Spring 2023 Faculty Update

B

Professor of Economics and Coordinator of Mathematical Economics Richard Ball was one of three presenters in a webinar on "The Life Cycle of a Reproduction: From Ex Ante Documentation to Ex Post Reproduction and Beyond", October 4, 2022. This event was one of a four-part series of Open Research Seminars hosted by the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS). He was also one of three presenters in a panel discussion of "Should Reproducibility Be Part of the Undergraduate Curriculum in Economics and the Social Sciences". This event was part of a year-long monthly symposium on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics and the Social Sciences organized by the Data Editor for the journals of the American Economic Association. He also presented a talk titled "Teaching Reproducibility: Principles and Flexibility" for a Presidential session titled "Pedagogy and Economic Education" at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association, Fort Lauderdale, FL, November 19, 2022.

Assistant Professor of Economics Carola Binder was selected as a research affiliate of the National Bureau of Economics research (NBER) in the Monetary Economics group. She was also a speaker at the Kenyon College Center for American Democracy conference on information and attended the Brookings Papers on Economics Activity spring conference.
 

C

Professor of Spanish Roberto Castillo saw publication of his third novel, "La novela del corazón" (Laurel Editores) in November 2022, which has received excellent reviews. Also in late 2022, production kicked off for a feature-length film and a series based on his earlier novel, "Muriendo por la dulce patria mía" (Laurel, 2017).

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Jane Chandlee published an article titled 'Less is more: Reexamining assumptions through the narrow focus of subregularity' in the journal Theoretical Linguistics. She also gave two colloquium talks: 1) 'Formalizing (Non)iterativity and the Computation of Rule Application Modes' at CUNY in April 2022, and 2) '(Non)iterativity and Input/Output Locality' at Stony Brook University in March 2023; gave a tutorial session called 'Boolean Monadic Recursive Schemes for Phonological Analysis' at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2022, held at UCLA with co-presenters Adam Jardine, Adam McCollum, and Tatevik Yolyan (all of Rutgers University); presented a poster titled 'Decision Trees, Entropy, and the Contrastive Feature Hierarchy' at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, held in Denver, CO in January 2023; and received the Morris Halle Award for Faculty Excellence in Phonology from the Linguistics Society of America.

Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian was elected to the Armenian Society of Fellows and National Academies of Sciences US National Committee. Charkoudian was awarded a Rising Star Award from the American Chemical Society, which recognizes exceptional early to mid-career women chemists across all areas who have demonstrated outstanding promise for contributions to their fields. Charkoudian was also awarded a $447,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for her work on the biochemical comparison of type II polyketide biosynthetic enzymes across phyla for expanded access to chemical diversity. She co-edited the book “Confronting Failure: Approaches to Building Confidence and Resilience in Undergraduate Researchers” and published manuscripts in the 'Journal of Physical Chemistry' alongside Professor Casey Londergan and seven Haverford undergraduate researchers and in 'Microbial Genomics' alongside colleague Assistant Professor Eric Miller and Christina McBride (HC ’23). Charkoudian served as a panelist for the University of Chicago “My Choice” webinar and the NSF Center for Genetically Encoded Materials “Career Chat” webinar. Charkoudian gave invited talks for the American Society of Pharmacognosy national meeting, the American Chemical Society national meeting, the Bioorganic Gordon Conference and the National Council on Undergraduate Research Conference. She also led a workshop on “microaffirmations and other validated strategies to increase inclusivity in our research training environments" as part of the Bioorganic Gordon Conference.

Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kathryne Corbin published an article, "'On ne peut que cracher sur la page du Code.' Pour une nouvelle cour de justice : la journaliste et la criminelle dans la presse quotidienne de la Belle Époque" (‘One can only spit on the page of the Code.’ For a new court of justice: the journalist and the woman criminal in the daily press of the Belle Époque”) in the quebecker journal "Tangence" special edition on women criminals and the media (digital publication April 2023).

