Staff: Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Staff

Office Location: Kresge 2350
E-mail: hum.director@northwestern.edu
Laura Brueck is Professor of South Asian and Comparative Literature in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and the Program in Comparative Literary Studies. Her research and teaching crosses the fields of caste and race, anti-caste literature, popular South Asian literature and literary publics, postcolonialism, and the theory and practice of translation. Current projects include her book Indian Pulp: The Local and the Global in Indian Detective Fictions, a co-edited anthology of essays on caste and race, and a series of essays on the global lexicon of caste. She is co-editor of the new Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature (2024).

Phone: 847-491-7946
Office Location: Kresge Hall 2350
E-mail: thomas.burke@northwestern.edu
Tom Burke received a B.A. from Union College and an MFA in creative writing from UMass Amherst. In the past, he has worked for the Chinua Achebe Center at Bard College, the Summer Literary Seminars in Russia and Kenya, and Words without Borders, which advocates for literature in translation. Tom also teaches creative writing at Northwestern, and his novel, Eastbound into the Cosmos, was published in April 2019 from MadHat Press. www.tsburke.com

Contact Tom for questions regarding the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program, the Faculty Fellowship program, postdoctoral fellowships, graduate assistantships, and public humanities initiatives.

Phone: 847-467-4303
Office Location: Kresge 2350
E-mail: leon.hedstrom@northwestern.edu
Leon Hedstrom received a B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Iowa and an M.A. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has previous experience in everything from graphic design to literary magazine production to tow truck driving. You are likely to find him watching any number of bar bands and/or experimental sound performances across the greater Chicago area.

Contact Leon for questions regarding Research Workshops and Kaplan Institute seminar room availability.

Phone: 847-467-3970
Office Location: Kresge Hall 2350
E-mail: jill.mannor@northwestern.edu
Jill Mannor has a background in graphic design, marketing, advertising and development. In the nonprofit world, she worked to develop the capabilities, audience, and culture of Chicago Children’s Museum, Kohl Children’s Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo and Imagine Chicago. In the agency space, she managed projects and creative teams for clients in cultural/arts, microfinance, and higher education. Jill's volunteer work has included The Seldoms dance company; EPIC: Engaging Philanthropy, Inspiring Creatives; Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE); Sit Stay Read; and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance. Jill received a B.A. in English from Hope College.
Contact Jill for questions regarding Co-sponsorships, Franke Fellowships (Undergraduate and Graduate), Artist in Residence program, Undergraduate Curriculum, and media requests.

Jayme Collins leads the Public Humanities Graduate Practicum. Her research encompasses topics in literary studies and environmental humanities and appears in academic and public venues. She has two active research projects: A book project called Composing in the Field recovers a genealogy of experimental material poetics since 1960 that engage with discrete transformations in land use and management over the period, and a book and audio documentary project called Archival Ecologies tells stories about how communities are grappling with the endangerment and loss of large and small cultural collections caused by climate change-exacerbated natural disasters. Prior to joining Kaplan, Dr. Collins was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, where she was a project leader at Blue Lab, an environmental storytelling and research group. You can find her work wherever you get your podcasts, as well as in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Inscription: The Journal of Material Text, Wordsworth Circle, and Edge Effects.

Adam Syvertsen earned his Ph.D. in English from Northwestern in 2024, where he also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English before joining the Kaplan Institute as a postdoctoral fellow. His research brings together narratology, critical theory, and the history of political economy to investigate representations of utopia in the Atlantic World since the late eighteenth century, arguing for renewed attention to how forms of narrative speculation that emerge in the long nineteenth century continue to disrupt and construct our contemporary perceptions of political, economic, and social possibility. When not at Kaplan, Adam is an instructor for the Illinois Humanities’ adult education program Odyssey Project/Proyecto Odisea. On weekends, he can often be found watching Samurai films at the Music Box Theatre, or sitting in a coffee shop pretending to understand what aufheben means.

Selected Publication:
“‘I’ll wait no longer’: Emigration, Speculation, and Utopia in Martin R. Delany’s Blake.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Vol. 12, No. 1. Spring 2024. pp. 503-530.