The faculty members listed below are a sample of the faculty members available to teach credit courses in College Prep.
Gabor Agoston
Gábor Ágoston joined Georgetown University’s Department of History in 1998 as a specialist on the Ottoman Empire.
Before Georgetown, he taught Ottoman, Hungarian, and Balkan history at the Universities of Budapest (ELTE) and Pécs (JPTE), Hungary. His research has focused on the Ottoman Empire and its Habsburg, Russian and Safavid imperial rivals, and on Ottoman and European warfare, diplomacy, and intelligence gathering. In 2003, he was visiting professor at the University of Vienna, Austria. In 2008 and 2009 he taught at Georgetown's McGhee Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies in Alanya, Turkey, and in 2018 at Georgetown’s Doha, Qatar, campus. He is the author of ten monographs and collected studies on Ottoman history, including Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021). He has written more than ninety scholarly articles and book chapters in English, Turkish, and Hungarian on Ottoman, European, and Hungarian history. He is also the co-author of the first English-language Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (2009) and the co-editor of the upcoming Cambridge History of War.
Tommaso Astarita
I was born and raised in Naples, Italy.
In 1983 I came to the United States to pursue my doctoral work, which I finished in 1988. I taught for one year at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Since 1989 I have taught at Georgetown, where I am now Professor of History. My research has focused on the social and economic history of early modern Italy, especially the South. I teach all periods of European history at the survey level, and the Renaissance and early modern periods (ca. 1400-1800) at the upper level. I have developed and taught courses on the Renaissance, Italian history, Iberian history, European historiography, music and theater in early modern Europe, the development of individuality in European culture, the city of Rome, the city of Florence, art and power in pre-modern Europe, crime and justice in early modern Europe, and European society and culture in the eighteenth century.
Schuler Benson
Schuler is a lecturer in the Writing Program, where he works exclusively with students in Georgetown’s Writing and Culture seminar.
He blends elements from his backgrounds in rhetoric, genre, and creative/academic writing with his current projects in industrial-electronic music and media composition to encourage students to view their interests and experiences as expertise they can draw on in order to pursue their own passions into unexpected academic conversations. He’s not afraid of tortuous sentences, he adores working with first-year college composition students, and he would love to talk to you about writing. He completed his Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of South Carolina in 2022.
Santiago Bestilleiro Lettini
Santiago Bestilleiro Lettini is a historian of Latin America.
His work focuses on the long nineteenth century with a transnational perspective. Santiago’s research explores how political and economic notions of “resource”, “progress” and “potential productivity” interacted to shape the trajectory of an extensive ecological region of South America: the grasslands of Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. His doctoral dissertation, The Greater Pampas. Politics, Environment and the Rise of Capitalism in the Río de la Plata Prairies (1770-1920), not only analyzes the material and ideological factors that transformed this biome but also how the biome’s characteristics forged the capacities and limits of the States that emerged on it. Santiago’s approach bridges environmental, political, and economic history to offer a renovated framework of study that challenges nation-centered histories and classic periodization.
Before coming to Georgetown, Santiago was trained in Political and Economic History at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, from where he received a bachelor's and a master's degree. In Argentina, his research focused on the effects of the Napoleonic Wars on the Río de la Plata region in the late colonial period and the revolutionary era. Santiago also took graduate courses at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, The University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and El Colegio de México. He also received scholarships and grants from prestigious institutions, including the Fulbright Commission, the Georgetown Americas Institute, and the Latin American Studies Association.
His teaching experience in Argentina and the United States includes courses in Latin American, European, U.S., and Global History. Santiago also takes pleasure in participating in interdisciplinary debates across different regions. He is a member of diverse international academic associations and has presented his work at conferences in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States.
Karthikeya Easwar
Dr. Easwars expertise lies in consumer psychology.
