda, Assistant Professor
Pavithra Tantrigoda holds a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University. She has most recently been an American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. Her primary research interests are in environmental humanities, postcolonial studies, and law. Her scholarly work has appeared in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies and Postcolonial Text.

Veronica Joyner, Assistant Professor

Peter Kispert, Assistant Professor

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

Yukari Nakamura-Deacon, Instructor
Yukari Nakamura-Deacon has a MA in Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a MA in Education from Carthage College. She has taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced Japanese language courses and has taught calligraphy. She has also developed a brand-new course: Japanese through Anime, Gaming and Technology. Her research interests include student acquisition of pragmatic Japanese sentence final expressions and the effectiveness/implementation of student-led classroom activities. She is interested in implementing curriculum development to facilitate students’ language learning such as utilization of Anime. Prior to UCF, she taught at the University of Florida as a senior lecturer for 9 years, at Arizona State University as an instructor for 2 years and served as a board member of the Association of Florida Teachers of Japanese for 3 years.

Linda Núñez, Instructor
Linda Núñez earned her BA in Spanish from the University of Central Florida and went on to teach in Orlando for over 20 years. She holds an MFA from Troy University and an MA in Spanish from Florida State University. Linda is currently a doctoral candidate at FSU. Her research interests center on intertextuality, colonialism, and trauma as depicted in the writings by Puerto Rican women authors.

Allison Milner, Assistant Professor
Dr. Ally Milner earned her PhD in Spanish Linguistics from the University of Houston, where she also completed her MA. She also holds a graduate certificate in Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language. Her research focuses on sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of U.S. Spanish, seeking to better understand and contextualize these dialectal differences in the context of heritage and mixed language classrooms. Integrating her experience with language pedagogy and a further interest in Spanish phonology, she has published in Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics regarding the perception of diphthong and hiatus contrast in second language and heritage Spanish speakers. Her dissertation work encompassed an analysis of impersonal forms in spoken U.S. Spanish, drawing from oral sociolinguistic corpus data. An expansion of this project seeks to further analyze how different generations of U.S. Spanish speakers conceptualize impersonality and integrate contemporary big data analysis into corpus linguistics. She is excited to share her experience with language pedagogy and expertise in applied linguistics with the UCF Community.

Nathalie Amato, Visiting Instructor

Wenhong Teel, Visiting Instructor

School of Performing Arts

Ryan Boehme, Visiting Instructor
Ryan Boehme stays active as a performer and educator of percussion in the southeast. He recently served as the Acting Principal Percussionist of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and he has performed with several other orchestras in Alabama and Florida. He also performs with A Brothers Revival, a touring tribute band that performs the music of The Allman Brothers. As an educator, Boehme has worked with high school and university marching percussion ensembles in Alabama and Florida. Before graduating from UCF with his Master of Arts in 2019, he served as the Teaching Assistant for the Marching Knights Drumline. Boehme is completing his Doctor of Music degree in Percussion Performance at Florida State University.

John Gardiner, Assistant Professor
John Gardiner has appeared on Broadway as Tommy DeVito (Jersey Boys) and Carmine (A Bronx Tale). John spent over a decade on the road with the Broadway National tours of The Lion King (Timon), Jersey Boys (Tommy DeVito), A Bronx Tale (Rudy the Voice), and Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (Neil Bogart). Some of his regional favorites include Tuacahn Theatre (Million Dollar Quartet, Sam Phillips), Alabama Shakespeare Festival (Arms & The Man, Bluntschli – the man), Geva Theatre (A Christmas Carol, Young Scrooge), and St. Michael’s Playhouse (Big River, Huck). John had the pleasure of collaborating with Chazz Palminteri, Alan Menken, Jerry Zaks and Robert De Niro, on the Broadway workshop and development of A Bronx Tale. He earned his BA from Northern Kentucky University and his MFA from The University of Alabama / Alabama Shakespeare Festival. After 25 years of performing in and out of New York City, John Gardiner is thrilled to be coming to UCF to help the next generation of artists unlock their potential.

