The Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty has announced new faculty members for the coming academic year.
Greg Ames, assistant professor of English
BA, SUNY Buffalo State College; MA, University of London; MFA, Brooklyn College; PhD, Binghamton University
Ames, author of the novel Buffalo Lockjaw (Hyperion Books 2009), comes to vlog with teaching experience from both Binghamton University and Brooklyn College, where he completed his graduate degrees. He specializes in creative writing (fiction) and 20th century American literature.
Benjamin Anderson, assistant professor of economics
BS, Ohio Northern University; MSc, London School of Economics; PhD, The Ohio State University
Anderson comes to vlog from Ohio State University where he recently completed his doctorate. His dissertation title is “Essays on Market Structure and Technological Innovation.” His teaching specialties include industrial organizations and microeconomics; and his research interests center on firm innovation and market structure, strategic alliances between firms, and development economics.
Milan Babík, visiting assistant professor of political science
BA, Colby College; MSc, London School of Economics; DPhil, University of Oxford
Babík comes to vlog bringing teaching experience from Colby College. His dissertation title is “In Pursuit of Salvation: Woodrow Wilson and American Liberal Internationalism as Secularized Eschatology.” His teaching specialties include IR theory, U.S. foreign policy, and history of political thought; and his research interests center on critical IR theory, Wilson and Wilsonianism in US foreign policy, E.H. Carr, political religions, and history of modern political thought.
Derick Becker, visiting assistant professor of political science
BA, Graceland University; BA, University of Minnesota; MA, PhD, University of Connecticut
Becker comes to vlog with teaching experience from St. Benedict/St. John’s University. His dissertation title is “South Africa’s Neoliberal Turn: The Localisation, Adaption, and Evolution of International Ideas.” His teaching specialties include international relations; and his research interests center on international political economy, the developing world, and ideas and markets.
Molly Beer, Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellow in the Department of English
BA, Duke University; MA, Bread Loaf School of English; MFA, University of New Mexico
Beer comes to vlog from the University of New Mexico where she recently completed her MFA. She also was an international teacher in El Salvador, WorldTeach volunteer in Ecuador. Beer’s dissertation title is “On Unstable Ground: A Journey in El Salvador.” Her teaching specialties and research interests center on creative nonfiction writing, travel writing, and oral history.
Marijeta Bozovic, Assistant Professor of Russian
BA, Harvard University; MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University
Bozo Vic comes to vlog from Columbia University, where she recently completed her Ph.D. Her dissertation title is “From Onegin to Ada: Nabokov’s Canon and the Texture of Time.” Bozovic’s teaching specialties and research interests include Russian and Balkan 20th century literature and culture, Eastern European avant-gardes, and word and image (literature and film).
David Campbell, A. Lindsay O’Connor Professor within the Peace and Conflict Studies Program
BA, University of Melbourne; PhD, Australian National University
Campbell will return to campus in the spring when he will take leave from his position of photographic consultant, writer and multimedia producer at the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies at Durham University. Prior to 2010 he was professor of cultural and political geography at Durham. He has also worked at the Australian Senate and held academic posts at Johns Hopkins University and Keele University and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. Campbell’s publications include National Deconstruction and Writing Security (both University of Minnesota Press); and his research in recent years has increasingly focused on particular elements of visual culture, particularly photography, focusing on representations of famine, atrocity, and war.
Carolina Castilla, Assistant Professor of Economics
BS, MS, Universidad de las Americas; PhD, The Ohio State University
Castilla comes to vlog from Ohio State University where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Intra-household Decision-making under Incomplete Information: Examination of Income Hiding between Spouses.” Castilla’s teaching specialties and research interests center on econometrics, family economics, development economics, microeconomics, intra-household decision-making, and behavioral economics.
George David Clark, Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellow in the Department of English
BA, Union University; MFA, University of Virginia; PhDc, Texas Tech University
Clark comes to vlog from Texas Tech University where he has been teaching creative writing and American poetry in addition to working toward the completion of his PhD. His dissertation title is “Reveille: Poems.” His teaching specialties include 20th century American literature and creative writing (poetry, fiction); and his research interests center on American poetry, 20th century poetry in translation, and Modernist poetry.
