Fall 2017 Faculty Updates

Professor of Fine Arts Markus Baenziger was a fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences residency program and received the Friends of Lake Burton Distinguished Fellowship award. He also gave an open studio presentation as part of the Great ARTdoors Festival at the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Laura Been attended the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington D.C., where she presented a poster on "Estrogen withdrawal increases oxytocin in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and alters open field behavior in Syrian hamsters." Co-authors included Haverford alumnae Claudia Amaral '17, Clio Bodie '17, Breanna D'Antonio '17, and Rachel Lee '17. Been's current students, William Foster '18 and Elizabeth Heaton '18 also attended the meeting and presented a poster with her on "Increased oxytocin immunoreactivity in the paraventricular nucleus, but not the supraoptic nucleus, following a hormone-simulated pregnancy in female Syrian hamsters." Been also gave an invited talk, "The neurobiology of social communication in Syrian Hamsters: a bidirectional relationship between brain and behavior," at St. Joseph's University's Department of Psychology seminar.

Assistant Professor of Economics Carola Binder published "Measuring Uncertainty Based on Rounding: New Method and Application to Inflation Expectations" in The Journal of Monetary Economics, "Consumer Forecast Revisions: Is Information Really So Sticky?" in Economics Letters, and "Interest Rate Prominence in Consumer Decisionmaking" in Economic Inquiry. Binder attended the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Monetary Economics and "Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy" at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She also presented "Household Informedness and Long-Run Inflation Expectations: Experimental Evidence" with Alex Rodrigue '17 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo completed his cycle of 13 piano miniatures, Cameos from the Quaker Domain, and gave the work its world premiere during the College’s Lives that Speak celebration. Five other major new works received world premieres. Armed and Dangerous (variations on “L’homme arme”) was performed at Haverford by the Grammy-nominated Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli, and again at Bard College. Also at Haverford, Cacioppo’s 6 Canti su testi di Renzo Oliva, Piano Variations on “Hail to the Chief” – for ALL Americans, Fantaisie-Sonatine (Souvenirs du Levant), and Bernini Elegy received their first performances, with Cacioppo at the piano joined by mezzo soprano Misoon Ghim, baritone Brian Ming Chu, Philadelphia Orchestra oboist Jonathan Blumenfeld ’78, and fellow pianists Charles Abramovic and Sara Davis Buechner. Additionally, his Philadelphia Diary was performed at Cerritos College by pianist Althea Waites. Cacioppo was commissioned to compose a new work for former Philadelphia Orchestra principal horn David Wetherill and the eminent Italian violinist Francesco D’Orazio. He was also awarded a commission from the art song organization Lyric Fest to compose a setting of Walt Whitman, and he is among a select group of American composers nominated for an Edwin G. McCollin Fund Commission Award.

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Jane Chandlee published a paper, "Computational Locality in Morphological Maps," in the November 2017 issue of Morphology.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian published an article, "Collaborating with Undergraduates to Contribute to Biochemistry Community Resources," with collaborators Kathryn Haas (Saint Mary's College of Notre Dame), Jen Heemstra (Emory University), and Marnix Medema (Wageningen University) in the journal Biochemistry. She also co-authored a manuscript in PLoS Biology with Haverford collaborators Rob Fairman, Bashkim Kokona, Adam Huff, and 17 undergraduate students. This paper, "Uncovering Protein-Protein Interactions through a Team-based Undergraduate Biochemistry Course," describes the pedagogical and research findings from Fairman and Charkoudian's 2015 "Biochemistry Superlab" course. Charkoudian also gave invited talks at George Washington University, Swarthmore College, University of Delaware, and Bowdoin College.

Visiting Assistant Professor Thomas Devaney hosted poets Joan Larkin and Robert Hershon, with Haverford and Swarthmore College’s Creative Writing Programs and the Hurford Center, on campus. He was featured poet in the Pretext Reading Series at Studio 10 in Brooklyn, N.Y. His interview with Bill Berkson was published in The Brooklyn Rail's November issue, and he selected 12 audio files from the American Philosophical Society Native American Indigenous Archive for a pop-up Sensory Lab installation as part of the Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives project "Sounding the Archive" in the VCAM building. He hosted Philadelphia Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher, with the English Department, VCAM, and the Hurford Center. And he also read new work in “The Poetry of Beethoven” program, responding to Beethoven's Opus 132, which was performed live by the Daedalus Quartet, at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor of Computer Science John Dougherty served as a member of an invited panel at the MAA Mathfest 2017 in Chicago, Ill. The panel, "Math for Computing? Computing for Math? A Discussion of Interdependencies," discussed how computer science can support and amplify learning in mathematics. Dougherty also presented an accepted paper, "Assessment of a Problem‐Based Learning Activity in a High Performance Scientific Computing Course," at the CCSC-Eastern Conference at Muhlenberg College. (This work also appeared in the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges.) Dougherty also attended the recent ASSETS 2017 conference in Baltimore, Md., to explore accessible computing research.

