Faculty
Joel Nathan Rosen | Associate Professor of Sociology and Media Studies; Director, Communications and Media Studies Program
Office location: Hamilton Hall, Room 101
Office phone: 610-625-7814
Email: rosenj@moravian.edu
Personal website:
Research interests and expertise
Media in Culture; American Popular Music (especially the blues and its related genres); Sport; Celebrity and Reputation; Moral Panics in the Media; American and African-American Culture; and the American South
Joel Nathan Rosen (Associate Professor of Sociology) is Program Director in Communications and Media Studies at 色中色 University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His research is premised on the relationship between human activity and human efficacy as portrayed in media and as demonstrated through such cultural idioms as sport, music, comedy, and other areas that intersect celebrity. He is the author of The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos: Shifting Attitudes toward Competition (McFarland) and From New Lanark to Mound Bayou: Owenism in the Mississippi Delta (Carolina Academic Press), is coeditor of and a contributor to a multi-volume series that explores the relationship between sport and celebrity (University Press of Mississippi), and has been published in such varied journals and anthologies as The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2009-2010, The Sociology of Sport Journal, The Journal of Mundane Behavior, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The Journal of Sport History, and Media History Monographs.
Affiliated Faculty
Gary S. Kaskowitz | Professor of Management
Office location: Benigna 212
Office phone: 610-861-1406
Email: kaskowitzg@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise: Strategic marketing; interactive marketing; the use of storytelling and archetypes in creating an identity; the morality and ethics of marketing, especially from Judeo-Christian and Western perspectives; service and interdisciplinary learning.
Debra Wetcher-Hendricks | Professor of Sociology
Office location: PPHAC 314
Office phone: 610-861-1415
Email: wetcher-hendricksd@moravian.edu
Research interests and expertise
Wetcher-Hendricks' primary academic endeavors relate to research methodology, particularly quantitative data analysis. Other areas of interest, based upon her own academic background, include gender studies, interpersonal communication and classroom pedagogy.
Dr. Wetcher-Hendricks received her B.A. from Glassboro State College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Lehigh University. Her main areas of interest are social research, statistical methods, interpersonal and mass communication, and gender relations. Courses that Dr. Wetcher-Hendricks regularly teaches include Basic Research Methods, Advanced Research Methods, Sociology of Gender, and Media Technology and Society. Her areas of interest are: social research and statistical methods, including mathematical modeling, interpersonal and mass communication. She has written a textbook entitled Analyzing Quantitative Data: An Introduction for Social Researchers. She has been listed in various editions of Marquis Who鈥檚 Who in America, Who鈥檚 Who Among American Women, and Who鈥檚 Who in the World since 2008.
Katie P. Desiderio | Professor of Management
Office location: Comenius Hall 202 * Think Tank
Office phone: 610-861-1376
Email: desideriok@moravian.edu
Dr. Desiderio, holds a MBA from Wilkes University and a Doctorate in the field of leadership with a specialization in human resource development from Barry University. Her research interests, in the area of flow and finding happiness to optimize performance at work, stimulate her overall work as a professor. As a collaborator by nature, she embraces research with fellow HRD scholars in the areas of performance, social and transitional justice issues in HRD, perceived leader behavior and organizational citizenship behaviors. After working for several years in corporate marketing, Dr. Desiderio is excited to be able to share her knowledge and experience with students in a career where she has found the essence of embracing flow at work.
