Program Faculty

Avery Holton is associate professor of Communication. His research focuses on digital and social media, innovation, and health and disabilities. He served as an H2 Honors scholar in the Honors College (2014-2015), and his  research thus far has emphasized the changing roles of the public and journalists in light of new technology, network theory and applications of network analysis, health messages and delivery, and gaps in health communication. In the classroom, he teaches a blend of online content creation and social media engagement. Avery completed his PhD in 2013 as a William C. Powers, Jr. Fellow with the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeremy Rosen is associate professor of English. His research and teaching focus on contemporary American and global literature, the blurry line between "high" literature and popular culture, and the history of genres. He has taught courses on contemporary spin-offs of classic literary texts, transformations of science fiction, detective fiction, and environmental fiction (also known as "cli-fi"). He also offers classes on diversity in contemporary American literature and on the literature of immigrants and refugees.

Danielle Olden is assistant professor of History. Her research and teaching focus on modern U.S. History, U.S. West History, and Chicana/o History. From the time she was an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, Professor Olden has been deeply engaged in trying to understand how different forms of social stratification and identity shape people's diverse experiences and contribute to institutional inequity. What is race? How does race operate? What role does gender play in socioeconomic advancement? What is the relationship between race and class? A critical engagement with history, she believes, provides important insights for understanding these important contemporary questions. At present she is working on her first book, which explores school desegregation in Denver, Colorado in the late 1960s and 1970s, and how the courts and local citizens constructed Mexican American racial identity.

Johanna Watzinger-Tharp is associate professor of Linguistics, with a focus on applying the study of language to society and education. She researches, and teaches courses on language acquisition, teaching methodology and sociolinguistics. Since 2008, she has been involved in dual language immersion in Utah public schools, working closely with program administrators and teachers. Currently, she focuses on federally funded research to examine the relationship between students’ receiving schooling in two languages and their academic achievement. She is also working on a study to measure dual language immersion students’ proficiency in different languages, including Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. She received her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and appreciates being able to live in Utah while also maintaining connections to her homeland of Germany.

Dustin Stokes is associate professor of Philosophy. He researches and teaches in the areas of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of art, metaphysics, and theories of knowledge. Some questions he explores with students concern how we should theorize the human mind, how we come to understand and know about the world around us, and what’s special about human sensory experience, cognition, imagination, and emotion. Most generally, he attempts to instill in his students a healthy sense of wonder about the world, coupled with precise tools of analysis for exploring and clarifying that wonder.

Christie Toth is assistant professor of Writing and Rhetoric Studies. Her research focuses on writing instruction in community and tribal colleges, and she is particularly interested in how writing faculty adapt their teaching to local contexts. Her teaching often focuses on the role writing plays in both perpetuating oppression and pursuing social justice. She earned her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2014, where she conducted her doctoral research on locally responsive writing pedagogy at a tribal college on the Navajo Nation. She works closely with faculty colleagues at Salt Lake Community College, and she is currently collaborating with a team of undergraduate and graduate research assistants on a study of transfer student writing experiences at the University of Utah.

Karin Baumgartner is professor of German. A native of Switzerland, Professor Baumgartner teaches German language and literature and comparative literature (e.g. From Grimm to Disney). She received her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis with a concentration in German literature and Women's Studies. Prior to joining the University of Utah in 2006, she was Assistant Professor of German at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, and spent the academic year 2005-2006 in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship. Currently, Professor Baumgartner is writing the monograph Mapping the Nation: German Travel Guides, 1789 to 1871, a study that investigates how early German travel guides shaped the discourses of national identity in the German-speaking countries. Professor Baumgartner appreciates the Wasatch Mountains in summer for hiking and in winter for skiing.