Winter 2015 Faculty Updates

Associate Professor of Physics Suzanne Amador Kane was the lead author of "When Hawks Attack: Goshawk Hunting and Prey Evasion Strategies,” published in The Journal of Experimental Biology. She also gave a talk on this subject at the Society for Comparative and Integrative Biology's conference in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Associate Professor of Economics Richard Ball gave a presentation on“Replicability of Empirical Research: Classroom Instruction and Professional Practice” at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association during the session on“Promoting New Norms for Transparency and Integrity in Economic Research.” The work was done in collaboration with Associate Librarian Norm Medeiros.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professorship of Music Curtis Cacioppo was commissioned by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Heredia in Costa Rica to compose a new work for premiere in 2016. He also completed a two-piano commission as well as a three-movement suite for the Orpheus Duo of Long Beach, Cal. In addition, Cacioppo authored the ballad A Chanter's Parting that tells the story of a Navajo ceremonial practitioner. Music from his new CD Ritornello was broadcast on WRUV 90.1 FM in Burlington, Vt., and his Gloria for the Venice Cello Ensemble was broadcast on Vatican Radio 105FM/585AM in Rome, Italy.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Louise Charkoudian won a Cottrell College Scholars Award for her work on the molecular interactions between carrier proteins and oxygenases in natural product biosynthesis.

Assistant Professor of Classics Robert Germany gave an invited talk at Princeton University on“All the World's a Stage: Contemplatio Mundi in Early Roman Theater.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Seth Gillihan co-wrote with Janet Singer Overcoming OCD: A Journey to Recovery (Rowman & Littlefield).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing John Hyland presented the paper “Sonic Performances of Radical Blackness in Amiri Baraka's ‘A Black Mass' and Wanda Coleman's ‘Twin Sisters'” at the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Literature, and Creative Writing. He also published a chapbook of poems, The Novice, with Habenicht Press and conducted research in the sound archives at the Woodberry Poetry at Harvard University.

Associate Professor of Religion Naomi Koltun-Fromm gave a public lecture on“Investing (in) Jerusalem: Sacred Stones, Cosmic Time and Salvation Narratives” at the University of South Carolina.

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Danielle Lillehaugen received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue research on “A Collection of Zapotec Indigenous Testaments in Translation with Linguistic Analysis and Annotation.” She also was awarded a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to work on“Colonial Indigenous Testaments in a Modern, Digital Text Explorer: Presentation, Analysis, and Annotation of a Corpus of Last Wills and Testaments in Zapotec (Oaxaca, Mexico: 1565-1740).” As co-principal investigator with Swarthmore College colleagues Lillehaugen received a National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates Site Grant for“Building Digital Tools to Support Endangered Languages and Preserve Environmental Knowledge in Mexico, Micronesia, and Navajo Nation.” She also co-authored with Haverford staff and students the article“A Tactile IPA Magnet Board System: A Tool for Blind and Visually-Impaired Students in Phonetics and Phonology Classrooms” in Language: Teaching Linguistics.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth gave a keynote address on “Mathematical Logic, Mathematical Understanding” at the International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. In conjunction with the workshop, she was asked to serve as an expert advisor on the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel's Research Council. Macbeth also gave two invited lectures:“The Myth of the Given, Again” to the Wilfrid Sellars Society Group Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Meeting in Philadelphia and “Revolution in Philosophy” to the Philosophy Club of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Wyatt MacGaffey was on a panel at the annual meeting of the College Art Association that honored Robert Farris Thompson, the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. There, MacGaffey spoke on“The Master and Mangaaka: The Art of Art History.” He also addressed the Diaspora Seminar at New York University on“The Problem of Kings in African History” and published the essay“Historiography of African Religions” in The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History (Princeton University Press).

Associate Professor of Political Science Steve McGovern was invited to join the editorial board of Urban Affairs Review, one of the leading journals in the field of urban studies, for a three-year term.