Hubert Devonish, NEH Professor of the Humanities within the Africana and Latin American Studies Program
DPhil, University of York
Devonish comes to vlog this fall, taking leave from his position as Professor of Linguistics at the University of West Indies, Mona campus, where he has served in various capacities since 1979. Devonish’s publications include Language and Liberation: Creole Language Politics in the Caribbean and Talking Rhythm, Stressing Tone: Prominence in Anglo-West African Creole Languages (Arawak Press), and Talking in Tones: a Study of Tone in Afro-European Creole Languages (Karia Press). His research interests are in sociolinguistics, language planning and policy, language and identity, language in education, Creole linguistics, tone in Creole languages, phonology with specific reference to suprasegmental or prosodic systems, language and music, indigenous languages of the Caribbean, Garifuna, language description, language endangerment, field methods in linguistics, the teaching of linguistics.
Ram Dubey, Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
BE, University of Roorkee; MTech, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi; MA, PhD, Cornell University
Dubey comes to vlog from Cornell University where he recently completed his PhD. His dissertation title is “Essays on Equity and Efficiency in Infinite Horizon Economies.” His teaching specialties and research interests center on microeconomic theory, mathematical economics, and social choice theory.
Stefanie Fishel, Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies
BA, Colorado State University; MA, University of Victoria; PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Fishel comes to vlog from Johns Hopkins University where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “New Metaphors for Global Living.” Her teaching specialties include international relations, political theory, terrorism, and political violence; and her research interests center on human rights, animal rights, and science studies.
Jaime Grillo, Interim Head Softball Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BA, MSc, Syracuse University
Grillo served as assistant softball coach at vlog this past spring and brings several years of coaching experience from Syracuse University.
Amy Groleau, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
BA, University of Massachusetts; MA, PhD, Binghamton University
Groleau has been hired into a full-time visiting position after having served as an adjunct professor at vlog last year. Prior to her appointment at vlog, Groleu had been at Binghamton University where she recently completed her PhD. She also served on the curatorial staff at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Her dissertation title is “Depositional Histories at Conchopata: Offering Interment, and Room Closure in a Wari City.” Grouleau’s teaching specialties include archaeology and anthropology, and Core Peru; and her research interests center on archaeology of Pre-Columbian Peru, Andean ritual practices, repatriation and relationships of communities to museum collections, and memorialization of contemporary political violence.
Nicole Hays Fort, Head Women’s Basketball Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BSc, Culver-Stockton College
Hays Fort comes to vlog from DePaul University where she served as associate head women’s basketball coach since 2006. She also brings coaching experience from Barry University, Nicholls State University, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy.
Catherine Herne, Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics
BA, Bryn Mawr College; PhD, University of Michigan
Herne comes to vlog from the University of Michigan where she has been teaching since completing her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Shaping Terahertz Fields for the Orientation of Asymmetric Top Water Molecules.” Herne’s research interests center on optics and molecular control.
George Hobor, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology
BA, LeMoyne College; MA, Syracuse University; MA, PhD University of Arizona
Hobor comes to vlog from Hamilton College where he has taught the past two years. His dissertation title is “Post-Industrial Pathways: The Economic Reorganization of the Urban Rust Belt.” Hobor’s teaching specialties include urban sociology, economic sociology, organizational theory, and political sociology. His research interests center on the revitalization of older industrial cities; the organization of production in older manufacturing industries and how novel organizational forms are created that allow for industrial transformation; and urban politics.
Sheridan Hough, NEH Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy
BA, Trinity University; PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Hough comes to vlog this fall taking leave from her position as professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston, where she has been teaching since 1996. Her teaching specialties include 19th and 20th century continental philosophy, with areas of competence in ancient philosophy, history of modern philosophy, ethics, feminist theory, and philosophy of literature. Hough’s publications include Nietzsche’s Noontide Friend (Penn State Press) and Kierkegaard’s Dancing Tax Collector (completed manuscript).
