Spring 2018 Faculty Updates

Professor of Fine Arts Markus Baenziger was included in the group exhibition Sign of the Times at the Weave Shed Gallery at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences in Rabun Gap, GA.

Visiting Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Gender and Sexuality Studies Anne Balay participated on two panels, including the closing plenary, at the Southern Labor Studies Association's Conference, whose theme was "Dirty Work."

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Writing Fellow Elizabeth Blake published a chapter, "Dinner Theatre/Dinner Theatricality," in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food.

Assistant Professor of Economics Carola Binder presented her research on “Inflation Expectations and the Price at the Pump" at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting. She also presented on “Reversal of the Inflation-Inequality Correlation" at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Her blog was also featured as one of the “Top 100 Economics Blogs of 2018” by the Intelligent Economist.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Writing Fellow Natasha Bissonauth attended two conferences, “Sa’dia Rehman’s Lotah Stories' Mazaa: Rethinking Fun and Pleasure in South Asia” at Brandeis University, and “Sunil Gupta’s Sun City: An Exercise in Camping Orientalism” for the Queer South Asia Conference at Syracuse University. Bissonauth also moderated two events with Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia: “Unruly Politics: Panel on Queer Pakistani Art” and “In Conversation with Alpesh Kantilal Patel and his new book, Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Art Histories.”

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo presented the Philadelphia premieres of his 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 at the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA), 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. In addition, he completed four new works: Nebbia lagunare for the Quartetto di Venezia, the song cycle Conditions of Life, and piano pieces Breve indagine fugale d’un arabesco di Chopin and Ricercar sopra “Clavis Astartis Magica.”

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Jane Chandlee presented  “How the Structure of the Constraint Space Facilitates Learning,” co-authored with Jonathan Rawski (Stony Brook University), Jeffrey Heinz (Stony Brook University), and Adam Jardine (Rutgers University), at the 10th North American Phonology Conference at Concordia University in Montreal. Chandlee also presented “Computational Locality and Autosegmental Processes,” co-authored with Jardine, at the 54th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society at University of Chicago.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian published a manuscript, "A Standardized Workflow for Submitting Data to the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene Cluster (MIBiG): Prospects for Research-based Educational Experiences," in the journal Standards in Genomics Science. This work was conducted in collaboration with Sam Epstein '19 and Professor Marnix Medema (Wageningen University). Charkoudian also gave invited talks at Emory University and University of Richmond.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Thomas Devaney published a poem in FENCE Magazine's winter-spring 2018 issue. His essay "The Most Difficult Relationship: The Heart of Frank O’Hara’s 'Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets'” was published in the book Lovers of My Orchards: Writers and Artists on Frank O'Hara (Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018). His poem "The Blue Stoop" was selected by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book for their state-wide 2018 Public Poetry Poster series.

Assistant Professor of Religion Molly Farneth published a chapter, “Constructivism in Ethics: A View from Hegelian Semantics,” in Religious Ethics and Constructivism: A Metaethical Inquiry, edited by Kevin Jung (Routledge, 2018). She also gave a talk on “The Politics of Ritual” at Templeton Honors College at Eastern University.

Margaret Gest Professor of Global Philosophy Ashok Gangadean created a YouTube series, ((Guided Meditations to Source Life)), which consists of 28 meditations that reflect his research and teachings of the last 50 years.

Assistant Professor of Physics Daniel Grin was awarded a NASA ATP Theory Grant, which will support new work, in collaboration with Tristan Smith at Swarthmore, to understand the physics of dark matter and dark energy in a data-driven, model independent way. This will support new approaches to testing cosmological data for evidence of novel neutrino interactions.

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman served as the discussant during the closing plenary, “In the Name of (A Critical?) Global Citizenship: Stepping Forward,” at the 5th Global Service-Learning Summit: Dignity and Justice in Global Service-Learning, which was held at the University of Notre Dame. He was also one of several CPGC on- and off-campus colleagues who presented "Deepening the Local-Global Connection: Sustained Community-Based Learning in Global Health and Migrant Rights" at the same conference. His co-presenters included Marco Antonio Lopez (Casa de los Amigos), Alexandra Wolkoff ‘14 (Puentes de Salud), Shannon Wheatley Hartman (Interactivity Foundation and Haverford College), Rosa Urquiza '20, and Cynthia Toms (Westmont College).

