Program Administration
Program Chair
P. Kyle McCarter William Foxwell Albright Chair in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, has chaired the MLA Program since 2003. His research and teaching interest include Biblical Studies, Northwest Semitic philology, and Dead Sea scrolls. Dr. McCarter also teaches course in the MLA Program including King Arthur, Lost Books of the Bible, and Ancient Medicine, and Dead Sea Scrolls
Associate Program Chair
Melissa Hilbish Director, Center for Liberal Arts in AAP, and the Associate Program Chair for the MLA Program. Her Masters and Phd are in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park (1990). Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins in 2000, Hilbish worked as a Project Archivist at The National Trust for Historic Preservation Library Collection, as Assistant Director for Research at the American Studies Association, as a Staff Historian/Archivist at The History Factor, and as a Visting Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her teaching and research interests include Film and Culture, interdisciplinary studies, and cultural history. Courses taught in the MLA program include: Film and Public Memory, Science Fiction Film in the 20th Century, Cultural Eras: The 1950s, Cultural Eras: The 1960s, Space and the American Imagination, and Exploring the Liberal Arts.
Advisory Board
The faculty advisory board is drawn from both Johns Hopkins and area cultural institutions. The board meets twice a year to advise on matters of curriculum, program requirements, and structure. The Advisory Board is chaired by the MLA Program Chair. This is an active advisory board. Most members of the board teach in the program and direct graduate projects and thesis. In addition the group is frequently consulted on matters related to the teaching and curriculum of the program
Chair: P. Kyle McCarter William Foxwell Albright Chair in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, has chaired the MLA Program since 2003. His research and teaching interest include Biblical Studies, Northwest Semitic philology, and Dead Sea scrolls. Dr. McCarter also teaches course in the MLA Program including King Arthur, Lost Books of the Bible, and Ancient Medicine, and Dead Sea Scrolls
Ex-Officio: Melissa Hilbish, Director of the Center for Liberal Arts and Associate Program Chair, MLA Program
Members
George Fisher is Emeritus Professor of Geology at Johns Hopkins University. After studying geology at Dartmouth College (A.B, 1959) and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D., 1963), he taught in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins from 1966 to 2005. He also served as Dean of Arts and Sciences from 1983 to 1987, and as Director of the Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Global Studies from 2002 to 2005. Dr. Fisher’s early research focused on the geology of the Appalachian Mountain system and on the kinetics of metamorphic processes, especially on how rates of heat flow, diffusion, and chemical reaction can jointly influence textures and structures in deeply buried rocks. During the last fifteen years, his interests have shifted to questions of how the Earth functions as a system, how humans can learn to live within the limits of the Earth system, and how natural science and religious thought can jointly shape our response to those questions. His interest in the links between science and religion led Dr. Fisher to study theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University (M.A., 2002). In retirement, he continues to teach courses on nature, religious thought, and responsible living in Johns Hopkins’ part time Master of Liberal Arts program, and in the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at Saint Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore. He also serves on the boards of two national organizations devoted to promoting the science-religion conversation, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), and Metanexus. This summer he served as co-convener of IRAS’s annual conference, on the topic Emergence: Nature’s Mode of Creativity.
Mary E. Fissell - Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the Johns Hopkins University. European health care and popular medicine, 17th and 18th centuries; early modern gender and the body. Publications include: Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2004). Co-Editor, Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
Neil Hertz - Professor (English): Romantic and modern literature, Freud and psychoanalytic theory. Professor Hertz has been at Johns Hopkins University since 1982. He chaired the Humanities Center from 1993-1999, and the Master of Liberal Arts Program from 1999 until 2003.
Edward Papenfuse - Maryland State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patents since 1975. As director of the extensive activities of the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, Dr. Papenfuse is responsible for the Archives' vast collection of government and private materials. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including In Pursuit of Profit: The Annapolis Merchants in the Era of the American Revolution (1975) and, with Joseph M. Coale, The Hammond-Harwood House Atlas of Historical Maps of Maryland, 1608-1908 (1982). Dr. Papenfuse received his undergraduate degree from the American University, an M.A. from the University of Colorado, and his Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University.
Jonathan Pevsner - received an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in the Dept. of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He pursued postdoctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. In 1995 he joined the faculty of the Kennedy Krieger Institute (Dept. of Neurology) and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Dept. of Neuroscience). He holds joint appointments in the Division of Health Sciences Informatics (School of Medicine) and the Dept. of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health). His lab studies the molecular basis of childhood brain disorders and has developed bioinformatics tools for data analysis including DRAGON, SNOMAD, SNPscan, and SNPtrio. Dr. Pevsner is author of a textbook, Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics (2003). He was awarded Teacher of the Year (2001 and 2005) and the Professors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching (2003) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He lectures widely on Leonardo da Vinci (New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Art Museum, Philadephia Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum), teaches a course on Leonardo, and has published articles on Leonardo’s studies of the brain and soul.
