College Disability Liaison
Nicole Scalissi joined CSUSB in 2023 as Assistant Professor of Art History and Global Cultures. She is a historian of Latinx/Afro-Latinx contemporary art, but teaches about art from all over the globe. As a community-engaged scholar, her courses often produce mutually-beneficial projects with local communities, such as new audio description of public visual artworks developed with blind and low vision self-advocates, and student-written interpretative texts for The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside. She serves as an academic and professional resource to help student-residents get comfortable on campus and with college life—especially when transitioning from community college, changing majors, and developing their own critical voice in writing.
Our Faculty
Faculty of the fine arts at CSUSB are nationally recognized and accomplished creative writers, curators, artists, composers, directors, and performers.
Collectively, Arts & Letters faculty have published over 40 books of scholarship and creative writing. In addition, dozens of faculty articles appear in publications such as International Journal of American Linguistics, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Journal of Moral Philosophy, International and Intercultural Communications Annual, Text and Performance Quarterly and Art in America.
Our professors have won highly competitive grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Defense, and National Security Agency, as well as interdisciplinary grants from the National Institute of Nursing and NASA.
Faculty present their work at major conferences — including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the National Communication Association Conference, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Conference, the American Philosophy Association Conference, the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, the Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the North American Victorian Studies Association — and are frequently invited as keynote speakers and guest lecturers.
On campus, we enjoy interdisciplinary exchanges in faculty colloquia, which are offered each academic term and are open to the campus community.
Explore our site and learn more!
CAL Research & Creative Activities Spotlight Series #1
On Nov. 19, 2020, five recently tenured or promoted faculty members in the College of Arts and Letters shared details about their work and research via Zoom.
Following an introduction by Dean Rueyling Chuang, Prof. Johanna Smith from the Department of Theatre Arts facilitated presentations by Dr. Maria Garcia-Puente, World Languages and Literatures; Prof. Ed Gomez, Art and Design; Dr. Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, Communication Studies; Dr. Julie L. Taylor, Communication Studies; and Dr. Dany Doueiri, World Languages and Literatures.
CAL Talk: Arts and Humanities in the Age of the Pandemic
On Oct. 1, 2020, the College of Arts and Letters presented “Arts and Humanities in the Age of the Pandemic,” a faculty panel discussion examining COVID-19’s impact and the critical role of creative and humanistic practices in fomenting social connectedness and cultural life.
Following a welcome by Dean Dr. Rueyling Chuang and introductions by Associate Dean Dr. Parastou Feizzaringhalam, the presentation featured remarks from Prof. Matthew Poole, Art and Design; Dr. Shafiq Rahman, Communication Studies; Dr. David Carlson, English; Dr. Stacey Fraser, Music; Dr. William Vanderburgh, Philosophy; Dr. Terry Smith, Theatre Arts; Dr. George Thomas, World Languages and Literatures; and Prof. Kelly Dortch, Liberal Studies.
Meet (Some of) Our Faculty
In these short, captioned videos, hear directly from some of the outstanding faculty in the College of Arts and Letters as they discuss the courses they teach, the subjects they explore, and the research they conduct. #WeDefineTheFuture