LCA Retired Faculty

Rashmi Luthra

Rashmi Luthra is Professor Emerita of Communication at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Her work has been published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication; International Journal of Communication; Women’s Studies in Communication; Communication, Culture and Critique; Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization; Gazette: International Journal for Mass Communication Studies; Feminist Formations; Feminist Issues; Communication Yearbook; Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, and in several edited collections. She has also edited two volumes on Journalism and Mass Communication as part of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems published by UNESCO. Her book, Refugee as Threat or Opportunity: Metro Detroit Discourses on the Refugee in the Age of Displacement, is forthcoming. She continues to mentor faculty and to review manuscripts for top tier journals in the field. Beyond research, Professor Luthra is enjoying creative writing and spending time with her granddaughter

Stéphane Spoiden

Stéphane Spoiden is a Professor Emeritus of French and Global Culture,s who published several books and articles on culture, cinema, and the European Union. He was director of the International Studies and Global Cultures programs for many years. Prof. Spoiden retired in 2018.

Jacqueline Vansant

Jacqueline Vansant, Professor Emerita of German at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, taught courses on German language, literature, and culture during her almost twenty-five years at UM-Dearborn. Her scholarly work has been centered on the constructions of ethnicities, gender, and identities in post-World War II and contemporary Austrian literature, memoirs, and films as well as the image of Austria in Hollywood films and exile studies. Her publications include Against the Horizon: Feminism and Postwar Austrian Women Writers (1998), Reclaiming ‘Heimat’: Trauma and Mourning in Memoirs by Jewish Austrian Reémigrés (2001), and Austria Made in Hollywood (2019). Since 2008 she has been researching a group correspondence by classmates who fled Vienna between April 1938 and April 1939 and is presently working on an edition of the letters. Check out her website!

Margaret Willard-Traub

Margaret Willard-Traub, Associate Professor Emerita of Composition and Rhetoric, retired in 2022. She served as Director of the Writing Program and Writing Center (2006-2012), Director of the Writing Program (2017-2022), as a member of the campus-wide task force charged with revising general education (2013-2014), and as CASL representative to the Faculty Senate Council (2016-2018), among other roles. Her work has appeared in College English, Assessing Writing, Feminist Studies, Rhetoric Review and Pedagogy, as well as in a number of collected editions. Her current scholarship addresses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the decision-making and reflective processes of faculty and administrators at post-secondary institutions nation-wide. 

Jonathan Smith 

Jonathan Smith, Ph.D., professor of English in the Department of Language, Culture, and the Arts at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, retired from active faculty status on April 30, 2023.

Professor Smith received his bachelor of arts from Rice University in 1984 and his master of arts, masters of philosophy, and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1985, 1988, and 1990, respectively. He joined the University of Michigan-Dearborn faculty as an assistant professor in 1991, was promoted to associate professor in 1997, and professor in 2005. In 2002, he was Jack Williamson Visiting Professor in Science and the Humanities at Eastern New Mexico University. He became the Dearborn campus’s ninth William E. Stirton Professor, its highest faculty honor, in 2012.

Professor Smith’s undergraduate training in both English literature and chemical engineering led to his interdisciplinary research in the literature and science of nineteenth-century Britain. His first book, Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1994), argued for the methodological congruity of literature and science in the period, while his second, Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (2006), broke new ground in its analysis of the illustrations in Darwin’s books and the impact of Darwin on fine art and popular visual culture. The 2008 recipient of the Dearborn campus’s Distinguished Research Award, Professor Smith has also co-edited two volumes of primary source material, one for Victorian Science and Literature (2011) and another forthcoming for Nineteenth-Century Science and Visual Culture in Great Britain. A rigorous and innovative teacher, Professor Smith taught a wide array of undergraduate courses, was an early adopter of online pedagogies, and mentored numerous students in research projects. From 2002 to 2005, he led a team from the Dearborn campus and The Henry Ford that developed a National-Endowment for the Humanities funded website on The Automobile in American Life and Society. Professor Smith was also deeply engaged in shared governance and academic administration, serving on numerous departmental, college, campus, and university committees, as associate dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters (2006-2009), as chair of the Department of Literature, Philosophy, & the Arts (2011-2016), and as chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences (2016-2022).

Tim Kiska, Ph.D., professor of communication in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, retired from active faculty status on May 1, 2026.

Professor Kiska received his Ph.D. degree from Wayne State University in 2003, after a 32-year career in journalism at Detroit Free Press, 1970-1987, and Detroit News, 1987-2002. Professor Kiska joined the University of Michigan-Dearborn faculty as Assistant Professor of Communications in 2001, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2022.

Professor Kiska is an established authority on the history of Detroit media. He has published on a wide range of topics, including women in sports journalism, the social and political dimensions of the journalism covering the 1967 Detroit rebellion, Richard Nixon’s relation to the news media, and various aspects of election analysis. Throughout his time at UM-Dearborn he practiced journalism, publishing features, op-eds, and obituaries. He served as an election analyst for Detroit Free Press and for local television stations. Most notably, for six seasons he produced and presented the Michigan History Podcast, which received the Best Media award from the Historical Society of Michigan in 2020. His historical documentary on WDIV-TV was awarded an Emmy for best historical documentary in 2023, and he was elected to the Michigan journalism Hall of Fame. 

Professor Kiska’s many years of teaching reflect his broad knowledge and extensive professional expertise and ongoing involvement. He gave his students a thorough grounding in the history and practice of journalism, and he served for many years as advisor to UM-Dearborn’s weekly student newspaper, The Michigan Journal. He was President of the UM-Dearborn Faculty Senate (2014-2016) and a member of the Senate’s five-member council (2013-2014). He also served on the University Budget Committee and the Provost’s UM3 Committee (2018), He has given talks, served on panels, and moderated discussions related to the two museum exhibits that he curated. 

Susan N. Erickson, Ph.D., Professor of Art History in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, retired from active faculty status on May 1, 2026.

            Professor Erickson received her Ph.D. degree in Art History from the University of Minnesota in 1989.  She joined the University of Michigan-Dearborn faculty as assistant professor in 1991, and she was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and to professor in 2009.

            Professor Erickson taught courses about Asian art and a course fulfilling a Foundations requirement.  She taught capstone courses for Art History and Museum Studies majors involving the creation of an exhibition at the Berkowitz Gallery and the Stamelos Gallery Collection in coordination with gallery staff. Professor Erickson is a scholar in the fields of early Chinese art and the history of collecting Chinese art in the United States. She has written foundational articles about types of objects placed in Han dynasty tombs. The objects include boshanlu incense burners, images of dancers captured in jade, face coverings made of jade, and bronze money trees (yaoqianshu), and she traced their origin, distribution, and meaning. Professor Erickson also has written articles about the iconography of que towers and the structures of rock-cut cliff tombs in Sichuan. She contributed essays and object entries to exhibition catalogues or conference proceedings published by the Dayton Art Institute, Princeton University Art Museum, and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  Dr. Erickson also contributed a chapter to the comprehensive study of the Han dynasty, China’s Early Empires: A Re-appraisal, Cambridge University Press. Professor Erickson made important service contributions.  She served as Vice Chair of the Faculty Senate (1999–2000), Associate Chair of the Department of the Humanities Department (2000–2001), and Chair of the Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts (2008–2011).