Assistant Professor of Religion Molly Farneth gave a talk, "Why Religion Still Matters: Provocations after Hegel," at Princeton University's Hegel and the Humanities Symposium and gave a paper, "Pluralism, Politics, and the Problem with Liturgy: A Response to James K.A. Smith's Awaking the King," at the American Academy of Religion Conference in Boston, Mass. Farneth also spoke at Boston University's Institute for Philosophy and Religion on “How to ‘Love Thy Neighbor’: Lessons from Hegel on Conflict and Reconciliation.”

Visiting Assistant Professor and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Rafter Ferguson published "Diversification and labor productivity on U.S. permaculture farms" in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Heidi Goodson gave three invited talks in October at The Five Colleges Number Theory Seminar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Mt. Holyoke College; and Smith College. Goodson also published an article, "A Complete Hypergeometric Point Count Formula for Dwork Hypersurfaces," in The Journal of Number Theory.

Assistant Professor of Physics Daniel Grin gave a physics colloquium at Drexel University and an astronomy seminar at Rutgers University, presenting, in both venues, his research on using precise cosmological data to test for the existence of ultra-light hypothetical particles called axions.

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman published an essay, "Sustained rights inquiry: Before, during, and after summer internships," in Civil Rights and Inequalities, published by the CAPA Global Education Network. He also published "Community-engaged scholarship, knowledge, and dominant discourse: A cautionary tale from the global development sector" in The Journal of Leadership Studies.

Associate Professor of Spanish Ariana Huberman attended the Latin American Jewish Studies Association International Conference in Mexico City to give a contributed talk, "Pintura, enfermedad y misticismo en la literatura de Angelina Muniz-Huberman."

Professor of Physics Suzanne Amador Kane gave a keynote speech on biomechanics research at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physical Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Charlie Kuper co-organized a panel, "Views To and From the Wondrous Mountain," at the 2017 Byzantine Studies Conference in Minneapolis, Minn., which was sponsored by the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture. In this panel, he gave a paper, "We Cannot Praise the Fruit without the Root: The Mother Figure in the Communities of Symeon the Younger and Alypius."

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen (and Felipe H. Lopez)  published "Mam" and "Guepy," two Valley Zapotec poems with translations, in Latin American Literary Review. Lillehaugen and her student collaborators, Sabea K. Evans '18, Kathryn Goldberg BMC '18, Julie Gonzales BMC '19, Jaime Metzger '19, Lyra Piscitelli BMC '18, Diamond C. J. Ray BMC '18, and Conor Stuart Roe '20, published a digital edition of pp. 97-117 of Leonardo Levanto’s 1732 Arte de la lengua zapoteca.

Professor of Physics and Astronomy Andrea Lommen took the nine Tri-Co students in her "Gravitational Waves" course to the fall meeting of the North American NanoHertz Observatory of Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) at Lafayette College, where they participated in discussions about both the science and the politics of the expected future detection of gravitational waves by the NANOGrav collaboration, and they met students and faculty from all over the United States and Canada who are members of the collaboration. Lommen gave a talk on the status of the Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER), which is the x-ray telescope installed on the International Space Station in June. (Haverford students are beginning to analyze NICER data.) Lommen also published an invited opinion piece in a special issue of Nature Astronomy dedicated to pulsars.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth published an essay, "The Place of Philosophy," in the journal Philosophy East and West. Macbeth gave two talks: an invited lecture, "Ampliative Deductive Proof: Lessons from Kant and Frege," in the Philosophy Colloquium Series at the University of Pittsburgh, and a contributed talk, "Formal Proof in Mathematical Practice," at the joint meeting of the Ninth French PhilMath Workshop and the ANR/DFG in Nancy, France. She was also an invited participant in two roundtables: one on varieties of visualization in mathematics at the Fourth International Meeting of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice in Salvador, Brazil, and one on methodologies in mathematics and the humanities at the 31st annual meeting of the Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts in Tempe, Arizona.

Associate Professor of Political Science Steve McGovern was invited to give a presentation based on his paper "Analyzing Urban Politics: A Mobilization-Governance Framework" for the concluding session of a mini-conference on The New Urban Politics: Changing Cities and Fresh Perspectives. The mini-conference was an all-day event at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco.

Associate Professor of Political Science Barak Mendelsohn received a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation for the project "After the Caliphate."

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan presented "Digital Approaches to Latin Vocabulary Learning: The Bridge" and "Introducing the Classics Chair’s Handbook and Repository of Exemplary Materials" at the Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in New York. He also gave a lecture, "Pathography in Antiquity: the Case of Gout," at Skidmore College and led an all-day workshop for secondary and collegiate educators on "Digital Commentaries for Teaching" at Dickinson College.

Associate Professor of Political Science Zachary Oberfield was invited to give a lecture, "Teaching Climates and Publicness," at the Wake Forest University Departments of Education and Politics & International Affairs. The lecture was based on Oberfield's recent book, and it was followed by four panelists offering comments and criticisms of the book.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Adam Rosenblatt's article, "Civic Engagement with the Dead: Notes on Theory and Practice in a Forensic Key," was published in the fall 2017 issue of The Applied Anthropologist. Using examples from mass grave exhumations as well as a local cemetery where multiple Haverford classes are doing service projects, Mount Moriah, it argues that bridging the divide between theory and practice requires careful thinking about power, relationships, and the spaces where these efforts take place. On Nov. 8, he was featured on The Academic Minute, a production of WAMC Radio and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, discussing his research. Over fall break, Rosenblatt used a CPGC faculty travel grant to accompany volunteers who work in two historic black cemeteries in Richmond, Va., which have fallen into disrepair due to the ongoing displacement of black families and the lack of state resources for preservation and maintenance. In addition to hands-on work weeding and clearing brush, he conducted interviews with people who have family members buried in these cemeteries or are involved in work there. The trip supported his research on communities that care for neglected cemeteries, as well as planning for a future travel component for his "Human Rights and the Dead" seminar. Rosenblatt was also an invited participant at a colloquium, "From Clandestine Graves to the Empty Tomb: Narratives of Dignity and Hope in a Time of Horror," at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where he gave a talk, "Complexity is not the Enemy: Tools for Understanding the Ethical-Political Landscape of Clandestine Graves." Collaborating closely with CPGC, he organized the "Rights at the Edge" symposium at Haverford this November, which brought together scholars, activists, artists and journalists to discuss ways of extending the guarantees of human rights policy more broadly while also challenging us to rethink the boundaries of the "human" for a new century.  

Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Eric Stachura and Associate Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier were awarded a Mellon Tri-Co Faculty Forum Seed and Root Grant for their "Philadelphia Theoretical Chemistry Club." They also organized a one-day conference, "Philadelphia Area Density Functional Theory Day." Stachura gave an invited talk, "Weak Solutions to Refraction Problems in Metamaterials," at the West Chester University Applied Math Seminar and, thanks to funding from the NSF and Oak Ridge, attended the Heidelberg Laureate Forum for young researchers, for which he was featured in short blog post.

Associate Professor and Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer gave a paper on a panel discussing Gabriela Basterra's book Kant, Levinas: The Subject of Freedom at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in Memphis, Tenn.

Emeritus Professor of History Susan Stuard finished three entries for the new Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia on "Annales School," "Dowry," and "Nicolosa Castellani Sanuti."

Douglas and Dorothy Steere Professor of Quaker Studies David Harrington Watt gave a talk at the University of California, Berkeley on antifundamentalism in the modern United States.

Assistant Professor of Health Studies Anna West presented a paper, "Local Histories of the Community Health Worker Role: Legacies of the Jeanes Community Workers in Malawi, ca. 1930s-40s," at the 60th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Chicago.

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies Helen White had her proposal, "Assessing the Use of Two Rapid Sensing Techniques to Determine Oil Content and Source of Persistent Oil in the Marine Environment," funded by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The $73,821 collaborative grant is shared with Anna Michel at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Photographs by Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Fine Arts William Earle Williams were included in the group exhibition The Expanded Caribbean: Contemporary Photography at the Crossroads at the Pearlstein Gallery-Drexel University. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer review of the show calls out his works in that show. He was also included in another group exhibit, Innovative Approaches, Honored Traditions, at the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum at Hamilton College. Additionally, Williams' portrait of photographer Aaron Siskind, which is part of Lehigh University's permanent collection, was on view in an exhibition of his work at Lehigh. He also served on an Outside Review Committee of the Fine Arts Department at Bowdoin College.

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing was the program co-chair for the African Studies Association 60th anniversary annual meeting in Chicago, the largest gathering in the world of Africanists. Wing co-presented a paper, "The Constitutional Court and the Defense of Human Rights in Benin," with Alice Kang of the University of Nebraska at that conference.