Fall 2013 Faculty Update

Assistant Professor of German Imke Brust published a peer-reviewed chapter,“Chapter 8: Transnational and Gendered Dimensions of Heimat in Mo Asumang's Roots Germania,” in the book Heimat Goes Mobile: Hybrid Forms of Home in Literature and Film. She presented“Being Haunted by the White Lady: From Burgfäulein to Phantom-Anhalterin to King Kong” at the panel“Erlkönigs Töchter: Witches and Ghosts in German Literature and Film” at the 38th Annual Conference of the Coalition of Women in German (WiG), in the Poconos Mountains in October. Brust also attended the German Studies Association's 37th Annual Conference, serving as an organizer and commentator at the WiG panel“Violent German Women - Rebels, Revolutionaries, Perpetrators, Abusive Mothers and Violent Lovers” and a presenter at the panel“Continuing to Think Outside the State,” where she gave the paper“Heimat as a Transnational Concept.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry Thomas Devaney was a featured poet at the Dia Center for the Arts's Readings in Contemporary Poetry series in New York City on November 18. Devaney was also a featured poet at the FLAG Arts Foundation in New York City on December 4. He published “Traveling Furiously Toward You: John Ashbery and the Arts," a feature on John Ashbery co-edited with Marcella Durand for Jacket2, which also includes Devaney's poem “Morning in Runnemede.” Additionally, his essay“The Last Bookcase” was published in Shelf Life by
The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

Post-Doctoral Writing Fellow Paul Farber wrote the main essay for the photography collection Kodachrome Memory: American Pictures 1972–1990, which was published by Powerhouse Books in October and features images by former National Geographic photographer Nathan Benn.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sorelle Friedler attended and presented at the Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry held at the City College of New York in October. The abstract she presented,“Probabilistic Kinetic Data Structures,” represents joint work done with F. Betul Atalay of St. Joseph's University and Dianna Xu of Bryn Mawr College.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Seth J. Gillihan gave a three-hour continuing education workshop,“Avoiding Common Pitfalls in the Delivery of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for Adults with OCD,” at the Philadelphia Society of Clinical Psychologists in November. He also co-authored a paper,“Change in negative cognitions associated with PTSD predicts symptom reduction in Prolonged Exposure,” in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and co-authored another paper,“Serotonin transporter genotype modulates functional connectivity between amygdala and PCC/PCu during mood recovery,” in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Emeritus Professor of History Emma Lapsansky-Werner published an article,“Plainness and Simplicity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies.

Professor of Computer Science Steven Lindell presented a talk,“Presentation-invariant definability,” at the Highlights of Logic, Games and Automata conference in Paris, France, in September.

Associate Professor of Music Thomas Lloyd premiered two new pieces this semester. For the October inauguration of new President Dan Weiss, the Chamber Singers and flutist Robert Hillinck '15 performed“Life Time,” which Lloyd set to a text chosen by President Weiss from the prologue to the play The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan. In December, Lloyd also conducted the premiere of a new 20-minute suite of medieval English carols, As Well for the Poore as the Peere, for the Bel Canto Children's Choir, the Fairmount Brass Quintet, hurdy-gurdy (mechanical violin) solo, and the Bucks County Choral Society. The carols selected share the common theme of the rich (represented by the brass) and poor (represented by the hurdy-gurdy) coming together to share the celebration of the holiday season.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth presented a paper,“Rigor, Deduction, and Knowledge in the Practice of Mathematics,” at the second international meeting of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in October. She also gave an invited lecture at the 23rd World Congress of Philosophy in Athens, Greece, in August. Her paper,“Conceptions of Logical Form,” was one of three in the invited session“The Character of Classical Logic.”

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Wyatt MacGaffey published“Meaning and Aesthetics in Kongo Art,” in the book Kongo Across the Waters (University Press of Florida).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Justine Melo was featured as a“high profile” young researcher and alumnus awardee on the cover of the Jane Coffin Childs (JCC) Memorial Fund for Medical Research's annual newsletter. Melo was selected for the distinction for her research findings connecting animal behavioral and innate immune defenses to food poisoning acting at the cellular level.