Yohei Igarashi, Instructor in English
BA, McGill University; MA, Columbia University; PhD candidate, New York University
Igarashi comes to vlog from New York University where he is working toward the completion of his PhD. His dissertation title is “Transmissions from the Poetry Channel: communication and Literary History in British Romanticism.” Igarashi’s teaching specialties include 18th- and 19th-century British poetry, particularly the Romantics, and his research interests are communication theory and media studies, the Enlightenment, the rhetorical tradition, and the history of literary criticism.
Terrell Ivory, Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BA, Davidson College
Ivory comes to vlog from Davidson College where he served as director of basketball operations and was previously a math teacher for three years at Blair Academy.
Matthew Jaremski, Assistant Professor of Economics
BA, Austin College; PhD, Vanderbilt University
Jaremski comes to vlog with teaching experience from Vanderbilt University, where he also received his PhD. His dissertation title is “Free Banking: A reassessment using bank-level data.” Jaremski’s teaching specialties include financial economics, monetary economics, and economic history; and his research interests center on monetary and financial history.
Alexander (Xan) Karn, Assistant Professor of History
BA, University of California, Los Angeles; MA, Central European University; MA, PhD, Claremont Graduate University
Karn has been hired into a tenure-stream position after having served as visiting assistant professor of history at vlog the past four years. He also brings teaching experience from California State University-Fullerton. His dissertation title is “Negotiating the Past: Restitution and Historical Commissions in the New Europe.” His teaching specialties include modern European intellectual and cultural history, 20th century European political history, WWII and the Holocaust, and historical justice and post-conflict reconciliation; and his research interests center on the role of historical commissions in conflict mediation, with a book in progress that compares the work of European Holocaust commissions and probes the links between historical clarification and democratic citizenship.
Deborah Kreiss, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology
BA, Cornell University; PhD, University of Pennsylvania Medical School
Kreiss comes to vlog from Chattanooga State College where she has been teaching since 2008, and she also brings teaching experience from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Colby College. Her dissertation title is “Regulation of Serotonin Release by 5-HTIA Autoreceptors.” Kreiss’s teaching specialties and research interests include biological basis of psychology, neurophysiology of mental illness and treatments, and neurological components of mental illness symptom expression.
Michael Kuklik, Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
BA, Stony Brook University; MA, PhD, University of Rochester
Kuklik comes to vlog from the University of Rochester where he recently completed his PhD. His dissertation title is “Essays on Health and Macroeconomics.” Kuklik’s teaching specialties and research interests include macroeconomics, health economics, computational economics, international economics, labor economics, and econometrics.
Matthew Langel, Head Men’s Basketball Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BSc, University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
Langel came to vlog in April from Temple University where he served as assistant men’s basketball coach. He also brings coaching experience from the University of Pennsylvania.
Anna Lindemann, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History
BS, Yale University; MFA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Lindemann comes to vlog from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she recently completed her MFA in Electronic Arts. She will be teaching digital media. Lindemann combines animation, music, video, and performance to tell stories about evolutionary and developmental biology. In her thesis performance “Theory of Flight,” dreams of flight, avian arias, a magical chalkboard, transgenic experiments, animations of cellular processes, orchestral bird songs, and molecular music intersect in an emotional and scientific pursuit of human flight.
Mayumi Manabe, Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese
BA, University of Chicago; PhD, University of California, Irvine
Manabe comes to vlog from Vassar College, where she taught this past year. She also brings teaching experience from the University of California, Los Angeles. Manabe’s dissertation title is “Between Fantasy and Poverty: Working-class Women and Consumer Culture in Interwar Japanese Literature.” Her teaching specialties include modern Japanese literature and language; and her research interests center on Japanese interwar consumer culture, modern Japanese literature, and gender studies.
