Summer 2022 Faculty Update

Visiting Assistant Professor of Health Studies and of the Writing Program Eli Anders presented "Making places for resilience: convalescent landscapes in nineteenth-century England" at the Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference in Swansea, Wales.

Professor of Fine Arts Markus Baenziger won the Baer Art Center Artist Residency Award, and did that residency in Iceland in June.

Professor of Economics Richard Ball and Associate Librarian Norm Medeiros jointly planned and taught a four-day workshop on teaching reproducible quantitative research for faculty from the Atlanta University Consortium, which includes Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College. This workshop was part of a series of programs offered throughout summer 2022 by the Clark Atlanta University Data Science Initiative.

Associate Professor of Economics Carola Binder published "Expected and Realized Inflation in Historical Perspective" (with Rupal Kamdar) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Her paper "Federal Reserve Legitimacy," with Christina Skinner, was accepted by the Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance. Her paper "Out of Bounds: Do SPF Respondents Have Anchored Inflation Expectations?" with Wesley Janson and Randal Verbrugge, was accepted by the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. She published an op-ed in The Hill called "Inflation Reduction Act--What’s in a name?" She made her third appearance on the Macro Musings podcast. She gave a live interview about inflation and gas prices on CNN New Day Weekend with Christi Paul and Boris Sanchez. She was quoted in The Wall Street Journal article "Amid Anxious Markets, Fed Officials Still Don’t See Recession" and in the in Bloomberg article "Gasoline Prices at Record Added Pain to Hot US June CPI Report." She gave a testimony on "Inflation and the Federal Reserve" for the Pennsylvania House Majority Policy Committee hearing on "What Causes Inflation?" She published three policy briefs for the Mercatus Center, where she is a visiting scholar. She was on a panel on “Inflation and Household Finance” at the National Bureau of Economics Research Household Finance Summer Institute. She was on a panel on "Addressing Inflation Expectations" at the Council on Foreign Relations Robert B. Menschel Economics Symposium. She also continued her service as associate editor of two top journals, The Review of Economics and Statistics and The Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Clyde A. Daly Jr. was awarded two grants: one from the National Science Foundation supporting his work developing a vibrational spectroscopic map for terminal alkyne molecules, and another from the Department of Energy to develop polymeric ionic liquid materials for carbon capture. He also gave an invited presentation, “Open Source Software for Vibrational Frequency Calculations on Small Molecules Based on Discrete Variable Representations of Vibrational Hamiltonians,” with Sara Hunsberger ‘22, Briana Boachie ‘24, and Scott Kaiser ’22 at the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition in Chicago.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Tom Donahue published a symposium article, "Deconstructing the Divides," in Journal of Social and Political Philosophy. With Eric Hartman and colleagues at Dickinson and American University-Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), he won a $275,000 seeding grant from the Stevens Initiative. This funds the Transformative Sustainability Project, a 2022–23 virtual exchange program run by the three institutions. In it, Bi-Co faculty and students will make online exchanges with counterparts in courses offered by the AU-S. The exchanges explore cross-cultural understandings of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Donahue also organized the Engaged Transregional Thought Track for this September's meeting of the PA Council for International Education, which the College will host. This conference track, which features the work of Haverford faculty from several programs, brings some 15 political and ethical theorists and intellectual historians to the campus. They will present to local and regional faculty, students, and civic/international educators their progress on research that centers the ideas of those most affected by injustices of our time.

Professor of Biology Rob Fairman published “Citric Acid-Derived Carbon Quantum Dots Attenuate Paraquat-Induced Neuronal Compromise In Vitro and In Vivo” in ACS Chemical Neuroscience with collaborators at the University of Texas at El Paso. That research, which shows that a treatment for Parkinson's disease may lie in carbon quantum dots derived from an antioxidant, received a lot of press as breakthrough work. Fairman also published “Gelatin-derived carbon quantum dots mitigate herbicide-induced neurotoxic effects in vitro and in vivo” in Biomaterials Advances with that same team.

Emily Judson Baugh Gest and John Marshall Gest Professor of Global Philosophy Ashok Gangadean published "Open Letter to 'We the People' " in several places, including the "The Edge: the Newsletter for the Evolutionary Leaders," a prominent gathering of eminent evolutionary thought leaders, best-selling authors, and cultural change agents that he co-founded. The candidate for mayor of Sedona, AZ, welcomed Gangadean to his campaign and used his open letter in his campaign to urge the citizens of Sedona to model a more effective democracy. Ashok's letter is also a prologue to his published web series 1776 Now- Our UnFinished American R-Evolution. 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Charles Goldhaber presented an essay, "Hume's Real Riches," at the 48th International Hume Society Conference in Prague, and published a paper by the same name in History of Philosophy Quarterly. He also participated in a month-long, NEH-funded Summer Institute at Portland State University: "David Hume in the 21st Century: Perpetuating the Enlightenment."

Associate Professor of Spanish Aurelia Gómez Unamuno gave presentations on her book Entre fuegos, Memoria y violencia de Estado: los textos literarios y testimoniales de la lucha armada en México at Bookstore El Gato Literato in Coyoacán, Mexico; the History Department of Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mexico; and Casa de la Memoria Indómita in Center City, Mexico.

