Artists, Scholars, Educators: Meet CABCoFA’s New Full-Time Faculty
By Dr. Khalid Y. Long, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts
As the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts begins a new academic year, it welcomes a cohort of full-time faculty whose work reflects the breadth, rigor, and evolving possibilities of contemporary arts education at Howard University.
Across theatre, dance, musical theatre, costume design, and graphic design, these artists and scholars share more than distinguished professional accomplishments. They are practitioners whose teaching emerges from active creative and scholarly lives—as directors, designers, choreographers, performers, researchers, cultural historians, publishers, and institution-builders. Their careers span Broadway, major American dance companies, nationally recognized theatres and universities, international exhibitions, and influential scholarly and cultural organizations.
Many also bring practices deeply engaged with culture, identity, history, and public life. Their work draws upon African and African Diasporic performance traditions, Black feminist thought, cultural memory, Womanist theology, interdisciplinary design, equity-centered pedagogy, and generations of artistic practice passed from artist to artist. Together, they bring students into conversation with both the traditions that have shaped their disciplines and the new possibilities they are creating within them.
That combination of inheritance and innovation runs throughout the cohort. These faculty members have trained within, performed with, taught at, and contributed to some of the country’s most significant artistic and academic institutions; they have also founded companies, developed new scholarship, created original works, and expanded the ways their disciplines are practiced and understood. Their arrival strengthens the College’s capacity to connect rigorous training with professional practice, cultural inquiry, mentorship, and creative experimentation—preparing students not simply to enter the arts, but to help determine where the arts go next.
Takiyah Nur Amin, MFA, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Dance
Dr. Takiyah Nur Amin, MFA, PhD, is a scholar, strategist, and faculty developer whose work bridges Black performance scholarship, equity-centered institutional practice, and the enduring intellectual traditions of the African Diaspora.
Her research examines the cultural, historical, and philosophical dimensions of Black dance, centering movement as a repository of cultural memory, embodied knowledge, and social imagination. Her scholarship has appeared with Duke University Press, Routledge, Oxford University Press, and The Black Scholar.
Amin is a founding executive board member of the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance and a past Vice President for Membership of the Dance Studies Association. She is also a two-time Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow and an NEH Summer Institute fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
As founder and CEO of Black Girl Brilliance, LLC, Amin has partnered with colleges and universities nationally to advance faculty development, inclusive curriculum design, and transformative institutional change, bringing to that work the same intellectual rigor and equity-centered commitment that animates her scholarship.
Gentry Isaiah George
Lecturer of Dance, Department of Theatre Arts
Gentry Isaiah George is a Lecturer of Dance in the Department of Theatre Arts at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. A Miami native and graduate of The Juilliard School, he also trained at The Ailey School, The School at Jacob’s Pillow, and The Miami Conservatory’s Thomas Armour Youth Ballet.
George has danced professionally with Ailey II and the Dance Theatre of Harlem under the direction of Virginia Johnson, performing works by choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Robert Battle, Martha Graham, Ulysses Dove, Judith Jamison, Nacho Duato, and Robert Garland. He has also appeared as a guest artist with Peter London Global Dance Company and Christopher Williams Dance.
Named by the New York Post in 2012 as one of “three men to watch in ballet,” George is also a National YoungArts Foundation award recipient. In 2013, he founded ZEST Collective and has since created works for the company as well as commissions for The Juilliard School, Peter London Global Dance Company, and other institutions.
Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green, MFA
Professor and Chair, Department of Theatre Arts
Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. A cultural historian, dramaturg, director, and scholar-artist with more than two decades of experience in higher education, her work centers Black Theatre and African Diasporic performance, with particular interests in Africanist dramaturgy, Black feminist theory, cultural memory, and performance as community practice.
Green is the inaugural editor-in-chief of Black Theatre Review, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to scholarship and creative work on the theatrical traditions of the African Diaspora. Her scholarship has been presented internationally in Uganda, Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago, and Belgium, and her work has appeared in leading theatre journals and edited collections.