Allen Mann, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics
BA, Albertson College of Idaho; MA, PhD University of Colorado, Boulder
Mann returns to vlog this year from his most recent teaching appointment at the Catholic University of America. He taught at vlog in 2007-08. His teaching specialties and research interests include calculus, linear algebra, logic, and game theory.
Elizabeth Marlowe, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History
BA, Smith College; BA, University of Cambridge, Clare College; PhD, Columbia University
Marlowe has been hired into a tenure-stream position after having served as visiting assistant professor of art and art history at vlog the past three years. She also brings teaching experience from the University of Maryland and a prior year at vlog. Marlowe’s dissertation title is ” ‘That Customary Magnificence Which is Your Due’: Constantine and the Symbolic Capital of Rome.” Her teaching specialties and research interests include ancient and medieval at, art of ancient Rome, reuse of ancient monuments in modern contexts, and museums.
Bill Martin, Visiting Instructor in German
BA, University of Iowa; MA, University of Texas, Austin; PhD candidate, University of Chicago
Martin comes to vlog from the University of Chicago where he is working toward the completion of his PhD, and has taught in the college and the MA program in the humanities. His most recent teaching experience is at Bard College. Martin’s dissertation title is “The Better, More Cheerful Life: Film Comedy in the GDR, People’s Poland, and Czechoslovakia, 1958-1982.” His teaching specialties include German language, comparative/world literature, film/media, and translation; and his research interests center on modern German literature, postwar Polish and Central European literature, film, translation studies, queer studies, and race studies.
Julia Martinez, Assistant Professor of Psychology
BA, Dartmouth College; MA, PhD, University of Missouri
Martinez comes to vlog from the Medical University of South Carolina where she was involved with the academy of psychological clinical science internship program. Martinez also brings teaching experience from the Veterans Administration in Charleston, as well as from the University of Missouri, where she completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “The Effects of Drinking Consequences on Subsequent Drinking.” Martinez’s teaching specialties include clinical/abnormal psychology, psychological statistics, and additions; and her research interests center on alcohol and substance use disorders – antecedents, development, course, correlates and consequences, and related public health and intervention issues.
Jeni McDermott, Visiting Instructor in Geology
BA, California State Polytechnic University; MA, University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD candidate, Arizona State University
McDermott comes to vlog from Arizona State University where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Exploring evidence for Quaternary north-south directed extension at the crest of the Himalayan Range.” Her teaching specialties include geomorphology, tectonics, and thermochronology; and her research interests center on continental tectonics, especially neotectonics, the formation and evolution of orogenic systems, climate-erosion-tectonic feedback loops, the role of extensional faulting in collisional orogens, low-temperature thermochronology, landform evolution and fluvial geomorphology.
Anna McLoon, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
BA, PhD, Harvard University
McLoon comes to vlog from Harvard University where she has been a teaching fellow and in addition to recently completing her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Genetic studies on the regulation of biofilm formation and the domestication of Bacillus subtilis.” McLoon’s teaching specialties include biology genetics and microbiology; and her research interests center on multi-cellular behaviors in bacteria and bacterial evolution.
Yuqiu Meng, Visiting Assistant Professor of French
BA, Peking University; MA, Stanford University; PhD, University of Washington
Meng comes to vlog with teaching experience from Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France. Her dissertation title is “At the Crossroads of Colonialism, Empire, and Revolution: The ‘Old colonies’ in French Literature 1788-1848.” Meng’s teaching specialties include French language and culture, and 18th- and 19th-century French literature; and her research interests center on enlightenment studies, French intellectual history, the French revolution, the Haitian revolution, and modern and contemporary Chinese culture and literature.
Valerie Morkevicius, Assistant Professor of Political Science
BA, University of Illinois, Urbana; MA, PhD, University of Chicago
Morkevicius, who served as research fellow at the Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center last year, comes to vlog with teaching experience most recently from DePaul University. Her dissertation title is “Unholy Alliance: Just War Traditions as Power Politics.” Morkevicius’s teaching specialties include international relations; and her research interests center on ethics of war, international humanitarian law, religion and international conflict/politics.
