The School of Foreign Service’s Field Chair of Culture and Politics, Shiloh Krupar, announced in an email to all CULP majors on Tuesday the creation of a new tenure-line faculty position responsible solely for the CULP major.
Until now, CULP has only retained one faculty member fully affiliated with the program, Professor Krupar. The new faculty position, in development since last spring, aims to bring a tenure-line faculty member specializing in visual culture and new media.
“In terms of culture and politics faculty, there’s only one person that’s actually fully affiliated, 100 percent affiliated with culture and politics, and that’s my faculty line. Everyone else is cross-affiliated. They’re very involved, it’s just that they have obligations elsewhere,” Krupar said. “A second person [fully] attached to CULP … would mean that we have a larger core than one person to provide stability with the curriculum.”
Having a permanent full-time faculty member will allow CULP students to “get more creative [and] have more advising power from someone who would be able to advise in a way that would fit the specific goals of their CULP major,” said Kyle Zhu (SFS ‘14), president of the SFS Academic Council.
“The number one thing [for candidates] is to have some sort of visual expertise. More than anything, someone who does visual culture and new media would be great. … [We also] want somebody whose research is really integrated in what they teach and who, of course, is a really good teacher,” Krupar said. ‘We already have quite a number [of applicants]. The window is a month, it’s hard to say, [but] it’s going to be 50 at least.”
Candidates will visit campus in early December to give guest lectures, talk to deans, and engage with students. The University expects the new tenure-line faculty member to begin teaching in the fall of 2014.