D

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Clyde Daly presented research at Oberlin College on April 19, 2023. Talk title: Development of Novel Spectroscopic Maps for Terminal Alkyne Containing Molecules.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Thomas Devaney published six poems in the 2023 January/February issue of The American Poetry Review. On April 22, 2023, he also hosted "EARTH DAY: A Poetry Summit & Happening," a day-long event on campus. The summit showcased poets and artists from Haverford’s Creative Writing Program, visiting poet Sparrow who merges poetry and music, and Mural Arts artist Shira Walinsky. The event was sponsored by Haverford’s Creative Writing Program, the English Department, and the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Associate Professor of Computer Science John Dougherty attended the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Northeast Region Conference (April 2023) and presented work via poster session with colleague Bruce Char of Drexel to explore how undergraduate students perceive the connections between mathematics and computer science. (B. Char and J.P. Dougherty. A Study of the Perception of Mathematics as a Learning Tool for Computer Science Undergraduates. Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Northeast Region Conference, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, April 2023.) He was also invited to present “Music as Motivation in CS Education,” an invited conference-dinner presentation, CCSC Eastern's 38th Annual Regional Conference, DeSales University, Center Valley, Pennsylvania, October 21 - 22, 2022. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges.

F

Associate Professor of Religion Molly Farneth published her second book, The Politics of Ritual, in March 2023, through Princeton University Press. The Center for Political Theology at Villanova University hosted a book launch and panel discussion, with four scholars (including Haverford's own Lindsay Reckson) engaging the book. She also participated in a panel discussion on “Faith, Ritual, and Witnessing” at Brown University in April 2023.

She gave two talks based on archival research supported by an NEH Summer Stipend in summer 2022: one at Haverford College ("Revolution as Spiritual Evolution: Religion and Politics in Grace Lee Boggs's America," February 2023) and the second at University of Wisconsin-Madison (A Revolution of Spirit: Grace Lee Boggs on Religion and Politics," Apr 2023).

She gave a keynote address ("Hegel on Ritual and the Spirit of Becoming") at the Hegel & Theology Symposium at St Louis University in June 2022, and presented a paper, “What Does Philosophy Learn from Religion? And What Must Religious Studies Learn from Philosophy?” at the Future of Philosophy of Religion Symposium at Amherst College in June 2022.

At the PACIE Conference at Haverford College in September 2022, she gave a talk on "Rethinking Campus Borders: Democratic Organizing and/as Pedagogy," which reflected on the work that students did in her Spring 2022 course "Religious Organizing for Racial Justice."
 

G

Professor of Global Philosophy Ashok Gangadean will make a keynote presentation at the next International Gathering of "EUROTAS" in Tuscany, Italy. Over the past decade, he has been invited to make keynote presentations to this growing global community in Germany, Latvia, Crete, Italy and now this keynote presentation in Italy.  He has been elected to a leadership position in EUROTAS.

Gangadean was featured in a published Global Podcast focusing on his advances in Global Reason, Global Philosophy and the quest for the ((Logic)) of Logos:

The first interview, conducted February 17th, 2023 on ((Logos: The Underlying Unity of all Reality)) explores essential points in ((Logos as the Underlying Unity of all Reality)) and brings out the millennial quest to access and bring to the fore the long eclipsed yet ever emerging ((Logos Code)). The second portion of this Podcast is a dialogue on Part I and begins with a Haverford Alum Jason Kunen '13 who worked closely with Professor Gangadean here as a Philosophy Major and is now teaching Global Philosophy at St Andrews School. 

The sequel to the first Podcast focused on Gangadean's ((Seven Stages of Deep Dialogue)). This is a ((meditation)) Gangadean drafted in 1997: ((Seven Stages of Awakening Global Deep-Dialogue)).  Attached here, this  ((meditation)) has been presented and performed around the globe, including here on campus since 1997.  These ((Seven Stages)) present a global blueprint  for an all-important ((code shift)) from /monologue/ to ((Deep Dialogue)); from "/Dialogue/" to ((Deep Dialogue)) from /Mono-logic/ to ((DiaLogic)).  This mind operating shift has profound implications for all aspects of our personal and cultural lives. This Zoom includes Gangadean's  son Näthan Saith on the panel as the participants ((read and reflect))  on each of the ((seven stages)).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Charles Goldhaber had two papers accepted for publication: "Kant's Offer to the Skeptical Empiricist" is forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy and "The Dissatisfied Skeptic in Kant's Discipline of Pure Reason" is forthcoming in Journal of Transcendental Philosophy. Charles presented a talk on the latter paper at the American Philosophical Association's Central Division Meeting in Denver. He presented another talk entitled "Hume's Skeptical Philosophy and the Moderation of Pride" for audiences at CSU Fullerton, NYU Shanghai, and the Early Moderns on the Power of Philosophy Workshop in Dublin. Additionally, he delivered comments on Lewis Powell's "Why Were So Many Early Modern Philosophers Willing to Believe" at the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division Meeting in Montreal.

