Biography
Dr. Jade C. Huell joins the Department of Communication as Assistant Professor in Fall 2017. She comes to CSUN from Columbia College, South Carolina, where she served as Director of the Columbia College Players, a multidisciplinary performance arts troupe, Assistant Professor of Arts and Communication Studies, and as Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. Dr. Huell holds a BA in Communication, an MA in English, graduate credentials in Women’s Studies and Theatre, and her Ph.D. (1997) is from Louisiana State University in the area of Performance Studies.
Her research rests at the intersections of live performance practice, African American Studies, and Memory Studies. Prior to her work at Columbia College, Dr. Huell was the inaugural Black Performing Arts Fellow for the Black Arts Initiative at Northwestern University, where she worked with graduate and undergraduate students, began a performance troupe, and taught in the Departments of Performance Studies and African American Studies. Her book project traces critical nostalgia and the aesthetics of memory in black diasporic performances of affiliation with the African continent. In addition to her book project, she writes and directs original and ensemble performances, which emphasize the complexity of memory and identity. Her most recent staged performance, titled “Light Show,” debuted at Columbia College, SC, in April 2017.
Dr. Huell’s pedagogy centers around the motto, “move and be moved.” Her classes are each challenged to create an environment in which people learn from/about each other and enjoy the learning process. As an artist and scholar invested in innovative teaching, she values play, visceral understanding, cultural knowledges, and collaborative learning. She believes these concepts stir students and teachers alike to remain intellectually and emotionally affected by others and potentially inspired to serve or to take action outside of the classroom. Using a breadth of pedagogical methods, Dr. Huell believes educators can have a lasting impact on the ways in which we all move through our sociocultural and artistic worlds.
Jade takes care to maintain the integration of her scholarly work and her creative practice outside of the university setting. Employing a personal ethic of social justice living, Jade has founded or reanimated two traveling performance troupes, directed various community performance projects, served on the board of the Rogers Park Arts Alliance of Chicago, Illinois, and worked with non-violence and refugee-focused activists. Jade maintains a healthy and varied creative practice as a storyteller, mixed media visual artist, jewelry designer, playwright, songwriter, model, and performer.