Bonner Community-Engaged Learning Initiative Fellows

Bonner Community-Engaged Learning Initiative Fellows, supported by the Bonner Foundation, are tenured practitioners of community-engaged scholarship and teaching.

2022-2023 Fellows

These first Community-Engaged Learning Initiative Fellows at the University of Richmond worked with Bonner Center for Civic Engagement staff to significantly further work on a resource to support conversations about community-engaged scholarship and teaching.

Dr. Patricia Herrera
Associate Professor
Department of Theatre & Dance
Affiliated with American Studies and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies

As a community-engaged educator, scholar, and artist, Dr. Patricia Herrera uses the arts to explore ways of producing radical imaginings of resilience, hope, futurity, and justice. She is the author of Nuyorican Feminist Performances: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater (University of Michigan Press). Since 2011 Patricia has engaged with the city of Richmond on a community-based public history project entitled Civil Rights and Education in Richmond, Virginia: A Documentary Theater Project, which has led to the creation of a digital archive The Fight for Knowledge, as well as three community exhibitions at The Valentine Museum: Made in Church Hill (2015), Nuestras Historias: Latinos in Richmond (2017) and Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic (2019–2020) and Through it All: Families Moving Richmond (2021) at GRTC’s Transit Museum. She has co-created series of seven docudramas about gentrification, educational disparities, HIV/AIDS, segregation and Latinos in Richmond with community partners and students. She was the co-founder and co-director of Rubí Theater Company, an intergenerational ensemble that produced original plays and conducted performance workshops in New York City. She has appeared with the group as a lyricist and rapper on Dan Zanes’s Nueva York (2008), Catch That Train (2006 Grammy Award Winning CD for Best Children’s Musical Album), House Party (2003), and Night Time (2002). As dramaturg, she has assisted with the development of the dance film Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved (2021) and original plays such as Threshold (2014), My Life is a Telenovela (2004) and Through My Eyes (1999). Her plays A Woman Who Outshone the Sun (2003), Embrace Me with Your Shawl (1997), and the musical Remnants (2014) co-written with José Joaquín Garcia, deal with growing up in New York City, environmental justice, and urban youth experiences. Her plays have appeared at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, International Fringe Festival, Rubicon Theatre Company, University of Richmond and Culver Center of the Arts. She is currently an Associate Professor of Theater affiliated with American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies programs at the University of Richmond. For more information got to: https://www.drpatriciaherrera.com


Dr. Nicole Maurantonio
Professor
Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
Affiliated with American Studies

Nicole Maurantonio is Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies and Director of Advising, First-Year Seminar, and First- and Second-year Programming at the University of Richmond. Dr. Maurantonio’s research explores narrative and material traces of memory, with a particular focus on the relationship between race and place. She is the author of Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century (University Press of Kansas, CultureAmerica series, 2019) and co-editor of Communicating Memory and History (Peter Lang, 2019) with David W. Park. She has published articles in leading academic journals such as Memory Studies, Communication, Culture, and Critique, and the Howard Journal of Communication, as well as venues aimed at a broader audience.

Active in the University of Richmond community and the discipline, Dr. Maurantonio holds a joint appointment in the Department of Rhetoric and Communication Studies and American Studies Program. Her courses center community-based learning and encourage students to engage critically with the city of Richmond. In 2019, she received the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award and the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement’s Engage for Change Award for Contribution to the Institution.

Working with faculty, staff, and students at UR, Dr. Maurantonio co-founded the University of Richmond Race and Racism Project, an interdisciplinary initiative that documents, interrogates, and catalyzes community discussions on the history of race and racism at the university. She also served as chair of the Communication History Division of the International Communication Association (ICA) from 2018-2020.

Dr. Maurantonio holds a joint Ph.D (2008) in Communication and History from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. (2001) in Economics and History from the University of Virginia.


Dr. Maia Linask
Associate Professor
Department of Economics

Maia Linask is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Her research examines the political economy of trade policy, the interaction of trade policy and product quality, and the impact of trade policy on foreign direct investment. Her research has appeared in the Journal of International Economics, the Review of International Economics, Public Choice, and the Journal of Economic Education. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Trade & Finance Association. Among other courses, Maia teaches principles of microeconomics, international trade, and the economics capstone at the Robins School of Business.