Andrea Nevins, Ph.D., the current Interim Dean of the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences (HCAS) and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center at Nova Southern University (NSU) in Florida, has been named the new Dean of the Farquhar Honors College. As Dean, Dr. Nevins will expand research opportunities for honors students, particularly community-oriented research that impacts the South Florida community. She will also develop additional travel-study honors courses and gain funding for those students who would not otherwise be able to experience travel. She will start in her new position as Dean on September 6, 2021.
During her service as Interim Dean. Dr. Nevins launched initiatives that resulted in the funding of interdisciplinary teaching, research, and co-curricular activities. She also established the HCAS Undergraduate Student Ambassador Program, the HCAS Faculty Advisory Council, and the HCAS Faculty Fellowship.
Nevins attended St. Andrew High School, an all-girls institution, in Jamaica. She graduated from the University of Miami with a PhD in English and earned a B.B.A. in Marketing at Florida International University. She also holds an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International. She started her career at Nova Southern in 2005 in the role of writing program coordinator in the university’s Division of Humanities at the former Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. She advanced to several leadership positions there, which included being the assistant director of the Division of Humanities, chair of the Department of History and Political Science, interim chair of the Department of Literature and Modern Languages, and interim chair of the Department of Family Therapy. Before being appointed Halmos College Interim Dean, she was the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and founding Director of the Center for Humanities in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Dr. Nevins has taught courses in international studies, literature, writing, and film, focusing on the Caribbean and African Diaspora. She is the author of several books, including “The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies” from Lexington Press and “Working Juju: Fantastical Imaginings of the Caribbean” from the University of Georgia Press. She has contributed chapters to “Archipelagos of Sound: Transnational Caribbeanities, Women and Music” from the University of the West Indies Press and “Music, Memory and Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination” from Ian Randle Publishers. She also contributed a chapter to “The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to 21st Century Chic” from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Dr. Nevins was the winner of the Small Axe Literary Competition in the short fiction category, and her scholarly and creative writings have been featured in numerous journals, including World Literature Today, MaComére, Small Axe, The Caribbean Writer, Fat Studies, Crab Orchard Review, Feminist Media Studies, Palimpsest, Callaloo: a Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, and Social Semiotics. She is the former associate managing editor of sx salon as well as the former managing editor of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal and Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship, and the former associate editor of Gulf Stream Magazine. She has been a presenter at many professional conferences, such as the Annual Caribbean Studies Conference, the Annual National Women’s Studies Association Conference, the Annual West Indian Literature Conference, the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, and the International Conference on Caribbean Literature.