Dr. Easwar's expertise lies in consumer psychology. His interests and research focus on the influence of affect, emotion and prospection on consumer information processing and decision-making. Dr. Easwar has also written cases for Harvard Business Publishing examining various global business challenges. At Georgetown, Prof. Easwar teaches principles of marketing and consumer behavior across various degree programs as well as conducting the Global Business Experience in Vietnam, India, and Chile. He is also the Director of the Business Scholars Program at MSB.
Brady Forrest
Brady James Forrest is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Georgetown University affiliated with the Disability Studies Program.
In 2024, they received their PhD from the Department of English at George Washington University. There they also received their Master’s degrees in American Studies and English. Forrest is currently at work on their first book manuscript titled An Attunement to Quiet: Crip Feelings, Queer Intimacy, and the Trans Gaze. The project argues that an attention to minor forms of feelings, intimacy, and ways of seeing offer alternative sociopolitical possibilities that center embodiment, affect, and relation over enlightenment notions of the individual, Reason, and the human.
Forrest has presented work at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, the Museum of Popular Culture Conference, the DC Queer Studies Symposium, the Northeast MLA Annual Convention, and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference. In 2017, they were selected to present their paper titled “Crip Feelings/Feeling Crip” in the Disability and Emotion Seminar Series hosted by the Center for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. A revised version of the presentation is now available in a special issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Forrest has also served as a Grant Reviewer for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ Fellowship Program for the 2023 fiscal year and is currently a reviewer for Disability Studies Quarterly.
Andrew Gibson
Andrew Gibson earned his Ph.D. (with Distinction) from the Department of Government in 2024, studying Political Theory (major) and International Relations (minor).
He received his B.A. in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy (Honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Michigan State University's James Madison College as well as M.A.s from the University of Chicago (Social Sciences) and Georgetown University (Government).
Dr. Gibson's dissertation–"The Atlantic Machiavellians: Republican Realism, Renaissance Historiography, and Twentieth Century Political Thought, 1915-1975"–traced twentieth-century debates over Machiavelli's political and historical legacy. His committee included Shannon C. Stimson (chair), Joshua L. Cherniss, and Stefan Eich. Dr. Gibson has been a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow with the Notre Dame International Security Center (NDISC) and a Doctoral Research Fellowship with the German Historical Institute (GHI). In the fall of 2023, he taught an upper-level seminar entitled "From Machiavellism to IR Realism: Ethics and Power in Modern Political Thought" as a Jill Hopper Memorial Fellow in the Department of Government. He has also taught "Political and Social Thought" (Summer 2023) and "Elements of Political Theory" (2023). In the fall of 2024, he will teach two upper-level political theory seminars in the Department of Government.
Desha Girod
Desh Girod (Ph.D., Stanford University, 2008) is an associate professor in the Department of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University and an affiliate with the Departments Conflict Resolution Program and Georgetowns Center for Social Justice.
Desh Girod (Ph.D., Stanford University, 2008) is an associate professor in the Department of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University and an affiliate with the Department's Conflict Resolution Program and Georgetown's Center for Social Justice. Dr. Girod's research examines how racial projects function globally and in the United States. His work employs interpretive methods. He is currently writing a book, Jim Crow Foreign Policy, on how domestic race politics shaped the rise of the United States as a Great Power in the 1900s. Click here for an abstract of a book-related article. In addition, Dr. Girod is researching the relationship between political science and policy formulation.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Dr. Girod developed an early interest in how powerful countries influence less powerful ones. He published his research on foreign aid in periodicals including the American Journal of Political Science and International Organization, as well as his first book, Explaining Post-Conflict Reconstruction, with Oxford University Press.
In 2017-18, Dr. Girod served as President of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. In 2018-2021, he directed the Master's program in Conflict Resolution at Georgetown. In 2020, Out in National Security recognized him as National Security Leader and as an LGBTQIA+ Foreign Policy Expert, and the Diversity in National Security Network recognized him as a Latinx Foreign Policy Expert. Dr. Girod is a transgender man.