C.V. Starr Professor of Asian Studies and Associate Professor of Chinese and Linguistics Shizhe Huang presented her paper, “On Referential Indefinites in Chinese: A Study of (Specific) Indefinites and their roles in Universal Quantification,” at the 26th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Assistant Professor of Biology Roshan Jain published a research article, "A Cyfip2-Dependent Excitatory Interneuron Pathway Establishes the Innate Startle Threshold," in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports. This project was a collaboration with labs at the University of Pennsylvania, North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and featured senior thesis work by Haverford Biology alum Ben Miltenberg '17. Jain is also the primary author of a research article, "A Forward Genetic Screen in Zebrafish Identifies the G-protein Coupled Receptor CaSR as a Modulator of Sensorimotor Decision-making," which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology. This publication features Christina Szi '18, Amy Zamora '18, Keisuke Sawada '17, and Emilia Cobbs '17.

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen participated in three panels at conferences: “Digital Scholarship and Collaboration with Stake-holding Communities” at the Annual Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in Barcelona; “Twitter y las lenguas de Oaxaca” at the Coloquio sobre lenguas otomangues y vecinas VIII: Coloquio Antonio Peñafiel; and “Making the Story, Telling the Story, and Ethical Representation Through Partnerships” at the Global Service-Learning Summit 5: Dignity and Justice in Global Service-Learning at the University of Notre Dame. She also presented “Engaging Indigenous Languages through Social Media: Colonial Archival Documents and Modern Zapotec Language Speakers” at the Indigenous Languages Panel of the Annual Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in Barcelona, Spain. Lillehaugen also spoke on Bryn Mawr College’s “Perspectives on Universal Design for Learning” panel, which was part of the Tech Talk Series.

Professor of Fine Arts Hee Sook Kim received the Chateau d'Orquevaux Artist Residency in Orquevaux, France and was selected for the 2018 Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge 3 juried exhibition, for which she won an award. Her work was featured in the solo exhibit My Spiritual Garden at Art Mora Hannam in Seoul, Korea; and the group shows, 16 Times ART at Weibenthurm Town Hall in Germany, Kyo Gallery’s Iauguration Exhibition in Alexandria, VA, ACPS in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill Gallery, Welcome to Art Garden at PizzArte in New York; and Armory Art Week’s Artbox Project in New York. She also gave an artist talk on “Paradise Between” at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Charlie Kuper gave two invited papers this April: "Teaching the Saints in a Classics Classroom" at the Friends of the Saints Colloquium at CUNY Graduate Center, and "Origins in Jerome's 'Life of Paul the First Hermit'," at the Origins and Original Moments in Late Latin Literature conference at Fordham University. In June, Kuper also published "The 'Life of Alypius the Stylite': Introduction, Translation, and Commentary" with Oxford's Cult of the Saints Project.

Associate Professor of Spanish Ana Lopez Sanchez presented a paper, “Landscapes of Protest and Struggle in Ayotzinapa and Tixtla (Mexico): Beyond the Disappearance of the 43,” at the Latin American Studies Association conference in Barcelona, Spain.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth published the essay “Inferentialism After Kant” in the volume From Rules to Meanings: New Essays on Inferentialism. She also presented “Teaching Logic Historically" at the Teaching Logic and Prospects of Its Development Conference, the 8th International Conference of the Department of Logic at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in  Ukraine; and “The History and Prospects of Structuralism” at the FilMat 2018 Conference, “Philosophy of Mathematics: Objects, Structures, and Logics,” in Mussomeli, Sicily.

Associate Professor of Astronomy Karen Masters gave an invited talk about Galaxy Zoo at the “Galactic Rings: Signposts of Secular Evolution in Disk Galaxies” conference at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Masters also wrote and narrated a BBC Ideas video, “Why We All Need a Bit of Childlike Wonder,” and was quoted in a press item about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s artist-in-residence in her capacity as SDSS spokesperson. She also published a paper, “SDSS-IV MaNGA: evidence of the importance of AGN feedback in low-mass galaxies,” and gave a press conference on it at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in January.

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Weiwen Miao had a paper, “Case Comment: Estimating the Economic Value of the Loss of a Chance: A Re-examination of Chaplin v. Hicks,” accepted to appear in Law, Probability, and Risk.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan received a Society for Classical Studies Pedagogy Award that will support the Concordance Liberation Project, which aims to digitize and make accessible important resources for the study of Latin and Greek texts.

