Professor Eversley Appointed Faculty Fellow and Interim Chair of Black and Latino Studies

January 16, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

I am extremely pleased to announce that Professor Shelly Eversley has been appointed as Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Provost, beginning January 20 and continuing through the end of August 2021. Over the course of the next 18 months, Shelly will take on a number of critical projects in our office, but none will be more important than her simultaneous assignment as Interim Chair of the Department of Black and Latino Studies in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

Black and Latino Studies, as areas of teaching and research, are central to the mission and values of Baruch College. Although there are a number of faculty members throughout the College who contribute greatly to teaching and scholarship in the broad areas covered by the department, it presently consists of only four full-time faculty. The challenge moving forward for Professor Eversley will be to engage all those committed to the department in the creation of a compelling vision for the future of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch, and to move ahead to make that vision a reality. Success in this challenge will depend on the support and effort of many people throughout the College and I am confident that Professor Eversley can rely on that support. I urge all who are interested in the success of this endeavor to reach out to her and join the process to rejuvenate the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch.

Professor Eversley brings a wealth of academic, scholarly, and administrative experience to this challenge. She currently is an associate professor in the Department of English where her teaching and research specialize in African American literature and culture, with intersecting interests in gender, class, and sexuality studies. She is the founder of EqualityArchive.com, an open education resource on the history of sex and gender equality in the United States that has been commended by the Wikimedia Foundation and featured in The Huffington Post, Mashable, and Refinery 29. Her scholarly publications in black literary studies, gender analysis, and cultural studies appear in a range of academic journals and books, including American Literary History, The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison, Feminist Media Histories, and the Journal of Narrative Theory. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, where she also edited two special issues, The Sexual Body and The 1970s. She recently completed an edited book on 1960s black art, politics, and aesthetics for Cambridge University Press and she is completing the manuscript for her second book, The Practice of Blackness: Cold War Surveillance, Censorship, and African American Literary Survival.

Shelly is academic director of CUNY’s Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, the only University-wide program that mentors and supports faculty in reaching their publication goals for tenure and promotion. Sponsored by CUNY’s Central Office, the program offers works-in-progress writing groups as well as professional development seminars. In this role, she supervises 10 faculty mentors and 60 faculty fellows.

She earned her BA at Columbia University and PhD at Johns Hopkins University. She was part of the inaugural cohort for CUNY’s Diversifying Leadership Fellowship, and she recently completed the management development program in higher education at Harvard University. In summary, Shelly is eminently qualified to take on these very challenging roles.

In closing, I want to offer special thanks to Professors Arthur Lewin and Regina Bernard, who have served as department chairs in recent years, along with the department’s full-time faculty, Ms. Lourdes Gil and Professor Tsombe Miles. These dedicated members have sustained the department through challenging times, serving countless Baruch students for many years. This cadre of teachers, scholars, and advocates—along with colleagues throughout the College—will, under the leadership of Professor Eversley, create a vibrant locus of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch.

With regards,

James McCarthy
Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs