People

Deborah Keene is an archaeological scientist who specializes in Southeastern U.S. prehistory. She started excavating with the Schiele Museum when she was 15 and went on to work for various private archaeological firms while an undergraduate and then graduate student. She worked as a principal investigator at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology after earning her Ph.D. She specialized in ceramic analysis, shallow geophysics, households, and subsistence strategies. After moving to Alabama, her focus changed from fieldwork to education. She uses her anthropological and scientific backgrounds to teach liberal arts courses for the Blount Scholars Program.

“But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” (E.B. White 1969).

Toni Copeland is a biocultural medical anthropologist interested in how biological, cultural, and social factors interact to influence health and illness. Her research as primarily been in Kenya and the American Deep South.

Kendra is a professional nature photographer, educator and outdoor enthusiast. She is an ecologist and has focused on endangered species and conservation issues much of her career.

Seth Bordner joined the University in 2011 after finishing his doctorate at UNC Chapel Hill. Originally from central Pennsylvania, he is a first-generation college student who never took the sensible advice to get a real job. He teaches the History of Philosophy sequence (PHL 211 & 212) in the philosophy department, along with regular sections of Intro to Ethics and Philosophy of Sport. His research is an eclectic mix of history of philosophy and contemporary applied issues in science and sports. Fall 2017 was his first semester teaching in Blount.

Jennifer Caputo began teaching at UA in 2008 as an instructor in New College and currently teaches a range of on-campus and distance arts and humanities courses. She is originally from New York and holds degrees in percussion performance/music education and ethnomusicology. She was introduced to the music and culture of Ghana in 1998 while taking a weekly class that met regularly in Riverside Park in NYC. She has been studying and performing Ghanaian and West African music ever since. Fun fact: while attending the Ghanaian music class in 1999 in Riverside Park, the Dalai Lama (who was scheduled to appear in Central Park in August) walked by with his entourage and stopped to listen to our rehearsal.

Andrew Raffo Dewar is a composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and arts organizer.

As a composer and performer of experimental acoustic and electronic music, his work has been presented throughout North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and he appears on nearly two dozen commercially released recordings.

As a scholar, Dr. Dewar’s research interests include experimentalism in the arts, jazz and improvisation, music technologies, intercultural music, and 1960s intermedia arts. His writing has been published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, Leonardo Music Journal, Jazz Perspectives, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music (2nd Edition), Musicians and Composers of the 20th Century, and the Jazz Research Journal. He also has chapters published in Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Representation and Subjectivity, edited by Gillian Siddall & Ellen Waterman (Duke University Press, 2016), and Experimental Music in Practice: Perspectives from Latin America, edited by Alejandro Madrid, Ana Minutti, Eduardo Herrera (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Dr. Dewar is an Associate Professor in New College and the School of Music.

Matt Feminella is an Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Classics and the Fulbright Program Advisor for UA. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2016. When he isn’t teaching undergraduate and graduate German courses, Dr. Feminella spends his time researching eighteenth-century intellectual history and theater cultures.

Hank Lazer has published thirty-two books of poetry, including field recordings of mind in the morning (2021, BlazeVOX – with 15 music-poetry tracks with Holland Hopson on banjo – available from Bandcamp), COVID 19 SUTRAS (2020, Lavender Ink), Slowly Becoming Awake (N32) (2019, Dos Madres Press), Poems That Look Just Like Poems (2019, PURH – one volume in English, one in French), Evidence of Being Here: Beginning in Havana (N27), (2018, Negative Capability Press), Thinking in Jewish (N20) (2017, Lavender Ink).  Lazer has performed jazz-poetry improvisations in the US and Cuba with musicians Davey Williams, Omar Pérez, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Holland Hopson, and others.  Lazer’s Brush Mind books have been transformed into video installations and performances in several art gallery venues.  In 2015, Lazer received Alabama’s most prestigious literary prize, the Harper Lee Award, for lifetime achievement in literature.  Lazer has been quarantining in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and at Duncan Farm in Carrollton, Alabama.  To order books, learn about talks, readings, and workshops, and see photos of Duncan Farm see Lazer’s website: https://www.hanklazer.com

Richard Richards, professor and chair of the philosophy department, has been involved with the Blount Scholars program since its first year. His research is in the philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, and he has two books published by Cambridge University Press, The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis, and Biological Taxonomy: A Philosophical Introduction.  He is finishing a third book with Cambridge, The Biology of Art.  

Steve Tedeschi is an English professor at UA.

Dr. Claire Thompson is an anthropologist who specializes in Southeastern archaeology. She enjoys bringing a cultural perspective to the Blount Foundations courses that she teaches.

Alexa is a social psychologist who examines scientific, religious, and political beliefs, and the factors that facilitate or impede belief change. Some of her work takes a meta-scientific approach, using psychological methods to study the beliefs and practices of psychological scientists. Inspired by her students, she has recently become interested in how classroom environments can foster the right balance of agency and humility.

Casey Logan A’Hearn is an MA student in Religion in Culture at the University of Alabama. Their research examines the category of “scripture” as a multi-faceted and interconnected relationship between actors, agency, and power. Within their research, Casey focuses on Mormonism both contemporarily and historically. In addition to studying Mormonism, Casey has created numerous digital projects to emphasize the use of the digital humanities as a site for critical discourse and analysis of their research.

Posoh! I am a Bioarchaeology Ph.D. student from the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin. It is my belief that the most important aspect of any research in North American Archaeology is the relationship between tribes and institutions of learning. My research interests revolve around this relationship and include: the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Movement, Tribal Archaeology, NAGPRA case studies, and forensic anthropology regarding ancestry. My current research is taking me to South America where I am exploring burial practices, chicha, and purple corn. If any of these topics interest you, feel free to ask me about them!

Sophia graduated from the University of Alabama in May 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and International Studies. She was also a Blount Scholar and an Arabic minor. She began the MA program in Religious Studies at UA in Fall 2022. She is originally from Portland, Oregon. Her research interests include how religion functions in Middle Eastern politics, imperialism, and the creation of solidarity movements and identities across religious and cultural boundaries.

Allison Koszyk is a Blount Scholar (2019), a UA Law Alumni (2022) and practicing attorney who specializes in family law, mediation, and consults on immunity issues. Alli is a member of the Blackburn Institute and lives with her cat Pickle (Cornichon en Francais). Alli is pursuing a PhD in political science (International Relations and Political Theory) and is spending summer 2023 in total French immersion (L’ecole De Francais) at Middlebury College in Vermont. She is vegan and adores the University of Alabama and Tuscaloosa!