Staff
Jessica Winegar | Director
- 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.
Tom Burke | Assistant Director
- Phone: 847-491-7946
- Office Location: Kresge Hall 2350
- E-mail: thomas.burke@northwestern.edu
Tom Burke received a BA 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, is forthcoming in March 2019 from Madhat Press. www.tsburke.com
Contact Tom for questions regarding the Kaplan Humanities Scholars Program, the Odyssey Project, the Chicago Humanities Festival's Morris and Dolores Kohl Kaplan Northwestern Day, Humanities Minor, the Faculty Fellowship program, graduate assistantships 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 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 Undergraduate and Graduate Fellowships, Artist in Residence program, public humanities initiatives, Undergraduate Curriculum, and media requests.
Wendy L. Wall | Interim Kaplan Scholars Coordinator
- Phone: 847-467-3971
- E-mail: w-wall@northwestern.edu
- Wendy Wall (Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English and Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence) teaches and undertakes research on Renaissance literature and culture. She has published articles on topics as wide-ranging as editorial theory, gender, poetry, national identity, authorship, Shakespeare, food studies, domesticity, theatrical practice, women's writing, and Jell-O. Author of Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen (2015), The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (1993), and Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (2002), Professor Wall has served as co-editor of Renaissance Drama and president of the Shakespeare Association of America. When not at work on a digital, open access edition of the amazing poems of Renaissance writer Hester Pulter (entitled The Pulter Project), she enjoys participating in public humanities programs, working with organizations such as the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Prison Neighborhood Arts Program.
Rebekah Bryer | Graduate Assistant
- E-mail: rebekahbryer2022@u.northwestern.edu
- Rebekah (Beka) Bryer is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern. Her research interests are focused on the various intersections of performance and public memory, particularly in American culture from the 18th century to the contemporary moment. Her dissertation project examines how memorials facilitated and helped construct contested performances of American national identity in the wake of the Civil War. Outside of research at Northwestern, she is the co-convener of the Northwestern University Graduate Public Humanities Colloquium, serves on the Center for Civic Engagement’s Graduate Student Advisory Council, and has worked as a dramaturg for Wirtz Center productions. She has been published in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies and The Atlas of Boston History (2019) and has been awarded fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Mellon Cluster in Rhetoric and Public Culture at Northwestern University. She received her B.A. in History and Theatre and Dance Studies from Wheaton College (MA) and her M.A. in Public History from Northeastern University. Prior to Northwestern, she worked as a stage manager and in audience services at theatres in Maine and Massachusetts.. In her role as the 2020-2021 graduate assistant at the Kaplan Institute, Beka will work to develop public humanities outreach and career development opportunities for graduate students.