Faculty

The faculty members listed here provide a sampling of the DMS Faculty, which is interdisciplinary and changes from semester to semester.

Amy Green Deines

Amy's work is firmly grounded in the idea of collaboration and its yielding effect in creating places that directly involve the inherent qualities of the body as a means for both structure and memory. Deines has been with the University for four years and teaches in the School of Architecture and in the DMS Program. She is a principal and founder of a design studio that engages a multidisciplinary approach to each project offering a variety of experiences in practice and teaching. Her professional work includes product design, graphic design, interiors as well as cultural interventions within Detroit’s urban landscape. Her work has been published in international and domestic design journals as well as academic journals. Deines received her B.F.A. from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI and her M. Arch from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.

Tim Dugdale

Although he holds a Ph.D. in communication/anthropology from Wayne State University, Dugdale's principal area of interest and teaching is creative writing, particularly the social realist novel and new journalism in all its various glories. He has published two such novels and currently is finishing two more. He also co-edits UDM's national academic journal, Post Identity. He is the graphic designer for The Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture, the University of Detroit Mercy Press, and he is also the founder of Atomic Quill Press. Dugdale is a committed theistic existentialist and has published a variety of screeds and papers on the relationship of philosophy to electronic music, celebrity and sports.

Dave Koukal

D. R. Koukal is associate professor of philosophy and director of the honors program at the University of Detroit Mercy. He has published articles on how the work of various phenomenologists (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) relates to expression, imagination, media, pedagogy, politics and technology. Koukal teaches Critical Thinking in Media for the Digital Media Studies Program.

David Lucsko

David N. Lucsko (B.S., Georgia Tech, 1998; Ph.D., MIT, 2005) is an historian of technology who joined the UDM staff in the fall of 2005. He is also the managing editor of Technology and Culture, the international quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology. A native Pittsburgher who grew up in the Atlanta area, Dr. Lucsko is an avid vintage automobile enthusiast and a frustrated Steelers and Braves fan. His dissertation, "Manufacturing Muscle: The Hot Rod Industry and the American Fascination With Speed, 1915-1985," examines the culture and technology of the high-performance automotive aftermarket in the United States, and it will appear (in revised form) from the John Hopkins University Press in 2007. Dr. Lucsko teaches the History of American Technology course for the DMS Program.

Allegra Pitera, Director

Allegra Pitera joined the University of Detroit Mercy in 2001. She has a Master of Fine Art from the Cranbrook Academy of Art as well as a professional degree in Architecture from the California College of Arts. She has lectured, taught, and reviewed projects at Harvard University, Lawrence Technological University, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), Oakland Community College, Paint Creek Center for the Arts and presently at the University of Detroit Mercy in Digital Media Studies as well as the School of Architecture and the Women's Studies Department. She recently won two Best Experimental Short Videos at the New York Independent International Film Festival and is currently working on a feature length documentary for the Loeb Fellowship of Harvard University. She founded the TimeBase video company in 2000 and has created videos, independently as well as collaboratively, which have been included in both international as well as national exhibits, shows and conferences.

Nick Rombes (co-founder of E-Crit)

Rombes, who received his Ph.D. from Penn State, has been teaching at UDM since 1995. His interests lie in digital cinema and culture and in the new forms of narrative logic that have come to dominate our era. His recent publications include the book Ramones, published by Continuum as part of their 33 1/3 series, and essays in journals such as Post-Script and CTheory. He has recently edited the book New Punk Cinema, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2005 as part of their Traditions in World Cinema series. He is at work on the book Cinema in the Digital Age, due to be published in 2007.

John M Staudenmaier

Most of the time, I live and work in Detroit, Michigan. Since July 1, 2005 I have been directing UDM's Office of Mission and Identity. In the other half of my working life I edit Technology and Culture, The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology. I also lecture and offer workshops frequently in this country and overseas, sometimes in the academy, sometimes for professional organizations, and sometimes with Church related groups. I consult with museums about exhibits, with television producers about historical programs, with science and technology reporters about articles in process. I serve on a few boards. When I find the time, I write for publication in academic and public venues, sometimes interpreting the evolving historiography of my professional field, sometimes asking how people use technologies in their search for integrity and intimacy even as they are influenced by those same technologies. My work includes: Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (MIT Press 1985, under contract for 2nd edition); "The Politics and Ethics of Engineering"; "Relating to Technologies as Moral Adults", "Denying the Holy Dark: The Enlightenment and the European Mystical Tradition", "Rationality vs Contingency in the History of Technology."