Elizabeth Rodini – Associate Director of the Museums and Society Program since 2006 and Senior Lecturer in History of Art, as well as Adjunct Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Rodini teaches courses in Renaissance art, the history of the print, museum history and theory, and museum practice. Her own research is in the area of Venetian art, and she has published articles in Art History and Word & Image, as well as the recent exhibition catalogue, Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500-1800 with Rebecca Zorach. She serves on the Johns Hopkins Arts Coordinating Council and is active in building connections between the university and local museums. Before coming to Hopkins, Rodini was the Mellon Projects Curator at the University of Chicago's David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, where she was in charge of faculty and student curated exhibitions, research, and catalogue publications. She received her doctorate in Italian Renaissance art and architecture from the University of Chicago.
George Scheper – George Scheper is Professor of Humanities at the Community College of Baltimore County–Essex and teaches interdisciplinary courses for The Johns Hopkins School of Professional Studies. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in English Literature, and his primary area of scholarship is cultural studies, with publications on Biblical themes, landscape architecture, popular culture, and the encounter of cultures in the New World. DR. Scheper also won one of The 2004 Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Awards. During his tenure he also has done extensive research on ancient American civilizations, including Meso-American and particularly Mayan culture. He has received seven grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, taking 24 college instructors at a time to Mexico and Guatemala for six-week seminars that explore archaeological sites, ancient ruins, contemporary traditional villages, schools and universities.
Ray Sprenkle has been a member of the history and theory faculties of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins since 1973. Between 1981 and 1995 he was also the host of “On Music” broadcast by Public Radio. A composer, Sprenkle’s works have been performed locally, nationally, and internationally. He is published by Boosey and Hawkes and Atlantic Press. CNN Television used Sprenkle’s music in two of its productions in 1999 and 2000: The John Glenn Story, A Return to Space, and Return of the Hero. Ray Sprenkle won the Master of Liberal Arts Program teaching award in 2004.
Gary Vikan - Director of the Walters Art Gallery since April, 1994, after serving as Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Medieval Art at the Walters since 1985. He has participated in scholarly conferences worldwide, and has published and lectured extensively on topics ranging from early Christian pilgrimages, to icons, to medicine and magic, to Elvis Presley. He is Adjunct Professor at The Johns Hopkins University. He is an internationally known scholar and has curated many of the most significant exhibitions in the history of the Walters, including Silver Treasure from Early Byzantium, Holy Image, Holy Space: Icons and Frescoes from Greece, Gates of Mystery: The Art of Holy Russia, and African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia.
Ron Walters – Social and Cultural History of the United States with special interest in radicalism, reform, race, and popular culture. He has been at the Johns Hopkins University since 1970, where he is presently Professor of History. He took his undergraduate degree at Stanford University and received my PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971. My earliest research was in American abolitionism and in the history of reform movements more generally. The result was two books, The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830 (1976, 1984), and American Reformers (1978; revised edition, 1997). In addition He has published three edited works: Primers for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian America (1974; reprt., with new preface, 2000); A Black Woman's Odyssey: The Narrative of Nancy Prince (1990), and Scientific Authority and Twentieth-Century America (1997), as well as numerous articles and book reviews in scholarly journals. At Hopkins, Walters has won two major teaching awards, been elected twice to the faculty Academic Council, and held numerous University, Arts and Sciences, and Peabody Conservatory committee assignments, including a term on the Provost's Committee on the Status of Women when it was first constituted. Walters also served two years as Special Assistant to the Provost and was first chair of the university-wide Diversity Leadership Council, 1997-1999.
Susan Forscher Weiss http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/cons/consfac/cons-mushist-fac.html- Musicology, The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. B.A., Goucher College; M.A., Smith College; Ph.D., University of Maryland. Additional studies, Juilliard School of Music, University of Michigan. Publications include articles in The Journal of The American Musicological Society, chapters in scholarly books such as Food and Eating in Medieval Society (1998), the book Bologna Q 18: An Introduction and Facsimile Edition (1999), as well as entries in the forthcoming edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Awards include National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 1986; American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant; Mu Phi Epsilon Musicological Research Award, 1990; John Ward Fellowship, Harvard University, 1991; Folger Shakespeare Library Fellow, 1992. Council of The American Musicological Society, 1995-97.