Before joining Howard, Green served for 16 years as Professor of Theatre and Africana Studies at William & Mary. A nationally recognized leader in theatre and higher education, she is a former President of the Black Theatre Network and has held leadership roles with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Black Theatre Association.
Her scholarship, creative practice, and leadership continue to advance Black Theatre, arts education, and institutional innovation.
Chen Luo, MFA
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Chen Luo is a graphic designer and educator whose work explores the intersections of design, publishing, language, culture, and participation.
She maintains an independent design practice collaborating with artists, galleries, and cultural institutions and is co-founder of Body&Forma, a collective practice exploring publishing across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Luo’s research investigates embodied and participatory approaches to publishing, reimagining reading and writing as communal and performative experiences. Her work has been recognized by Communication Arts, Design 360°, Boston Art Review, and The One Club for Creativity and has been exhibited internationally across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Aquilah Ohemeng, MFA
Lecturer of Dance
Aquilah Ohemeng, professionally known as KHILA, is a choreographer, visual storyteller, and educator from Philadelphia whose multidisciplinary practice is rooted in African Diasporic movement aesthetics, Womanist theology, and social justice.
Her work examines identity, history, and resistance through movement, bringing hip-hop and street dance forms into conversation with contemporary and ballet techniques. Her distinctive choreographic approach has garnered national recognition for performances that are both evocative and innovative.
Ohemeng has been featured in works by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SZA. She earned a BA from Spelman College and an MFA from UCLA and has held teaching appointments at Syracuse University and Spelman College.
Jeffrey L. Page, MFA
Professor and Coordinator of Musical Theatre
Jeffrey L. Page is an Emmy-nominated, MTV Video Music Award-winning director, choreographer, educator, and cultural researcher whose practice brings theatre-making into conversation with African and African Diasporic performance traditions.
Page’s Broadway work includes co-directing and choreographing 1776, which received the Douglas & Ethel Watt Critics’ Choice Award, and choreographing Violet. His revival of Ain’t Misbehavin’ was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and his direction of Cost of Living received the 2025 Young-Howze Theatre Award for Director of the Year.
Before joining Howard, Page served as Lecturer in Theater, Dance & Media and Director of the Harvard Dance Project at Harvard University and taught at The New School and The Juilliard School. A Fulbright Specialist, he also serves on the boards of Jacob’s Pillow and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium.
His teaching is grounded in consent, cultural context, embodied dramaturgy, and the development of artists who understand performance as both disciplined craft and meaningful participation in public life.
Danielle Preston, MFA
Lecturer of Costume Design
Danielle Preston is a Washington, D.C.-based costume designer and educator whose professional work spans some of the nation’s leading regional theatres.
Her recent design credits include work at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Red Bull Theater at The Public Theater, Folger Theatre, Theater Alliance, Round House Theatre, TheaterWorks Hartford, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, and Barrington Stage Company.
Preston holds a BA in Theatre from Meredith College and an MFA in Costume Design from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She received the 2025 Southeastern Theatre Conference Distinguished Costume Designer Award and the 2022 OPERA America Tobin Director-Designer Prize. Her honors also include the 2015 Kenan Costume Fellowship at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the 2013 A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute Fellowship in Costume Design.
In 2024, Preston received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Costume Design for Agreste (Drylands). She previously served as an Assistant Professor of Theater at Frostburg State University and an Instructor of Costume at Montgomery College.
Preston joins Howard with a commitment to mentoring emerging artists and fostering collaborative approaches to theatrical design.
Andrew Smith, Ph.D.
Lecturer of Musical Theatre
Dr. Andrew Smith is a Washington, D.C.-born and raised bass-baritone, educator, music director, and vocal director whose work bridges classical training with a wide range of musical traditions.
He studied at George Mason University, The Catholic University of America, and the University of Michigan. As a classically trained musician, Smith draws on his knowledge of vocal technique and musical interpretation to help bridge genres and strengthen musicianship within the communities he serves.
He is experienced in both performance and writing across classical music, gospel, musical theatre, and jazz. Throughout his career, Smith has performed as a soloist in operas, choral works, and musicals and has led numerous productions as a music director and vocal director.