Winter 2020 Faculty Update

Francis B. Gummere Professor of English Kim Benston participated in Harvard University’s Hutchins Center's workshops on "The Limits of Racial Representation" and "Making the Archive Speak.” Benston was also a panelist on "Leadership Voice" at the Yale Education Summit.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor Curt Cacioppo’s music received performances in Italy, Spain, Russia, and the U.S. His String Quartet No. 7 (“Nebbia lagunare”) was given its world premiere by the Quartetto di Venezia in Treviso, sponsored by the Benetton Foundation. His “Hamlet Elegy” was performed by violinist Francesco D’Orazio at the Nuova Consonanza festival in Rome, and his “Notturno elidiano” was given its Italian premiere by pianist Alessandro Vena on the Naturalismo e Verismo concert/lecture series in Shigeru Ban Hall of the Casella Conservatory in L’Aquila. Vena also performed the work in Spain at the International Chamber Music Festival in Torreperogil. Cacioppo’s “Neva Fantasy (Nevskaya Fantaziya -невская фантазия)” for violin & piano was given its world premiere by Ekaterina Budnikova and Olga Kotlyarova at the 2019–20 festival of the Tchaikovsky Center for Musical Culture in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the Museum-Estate G.R. Derzhavina. Prominent Italian composer and pianist Riccardo Piacentini of the Milan Conservatory dedicated a new solo piano work to Cacioppo, entitled “Wanishi” and written in solidarity with Native American traditions and values. As both composer and pianist, Cacioppo presented a program of world premieres of his music on January 26 in Haverford College’s Marshall Auditorium, assisted by Nathan Zullinger and the Viva Voce Chamber Singers, oboist Evan Ocheret, and Marlboro Music Festival soprano Kristina Bachrach. The third in a series of one-composer programs in which he has appeared as performer over the last several years, this concert served as Cacioppo’s farewell performance at the College, as he retires in June after 41 years in the professoriate (37 of them at Haverford).

Associate Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian ’03 gave invited seminars at the University of Pennsylvania, Trinity University, and Saint Jospeh's University. She also ran a workshop on “Failure as a part of Learning a Mindset Education Network” (FLAMEnet) at Trinity University.

Senior Lecturer of French and Francophone Studies, Coordinator of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and VCAM Faculty Fellow Kathryne Corbin published “Journalism and the Politics of Emotion: Sand and Séverine as Case Studies,” in a special edition of the George Sand Studies journal Feelings, Sensations, Perception: On Emotion in the Writings of George Sand and Women Writers of Her Time. Corbin also presented "The Voice of the People: George Sand's Epistolary Masks (1843-1850)" at the Northeast Modern Language Association convention in Boston.

Associate Professor of History Andrew Friedman published "Decolonization's Diplomats: Antiracism and the Year of Africa in Washington, D.C.," in the December 2019 issue of the Journal of American History.

Emily Judson Baugh Gest and John Marshall Gest Professor of Global Philosophy Ashok Gangadean launched his web tv series, ((1776 Now: Our UnFinished American R-Evolution)). This series has already presented six episodes and the next three episodes are in final production and will appear this month. The project is a collaboration with his son, Näthan Saith, whose original songs are included in the series along with his rendering of relevant songs from a range of well- known musical artists.

Chesick Program Academic Year Director, Visiting Lecturer of Writing, Multilingual, and Developmental Writing Specialist Barbara Hall co-organized and co-presented a panel on “Placement Practices for Multilingual Writers at Small Liberal Arts Colleges” with Natalie Mera Ford of Swarthmore and Ghada Gerwash of Colby at the Small Liberal Arts Colleges Writing Program Administrators' Conference at Franklin & Marshall College. Hall also presented on “‘We’re building the ship as we sail it:’ Transforming our institutions with and for Equity-Seeking Students” with a team from the Haverford Dean’s Office (Theresa Tensuan, Brian Cuzzolina, and Raquel Esteves-Joyce) and colleagues from Holy Cross and Smith at the American Academy of Colleges & Universities 2020 Annual Meeting.

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman served as lead author on a multi-author article, "Coloniality-decoloniality and Critical Global Citizenship: Identity, Belonging, and Education Abroad," published in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad’s special issue on diversity, equity, and inclusion in education abroad. Co-authors included Fellow for Ethical Global Learning Nora Reynolds and Sabea Evans ’18. Hartman also joined Bi-Co Education Program Director and Bryn Mawr Associate Dean for Global Engagement Alice Lesnick to present “Supporting Robust Learning and Research Partnerships in Situations of Intense Economic Inequity” at the Association of International Education Administrators Conference in Washington, D.C. Their collaboration included Gallaudet University’s Charles Reilly.

Assistant Professor of Biology Roshan Jain delivered an oral presentation, "Building Publication Into Undergraduate Course Design,” at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Chicago, as part of the "Getting Creative With Course-Based Research" workshop. This presentation detailed his development of a neurogenetics laboratory course interweaving novel publishable research with collaborative scientific writing. The panel of speakers at the workshop also featured innovative research-focused pedagogy presentations by Haverford alums Lena Dahlberg '01 and W. Jeffrey Wilson ’77.

Professor of Fine Arts Hee Sook Kim won the 2020 Arte Lauguna Special Prize Residency at Esproncenda Institute of Art and Culture in Barcelona, Spain, and earned an honorable mention at the American Color Print Society’s Member’s Spring Exhibition at the Abington Art Center for her woodcut “Nirvana 1.” Her work was part of the group exhibition Art on Paper at ARt Mora Gallery on Pier 36 in New York. And her illustration “Paradise Between 1” was used as the cover art for Cherry Tree, a national literary journal. 

