Faculty & Staff

B.A., Carleton; M.A., M.Div., and Ph.D., Harvard University

Michael McNally teaches courses in American religion and culture and Native American religious traditions. His special interests include the tradition and history of Minnesota’s Anishinaabe Ojibwe community, Native American Christianity, and lived religion in America. He is author of Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (2000), editor of Art of Tradition: Sacred Story, Song, and Dance among Michigan’s Anishinaabe (2006), and a number of book chapters and journal articles. His current research projects explore, on the one hand, aging, eldership, and religion in the Ojibwe tradition, and on the other explore the intersection between law, “religion,” and Native American traditions.

Adriana arrived at Carleton after teaching at the University of New Mexico and the University of Arizona. Her teaching and research interests include U.S. Latino literature (especially poetry), Latino Studies, the intersections of race, gender, and ethnicity in various genres of cultural expressions. She’s hard at work on the topic of Latina feminine beauty in literature and the mass media.

B.A. in English, Yale College; M.A. and Ph.D. in English, University of Michigan

Director of American Studies from 2007-2010

Nancy Cho teaches courses in American literature and drama, American Studies, and Asian American literature.  Her primary area of research is American drama and performance, particularly the work of playwrights of color during and after the Civil Rights Movement.  She has published articles on the theater of Chay Yew, Anna Deavere Smith, and Lorraine Hansberry, and is currently researching the staging of cultural memory in the plays of Alice Childress.  For the American Studies Program, Professor Cho teaches courses on immigration and Asian American Studies. 

(American Music, Music History) received the B.A. from the City College of New York and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Andrew teaches courses in American music, focusing on rock, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Andrew was a member of the Royster Society and was awarded the John Motley Morehead Fellowship to complete his dissertation, which was awarded the Glen Haydon Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Musicology from the UNC Music Department. Andrew has read papers at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for Music Theory, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Society for American Music. He has also been invited to speak nationally and internationally at institutions such as the University of Surrey, Princeton University, and the University of Michigan. Andrew has written articles, encyclopedia entries, and reviews on the music of Marvin Gaye, the Beatles, African-American pop singers and balladeers, and Bang On a Can. He has written extensively about American rhythm and blues, and is an expert on the music of Motown. His book, I Hear a Symphony: Listening to the Music of Motown, is forthcoming from The University of Michigan Press. Working directly with Universal Records, Andrew has served as consultant for several recent Motown reissues. He is also co-author of the history of rock textbook What’s that Sound (W.W. Norton).

B.A., Amherst College; M.A. and Ph.D., Rutgers University

Director of American Studies from 2001-2004

Michael Kowalewski joined the Carleton faculty in 1991 after teaching for several years at Princeton University. He has a special interest in regionalism and “place” in American art and culture. He was the creator and director of the only American Studies off-campus program to date: “Visions of California” (offered in 1995, 1998, 2001 and 2004).

Director for American Studies, 2017-2020

Associate director for American Studies, 2013-2016

B.A. in Classics, Bowdoin College; M.A. in Latin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Ph.D. in Early American History, Rutgers University

Interests include Colonial America, Early Modern Atlantic World, Age of Revolutions, the Early Republic, women, race & gender in American history.

Director for American Studies, 2013-2016

Associate director for American Studies, 2012-2013

B.A., Yale University; M.A. and Ph.D., Harvard University

Director of American Studies from 1972-1992

Interests include American social, cultural, material, architectural, and intellectual history. Clark teaches courses on immigration and ethnicity, the Gilded Age, reform movements, intellectual history, and material culture.  In addition to his American History textbook, The Enduring Vision, written with Paul Boyer and others, he has written Henry Ward Beecher: Spokesman for a Middle-Class America, The American Family Home, 1800 – 1960, and has edited, Minnesota in a Century of Change.

B.A. and M.A., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Director of American Studies from 2004-2007

Professor Keiser received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. His research focuses on progressive politics in America’s big cities. In 1997 he published Subordination or Empowerment? which analyzed the formation and disintegration of coalitions that advance African-American political empowerment. He coedited Minority Politics at the Millennium, which was published in 2000. His current research examines the relationship between cities and suburbs in the current era. Prof. Keiser teaches the introductory course on liberty and equality in America, as well as courses on urban and suburban political economy, poverty and public policy, and the Presidency.

A.B. in American History and Literature, Radcliffe College; Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, Harvard University

With a joint appointment in English and American Studies, Beth’s teaching interests include American literature, art history, and cultural history, with particular focus on landscape, place, and ideas of regional or national identity.  Courses she teaches include “Placing American Identities,” “The Midwest in the American Imagination,” “Writing about America and Globalization,” “Literature of the American South,” and “The American Sublime.”  Her research has been primarily on 19^th century America; she is the author of Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime and articles and reviews on Transcendentalism, Southern literature, American landscape painting, and tourism.  She came to Carleton in 1989 as Dean of the College, after holding faculty and administrative positions at Harvard University and Bryn Mawr College; she’s been a fulltime faculty member here since 2003.

A.B., Princeton University; M.A.T., Wesleyan University; Ph.D., Yale University

Director of American Studies, 1993-1997. Emeritus

Professor Tisdale has taught modern and contemporary British and American literature, specializing in poetry, memoir, and fiction.  Among his interests are immigration, and the topics of race and ethnicity, including African American and Native American history and literature.