Night of Ideas: Common Ground

Joyce Chen is professor of economics in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State. Her research focuses on demographic differences in labor market outcomes; the complex relationships between migration, climate change, and economic development; and the intrahousehold allocation of resources. She is active in efforts aimed at enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and supporting the nonprofit sector.

Bart Elmore is professor of environmental history and a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State. He is an award-winning author of three books, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W. W. Norton, 2014), Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future (W. W. Norton, 2021), and Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet (Ferris & Ferris, 2023). In 2022, he was honored with the Dan David Prize, the world’s largest history prize.

Ryan Joyce is an associated faculty member in the Department of French and Italian at Ohio State. His research and teaching focus on Caribbean literary and cultural studies, 20th- and 21st-century global Francophone studies, and gender and sexuality, with particular attention to queer Caribbean cultural production and activism, Haitian studies, and decolonial studies and pedagogy. His work has appeared in Études Francophones, Small Axe, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Haitian Studies, and Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory.

Jonathan Mullins is assistant professor of Italian at Ohio State. The main concerns of his research are the history of the Italian left, the use and representation of the body, and the way media facilitate the creation of mass-, sub-, and countercultures.

Dorothy Noyes is director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State. She studies the traditional public sphere in Europe, the policy careers of culture concepts, and performance and ritual in international relations. Among her books are Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016); and the coauthored Sustaining Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Guide for the Academy (University of Illinois Press, 2017). The Global Politics of Exemplarity, coedited with Tobias Wille, will appear in autumn 2025 from Bristol University Press.

Maurice Stevens is professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and associate dean for engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences. They teach theories and methods of interdisciplinary cultural and technological studies. Stevens’s most recent academic research has focused on the application of critical trauma theory in multiple clinical, social, organizational, and institutional contexts. Their work with individuals and organizations focuses on processes designed to amplify the ability to create change that is systemic and transformative. As associate dean for engagement, Stevens drives a signature approach to engaging community and other partners by orienting projects around critical community needs.
 

Lucille Toth is an associate professor of French, affiliated with Ohio State’s Department of Dance. Her academic and artistic work explores the intersections of health humanities, dance, and migration. She has published over a dozen articles and authored Danses et pandémies: Du sida à la covid-19 (Varia Press, 2022), examining the links between dance and pandemics from AIDS to COVID-19. She is also the founder and artistic director of On Board(hers), a dance project inspired by the testimonies of people from diverse countries of origin. Her work has been featured on media outlets and programs such as NPR, WOSU, Broad and High, and Columbus Alive.