Marvin Overby is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri, where he has served since 2002. He was Laszlo Orszagh Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Szeged in 2000-01, and has also held appointments at Loyola University Chicago (1990-1993), the University of Mississippi (1993-2002), and the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies (1997-1998 and 2005-2006). His research and teaching interests focus on various aspects of American politics, including the Congress, Southern politics, and minority politics. With James MacGregor Burns he is author of the book Cobbestone Leadership: Majority Rule, Minority Power and he has published in such journals as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, American Politics Research, the Journal of Legislative Studies.
Jon Roberts is Professor of English at Saint Thomas Aquinas College in NY State and was Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Szeged for 2002-03. Having earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Rutgers University, he offered courses in classical and contemporary American fiction as well as pragmatism and poetics. He has continued to lecture at Szeged especially on literature and terrorism and has served as an examiner on three recent Ph.D.s. Dr. Roberts has widely published in 19th and early 20th century American literature, pragmatism and modernism, literary theory, Shakespeare and 17th century English literature.
Paul Kantor (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Fordham University in New York City. His teaching and research interests include American and comparative politics, public policy, urban politics and economic development in the United States and Western Europe, and urban political economy. Professor Kantor was the Fulbright John Marshall Distinguished Chair in Political Science (Hungary) in 2005-2006. He has lectured extensively in the USA, China, South America, and throughout Europe. He served as Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar at universities in Italy and the Netherlands, and was a visiting research professor at the Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDST). Professor Kantor is on the editorial boards of journals in political science, American studies and urban affairs, and is on the advisory board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). He is former President of the American Political Science Association Urban Politics Section.
Before assuming duties as Rector of an Anglican Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Briane Turley served for 20 years as a member of the faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University where he has taught courses in the history of Christian thought and American religions and geography of religions. A DuPont Fellow, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Modern European and American religious history. He has published two books and several articles on religion and society topics. His second book (with John Super), published in 2006 by Routledge Press, is titled Religion in World History: The Persistence of Imperial Communion. Turley previously served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Szeged in 2002.
Turley has been recognized by the American Academy of Religion as an early pioneer in the application of the new technologies for humanities research. He has served as Managing Editor and co-founder of three scholarly, online journals: the Journal of Southern Religion, a peer-reviewed publication that examines religion and culture in the U.S. South; the American Religious Experience; and Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe. He has been recognized by both the Marquis Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in American Education. He is married to Ann Turley, a musician. They have one son, Christopher, now in his second university year.