William R. Keenan Jr. Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts gave an invited paper, "Blood-cry and Eyeglints: Translating Enallage in Aeschylean Lyric,” at a conference in honor of Victor Bers at Yale. Her book with University of Pennsylvania’s Sheila Murnaghan, Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965, was published by Oxford University Press as part of their Classical Presence series.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Adam Rosenblatt presented his paper “Forensic Science and the Concepts of Human Rights and Humanitarianism” at the Latin American Studies Association conference in Barcelona, Spain.

Associate Professor of History Bethel Saler was selected to receive the 2018 residency at Fukuoka University on social, cultural, and political history from the Revolution to the Civil War, with a focus on race and ethnic relations, state formation, colonialism, and empire. The Organization of American Historians and the Japanese Association for American Studies, with the support of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, select two U.S. historians to spend two weeks at Japanese universities giving lectures, seminars, advising students and researchers interested in American history, and joining in the collegiality of the host institution.  

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures and VCAM Faculty Fellow Erin Schoneveld won the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies Individual Research Grant. She also published an article, “Representation, Adaptation, and Preservation at the Frontiers in East Asian Art,” in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and gave an invited talk, “Shirakaba and Coterie Journals in Meiji-Taishō Japan” for the Faculty Seminar Series “Understanding the Material Text in East Asia: A Comparative View” of the Departments of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor and Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer published an article, “Disrupting ‘All the Familiar Geometry’: Drones, Settler Colonialism, and Nasser Hussain’s Difficult Questions,” in Law, Culture and the Humanities and did an interview with 3CR radio in Melbourne, Australia, about the PJHR program and her book, Ethical Loneliness. She also gave three invited talks: “Can we decolonize time?: Thinking about settlement, justice, and indigenous oral history,” at the Pendle Hill Retreat Center; “A goat story, a bear problem, and a ‘tin ear’: language and democracy in settler colonial courts,” at the Miami University Symposium on Language and Democracy; and “Breakdown and Repair in International Criminal Law: The Case of Dominic Ongwen,” at the Symposium on Breakdown and Repair at the Potomac Center for the Study of Modernity at the University of Maryland. Stauffer also gave a presentation, “Temporal lapse and temporal privilege: Is it possible to decolonize a perceptual tradition?” at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities at Georgetown University’s School of Law in Washington, D.C.

Assistant Professor of Health Studies Anna West presented a paper ,“Life is Capital: Health as a Resource for Future Making in Malawi”, at the Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society in Philadelphia in March. She also organized a roundtable on “Structural Competency for Global Health Education” for the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Philadelphia in April.  

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Fine Arts William Williams is featured in the exhibition Complete Set II at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, and the photography exhibit People, Places & Things at the Stanek Gallery in Philadelphia.

Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Jonathan Wilson was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to conduct a cutting-edge plant experiment to help reconstruct paleoclimatic history with colleagues in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History and at the Smithsonian Ecological Research Center at the Smithsonian Institution. The project is called "Fossil Atmospheres" and will be a multi-year growth experiment on trees of Ginkgo biloba, the living fossil, in outdoor chambers that simulate past carbon dioxide concentrations. Wilson and his collaborators will observe in detail how the plants respond over three years, using modern physiological and environmental analytical methods, and use these results to reconstruct atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a climatic event 55.5 million years ago that is the best analogue for anthropogenic climate change.

Professor of Philosophy Emerita Kathleen Wright was a visiting researcher in the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University during the spring semester. While there, she attended two conferences and gave three papers. She delivered invited lecture "The Question of Method in Chinese Philosophy: Bryon Van Norden and Taking Back 'Practical Philosophy'" at the National Chengchi University College of Law in Taipei; keynote talk "What We Can Learn From Chinese Philosophy: How to Change Our Mindset about War" at the Kyoto University and National Taiwan University Graduate Student Conference at National Taiwan University; and conference paper "Provincializing Anglo-European Philosophy: Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Question of Method in Chinese Philosophy" at the Conference on "Interpreting Chinese Philosophical Texts - Theories, Case Studies, and Praxis" at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.

Associate Professor of English Christina Zwarg was invited to deliver a paper on Frederick Douglass, phrenology, and the "money-nerve" of religion at the American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco.