The instructor, Bryan Rommel-Ruiz currently teaches Early American and African American history at the Colorado College. He is a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan, where he is writing his dissertation on the ramifications of the American Revolution for freed and enslaved blacks in Newport, Rhode Island and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Entitled "Slavery, Freedom, and the North Atlantic Diaspora in the Age of the American Revolution," this study examines the ways the emergence of national boundaries between British Canada and the United States influenced the development of Afro-American culture and society. When he is not belaboring his dissertation, he contemplates the joys of fatherhood with the expectation of his daughter Emma in February. In his freetime he follows the San Francisco 49rs and tries to convince his collegues that Car Wash is the best movie about race and class in LA, and illustrates the ways disco was a site of resistance. For readers interested in the more mundane aspects of the instructor's professional career, they can access his curriculum vitae.