People

Eric Gable, Professor of Anthropology
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 240 | egable@umw.edu | (540)654-1504 

Eric Gable received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Virginia. He has studied village-level politics and religion in Guinea-Bissau and Sulawesi, Indonesia, and the politics of heritage in the United States. He is the author of Anthropology and Egalitarianism (Indiana University Press) and (with Richard Handler) The New History in an Old Museum (Duke University Press). He is currently a managing editor for Museums and Society and book reviews editor for American Ethnologist. 

Jason James, Associate Professor of Anthropology
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 218 | jjames@umw.edu | (540)654-1169
Program Lead, Anthropology 

Jason James received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include nationalism, ethnicity, collective memory, socialism and post-socialism, and Germany. He teaches courses in collective memory, the anthropology of Europe, urban anthropology, and tourism. His book Preservation and National Belonging in Eastern Germany was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2012, and he is currently conducting research on the commemoration of slavery and the Civil War in Richmond as well as the process of integrating immigrants in Germany.

Laura Mentore, Associate Professor of Anthropology
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 235 | lmentore@umw.edu | (540)654-1499 

Laura Mentore received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Her primary areas of specialization include environmental anthropology, critical theories of development, indigenous cosmologies and social movements. Her research is based in Lowland South America (Amazonia) and the Caribbean. Other interests include economic anthropology and the anthropology of race and gender.

Julia DeLancey, Professor of Art History
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 217 | jdelance@umw.edu | (540)654-1959
Department Chair | Program Lead, Art History 

Julia DeLancey came to the University of Mary Washington in 2017. While previous scholarship has focused on sellers of artists’ materials and especially the Venetian vendecolori (color sellers) her new project examines the history of and visual culture related to disabilities in early modern Venice. At present, it looks at individuals with visual and mobility impairments and at mental diversity. She has presented her work both nationally and internationally. Her teaching responsibilities include art history surveys and first-year seminars (including one on art history and disability studies), as well as upper-level courses in a variety of areas including Medieval art;  she has also taught numerous courses on a variety of early modern (Renaissance) and Baroque topics, as well as on art and gender, Dada and World War I, Michelangelo, and the theory and historiography of art history.

Joseph Dreiss, Professor of Art History
Gari Melchers Hall, Rm. 104 | jdreiss@umw.edu | (540)654-2038 

Joseph Dreiss specializes in contemporary art and art criticism, contemporary architecture and the relationship between art and neuroscience, especially with regard to the implications of neuroplasticity for our understanding of the transformative potential of aesthetic experience. Dreiss teaches Introduction to Western Art I and II, Neoclassicism to Impressionism, Post Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, American Art, Pop Art to the Present, Seminar in Contemporary Architecture and Methods of Art History.

Suzie Kim, Associate Professor of Art History
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 219 | skim8@umw.edu | (540)654-1961 

Suzie Kim received her Ph.D. in Art History from University of Maryland, College Park and has held fellowships in the Japanese art curatorial department at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Her research investigates how Abstract art, Constructivism, and the International Style became the primary source for a multifaceted cultural phenomenon in Japan and Korea from the 1920s onward. Her wider areas of expertise include contemporary Korean art, North Korean architecture, postcolonial theory, and cross-cultural interactions between European and East Asian avant-garde movements.

Angela Pitts, Professor of Classics
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 238 | pitts2@umw.edu | (540)654-1023
Program Lead, Classical Studies 

Angela Pitts is a Professor and Program Lead of Classical Studies and a recipient of UMW’s 2024 Grellett Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.  She received her B.A. in English from the University of Ohio and her M.A. and PhD in Classics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has a wide range of scholarly interests: archaic Greek poetry; the writings of women in the ancient Mediterranean world and of Sappho, in particular; the epic and oral poetry of Homer; perception studies; and, reception studies. She is the co-author (with Bartolo A. Natoli and Judith P. Hallett) of Ancient Women Writers of Greece and Rome (Routledge, 2022), which won the 2022-2023 Ladislaus J. Bolchazy Pedagogy Book Award honoring outstanding educational materials in classical studies.  Her journal publications include a forthcoming essay, co-authored with Judith P. Hallett, on “Ancient Female Authors” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Women and Gender, “The Iliad, Force, and the Soundscapes of War,” “Orpheus, the Poetics of Silence, and the Humanities,” “Sappho as the Tenth Muse in Hellenistic Epigram,” “Sappho’s Kisses: Biographical Tradition and Intertextuality in AP 5.246 and 5.236”, and others.  She serves as an editor for Philomathes: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in Classics and as a member of the Classical Association of Middle, West, and South’s “College Greek Exam” committee.

Professor Pitts teaches Ancient Greek, Latin, Ideas and Culture: The Ancient Greek World, Women in Antiquity, Greek and Roman Mythology in Art and Literature, Myth in Theory, Film, and Culture, Democracy and Revolution in Ancient Athens, Ancient Slavery and its Legacy, Ancient Greek and Roman Literature, Epic Traditions, Guided Research in Classics, Independent Studies in upper-level ancient Greek and Latin, Meditation and Contemplative Practice, among others.  She frequently leads students abroad in UMW’s Center for International Education travel programs to Greece and Rome.

Jason Hayob-Matzke, Professor of Philosophy
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 234 | jmatzke@umw.edu | (540)654-1113 
(B.S., Ball State University; MAIS, Oregon State University; M.A., Ph.D., Michigan State University)
Program Lead, Philosophy (including Pre-Law)
Ethics, Applied Ethics (Environmental and Medical), Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy

Michael Reno, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 237 | mreno@umw.edu | (540)654-1023 
(B.A., Illinois State University; M.A., Ph.D., Michigan State University)
Logic, Environmental Philosophy, 19th Century European Philosophy, and Critical Theory
Farmer 237, 540-654-1023, mreno@umw.ed

Jennifer Barry, Associate Professor of Religion
Morgan Combs Hall, Rm. 324 | jbarry@umw.edu | (540)654-1343 
(B.A., Colorado Christian University; M.T.S., Duke Divinity School; Ph.D. Drew University)
Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, Women’s and Gender Studies
Farmer 233, 540-654-1343, jbarry@umw.edu, Humanities Commons site: https://hcommons.org/members/jennisifire/

Kalpesh Bhatt, Assistant Professor of Religion
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 236 | kbhatt@umw.edu | (540)654-1023
(B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D. University of Toronto)
Farmer 236, 540-654-1023, kbhatt@umw.edu

Mary Beth Mathews, Professor of Religion
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 239 | mmathews@umw.edu | (540)654-1354 
Program Lead, Religious Studies
(B.A., The College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia)
American and European Religious History, Christian Fundamentalism,and African American Religions
marybethmathews.org

Caroline Leassear, Office Manager
Departments of Cultural & Philosophical Inquiry and of Communication & Digital Studies
James Farmer Hall, Rm. 242 | cleassea@umw.edu | (540)654-1023