Leadership and Staff

Samantha Barbas is the director of The Baldy Center, effective Summer 2019.  Barbas researches and teaches in the areas of legal history, First Amendment law and mass communications law. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, culture, media and technology in United States history. Her recent research has explored the history of the law of privacy and defamation. 

Email: sbarbas@buffalo.edu

Amanda M. Benzin is the Associate Director of The Baldy Center, effective November 28, 2022. She is responsible for managing various activities in The Center. Benzin graduated summa cum laude from UB with a BFA in Dance and minor in Business Administration. She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado Boulder with concentrations in performance, choreography, women and gender studies, somatics, and pedagogy.

Benzin is a somatically conscious, rhythmically and passionately driven scholar-artist, educator, Emmy-Award-winning performer, choreographer, and administrator. Most recently she served as Dance Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Dance at Colorado Mesa University. Benzin's current research exists at the intersection of pedagogy, ethical practices, somatic techniques, and vulnerability.

Email: ambenzin@buffalo.edu

Debra Kolodczak, PhD (American Studies, University at Buffalo), is a multimedia artist, photographer, content developer, and AEM6 UX editor. At UB she designs and manages numerous websites, while teaching hybrid courses in communication graphics. In 2015, she led the design and launch of The Baldy Center website, and is responsible for maintaining continuity today.

As a Fulbright Research Fellow (Canada, 02-03) her graduate work was supervised by John Mohawk, Michael Frisch, and Oren Lyons. That work led to her current research involving an environmental literacy project that sustains an early 1830s farmstead in Western New York. The Pre-Civil War property is adjacent to an inland waterway indicative of the indigenous canoe routes, ‘the ancient superhighway' that still connects communities on both continents of the Americas. Kolodczak's work is guided by Oren Lyons.

Email: dmore@buffalo.edu