Professor and Chair of History Lisa Jane Graham published an essay on "Domesticating Pleasure: The Sexual Politics of the French Enlightenment" in Nina Kushner and Andrew Israel Ross, eds. Histories of French Sexuality: Enlightenment to the Present (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). This past December, she interviewed Olivia Sabee (Swarthmore College) for an SECFS (Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies) Online Conversation about Sabee's new book, Theories of Ballet in the Age of the Encyclopédie (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2022). She also wrote a review of Sabee's book for French Studies (forthcoming).

Assistant Professor of Physics Daniel Grin was recognized by the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation with a $150,000  "New Initiative" grant for research on "Dark matter and the first galaxies." The grant, jointly awarded to Prof. Adam Lidz (Physics, Penn) will be used to study the impact of cutting edge data from the JWST telescope on our understanding of dark matter microphysics. The funds will be used to support a postdoctoral fellow and undergraduate researchers at Haverford, as well as a graduate student at U Penn.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Alvin Grissom II published and presented "Rare but Severe Neural Machine Translation Errors Induced by Minimal Deletion: An Empirical Study on Chinese and English" at the International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), co-authored with two Haverford students. He also gave a guest lecture on large language models for a Tufts University course, Introduction to Cognitive and Brain Science.

H

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman was the keynote speaker at the Global Engagement in the Liberal Arts Conference, September 22, 2022, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. His talk was entitled, “Developing a Place-based Global Understanding through an Expanded Liberal Education: A Global Lens on the Lower Susquehanna Valley."

Assistant Professor of Spanish Lina Martínez Hernández was awarded a "New Directions" grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
 

J

Professor of Music Heidi Jacob released two new CDs: Lilacs for SABT Choir, solo soprano and narrator on Voices of Earth and Air/PARMA/Navona Records, with the Kühn Choir of Prague, conductor Lenka Navrátilová, soprano Kristýna Fílová, narrator Amina Robinson; and Metamorphosis I for viola and piano with violist Brett Deubner and Pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti on Bowed Colors 2/ PARMA/Navona Records. She also saw a performance by soprano Lisa Wilson DeNofo and cellist Michal Scmindt (both of whom have taught our Bryn Mawr and Haverford College students) of her Rosetta Stone for Soprano, Cello and Piano at Temple University.
 

K

Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Coordinator of Biochemistry and Biophysics Suzanne Amador Kane reports several updates: She co-authored the following peer-reviewed journal articles: "Sizing up spotted lanternfly nymphs for instar determination and growth allometry", Theodore Bien, Benjamin H. Alexander, Eva White, S. Tonia Hsieh, Suzanne Amador Kane, PLoS One 18 (2), e0265707 (2023); co-authors Theodore Bien, Benjamin H Alexander, and Eva White are Haverford students. "Wrinkle nanostructures generate a novel form of blue structural color in great argus (Argusianus argus) flight feathers." Eliason, Chad M., Julia A. Clarke, and Suzanne Amador Kane.  iScience (2022): 105912. She participated in three poster presentations at Integrative and Comparative Biology 2023 (January 2023, Austin TX): "How toe spacing affects impact dynamics during passive “foot” intrusions into poppy seeds" (Simon Thill, S. Tonia Hsieh, Suzanne Amador Kane); "Characterizing the adhesive forces of insect sticky traps" (Sophie Frem, S. Tonia Hsieh, Suzanne Amador Kane); and "Mind the trap: how spotted lanternflies negotiate terrain transitions during climbing", Aidan Bannon, Sophie Frem, Simon Thill, S. Tonia Hsieh, Suzanne Amador Kane. Aidan, Sophie, and Simon are all Haverford students. She gave a contributed talk at the American Physical Society March meeting, 2023 (virtual): "How toe spacing affects impact dynamics during passive “foot” intrusions into poppy seeds", Simon Thill, S. Tonia Hsieh, Suzanne Amador Kane.

