Namiko Kunimoto
Director, Center for Ethnic Studies
Associate Professor, Department of History of Art
Namiko Kunimoto is a specialist in Asian American studies as well as modern and contemporary Japanese art. Her research interests include the visual politics of race and gender, art and diaspora, and issues of migration and nation-formation. Her essays include “Intimate Archives: Japanese-Canadian Family Photography, 1939-1945” in Art History, “Olympic Dissent: Art, Politics, and the Tokyo Games” in Asia Pacific Japan Focus, “Photographic Pluralities” in Blackflash Magazine, and “Tactics and Strategies: Chen Qiulin and the Production of Space” in Art Journal.
Christine Ballengee Morris
Program Director, American Indian Studies
Professor, Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy
Christine Ballengee Morris is a Professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy, was founding Director of the Multicultural Center at Ohio State, and former Coordinator of American Indian Studies. Dr. Ballengee Morris' research interests include self-determination, earthworks, identity development, Indigenous arts, integrated curricula, service-learning, and arts-based research. Prior to coming to Ohio State, Dr. Morris worked as a curricula developer for a children's art museum in Charleston, WV and taught in public schools for over a decade. In addition to her scholarship and teaching, Dr. Ballengee Morris is a performing artist, who has held numerous artists-in-residence positions in several states with her late husband, David E. Morris.
Pranav Jani
Program Director, Asian American Studies
Associate Professor, Department of English
Pranav Jani is an associate professor of English with a focus in postcolonial studies and critical ethnic studies. His research and teaching interests lie in the literatures, cultures and history of colonized and formerly colonized people (in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Ireland) and people of color in the United States. In particular, Jani specializes in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, Marxist theories of nationalism and colonialism, and the intertwined legacies of colonialism, settler colonialism and slavery.
Miranda Martinez
Interim Program Director, Latina/o Studies
Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Studies
Miranda Martinez is an associate professor of Comparative Studies and teaches courses in Latinx studies, and urban cultural studies. Her current research interest is in the area of economic sociology and examines the emergence of “financial capability” as a principal policy answer to problems of inequality, and financial predation directed at vulnerable consumers of credit and banking services. Specifically, the work is on local spaces of financial counsel, that attempt to guide vulnerable consumers through problems of indebtedness and money management. Through these local spaces for advice, Professor Martinez focuses on the kinds of subjectivities and affects that surround the financialization of daily life, especially in low income and minority communities where safe credit and banking are less available.