Professor of Biology Philip Meneely published the second edition of his textbook Genetic Analysis: Genes, Genomes, and Networks in Eukaryotes with Oxford University Press.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Weiwen Miao gave an invited talk at George Washington University on“Statistical Issues Arising in Class Action Cases: Application to the Analysis Presented to the Court in Dukes v. Wal-Mart II.”

Associate Professor of Classics and Chair Bret Mulligan gave an invited talk titled“Athens, Catiline, and Reacting to the Past” at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in New Orleans, where he also organized a panel on“Medieval Latin Poetry and Commentary.” He also published a review of Christer Henriksén's A Commentary on Martial, Epigrams Book 9 in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, and he published“Infusing Theory into the Undergraduate Classics Curriculum: Examples from Haverford's `Senior Seminar' and `History of Literary Theory'” with Assistant Professor of Classics Robert Germany and William R Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts in Classical World.

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Desika Narayanan was awarded a Cottrell College Grant. He also gave invited colloquia at Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas, and the University of Colorado. Narayanan gave an invited review talk at the Dissecting Galaxies Conference Santiago, Chile, and he was awarded One Million Hours on the XSEDE National Super Computer.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Josh Schrier published the paper“The Role of Non-Covalent Interactions on Vanadium Tellurite Chain Connectivities” in Inorganic Chemistry with Haverford student co-authors Anahita Nourmahnad '14 and Matt Smith '13. Schrier also was selected as a 2015-2016 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Germany.

Associate Professor of Political Science Paulina Ochoa Espejo presented a paper to the Cornell Political Theory Workshop on“The Topian Tradition: A Forgotten Alternative to Utopianism.”

William R Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts gave a talk on “Decent Obscurity and Indecent Suggestion: Polyglot Translation and the Obscene” at the Transnational Literature and Translation International Conference held at Swarthmore College.

Visiting Associate Professor of Art History Carol Solomon was awarded a 2015-16 Fulbright Scholar Award for travel to Morocco over three years to complete research for a monograph on contemporary art in North African and its diaspora. In 2012-2013, she received a Middle East and North Africa Fulbright Scholar Award to Morocco and Tunisia.

Associate Professor of English Gustavus Stadler's essay“`My Wife': The Tape Recorder and Warhol's Queer Ways of Listening” was published in the journal Criticism.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Concentration Jill Stauffer participated on two panels at the Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference. On an international law panel, she presented a paper on“Evidence of Repair: Hope, Fact, and Recovery in International Criminal Proceedings.” She also commented on James Martel's new book The One and Only Law on another panel.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Shu-wen Wang published two papers:“What Happens When You Can't Read the Air? Cultural Fit and Aptitude by Values Interactions on Social Anxiety” in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology and“Children's Emotional Expressivity and Teacher Perceptions of Social Competence: A Cross-Cultural Comparison” in the International Journal of Behavioral Development (online edition).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Helen White published a paper titled“Examining the Diversity of Microbes in a Deep-Sea Coral Community Impacted by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” in the Deep Sea Research Part II Special Issue of The Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem: Before, During, and After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. She also co-presented a webinar as part of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative series on“Polar Petroleum Compounds and Their Degradation by Microbes.” White gave invited talks at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, and she attended the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill & Ecosystem Science Conference in Houston, TX, where she chaired a session on“Impacts from the Deepwater Horizon Spill on Deep-Sea Ecosystems: Detection, Causes, and Fate of the Fauna.”

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography William Earle Williams is one of 50 artists represented by 70 works of art in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's special exhibition“Represent: 200 Years of African American Art” from Jan. 10 to April 5, 2015. He also participated in“Represent: Artists Roundtable” hosted by the exhibition catalogue author Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw on Feb. 1.

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing wrote an analysis for the International Peace Institute's Global Observatory on“A New Hope for Peace, but Old Challenges Remain in Mali.” She also served as an expert adviser for Freedom in the World: Sub-Saharan Africa, a publication from Freedom House in New York.