The UC Irvine School of Humanities welcomes four new faculty members this fall with appointments in the Departments of African American Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Film and Media Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese.
These accomplished scholars bring expertise ranging from colonial theater to narrative filmmaking to Black critical theory. Please join us in welcoming this distinguished group to the School of Humanities.
Margaux Fitoussi, assistant professor, Departments of Comparative Literature and History
Margaux Fitoussi joins UCI with an interdisciplinary background that bridges anthropology, religious studies and experimental film. Before arriving at UCI, Fitoussi served as the Paloheimo Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and studied experimental film in Madrid. There she worked exclusively with analog film and cameras, exploring traditional and alternative development techniques, including creating ecological film developers from flowers.
Her research focuses on understandings of Jewishness in the contemporary Muslim world, specifically in Tunisia, while broadly examining film, cultural and religious differences and intercommunal relations.
This year, she’s teaching courses on sports and literature, Otherness and minorities in the Muslim world, with plans to teach the “Jewish Texts” course in future quarters. Fitoussi’s pedagogical motto draws inspiration from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s directive: “Don’t think, but look!” She designs class activities that encourage students to sharpen their powers of observation, whether analyzing literature and cinema or studying real-world societies.
She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University, an MTS in Religious Studies from Harvard Divinity School, an M.A. in Contemporary Audiovisual Creation and Practice from LAV (Laboratorio audiovisual) and a B.A. in History from UC Berkeley.
Fun fact: Margaux has been on swim teams in Long Beach, Madrid and Cape Town, competing in open-water swims including from Robben Island to Cape Town and from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco.
Nicole T. Hughes, assistant professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Nicole T. Hughes brings eight years of Stanford University teaching experience to UCI, where she previously served as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center before becoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. Her research on the early modern world focuses specifically on New Spain (Mexico) and Brazil in the sixteenth century. Her first book project analyzes how dramatic performances by missionaries, conquistadors and Indigenous elites created foundational narratives of New Spain and Brazil by depicting both distant conflicts and local struggles. Her research has appeared in prestigious journals including Representations, Colonial Latin American Review, Word & Image and Renaissance Quarterly.
At UCI, Hughes will teach “Colonial Mexico: Images and Power,” exploring how images maintained, constructed and transformed political power during the conquest and colonization of Mesoamerica, and “Shipwrecks and Backlands: Getting Lost in Literature,” which takes students through tales of getting lost in Portuguese and Spanish empires. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes promoting a model of sociability, and sees her role as fostering intellectual rigor in settings that emphasize self-discovery, mentorship and community.
Hughes holds a Ph.D. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature and Society from Columbia University, along with M.A. and B.A. degrees in Comparative Literature from New York University.
Fun fact: Prior to entering academia, Nicole edited nonfiction at Penguin Press.
Prashanth Kamalakanthan, assistant professor, Department of Film and Media Studies
Prashanth Kamalakanthan arrives at UCI as an accomplished filmmaker and educator. Born in Tirupati, India, and raised in North Carolina, he brings extensive experience teaching at Brown University, Virginia Commonwealth University and NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film School. His award-winning short films have exhibited worldwide and been featured in The New York Times, Mother Jones and The Nation. A Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellow in Film and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Film,” his research spans screenwriting and film aesthetics to Indian cinema, Asian American cinema and New Wave cinemas.
This fall, Kamalakanthan is teaching “Basic Production,” introducing students to the history of film production and its many craft specializations, with plans to offer courses in editing, cinematography, directing and New Wave/independent filmmaking in future quarters. His teaching philosophy is future-oriented, aiming to demonstrate how students can strategically use available resources while navigating changing institutional landscapes. Drawing from Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky’s insight that “you don’t use the cinema; the cinema uses you,” he emphasizes that cinematic expression is uniquely demanding and requires shifting students from passive mindsets to active, exploratory modes necessary for building one’s life as an artist.
Kamalakanthan earned his M.F.A. in Film Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and his B.A. in Political Science at Duke University.
Fun fact: In the course of three feature films, Prashanth has directed himself, his wife, his child, both parents, both parents-in-law and both grandmothers through their first on-screen roles.
Taija Mars McDougall, assistant professor, Department of African American Studies
Taija Mars McDougall joins UCI with an international academic background spanning Canada, Germany and the United States. Her research focuses on Black critical theory, slavery and financialization, psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. Her current book project, The Masochist’s Option, explores how Black and white psychopolitical desires shape political power structures, developing a theory of political perversion and twentieth-century sovereignty. At UCI, McDougall will teach “Capitalism and Black Liberation” and “Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll” for upper-division students, providing theoretical foundations in political economy and psychoanalysis respectively.
Her teaching philosophy draws from her extensive experience as a second-language instructor and her undergraduate philosophy training. She approaches teaching critical theory and philosophy as helping students learn new academic languages for understanding dynamics, structures and processes they already encounter in the world. Drawing on language instruction techniques, she emphasizes providing anchors, modeling and practice to build fluency. Her classes incorporate extensive writing exercises and in-class reading practice, reflecting her philosophy professors’ emphasis on writing as essential to learning. She describes her methods as “old school updated with new technology.”
Returning to UCI following a President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Santa Cruz, McDougall received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Culture and Theory at UC Irvine. She also holds a B.A. in English Literature with a Philosophy minor from Carleton University, Canada, and an M.A. in British, American and Postcolonial Studies from Universität Münster, Germany.
Fun fact: Taija has lived in (not just visited) seven different countries.
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