OUR TEAM
Katharine G. Trostel is Associate Professor and Unit Chair of Humanities at Ursuline College. She is a teacher-scholar and the humanities unit chair dedicated to building Ursuline’s capacity in the public humanities and its connection to the Rust Belt region since 2018. Recent activities include securing a grant through the Teagle Foundation's "Cornerstone: Learning for Living" initiative for, “Rhetorics of the Rust Belt: Framing Cleveland through Transformative Texts", actively working on a Modern Language Association's Pathways Step Grant for the project "Towards a Rust Belt Humanities Ecosystem" in collaboration with Cuyahoga Community College and the non-profit organization Teaching Cleveland, and organizing a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty in 2023 entitled, "Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt: Co-Creating Regional Humanities Ecosystems." She is the co-editor-in-chief of a new academic journal, Rust Belt Studies, and Co-Director of the Rust Belt Humanities Lab at the College.
Valentino L. Zullo is Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of the Rust Belt Humanities Lab at Ursuline College. He is co-editor-in-chief of Rust Belt Studies and Associate editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. He co-leads the Get Graphic program at Cleveland Public Library where he was the Ohio Center for the Book Scholar-in-Residence. In 2023, he was co-director of “Superman’s Cleveland,” a city-wide celebration of Superman’s 85th anniversary. He is a board member of the Siegel & Shuster Society, which in 2025 installed the Siegel & Shuster Superman Plaza in Cleveland, Ohio. He is also a licensed independent social worker.