Colleagues,

As July officially begins the 2022-23 fiscal year, I take this opportunity to formally announce the appointments, reappointments, and extensions of CHASS unit chairs and directors as well as thank our outgoing unit heads for their dedication to our academic mission and research, and service to our students, faculty, staff, and our greater Inland community.

The leadership structure below has been reviewed and approved by UCR’s Academic Personnel Office and shared with Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Watkins.

For a full list of all CHASS department chairs and center/program directors, please visit our main college website.

A formal announcement of other new leadership roles in CHASS will follow in mid-summer. Today, please join me in congratulating our new and continuing department chairs.

Yours sincerely,

Daryle Williams
Professor of History and Dean
College of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
University of California, Riverside

NEW APPOINTMENTS
	Department of Art Lynne Marsh Chair, 3-year appointment Outgoing Chair: Jim Isermann  Associate Professor Lynne Marsh received her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal and her MA at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work is held in public collections including the National Gallery of Canada; Remai Modern; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queens University; and Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.   Working with moving image, performance, and installation, Marsh’s works develop out of an ongoing inquiry into specific sites of human spectacle. Her works capture the behind-the-scenes workings and turn the camera onto those subjects whose labour and gestures support and mediate events in these locations. In doing so, her works address the political dimension of its scenography. Marsh’s formal and conceptual strategies emphasize the camera’s performance as a means to reconfigure social space, presenting the mechanics that create an experience as a type of theatre or performance in its own right.
	Department of Dance Anthea Kraut Interim Chair, 1-year appointment Outgoing Chair: Joel Smith Professor Anthea Kraut successfully served as Chair of the Department of Dance from 2015 – 2018 and currently serves as Department Vice-Chair. Kraut will be returning as Chair for a one-year appointment. Professor Kraut teaches courses in critical dance studies.  Her book, Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance, was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press and won the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2016 Outstanding Book Award, the Congress on Research in Dance’s Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research, the 2016 Biennial Sally Banes Publication Award from the American Society for Theatre Research, the 2017 Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics, and Honorable Mention for the American Society for Theatre Research’s Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History.  Kraut’s articles and essays have been published in the edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reeanctment, The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, and Worlding Dance, and in The International Journal of Screendance, The Scholar & Feminist Online, and Theatre Studies. Her teaching interests include U.S. dance history, critical race theory, and methods and theories of dance studies.
	Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies Brandon Robinson Chair, 3-year appointment Outgoing Chair: Jane Ward A former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Associate Professor Brandon Robinson broadly focuses their work on studying non-heteronormative gender and sexualities. The majority of this research is on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, especially poor LGBTQ people and/or LGBTQ people of color. Robinson takes an intersectional analytical approach in their research, and they implement a queer of color critique to investigate how class and race intertwine with gender and sexuality in LGBTQ people’s lives. Robinson draws on a range of interdisciplinary methods such as ethnographic methodologies, qualitative interviews, content and discourse analysis of online advertisements and personal profiles, survey design, as well as quantitative analysis. Their solo-authored book, Coming Out to the Streets: LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness (University of California Press, November 2020), exemplifies this implementation of intersectional analyses in their examination of how processes around gender and sexuality interconnect with processes of racial inequality, poverty, and experiences of homelessness.
	Department of History Steven Hackel Chair, 1-year appointment Outgoing Chair: Michele Salzman Professor Steven Hackel's research specializes on the Spanish Borderlands, the American West, colonial California, and California Indians. He is especially focused on the examination of Native life in California during the colonial period, the study of California missions and missionaries, and the creation of new online and digital resources that would help build and shape the field of early California history. He has published a biography on Fray Junipero Serra, the principal founder of California's mission system, and a monograph on Indian life in the California missions, as well as numerous essays, a textbook, and two edited volumes.  He is the general editor of the Early California Population Project and the Project Director for the Early California Cultural Atlas. He co-curated the Huntington Library’s international exhibition, “Junípero Serra and the Legacy of the California Missions.”
	Department of Music Walter Clark Interim Chair. Summer and Fall 2022 Outgoing Chair: Rogério Budasz In addition to directing Center for Iberian and Latin American Music, Professor Walter Clark's service to the university has included two three-year stints on the Committee on Academic Personnel and five years as chair of the Music Department.  He is currently the Faculty Athletics Representative, the chief liaison between the Athletics Department and the Chancellor.    Clark was the recipient of a coveted Kemper Award for Teaching Excellence at KU in 2000, and in addition to the Fulbright, he has received Del Amo Foundation and NEH grants.  In 2016, King Felipe VI of Spain conferred on him the title of Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica (Commander of the Order of Isabel the Catholic), a Spanish knighthood, in recognition of his efforts to promote Spanish music and culture.
	Department of Music Jonathan Ritter Chair, 4.5-year appointment starting Winter 2023 Associate Professor Jonathan Ritter is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on the indigenous and Afro-Hispanic musical cultures of Andean South America. Ritter teaches numerous courses on Native American, Latin American, and other musical traditions. He serves as director of Mayupatapi, the UCR Andean Music Ensemble and as Director of the Latin American Studies Program. Ritter’s work, as both a scholar and a teacher, addresses broad questions of how musical expressions are implicated in the work of cultural memory and political activism, particularly during times of political violence. Ritter’s scholarship on Andean, Afro-Ecuadorian, and Native American musics has appeared in numerous academic journals, edited collections, and encyclopedias. He was the founder and director of a multidisciplinary performance series, Fowler Out Loud!, at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
	Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance David Biggs Director, 3-year appointment Outgoing Chair: Christina Schwenkel David Biggs is a Professor of Southeast Asian and environmental history. He completed his PhD in History with concentrations in modern Southeast Asia, environmental history and historical geography at the University of Washington in 2004. His research broadly explores the environmental history and techno-politics of Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries, and his applied work contributes to projects concerned with such issues as toxic waste cleanups, de-militarization, and various public history projects associated with climate resiliency and biodiversity efforts as well as California-based studies with his students.
	Department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production Keun-Pyo (Root) Park Chair, 5-year appointment Outgoing Chairs: Bella Merlin and Robin Russin Associate Professor Root Park teaches directing and film production and has a diverse background as an independent filmmaker, theatre director, and actor. Park has also taught film and video production at the University of Iowa and Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Currently, he serves on the CHASS Executive Committee.   Park's most recent credits include The Years, Prayer Wish, Starry Night, Wake, Mosquito Incense, and Getting to Know. His short films won the Eastman Kodak Scholarship Grand Prize Award and have been played in numerous film festivals including Cannes International Film Festival as part of the Kodak Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, Austin Film Festival, Jackson Hall, Hawaii, Slamdance, Lyon Asian Film Festival, Asiana International Short Film Festival, and Mis-en-scen.
REAPPOINTMENTS
	Department of Comparative Literature & Languages Jeffrey Sacks Chair, 3-year reappointment Associate Professor Jeffrey Sacks is completing his fifth year as Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages.  Sacks writes and teaches around a series of questions, with which he is engaged in various ways, separately and together, and which he lists as follows: (1) poetics, (2) philology, (3) violence and the law, (4) Arabic poetry, (5) medieval Arabic philosophy, (6) Arab Jewish writing, (7) colonialism and the state, (8), deconstruction, (9) Ibn Khaldun, (10) Arabic and Islamic studies, (11) the question of Palestine, and (12) loss.  He has served as the Academic Senate Chair of the Committee on Committees.  He will continue to build upon the recommendation of the graduate program external review and provide leadership in advancing a more inclusive and collegial department.
	Department of Hispanic Studies Benjamin Liu Interim Chair, 1-year reappointment Professor Benjamin Liu has served as Interim Chair since 2021. He studies the literatures and cultures of the medieval Iberian peninsula. He is the author of Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d’Escarnho e de Mal Dizer (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 2004), articles in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Medieval Encounters, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, La Corónica, and Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, as well as several book chapters, the most recent of which is “Ricote, Mariana y el patrón oro” in Cervantes y la economía, ed. Miguel-Ángel Galindo Martín (Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2007). His current research project considers various economic modes of interfaith relations in early Spanish literature, examining how the circulation of money and goods among Christians, Muslims, and Jews configures complex interpersonal networks among these groups. He is also developing new research on travel literature and trade in the Middle Ages.
	Department of Religious Studies Melissa Wilcox  Chair, 5-year reappointment Melissa M. Wilcox, Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies, has served as Department Chair for the last three years. She is the author or editor of several books and journal issues, and numerous articles, on gender, sexuality, and religion. Her transdisciplinary research program focuses on queer and transgender studies in religion, with particular emphasis on the U.S. in the context of transnational queer and religious politics. Her latest book, Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody, opens the door to a new world of religion and social activism, which could be adapted to a range of political movements, individual inclinations, and community settings.
EXTENSIONS
	Department of Economics Steven Helfand Chair, 1-year extension Professor Steven Helfand has been chair of the Economics Department since July 2017.  Steven’s research areas include focus on Developmental Economics, Agricultural Economics, Brazil, and Latin America more broadly.  He is the recipient of the 2010-11 Distinguished Teaching Award for the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.  He was the Director of the UC Education Abroad Program in Brazil, 2006-09, and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program, 2002 – 2006.
	Middle East and Islamic Studies Muhamad Ali Director, 1-year extension Associate Professor Muhamad Ali has been an academic since 2007 in UCR's Religious Studies Department. Born and raised to a Batavian mother and a Bantenese father in Jakarta,  Ali was the first generation to get a college education in his extended family. He was educated in a modern madrasah and pesantren in Jakarta and West Java before attending the State Institute for Islamic Studies, specializing in the Qur'anic interpretation or tafsir and hadith. Ali took a MM-CAAE, a joint program of international management offered by the University Grenoble Paris and the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. He pursued an MSc degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh University, Scotland, and then a PhD in History, majoring in Southeast Asia, minoring in the Middle East, World, and European histories.
	Department of Philosophy Andrews Reath Chair, 1-year extension Professor Andrews Reath has completed his fourth year as Chair of the Department of Philosophy. His research is primarily in the area of moral philosophy, in particular Kant’s practical philosophy, with additional interests in the history of moral philosophy. His work on Kant has focused on his moral psychology, his conception of autonomy, and the foundational arguments in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason.
	Department of Psychology Daniel Ozer Chair, 1-year extension Professor Daniel Ozer has just completed his third year as Department Chair of Psychology. His research appears often in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Assessment, the Journal of Personality Assessment, and most recently in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. From 2003-2008, Ozer served the campus as Associate Dean of the Graduate Division and 2013-2016 as the Vice Provost for Administrative Resolution. He has served as a member of the Senate’s Executive Council, Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction, and Committee on Research. Ozer is a Charter member of the Association for Psychological Science, has served as President of the Association for Research in Personality, and is a member of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences and the European Association for Personality Psychology.