Crystal N. Fodrey | Associate Professor of English
Office location: Zinzendorf 202
Office phone: 610-861-1511
Email: fodreyc@moravian.edu
Website:
Education
B.A., M.A, Western Kentucky University
Ph.D., University of Arizona
Research interests and expertise
Composition and Creative Nonfiction Theory and Pedagogy; Social Justice Rhetorics and Civic Discourse; Stylistics and Craft; Spatial Rhetoric and Place Writing; Digital Rhetoric and Multimodal Composition; Writing Program Administration and Writing in the Disciplines
Dr. Fodrey specializes in rhetoric and writing studies. Her research is grounded in her dedication to well-theorized and effective teaching and administrative practices in writing courses across the curriculum. Her recent published articles include 鈥淰oice, Transformed: The Potentialities of Style Pedagogy in the Teaching of Creative Nonfiction鈥 in The Centrality of Style and 鈥淭hrown into Theory, or How I Learned to Love Spatial Rhetoric鈥 in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Her forthcoming co-written article 鈥淒igital [Re]Visions: Turning Pedagogical Strategies into Dynamic Classroom Tactics鈥 will be featured in Kairos Praxis Wiki. Her current projects focus on the teaching and assessment of creative writing, the creative nonfiction genre as a form of social-expressivist discourse, and the potentialities of spatial immersion invention practices in the teaching of writing across the curriculum.
Dr. Fodrey has given talks on creative nonfiction pedagogy, writing teacher training, and the rhetorical functionality of social-expressivist discourse at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference, the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. She is also an active member of each of the aforementioned professional organizations.
Regarding her approach to teaching, Dr. Fodrey writes, 鈥淲hether I am teaching academic writing, technical writing, or a creative nonfiction course, fostering the development of facilitas鈥擰uintilian鈥檚 term for the ability to communicate effectively and ethically in any form, in any situation鈥攔emains the primary tenet of my teaching. I believe that compositions spanning the spectrum from literary to lab report, from primarily alphabetic to multimodal, can be taught, practiced, understood, and improved. All students are capable and need not wait for inspiration from muses in order to have valid ideas and produce writing of value to both themselves and others. With an understanding of how to analyze, enact, and occasionally disrupt conventions of audience, purpose, and genre in particular, students can best work toward becoming autonomous writers with the agency to communicate effectively in myriad forms and effect positive changes in the communities for which they write. What does my approach say about me as a teacher? It says I understand that a good rhetorician should be able to navigate multiple roles and discursive situations within a single day all while remaining true to her convictions and ethical in her presentation. It says I value my students鈥 experiences. I value their cultures. I value their differences. I value their understandings of what successful compositions look like and do in the world. And I believe in their abilities to rise to writing challenges that extend past the classroom and into the various communities and publics that comprise their realities. My students are writers first, and I鈥攁 fellow writer鈥攁m their guide through the vast and ever-changing landscape of composition.鈥
Dr. Hilde Binford | Associate Professor of Music
Office location: Hurd Campus, Brethren's House, Room 302
Office phone: 610-861-1691
Email: binfordh@moravian.edu
Research interest and expertise
Western Plainchant; Music of the Old Order Amish; Western music history, especially Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods; Traditional American music.
Hilde Binford received her BA in history and Master of Music in music history from Rice University. She then went to Stanford University, where she earned a PhD in musicology. Her dissertation was on Aquitanian introit tropes. Since then, her research has expanded to the music of the Old Order Amish. In the summer of 2005, she was the co-director of the first NEH Institute for Schoolteachers on "Bach Across the Centuries." She continues to present papers at national and international conferences, develop new interdisciplinary courses, and coordinate the biennial conference on 色中色 music. When she has time, she plays the fiddle in a contra-dance band and viol da gamba.
In her personal life, Dr. Binford spends her free time traveling with her two sons, Trent and Alex. Together, they have camped in the wetlands of Brazil, stayed in yurts and wigwams in the Canadian wilderness (during winter!), and volunteered in a poor Guatemalan community. She continues to take courses herself -- most recently in math, photography and magic.
Arash Naraghi | Professor of Philosophy
Office location: Comenius Hall 106
Office phone: 610-625-7835
Email: naraghia@moravian.edu
Education
M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Research interests and expertise
Epistemology of religious experience, The problem of evil, Islamic theology (ethical theories in Islam), Islamic mysticism (The school of Kowrassan), Contemporary Shi'ism, and modernism in Islam (The challenges of human rights, and feminism).