Professor of Biology Philip Meneely and Jordana Bloom '14 published an educational primer in Genetics titled“SMG-ly knocking out gene expression in specific cells.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Independent College Programs John Muse launched his and Jeanne Finley's interactive community-engagement project about the Presidio Pet Cemetery, Falsework, in November. Muse also collaborated with artist Carmen Papalia on Three Works, an installation that explores access, descriptive language, and the visual culture of museums. Three Works was on display at CUE Art Foundation from Sept. 7 through Oct.12.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist published an article with Haverford undergrad co-authors Matthew Smith '13 and Kelvin Chang '10 on the structure of an organically templated vanadate in Acta Crystallographica Section E. He also published a paper in Crystal Growth & Design with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Josh Schrier, Matthew Smith '13, Jacob Koffer '13 and Jacob Olshansky '12 on the factors that govern the formation of organically templated vanadium selenite oxalates. He is also co-principal investigator of a collaborative proposal that was just funded by the National Science Foundation for the purchase of a single crystal X-ray diffractometer. The project,“MRI Consortium: Acquisition of a Cyber-Enabled Single-Crystal X-ray Diffractometer for Materials Research at PUIs,” was awarded $470,000.

Visiting Professor of Writing and Independent College Programs Carol Schilling published“ ‘The breath goes now:' Questioning a Case Study about Withdrawing a Respirator,” in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and a review of Catherine Belling's A Condition of Doubt: The Meanings of Hypochondria in the journal Literature and Medicine.

Associate Professor of English Gus Stadler delivered a paper,“Charles Chesnutt, Sonic Memory, and Racial Terror,” at the Annual Conference of the American Studies Association in November, in Washington, D.C. He also spent three works working in the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Okla., funded by a research grant from the Provost's Office, and delivered a paper,“Woody Guthrie's Common Sense,” at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present at Wayne State University in October.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jill Stauffer gave an invited talk on her upcoming book, Ethical Loneliness, at the Theorizing at Rowan colloquium at Rowan University in November. She attended a conference on political reconciliation in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and gave a paper,“Reconciliation as Repair (in a World Where Some Things Remain Broken),” at Queens University in September. Her contribution on Levinas and Heidegger was published in The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger. She also gave a paper,“The Will to Forget: Time, Resentment and Ressentiment in the Redress of Grave Harm,” at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) in Eugene, Ore., in October, and spent a week observing the Ruto/Sang trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as research for her next book.

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Photography William Williams had work included in a show at Lightwork in Syracuse, N.Y. That work was also published Lightwork's Contact #173, which served as the catalog for the exhibition. In September, his photographs were included in a National Gallery exhibition in Washington, D.C, honoring the soldiers and officers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. In addition, the board of the National Gallery approved the acquisition of three of Williams' photographs and accepted a fourth as a gift in honor of John Whitehead '43. In November, Williams was also a portfolio reviewer for Artsquest in Bethlehem, Pa. And earlier this fall an exhibition of 80 of his black-and-white silver gelatin prints, A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom 1619 to 1865, was shown at the College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. That show and the accompanying publication of the same name are collaborations with Lehigh University, where the exhibition will open on Jan. 23, 2014.

Assistant Professor of Astronomy Beth Willman was selected as a Kavli Fellow and participated in the U.S. Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium in Irvine, Calif., in November. She gave an invited seminar,“Lighting up Dark Matter Halos with Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies,” at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, the Ruckman Public Astronomy Lecture on“What is a Galaxy?” at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and a keynote talk on“Invisible Galaxies” at the annual meeting of the Nebraska chapter of the American Association for Physics Teachers. Willman also published a paper,“A Search for RR Lyrae Stars in Segue 2 and Segue 3,” with Erin Boettcher '12 and eight additional Haverford student co-authors in the Astronomical Journal. This paper was made possible by support from both the Green Fund and the KINSC, which sponsored student travel to the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., over the last three years.

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing gave an invited talk,“Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Perspectives on Political Crisis in the Sahel,” at Brown University in October. She participated in a roundtable,“After ‘Wildcat' in Mali: The Future of Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism,” and was a discussant and chair of“Reconfiguring the Sahel: Regional Effects of the Malian Crisis” at the African Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in Baltimore in November. Wing was also an expert adviser for Freedom House's report, Freedom in the World: Sub-Saharan Africa, and was interviewed live on BBC Newsday in November.