Staff
Kelly Wisecup | Interim Director
- Office Location: Kresge 2350
- E-mail: kelly.wisecup@northwestern.edu
- Kelly Wisecup is a literary and cultural historian whose work brings together early American studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and histories of books and archives. She is a professor in the Department of English and affiliate faculty at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Her research seeks to understand the many avenues through which Indigenous peoples—published authors and otherwise—created, interacted with, used, and read books, manuscripts, newspapers, and other texts. Her recent scholarship traces relationships between 18-19th-century Indigenous literatures and colonial archives, examining how Indigenous communities made compilations, intentionally-assembled texts like recipes, scrapbooks, and lists, and how the travels of those texts into colonial archives constituted acts of anti-colonial criticism. She teaches courses on Indigenous literatures and arts made in and about Chicago, early Native American literatures, early American literatures, and archival histories and theories. Wisecup’s most recent book is Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures (Yale, 2021).
Tom Burke | Associate Director
- 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 Chicago Humanities Festival's Morris and Dolores Kohl Kaplan Northwestern Day, Humanities Minor, the Faculty Fellowship program, graduate assistantships, public humanities initiatives, and the Humanities Plunge.
Megan Skord | Program Assistant 4
- Phone: 847-467-4303
- Office Location: Kresge Hall 2350
- E-mail: megan.skord@northwestern.edu
- Contact Megan for questions regarding Kaplan seminar room reservations, the Dialogue Series, Hot Off the Press, Kaplan Institute Lunch Colloquia (Kaplan Conversations), Research Workshops, the Future Directions Forum, and the undergraduate project prize.
Jill Mannor | Communications Coordinator
- 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 is a board member of The Seldoms, a Chicago dance company whose performances explore pressing social, political, and environmental issues. Her volunteer work has included 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.
Alejandra Uslenghi | Kaplan Scholars Coordinator
- E-mail: a-uslenghi@northwestern.edu
Alejandra Uslenghi is a literary and visual culture scholar specializing in modern Latin America, comparative modernisms, and avant-garde studies. She is associate professor in the Spanish and Portuguese department and core faculty in the Comparative Literary Studies and Critical Theory programs. She is affiliated with the Global Avant-Garde and Modernisms Studies Cluster and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. Her work spans the intersections between literature and the visual arts, in particular the discursive impact of photography from its origins in the 19th century to its reception and transformation in the 20th century. With a background in critical theory and philosophies of the image, her research questions the ways in which literature and photography revealed, shaped, and have taught us to see the world around us. Uslenghi is the author of Latin America at fin-de-siècle Universal Exhibitions: Modern Cultures of Visuality (Palgrave, 2016); the editor of Walter Benjamin: Culturas de la imagen; and co-editor of La cámara como método: La fotografía moderna de Grete Stern y Horacio Coppola (Eterna Cadencia, Buenos Aires, 2011 and 2021).
Bridgette Hulse | Public Humanities Graduate Assistant
- Bridgette Hulse is a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Northwestern’s Anthropology Department, focusing on medieval archaeology in England. Her research addresses the ways the medieval and early modern people of England experienced, interacted with, and created elite religious spaces by analyzing the historic graffiti they left behind. She is particularly interested in the everyday experience of religion, cathedral architecture, and the creation of space. Outside of her studies, Bridgette enjoys taking acting classes through the Piven Theatre Workshop, and uses her anthropological knowledge to analyze media, fandom, and internet culture. She received her B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from the University of Minnesota–Morris, and her M.A. in Archaeology from Durham University. During her M.A. she studied the graffiti of the Neville Tombs in Durham Cathedral. She developed 3D models of the tombs, used the project to test data techniques, and analyzed the symbols found in the inscriptions. As the 2022-2023 Graduate Assistant for the Public Humanities at the Kaplan Institute, Bridgette is excited to develop outreach and career development opportunities for graduate students and explore the public humanities as a future career path.
Wan Heo | Interdisciplinary Graduate Assistant
- Wan Heo (she/her) is a third-year Ph.D. student in Music Composition and Technology at Bienen School of Music. Originally from South Korea, her research interests are focused on the vulnerability of nature and soundscape in the country. She has been touring and recording sounds at historical sites in South Korea, which results in fixed media or ensemble with electronics works using the recorded sounds. Wan has presented those works at Composition in Asia conference, Society of Composers National Conference, North American Saxophone Alliance regional conference, National Student Electronic Music Event, and University of Miami’s Composition Colloquium. Outside of research, Wan is also a committee member at Journey Chicago, a month-long festival presenting collaborative events by diverse cultural heritage institutions that are members at Chicago Cultural Alliance, and a teacher at Korean Language School, where she teaches Korean to five to six-year-old Korean American kids. She holds a B.M. in Composition from Ewha Womans University in South Korea and a M.M. in Composition from Florida State University. Wan is excited to work as an Interdisciplinary GA at the Kaplan Institute to plan and support public events for the Public Humanities workshop and Kaplan Scholars program.
Jessica Winegar | Director (on leave 2022-2023)
- E-mail: j-winegar@northwestern.edu
- Jessica Winegar is a sociocultural anthropologist who specializes in cultural politics. She is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Core Faculty in the Program in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern. Her research and teaching draw on a range of disciplines and extend to how U.S. institutions deal with the MENA region. Winegar's body of work focuses on how people invest social arenas—such as art worlds, education, and political protest—with liberating potential, while re/producing hierarchies of gender, class, race/ethnicity, and generation. Her current book project, Counter-Revolutionary Aesthetics: How Egypt’s Uprising Faltered, examines how aesthetic forms, judgments, and practices play a central role in both delegitimizing revolutionary actions and in producing everyday right-wing attachments.