Dr. Girod earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 2008, an M.Phil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College, Dublin, in 2002, and a B.A. in Political Science from Penn State in 2000. Various institutions have funded his research: the Political Instability Task Force, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, Georgetown's College of Arts and Sciences and Office of the Provost, and Stanford's Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The Bunton-Waller Fellowship for underrepresented groups funded his Bachelor of Arts degree, the Mitchell Scholarship funded his M.Phil., and the Harry S. Truman Foundation, Stanford's Political Science Department, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law funded his Ph.D.
Ahmed Khattab
Ahmed is a PhD candidate in political science at the Department of Government, Georgetown University.
He studies migration, diaspora politics, and citizenship with a particular interest in the determinants of emigrant rights and diaspora enfranchisement policies at the intersection of political crises in developing [sending] countries. He focuses on the MENA region especially Egypt and Tunisia. His research has been published in Political Studies Review, and the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University in Cairo.
Ahmed is a Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant. He won the Spring 2023 GSAS-GradGov Research Grant at Georgetown for his project titled “emigrant attitudes in restrictive-labor migrant systems." He is also a recipient of Georgetown's Outstanding Teaching Assistant award in the “Social Sciences” category. Ahmed is an Instructor of Record at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies, and a Communications Officer at the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA). He served as an elected member of the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Migration and Citizenship section. He presented at the conferences of APSA, Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), CPSA, Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA).
Before coming to Georgetown, Ahmed received a MA degree in Political Science from the University of Toronto after writing a thesis on the role of militaries in the 2011 Bahraini, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian uprisings. Prior, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Honors Political Science, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and a minor in History, Summa Cum Laude, from the American University in Cairo. He also undertook summer non-degree programs at Oxford University’s St. Antony's College and UCLA. During his undergraduate study, Ahmed served as a presidential student ambassador, research assistant, model united nations and model arab league secretariat, and contributed to research centers and student papers. He was an intern at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the German Federal Enterprise for International Corporation-GIZ. He also served as the Research Assistant to the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum, a research organization hosted by the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt, and volunteered as an editor for the Multicultural Historical Society of Ontario.
Sarah Marshall
Areas of teaching include acting.
Sarah Marshall has been teaching at Georgetown University for 30 years. She has performed in over 100 professional theater productions Washington DC regional theaters including Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theater, The Folger, Studio Theater, Round House Theater, Signature Theater, Washington Stage Guild and she is a company member at Woolly Mammoth Theater. She has been nominated for 25 Helen Hayes awards and has been awarded one. Teaching credits include The Berkshire Theater Festival, Kennedy Center Program for Children and Youth, Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts, Studio Theater Acting Conservatory, Round House Theater, Filmore Arts Center, Theater Lab, Source Theater and Woolly Mammoth Theater.
Jonathan Ray
Jonathan Ray is the Samuel Eig Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University.
He holds a B.A. from Tufts University in History and Religion, and a Ph.D. in Jewish History from The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2006), After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry (NYU Press, 2013), and several articles on Jewish history and culture. His most recent book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain: A New History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), illuminates interfaith relations in Spain from the Jewish perspective.
Andrew Ross
I am generally interested in U.S. Imperialism, Statecraft, and Militarism in the 20th Century.
Much of my research includes a particular thematic focus on Science, Technology, and Environmental Change. Past projects of mine have explored the role of the Women Strike for Peace movement within 1950s/1960s anti-nuclear activism; Carl Sagan, Edward Teller, and the public discourse of the Nuclear Winter Hypothesis in the mid-1980s; and 19th Century U.S. colonial expansion into the Pacific during the "Age of Guano." My dissertation research examines the establishment and growth of the U.S. Missile Range System as a key infrastructure for U.S. global power projection during the Cold War. The primary sites of my research are White Sands Missile Range of the North American West, the Eastern Range of the Atlantic, and the Western Range of the Pacific. This research will shed light on how the U.S. used the atmosphere, low-Earth orbit, and aerospatial technologies to maintain its global hegemony.