L

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jia Hui Lee won the Trevor Levere Best Paper Prize 2022 for "Colonial rodent control in Tanganyika and the application of ecological frameworks," Annals of Science, 80:2, 83-111, DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2023.2181399. He has a poem published in Reckoning 7.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Ryan Lei published three papers. The first was in Nature Reviews: Psychology, entitled, "A sociohistorical model of intersectional social prototypes"; the second, in Social Psychology and Personality Compass entitled, "Positioning Asian Americans in Social Cognition"; and the third, in Infant and Child Development with Lizy Szanton ('22) and Zoe Frazer-Klotz ('22), entitled, "Black-Asian solidarity through collective racial socialization."

Associate Professor and Haverford Chair of Linguistics (TriCo) Brook Lillehaugen received a 2023 Mentor for the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium award funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She also presented at the following conferences: Ticha: un explorador digital de texto en zapoteco colonial. Panel: Historia Digital: proyectos, métodos, desafíos. XVI Reunión Internacional de Historiadores de México, Austin [online], November 2022; and Ticha: Digital Scholarship as a Bridge Between Archival Texts, Academia, and Stake-Holding Communities, with George Aaron Broadwell, Felipe H. Lopez, & Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial at the 9th Annual Conference of the International Council of the Archives, Rome, September 2022.

Director of College Writing Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Kristin Lindgren and Jess Libow, Visiting Assistant Professor Writing presented "Deafness, Visual Culture, and the Hearing Gaze" at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Philadelphia, PA. October 26, 2022.

M

T. Wistar Brown Professor and Chair of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth published three papers. "Logic, Mathematics, and Philosophy", appeared, by invitation, in the inaugural issue of the journal Annals of Mathematics and Philosophy. "Reading Tractatus, Understanding Wittgenstein" was published in the journal Disputatio: Philosophical Research Bulletin, in a special issue celebrating the centennial of the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. "Morality, Tribalism, and Value" was included in the collection Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Wilfrid Sellars's Practical Philosophy.

She also gave two presentations: "Reading Tractatus, Understanding Wittgenstein", an invited lecture at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and "Teaching Logic Historically", a contribution to the Fifth International Conference on Tools for Teaching Logic, Madrid, Spain.

Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Chair of Physics and Astronomy, and Director of Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center Karen Masters published a student-led paper, "Mass and Color Dependence of the Hubble Spiral Sequence" by Petra Mengistu '24 and Karen Masters in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (RNAAS). The AAS decided to feature the authors in their "AAS journal author series" on their Youtube channel. She was also plenary speaker on "Extragalactic Spectroscopic Surveys" at the "Wide-Field Spectroscopy vs Galaxy Formation Theory" workshop held at Biosphere2 near Tucson, AZ (March 28 - 31, 2023), and an invited guest speaker, NYC Intrepid Air, Sea & Space Museum's Access Family Program (virtual) where she spoke about Galaxy Zoo and Citizen science.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sara Mathieson gave a talk at the University of New Hampshire on October 5, 2022 entitled "Deep Learning for Population Genetic Data". It was part of their Ecological Genomics Seminar series.

Professor of Political Science Barak Mendelsohn published "Order, justice and inequality: the curious case of jihadist divine justice" in International Affairs, Volume 99, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 81–100. He also gave an invited talk at the third annual DeSales University Center for Homeland Security Conference in February and participated in a round table on Order Justice and Equality in the 64th annual convention of the International Studies Association, Montreal in March.

N

Professor and Chair of Chemistry Alex Norquist published a paper on an open-source environmental chamber, designed to conduct longitudinal studies on the stability of solar cell materials. One Haverford undergraduate (Keqing He '24), a Bryn Mawr alum (Margaret Zeile '21) appear as co-authors. The full reference is Digital Discovery 2023, 2, 422.

O

Professor and Chair of Political Science Zachary Oberfield co-authored “The Source Code: Revenue Composition and the Adequacy, Equity, and Stability of K-12 School Spending” by Bruce Baker, Matthew Di Carlo, and Zach Oberfield. It was published by the Albert Shanker Institute.

P

Assistant Professor of Biology Foen Peng published "Taxon-specific, phased siRNAs underlie a speciation locus in monkeyflowers" in Science as well as "A multivariate view of the speciation continuum" in the journal Evolution.

