New Leadership

Barbara Heath, Department of Anthropology

Professor Heath’s research is focused on archaeological method and theory, historical archaeology of eastern North America and the Caribbean, archaeology of the African diaspora, colonialism, historic landscapes, material culture, public archaeology and interpretation, Thomas Jefferson.

Viktor Nemykin, Department of Chemistry

Nemykin received his BS and MS in chemistry from the Kyiv State University and a PhD from the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine working on transition-metal and lanthanide phthalocyanines. He received a highly competitive postdoctoral fellowship, supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, which he completed at Tohoku University working on the preparation of phthalocyanines and their analogs. After completing another postdoctoral program at Duquesne University in bio-inorganic chemistry, Nemykin joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota Duluth. In 2016, Nemykin was recruited as a Department Head to the University of Manitoba. He joined the UT chemistry department in August 2020.

Ed Perfect, Interim, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Professor Perfect specializes in Vadose zone Hydrology. He joined the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in August 2001. As a member of the department’s Hydrogeology Research Group, he is actively involved in both research and teaching. His research interests are centered on relations between pore space geometry and soil/rock hydraulic and chemical transport properties, as well as understanding the scale-dependency of these relations. His research is, or has been, supported by the Petroleum Research Fund, National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, and US Department of Defense.

Misty Anderson, Department of English

Anderson is a professor of English, the James R. Cox Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, and holds courtesy appointments as an adjunct professor in both the theatre and religious studies departments. Anderson is the author of Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, and the Borders of the Self (Johns Hopkins, 2012) and Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Negotiating Marriage on the London Stage (Palgrave, 2002). She a co-editor of the two-volume Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama (2017), and Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Performance (2019).

Derek Alderman, Interim, Department of Geography

Professor Alderman’s research interests are cultural and historical geography with a specific focus on public memory, race, heritage tourism, social/spatial justice, and politics of geographic mobility and travel–all with the goal of advancing our understanding of the American South (southeastern United States). Much of his work focuses on the histories, memory-work, commemorative activism, and place-making efforts of African Americans as they assert and claim civil rights, their right to belong with public spaces, and the power to remember the past and shape the American landscape on their own terms. In particular, his interests focus on critical place name studies and using cultural struggles over the naming and renaming of streets, schools, parks, and other public spaces as important lens for understanding the unresolved place of race, memory, and identity in America.

Luis Cano, Interim, Department of Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures

Professor Cano teaches Spanish. He received his PhD from The Pennsylvania State University in 1999. He specializes in contemporary Latin American Literatures, with an emphasis on popular genres such as science fiction, detective fiction and the fantastic.

Christopher McNulty, School of Art

A dual citizen of France and the US, Christopher McNulty is a visual artist who creates sculptural objects, video, and works on paper. His current work explores how environmental space penetrates the body, creating relationships among individuals, species, and objects.

Stephanie Bohon, Department of Sociology

Professor Bohon has been at the University of Tennessee since 2006. She received a PhD in sociology and demography from Penn State in 1998. Her specialty areas include demography, immigration, Latino sociology, urban sociology, and quantitative methodology. Bohon’s most recent work examines the growth and needs of Latino migrants in the South, focusing on the difference between Latino migrant adjustment in traditional and emerging gateways.

Shayla Nunnally, Africana Studies

Nunnally received her BA from North Carolina Central University and her PhD from Duke University. She last taught at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in American politics and political behavior, with concentrations in African American politics and race and politics and political behavior, and with research interests in political trust and African American political development (political socialization and political institutions). Nunnally is also the new director of the Africana Studies program.

Gregor Kalas, Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Professor Kalas investigates the architecture of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages with a particular focus on the post-classical adaptations of ancient buildings and monuments. In his publications, Kalas explores the reuse of ancient structures by highlighting that architectural reconstruction engages with historical memories and the reconstitution of lapsed time. His book, The Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity: Transforming Urban Space (University of Texas Press, 2015), traces the political significance of reestablishing links to the venerable past in downtown Rome during Late Antiquity.