Ashley Burge

Associate Professor of English

• Email: ashleyburge@augustana.edu

Dr. Ashley Burge is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and her research on race, gender, class, and sexuality in African American literature is greatly influenced by the rich civil rights history of her hometown.

She completed her PhD at the University of Alabama and her studies centered the works of Toni Morrison and several of her contemporaries.

In addition to studying 19th and 20th century African American literature, Dr. Burge has studied the Black aesthetic, Black immigration, and Black foreign policy at the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Her essays have appeared in the North Carolina Literary Review, the African American Encyclopedia of Culture, the Pennsylvania Communication Annual, and the critical anthology Through Mama’s Eyes. Her current research and teaching interests are Black Feminism, Ecofeminism, Hip-Hop Culture, and Black horror. Her forever muses are Toni Morrison and Beyoncé.

Her current book project establishes a theoretical paradigm that interrogates spaces of resistance for tragic African American literary figures as a means to process trauma.

Dr. Burge enjoys spending time with family and friends, traveling, and bingeing good TV and books.

She has held teaching positions at the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Wallace State Community College.

Specializations: African American literature

Tšooane Molapo

Director of Institutional Research

• Phone: 309-794-7148
• Email: tsooanemolapo@augustana.edu
• Office: Bahls CLC 207

Specializations: Academic affairs, Institutional Research

Margaret H. Kunde

Associate Professor of Communication Studies

• Phone: 309-794-7562
• Email: margaretkunde@augustana.edu
• Office: Old Main 212

Meg Kunde’s research focuses on how political actors and political parties use texts, visual images, symbols and speech to enter into both formal and informal agreements with constituents and how this influences political relationships and policymaking. She likes to supplement her research with involvement in state politics. From 2013-2015, she worked as a program evaluator for the North Carolina General Assembly. Meg teaches courses in rhetoric and political communication with the goal of creating a classroom environment that can be used to establish patterns of critical thinking and effective deliberation.

Specializations: Rhetoric, Political communication

Jacob Wyco

• Email: jacobwyco17@augustana.edu

Jacob is rising junior, currently studying abroad in Greenland. 

Fred Kurt

Director of Dining Services

• Phone: 309-794-7570
• Email: fredkurt@augustana.edu
• Office: Gerber Center 510

Specializations: Dining Services