S

Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology Zainab Saleh delivered a keynote speech, titled "Visions of Belonging and Identity: Iraqis in the Aftermath of the US Occupation" at University of Toronto. She also took part in conferences at the Ohio State University and Columbus State University on the anniversary of the U.S. invasion. Her review of Mediated Lives: Waiting and Hope among Iraqi Refugees in Jordan by Mirjam Twigt (2022), came out in Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of Visual Studies Erin Schoneveld co-curated Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art, on view from March 2, 2023 – September 10, 2023) at the Poster House Museum in NYC. The exhibition reframes the canon of art and graphic design by exploring the cultural and political shifts within modern Japan that influenced the function and messaging of its iconic postwar advertising. The show highlights the history of collaboration as well as the mix of traditional and modern influences that make Japanese design so diverse and unique as well as centers the work of AAPI communities whose significant contributions to design history are often ignored. Made in Japan has received numerous press reviews in a range of national and international publications including:

• “Introducing the History of Advertising in Japan,” Shukan New York Seikatsu and The Japanese Press Association, April 1, 2023.
•  “How Japan used Poster Design to Reshape its Culture,” Fast Company, March 28, 2023.
•  “20th Century Japanese Poster Art in Pictures,” The Guardian, March 27, 2023.
•  “The Evolution of Poster Art in Postwar Japan,” Creative Review, March 17, 2023.
• “Poster House Debuts Major Spring Exhibits,”  Graphic Design USA, March 2, 2023.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies Zeynep Sertbulut, had two papers accepted for publication: “The Politics and Politicization of Ratings in the Dizi Industry” is forthcoming in the Visual Anthropology Review and “The Dizi Industry’s Global Imaginaries and Narratives of Global Success” is forthcoming in the International Communication Gazette. She also had a book chapter accepted for publication by Routledge: “Not Essential: The Controversy Over Dizis During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” which will be published in Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked. She also presented her research at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting in the Fall and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Annual Conference in the Spring. Recently, her paper submission to the Middle East Association’s annual conference has been accepted and she has been invited to review two ethnographies for International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropologica, respectively.

Associate Professor and Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer presented “What Does Possibility Feel Like?: Phenomenology of Social Change” at the American Philosophical Association Western conference, Denver, CO, February 23-26, 2023, as well as“Listening to Difficult Stories,” Community Dialogue Workshop at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, February 17-19, 2023. She also gave an invited talk, “International Criminal Justice and the Ethics of Victimhood” at the Critical International Law Summer Institute, Transnational Justice Project, Kigali, Rwanda, July 18-23, 2022. Her continuing education activity included Restorative Justice Facilitation training, a month-long workshop with Pablo Cerdera of Restorative Practices at Penn, September 2022, along with taking two courses in indigenous law: LAW 388A (Indigenous Law: Research, Method and Practice); and LAW 343-1 (Indigenous Legal Orders and Ecological Governance), Law School at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, May 4-30, 2022.

W

Associate Professor of Biology Kristen Whalen and six former senior thesis students (Han Yang '21, Emma Castiblanco '21, Megan Coolahan '22, Eve Dallmeyer-Drennen '22, Naomi Fukuda '22, and Eleanor Green '22) had the following manuscript accepted for publication in Aquatic Microbial Ecology: "Harvey, EL, H. Yang, E. Castiblanco, M. Coolahan, G. Dallmeyer-Drennen, N. Fukuda, E. Greene, M. Gonsalves, S. Smith, KE. Whalen. Quorum sensing signal disrupts viral infection dynamics in the coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi."  She was also an invited speaker at the symposium entitled “New Horizons in Linking Microbial Mechanisms and Biogeochemical Processes” at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel in March 4-9, 2023. PI Whalen presented two talks on both her current research interests in chemically-mediated marine microbial interactions.

Professor of Fine Art Willie Williams' book Party Pictures was reviewed in the Photo Eye Newsletter and named as book of the week on December 5, 2022. The reviewer Blake Andrews writes: ”It was published and ready, for anyone who cared to look. Browsing it now in 2022, this is an unsung gem. If it took 9 years of preparation, the work shows. It may be a smallish book with smallish photos, but the attention to minor details is comprehensive and unusual. This starts with the faux-leatherette cover, perhaps designed to glow like a satin dress. Party Pictures contains two great essays (by Elizabeth Spungen and John Caperton), a lengthy interview transcript between Williams and Newhall, plus an informative bio and captioned index. The supporting material is great, but it’s upstaged by the photographs, as it should be. The images are reproduced as tritone plates with high fidelity and lush tonality, and a sheen befitting a gala event. Party Pictures may have arrived well after most guests have left, but that’s no reason to sleep on it. This is one party worth staying up for."

More Faculty Updates