Ithaca College

Ithaca College is delighted to welcome this year’s Diversity Scholars to campus! Please join us on September 19th from 12:05-1:05 in Klingenstein Lounge when this year’s new Scholars from the School of Humanities & Sciences will introduce themselves and talk about their teaching. Refreshments will be served.

This year’s new Scholars are:

Shehnaz Haqqani joins the Women’s and Gender Studies program and her fall course is Islam and Feminism. She is finishing her dissertation, The Islamic Traditions, Islamic Feminism, and Contemporary Muslims’ Engagements with Gender and Sexuality as a Ph.D. candidate in the Islamic Studies program at the University of Texas, Austin. Her scholarly work has been published in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the edited volume Political Muslims: Understanding Youth Resistance in Global Context (2016, Syracuse University Press), and On Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, the Internet, and Islamophobia (forthcoming, 2017, Indiana University Press) among other venues. Haqqani earned a B.A. from Emory University and an M. A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas, Austin.

Raul Palma is in the Department of Writing, teaching Fiction Writing I: Short Story this fall. His dissertation is a novel, Manteca, which he is completing as a Ph.D. candidate in English (creative writing) and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He serves as fiction editor for Prairie Schooner. Palma has been the recipient of the Sandoz/Prairie Schooner prize and the Soul-Keats story prize. His fiction has been anthologized in 2013 Extract(s) II, 2014 Best of Vine Leaves Journal, and Eclectica 20 Year Fiction Anthology, and distinguished in Best American Short Stories 2016. Additionally, his work has been supported with fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Santa Fe Writer's Conference, Sewanee Writer's Conference, Sundress Academy for the Arts. This summer he visited Cuba on a literary trip with Richard Blanco and Ruth Behar, where he engaged with contemporary Cuban artists.

We welcome back Nandadevi Cortes Rodriguez, who is beginning her second year as Ithaca’s inaugural Post-Doctoral Diversity Scholar in the Department of Biology.

The Park School of Communications is also participating in the Diversity Scholars Program this year by bringing a series of Scholars to campus for short-term residencies over the course of the year. Please stay tuned to Intercom for opportunities to welcome and interact with these Scholars as they join us during the second half of the fall semester and throughout the spring. 

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Danette Johnson at djohnson@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-5170. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.