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman was an invited participant in “Higher Education Leadership for Democracy, Sustainability and Social Justice,” in June at Dublin City University in Ireland. The event was co-organized by the Council of Europe, the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility, and Democracy, the Organization of American States, and the International Association of Universities. Hartman's role allowed him to nominate one of the few students given an opportunity to attend, Maria Reyes Pacheco '24.

Professor of Spanish and Faculty Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Ariana Huberman’s book, Keeping the Mystery Alive: Jewish Mysticism in Latin American Cultural Production, was published by Academic Studies Press.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Michael Levere's work studying malnutrition and early childhood development in Nepal was accepted for publication at Economic Development and Cultural Change. The paper, "The Role of Information and Cash Transfers on Early Childhood Development: Short and Long Run Evidence from Nepal," is based on a randomized controlled trial offering young mothers information and cash transfers to promote healthy development of young children. Levere recently discussed the research on a VoxDev podcast and in a blog post. He also presented new research on the importance of schools in driving children's applications for disability benefits at the Liberal Arts College Labor and Public Economics conference.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth recently gave three papers at international conferences. She gave the keynote address, "Philosophy and Its Images of Man," at the conference "Nature and Norms in a Stereoscopic View: Wilfrid Sellars's (Meta)Philosophy", at the Institute of Philosophy at the Research Center for the Humanities in Budapest, Hungary. She presented the paper "Disagreement, How Much Can There Be?" at the conference "Cross-Linguistic Disagreement: An International Conference on Disagreement in the Age of Globalization" held at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Kanazawa, Japan. And she presented “Under the Fregean Microscope: A Preliminary Analysis of Traditional Chinese Mathematical Practice” at the tenth annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy at Shanxi University in China, which was held online.

Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Director of Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center Karen Masters attended the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting in Pasadena,with several students from Haverford, where they presented posters about their work studying galaxies. She also attended the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Busan, South Korea (with thanks to funding from the IAU, AAS and Haverford). Masters gave two talks—one about galaxy research, and one about her work as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequencies (CORF) with the goal of protecting some of the radio spectrum for astronomy observations.

Professor of Political Science Barak Mendehlson wrote "Zawahiri’s Legacy and the Prospects for an al-Qaeda Revival" (with Colin Clarke) for the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare blog. He also served as a judge for the Peter J. Katzenstein Book Prize.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan published “Latin Vocabulary Knowledge and the Readability of Latin Texts: A Preliminary Study” in New England Classical Journal. That paper was co-authored with J. Gruber-Miller. Mulligan also delivered a talk on "Evaluating Latin Readability: Methods and Future Directions” at the annual conference of the American Classical League. 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Studies and Digital Media Fellow Matt O’Hare published an article, "Cross-platform Play: A Hybrid Pedagogy for Devised College Theatre," in the July 2022 issue of Theatre Topics, the official publication of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).

Professor of Political Science Zachary Oberfield gave an invited talk, “Education Reform, Teaching Climates, and Student Learning in Poor and Nonpoor Districts,” at the Indiana University's O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. His article, “Racial Discrimination and Street-Level Managers: Performance, Publicness, and Group Bias,” published by Public Administration Review and co-written with Matthew Incantalupo, won the Best Journal Article award from the Academy of Management, Public and Nonprofit Division.

Associate Professor of English Lindsay Reckson published the edited volume American Literature in Transition: 1876-1910, a collection of 19 essays on post-Reconstruction American literature and culture, with Cambridge University Press. She also published an essay on Steffani Jemison's film and performance work in Black One Shot, a series for ASAP/Journal (Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present).

Associate Professor of Anthropology Zainab Saleh published an article, “Ethnographic narratives as living archives among the Iraqi diaspora” in Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World and a chapter, "The Construction of Diasporic Sensibilities among Iraqis in London," in The Routledge Handbook of Middle Eastern Diaspora.

Professor Emeritus of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures Paul Jakov Smith presented a paper, "A Song Sojourner to the Tang Bellosphere: Opposition to Wars of Choice in Early Tang and Mid-Song," at the Conference on Tang-Song Transitions at Princeton University. The paper, part of a larger project on the politics of war in mid-Imperial China, has been accepted for the conference volume.

Douglas and Dorothy Steere Professor of Quaker Studies David Watt participated in a faculty seminar, “Legacies of Slavery.” The seminar, which was sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges, met at the Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Watt also moderated a discussion of “Spiritualities and New Modes of Belonging” at the Sixth Biennial Conference on Religion & American Culture, which was held at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Fine Arts William Williams gave an illustrated slide lecture on his research methods for photographing Underground Railroad and related sites at the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University. Specific photographs related to the Underground Railroad in Madison County were on display in gallery, as were selected photographs from Williams’ upcoming solo exhibition, A Wicked Commerce: The Transatlantic Slave Trade seen through the lens of William Earle Williams, which opens Sept. 30. Williams was also invited to Columbus, MS, the home of photographer, O.H. Pruitt (1891–1967) for informal talks with Pruitt experts and relatives and a panel, “O.N. Pruitt's Pictures of Trouble and Resilience: Uncovering Common Ground,” which was held at the Rent Auditorium at Mississippi University for Women.

Professor of English Christina Zwarg's book, The Archive of Fear: White Crisis and Black Freedom in Douglass, Stowe, and Du Bois (Oxford University Press) was designated as an Outstanding Academic Title (2021) by Choice, the publication of the American Library Association.

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