Angelina is passionate about working with children. Her Psychology coursework in adolescent development becomes applied insight in her summer research project. With guidance from her faculty mentor, Dr. Kiren Kahn, Angelina seamlessly integrates her classroom learning into a meaningful real-world project while making a difference in the Memphis community.
Charles McKinney
Director, Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies
Associate Professor of History
Office: Buckman Hall 213
Phone: (901) 843-3525
mckinneyc@rhodes.edu
Charles McKinney, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies, is a specialist in African American history and twentieth century U.S. social history, particularly the history of the Civil Rights Movement. He is the author of Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina, which chronicles a movement from the 1930s to the 1970鈥檚. He is the co-editor of An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in 番茄社区, and From Rights To Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle. His current research focuses on the impact of local leadership on civil rights activity in Memphis, and his regional interests include the history of segregation, civil rights, and social justice movements in Memphis. Previous Institute projects he has mentored have included historical research on Civil Rights activity in Memphis and surrounding communities; research on African American political activity in Memphis; the digital divide in Memphis; and gender dynamics within the Civil Rights movement.
Laura Taylor
Associate Professor of Educational Studies and Urban Studies
taylorl@rhodes.edu
(901) 843-3986
Laura Taylor is a qualitative researcher whose work seeks to explore how we can build urban schools that are both humanizing and intellectually challenging spaces for students. This work necessarily takes an interdisciplinary approach, including examinations of the political, economic, cultural, and historical reasons why schools are not always already providing these experiences for students. Her research draws on methodological tools like ethnography, discourse analysis, and critical media analysis, and she often uses focus groups and interviews to learn the expertise of teachers, students, and parents. Her current projects include analyzing the public debate over test-based retention of Tennessee third-graders and understanding how educators are sustaining antiracist teaching in the current political climate.
Charles Hughes
Associate Professor, Urban Studies
Office: 206 West Campus
Phone: (901) 843-3379
hughesc@rhodes.edu
Charles L. Hughes is Associate Professor of Urban Studies. He is a historian of race and popular culture in the United States, with a particular interest in the connections between Black music and cultural politics. He's written two books, Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South, about the sounds and symbolism of popular music in the 1960s and 1970s, and Why Bushwick Bill Matters, a critical biography of the legendary disabled Houston hip-hop artist. He edited a special issue of Southern Cultures dedicated to 鈥淭he Disabled South鈥 in 2023, and he鈥檚 the co-editor of the online music newsletter No Fences Review. He鈥檚 written articles in places like Slate, Washington Post, Oxford American, American Quarterly, and others, as well as contributing the liner notes for Jason Isbell鈥檚 Southeastern: 10th Anniversary Edition. He was a regular contributor to the podcast Teaching Hard History. He鈥檚 writing a new book about African Americans and pro wrestling, as well as articles related to disability and hip-hop, a disability history of popular music, and anthemic traditions within Black country music. He's a voting member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a participant in Nashville Scene annual country-music almanac. A native of Wisconsin, his intellectual and teaching roots are in the interdisciplinary and engaged tradition practiced by the African American Studies Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Shatavia Wynn
Assistant Professor of Africana and Religious Studies
Wynns@rhodes.edu
Dr. Shatavia L. Wynn (she/her/they/them) is Assistant Professor of Africana and Religious Studies at Rhodes College. A South Carolina native, they earned their B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Claflin University, followed by a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from Yale Divinity School, where they concentrated in Black Religion in the African Diaspora. Dr. Wynn later completed their PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Society at Vanderbilt University.
Their research examines the morals and values of Black women in the American South, with broader interests spanning popular culture, Black church studies, phenomenology, aesthetics, and Black feminist and womanist studies. Dr. Wynn's current project investigates queer antagonism in Black religious and social media spaces.
Hadi Khoshneviss
Assistant Professor of Sociology
khoshnevissh@rhodes.edu
Hadi Khoshneviss, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is a specialist in social theory, social movements, nationalism, and movement and mobility. He has published pieces in Mobilities, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Sociology, and Ethnicities. His research is primacy concerned with the historical construction of socio-political and legal categories and how individuals and groups transition through these representational and discursive borders and boundaries. He has also studied the historical construction of whiteness in the United States. His current research project with Dr. Evelyn Perry investigates homelessness, belonging, and transition between major stages of life among residents of a shelter in the South. He is also starting a research project about bugs and humans.
Charity Clay
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
clayc@rhodes.edu
Charity Clay is a visiting professor of African American History. She comes to Rhodes College after being a 2023-24 research fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Before that she was a professor of Sociology at Xavier University of Louisiana. Dr. Clay is an integrated methods sociologist of the African Diaspora who has taught courses in Sociology, Women's and Gender Studies and African American and Diaspora Studies. Her work centers around place-based understandings of Black liberation and resistance movements. These movements date back to the 1600s with Marronage from enslavement in the New World; include decolonization movements on the African continent during the 1900s, and provide frameworks for understanding the Social Media era of Black Freedom struggle in the United States. For the summer of 2025, Dr. Clay鈥檚 area of focus will be the South Memphis Stories Project, an oral history initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.