Associate Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen was elected to the Executive Committee of the Society of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. With Bi-Co Education Faculty Member Alison Cook-Sather, she presented “Navigating and Transforming Higher Education: A Co-curricular, Co-created Approach to Fostering Student Success and Institutional Culture Change” at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. And with Felipe H. Lopez and  Savita M. Deo BMC ’21, she presented a poster, “Zapotec Talking Dictionaries: DEL impact in creating resources, supporting language activists, and educating undergraduates", part of the series of events "Innovations in Linguistic Technologies and Models of Research Collaboration: 15 Years of Documenting Endangered Languages through DEL” at the Linguistic Society of America meeting in New Orleans.

Professor of Computer Science Steven Lindell attended a winter school on the Mathematics of Quantum Computation sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Director of the Writing Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Kristin Lindgren presented "'Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough:' Institutionalizing Eugenics" at the National Women's Studies Association in San Francisco. Lindgren also published "Deafness, Language, and Personhood in the Enlightenment" in A Cultural History of Disability, Volume 4:The Long Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury Academic).

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth presented a paper, ”The Discipline of Philosophy,” at a conference on philosophical methods in Zagreb, Croatia. She presented "Diagrams and Figures in Ancient Mathematics: China and the West" at the Fifth International Conference of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice in Zurich, Switzerland. And at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Meeting in Philadelphia, Macbeth commented on a paper, "Competence and Reference in Early China,” by Susan Blake BMC '99 (who majored in philosophy at Haverford) as part of the APA Committee Session: Early Chinese and Anglo-American Philosophy of Language in Dialogue.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Karen Masters was elected a member of the nominating committee of the American Astronomical Society. She also published two papers with students: 1. "Galactic Conformity in both star formation and morphological properties," led by Justin Otter '19 and based on work he did while a student at Haverford, and "L-band Calibration of the Green Bank Telescope from 2016-2019,” led by Julian Goddy '21 and based on work done during research conducted during summer 2019 and involving postdoc Dave Stark. 

Associate Professor of Political Science Barak Mendelsohn published the articles “Why Do jihadi Groups Recruit Foreign Fighters?: The Case of the Islamic State,” in the journal Orbis and "In Limited Demand: The Other Foreign Volunteers in the Syrian Civil War,” in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. Mendelsohn also gave a book talk "Jihadism Constrained: The Limits of Transnational Terrorism and What It Means for Counterterrorism" at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel-Aviv.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan was promoted to executive editor of Dickinson College Commentaries and launched a collaboration with the online companion to the "Worlds of Roman Women" to enhance the addition of vocabulary notes to the site. Mulligan presented “Good Doc, Bad Doc: the Representation of Doctors in Ancient and Neo-Latin Epigram” at the Tri-Co Medical Humanities Network Symposium at Swarthmore College and “Digital Tools for Latin Vocabulary: The Bridge” at the Annual Meeting of the Philadelphia Classical Society at Bryn Mawr College. He also presented “The Reception of Martial’s Bad Medicine in the Epigrams of John Owen and Ludwig Holberg” at Influence et réception du poète Martial, de sa mort à nos jours at Université Paris Nanterre.

Assistant Professor of English Lindsay Reckson published her first book, Realist Ecstasy: Religion, Race, and Performance, in the Performance and American Culture series at NYU Press. She has given three recent talks. At the American Studies Association Annual Conference in Honolulu, Reckson gave a talk on "Gestures of Accommodation at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” and at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle, she gave a talk on "Suspended Eros, or the Gesture of Billy Budd." Reckson also gave an invited lecture on "Realist Ecstasy" at Washington University in St. Louis, co-sponsored by the Performing Arts Department, American Culture Studies, and the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.

Fellow for Ethical Global Learning Nora Pillard Reynolds published "Promoting Cultural Humility in Global Health: Lessons From a Multi-institutional Community of Practice" in Diversity and Democracy with Globalsl Network partners.

William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts published a paper, "“The Forecast is Hurricane: Circe’s Powers and Circe’s Desires in Modern Women’s Poetry,” co-written by Sheila Murnaghan. It appeared as a chapter in Homer’s Daughters, Women’s Responses to Homer (Oxford University Press), edited by Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos.

Associate Professor and Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer published “Law, Politics, the Age of Responsibility, and the Problem of Child Soldiers" in the journal Law, Culture and the Humanities. Stauffer also published a paper, “‘You people talk from paper’: Indigenous law, western legalism, and the cultural variability of law’s materials,” in Law Text Culture’s special volume on legal materiality.

Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral and Vocal Studies Nathan Zullinger conducted a performance of Handel's "Judas Maccabeus" in December with the Bi-College Chorale, a professional orchestra, and a dozen student soloists. Prior to the performances, he lectured on the work at Main Line Reform Temple in Wynnewood and The Quadrangle in Haverford. In January, Zullinger conducted the world premiere of Ruth Marshall Magill Professor Curt Cacioppo's "Seven Women of Ancient Greek Myth." The concert featured the debut of the professional Viva Voce Chamber Singers, assembled for the occasion. Prior to the concert, the work was recorded and will be released on Albany Records this spring. He also presented on "Mental Health in the Fine Arts" to the music faculty of Lower Merion School District as part of their in-service training.

More Faculty Updates