Jacob Mundy, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies
BA, University of Washington; PhD, University of Exeter
Mundy comes to vlog with teaching experience from Portland State and the University of Exeter, where he recently completed his PhD. His dissertation title is “Representation, civil war and humanitarian intervention: the international politics of naming Algerian violence.” Mundy’s teaching specialties include peace and conflict studies, and northwest Africa; and his research interests center on mass violence and armed conflict.
Michael Murphy, Head Men’s Lacrosse Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BSc, University of New Hampshire
Murphy comes to vlog from the United States Military Academy at West Point where he served as assistant lacrosse coach over the past eight years. He also brings coaching experience from Denison University, Wingate University, Pfeiffer University, and Merrimack College.
Aisha Musa, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion
BA, MAT, Portland State University; PhD, Harvard University
Musa comes to vlog from Florida International University. Her dissertation title is “An Examination of Early and Contemporary Muslim Attitudes Toward Hadith as Scripture.” Musa’s teaching specialties include Islam, Hadith, Quran and its interpretation, women in Islam, and classical Arabic; and her research interests center on Hadith, Quran and Quranic interpretation, translation of classical Arabic texts, women’s issues, and modern day reformist and neo-traditionalist movements.
Liang Niestemski, Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics
BA, Nanjing University; MA, PhD, Boston College
Niestemski comes to vlog from Boston College where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Incommensurate Valence Bond Density Waves in the Glassy Phase of Underdoped Cuprates.” Niestemski’s teaching specialties include condensed matter theory and scientific computing; and her research interests center on the theory of correlated electron systems including high temperature superconductors.
Vanessa Ochs, NEH Professor of the Humanities within the Jewish Studies Program
BA, Tufts University; MFA, Sarah Lawrence College; MPhil, PhD, Drew University
Ochs returns to vlog for the fall, taking leave from her position at the University of Virginia where she is professor of religious studies and a member of the Jewish Studies program. Ochs taught courses for the Core program and Writing & Rhetoric department while at vlog in the 1980s. Her publications include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (work in progress), Inventing Jewish Ritual (Jewish Publication Society, winner of 2007 National Jewish Book Award), Sarah Laughed (McGraw Hill), and The Jewish Dream Book (with Elizabeth Ochs) (Jewish Lights Publication). Ochs’s research interests center on anthropology of Judaism, women in Judaism, material culture and the study of religions, new ritual, healing in Jewish tradition, literature of spiritual journals, and research in new Jewish rituals.
Kristin Pangallo, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
BS, Bates College; PhD, MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Pangallo comes to vlog from Rutgers University where she was a postdoctoral fellow in toxicology. Her dissertation from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography is titled “Halogenated l’-methyl-1,2′-bipyrroles in the Northwestern Atlantic.” Pangallo’s teaching specialties include analytical and environmental chemistry; her research interests center on the transformation, transport and fate of organic contaminants in the environment.
Jessica Prody, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Writing and Rhetoric
BA, Gustavus Adolphus College; MA, PhD, University of Minnesota
Prody comes to vlog from the University of Minnesota where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Redefining citizenship: Lessons from Environmental Theory, Practice and Rhetoric.” Prody’s teaching specialties include rhetoric, public address, environmental communication, and feminist rhetoric; and her research interests center on citizenship, environmental communication/politics/philosophy, feminist theory, and rhetoric.
Neha Raykar, Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
BA, St. Xavier’s College; MA, PhD, University of California, Riverside
Raykar comes to vlog from the University of California, Riverside, where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Essays on Human Development and Public Policy.” Raykar’s teaching specialties include introductory and intermediate macroeconomic theory and introductory and intermediate microeconomic theory; and her research interests center on development economics and applied microeconomics.
