Faculty

Dr. Beatrice Guenther is the Director of International Studies and received her B.A. from the University of Toronto and her PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. She taught French and German at the College of William and Mary (Virginia) from 1990-2005 and has been teaching courses in French, Canadian Studies, and International Studies since joining the faculty at BGSU in 2005. She directed the Program in International Studies from 2015-2020 and is starting her term as director again in fall 2023. Her research interests are in 19^th-century narrative, and she is working on a book on women’s education as cultural capital from the French Revolution until the eve of the 3e République. Having grown up in Japan, Germany, and Canada, she continues to teach courses on the issue of global migration and its impact on human rights.

Dr. Kristie Foell has taught at BGSU since 1995, serving as on-site director of the Academic Year in Salzburg, Director of International Studies, and founding director of the Global Village residential program. She has published on Elias Canetti (feminist and holocaust studies) and co-edited two volumes on post-unification German culture. Recent teaching and scholarship have focused on the encounter between Islam and the West, including Turkish-German cinema. She previously taught at Vassar and Gustavus Adolphus, received two Fulbright fellowships (Vienna and Berlin), and holds degrees from UC Berkeley (PhD) and Yale (BA). She also speaks French, Italian, and some Arabic.

Dr. Fritsch’s research focuses on issues of international relations, international political economy and comparative politics. He is particularly interested in the relationship between technology and international affairs, the political economy of technological innovation, global trade issues, globalization, theories of International Political Economy, Multinational Corporations, and European integration. In 2012-13 and 2016-17 he served as Resident Director for BGSU’s Academic Year Abroad Program in Austria (Salzburg).

Dr. González works in the areas of intercultural communication and rhetorical criticism. His published research includes examinations of the political discourse of Mexican American activists and explorations of popular music as a mode of communication. His work has appeared in various journals, including The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Youth Theatre Journal, Western Journal of Communication, Southern Communication Journal, and Communication Quarterly.  He has co-edited several books, including Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity and Communication (now in its 6th edition) and Mediating Cultures: Parenting in Intercultural Contexts. He is co-author of Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life.

González also co-edited The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai: Planting the Future, which was recipient of the 2019 Edited Book of the Year Award by the International & Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association (NCA).

González is currently President of the Central States Communication Association. He has served as the Chair of NCA’s International and Intercultural Communication Division. From 2007-2012 he served as Chair of NCA’s Affirmative Action & Intercaucus Committee.

Minjie Huang received her Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Huang’s research interest lies in the field of Applied Microeconomics. She works on research problems of Agent-Based Computational Modeling, Industrial Organization, and Production Economics to explain a broad range of economic phenomena.

Her main research agenda falls into two categories: (1) understanding how people make decisions, such as firms' tax reporting decisions and consumers' online shopping decisions, by applying models of decision theory, (2) Identifying and estimating production functions and productivity and understanding firm performance in manufacturing industries. She has published in the European Journal of Operational Research and the Journal of Consumer Policy.

As a researcher of international communication and critical intercultural communication studies, my work addresses gender and identity in transnational performance studies, spiritual communication, and how communication can advance social, economic, and environmental justice. My research is published in, among others, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Journal of Health Communication, Feminist Media Studies, and Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Grants awards total nearly $500,000 for research and co-directed partnership development programs from U.S. Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Program and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Fulbright Program.

Dr. Franziska Schultz is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). Dr. Schultz’s research and teaching focuses on International Relations in Asia, specifically between Japan and its neighbors, and the interaction of political and economic exchange. Before joining BGSU, Dr. Schultz has served as Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Tuebingen (2014-2016), Adjunct Professor at Temple University, Japan Campus (2019-2021), and Lecturer at Rikkyô University, Japan (2019-2021).

Marc V. Simon is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science as well as Coordinator of the minor in Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) at Bowling Green State University.  He teaches courses on international relations, foreign policy, peace studies, and conflict resolution.  His research examines war and political violence, nonviolence, conflict resolution, economic sanctions, and environmental policy. 

Dr. Rachel Ann Walsh (she/her) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Literature Program of the English Department and International Studies. Her research focuses on Multiethnic Literatures of the U.S. and transnational and global literatures that operate as archives of the intergenerational traumas of settler-colonialism, slavery, apartheid, and U.S. imperialism. Her more recent projects have examined the relationship between the global sites of neoliberalism, post-9/11 border control, and white supremacist movements. Her work, ranging from studies of South African literature of the apartheid to depictions of neoliberalism and anti-Asian violence in contemporary transnational literature, has been published in Contemporary Literature, Twentieth-century Literature, Radical Philosophy Review, and the interdisciplinary journal, Society and Space: Environment and Planning. She has a book chapter in the forthcoming collection on the Postcolonial Bildungsroman. She holds a PhD in Literature and Cultural Studies from Stony Brook University and a BA (summa cum laude) in English from BGSU (and is, indeed, a Forever Falcon). Prior to returning to BGSU, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University.

When she is not reading (novels, Black studies and Border studies theory, and her students’ often inspired work), she is a committed cyclist, an ambivalent runner, a maker of unabashedly excellent meals, and she also sings back-up vocals in the Columbus-based, early aughts cover-band, Dad Bod Date-night Mix.