Sun-A Park, Assistant Professor
Korean-American pianist Sun-A Park completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at The Juilliard School with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Matti Raekallio. In 2014, she completed the prestigious Konzertexamen program in Hannover Musikhoschule (Germany). Park is a recipient of the Parisot Prize at the Yale School of Music, where she studied from 2014 to 2017. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in 2020. Currently, Park is an Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Central Florida. She has an extensive list of accolades and awards won from competitions across the globe and has been a soloist with the Yale Philharmonia, the Sendai Symphony Orchestra, the Houston and Albany Symphonies, and other ensembles.

Department of Philosophy

Jonathan Barker, Lecturer
Jonathan Barker holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Virginia. He specializes in metaphysics and epistemology. His current research focuses on the question of when and how genealogical explanations of our beliefs undermine their rationality. He has designed and taught courses in a wide variety of areas, including ancient philosophy, philosophy of religion, applied ethics, philosophy of mind, and symbolic logic. Prior to joining the faculty at UCF, Jonathan taught philosophy at Wake Forest University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Virginia.

School of Visual Arts and Design

Bobby Aiosa, Assistant Professor
Bobby Aiosa earned his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In 2015, Aiosa joined the staff of renowned atelier Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida, Tampa. As their head of sculpture production, he worked collaboratively with leading and emerging artists to produce limited editions and unique works of art. His research is based in investigating the built environment and the constant changing urban landscape. Most recently, his sculptures and site-specific installations have focused on the relationship between the natural landscape and contemporary urbanization.

Jim Casey, Visiting Lecturer
Jim Casey has recently been hired as a Visiting Lecturer for the School of Visual Arts and Design. He will be teaching 2D and 3D Design, Design Intensive and Narrative Sculpture. He received his BFA from UCF in 1991 and his MFA from FSU in 1996. For the past 25 years, he has worked in the Themed Entertainment Business as an Artisan Sculptor and Field Art Director with Walt Disney Imagineering.

Demetrius Dukes, Assistant Professor
Demetrius Dukes is a South Florida Native, receiving his MFA in Media Technology and Entertainment from Florida Atlantic University. Beginning fall of 2022, he began an academic appointment as an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media, instructing graduate and undergraduate courses in computer animation. Prior to arriving at UCF, Demetrius taught animation courses at Columbus State University in Georgia.

K-J Mathieson, Associate Professor
A native of Glasgow, Scotland, K-J Mathieson is an animator and educator with extensive experience in concept development, 3D technology, and animation production. As an active member of the global animation community, her work has screened in over 150 international and national film festivals, including animation, children’s, and fantasy festivals. Her animated shorts were “Official Selections” at multiple Academy-Awards, British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), and Canadian Screen Award qualifying events. Prior to UCF, K-J was an Associate Professor of Animation at Columbia College Chicago, teaching over fifty classes in animation, ranging from introduction to advanced thesis solo and group projects. She served a key role in creating a new BA, BFA, and Minor in Animation. K-J is also a member of Women in Animation, ACM SIGGRAPH, The American Film Institute (AFI), and enjoys serving on the professional jury for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (“CICFF”), the first Academy®-qualifying children’s film festival in the world.

Christina Christie, Visiting Lecturer

Nicholas Kalemba, Visiting Lecture

Anthony Mancuso, Visiting Lecturer

Dillon Williams, Lecturer

Department of Writing and Rhetoric

Joel Bergholtz, Instructor
Joel Bergholtz was born and raised in Florida. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in 2014 with Honors, earning Summa Cum Laude and majoring in both English: Editing, Writing, and and Media and Interdisciplinary Humanities (with concentrations in Human Rights, American History, and Philosophy). He then earned his Master’s degree from Ball State University in English: Rhetoric and Composition before returning to FSU for his PhD in English: Rhetoric and Composition. His research is motivated by a desire to uncover and analyze the current mechanisms by which individuals make meaning in and of the “public sphere,” a space and concept that he approaches according to both its physical and digital components. Beyond this academic description, Joel is dedicated to conducting research that contributes to a more compassionate understanding of the world and its people.

Rebecca Watkins, Visiting Instructor
Rebecca Watkins is a visiting instructor with the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF. She holds an MA in English from Indiana-University-Purdue-University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) and a BS in Secondary English Education from Indiana University, Bloomington. Rebecca is entering her fourth year in the Creative Writing PhD Program at Florida State University and working on her dissertation, Dollhouse Dream and Other Broken Things.

Lisa Baird, Visiting Lecturer