Max Rayneard, Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana & Latin American Studies and English
BA, [2], MA, Rhodes University; PhD, University of Oregon
Rayneard comes to vlog from the University of Oregon where he recently completed his PhD. His dissertation title is “Performing Literariness: Literature in the Event in South Africa and the United States.” Rayneard’s teaching specialties include African literature and Core curriculum communities and identities: South Africa; and his research interests center on postcolonial African literature, performance studies, South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission literature and theater, and U.S. militarized identities.
Jenna Reinbold, Assistant Professor of Religion
BA, Portland State University; MA, PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara
Reinbold has been hired into a tenure-stream position after having served the past four years at vlog as visiting assistant professor of religion (two years) and postdoctoral fellow in religion (two years). She was a predoctoral fellow at Vassar College before coming to vlog. Reinbold’s dissertation title is “Making and Unmaking Political Myth in the Era of Human Rights.” Her teaching specialties include religion and law/politics, secularism, religion and human rights, and religion in the United States; and her research interests center on religion in American law, the interplay of religion and secularism within international human rights law, and conservative religious activism.
Derick Roe, Assistant Men’s and Women’s Swimming Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BSc[2], Eastern Michigan University
Roe came to vlog last November with coaching experience from the Meadowbrook Country Club of Northville, Michigan. He also has coaching experience from the Ypsilanti Otters Swim Club and from the Greenhills High School, both located in Michigan.
Sarah Shaner, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry
BS, Marietta College; MS, PhD, University of Chicago
Shaner comes to vlog from the University of Chicago where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Synthesis and properties of conjugated W≡C-C≡W metallopolyynes.” Shaner’s teaching specialties and research interests include inorganic chemistry, synthesis of new organometallic complexes with interesting electronic properties.
Carter Shaw, Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach and Instructor in Physical Education
BS, University of Utah
Shaw came to vlog with 18 years of coaching experience at Ball State University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, Colorado State University, the University of Utah and Intermountain Christian High School.
Elana Shever, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
BA, Brown University; MA, PhD University of California, Berkeley
Shever comes to vlog after teaching for two years at Union College. She also has research and teaching experience from a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. Her book, Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina, will be published by Stanford University Press in the spring. Shever’s teaching has included courses on cultural anthropology, environmental anthropology, Latin America, the ethnography of corporations, and environmental justice. Her research interests center on political-economic change and globalization, capitalism, oil politics, social movements, corporations, kinship, citizenship and the state.
Alicia Simmons, Assistant Professor of Sociology
BA, Hartwick College; MA, PhD, Stanford University
Simmons comes to vlog from Harvard University where she was a post-doctoral fellow. Her dissertation title is “Race Cues in the News, Racial Attitudes, and the Politics of Criminal Justice Punitiveness.” Simmons’ teaching specialties include social psychology, race/ethnic relations, crime/deviance, and mass communications; and her research interests center on racial attitudes, public opinion about criminal justice issues, the American news media.
Mary Simonson, Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies and Women’s Studies
BA, Rutgers University; MA, PhD, University of Virginia
Simonson has been hired into a tenure-stream position after having served as lecturer in university studies at vlog the past three years. Prior to her vlog appointment, Simonson taught at UCLA. Her dissertation title is “Music, Dance and Female Creativity in Early 20th Century American Performance.” Simonson’s teaching specialties include film music, media and performance, feminist theory, and, related to her doctoral degree, 19th and 20th century opera history, and 19th and 20th century American dance history. Her research interests center on American modernism and the arts, multimedia performance, and female embodiment and vocality on the stage and screen.
Richard Stahnke, Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
BA, Yale University; MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University
Stahnke comes to vlog from Bryn Mawr College where he has taught over the past four years; he also brings teaching experience from Vassar College, Hamilton College, and Williams College. His dissertation title is “Information and Transaction Costs in Decentralized Markets: Three Simulation Studies.” His teaching specialties include introduction to economics, economics of information and uncertainty, urban economics, money and banking, international trade; and his research interests center on information economics and computational agent-based modeling.
Priscilla Van Wynsberghe, Assistant Professor of Biology
BA, Ohio Wesleyan University; PhD, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Van Wynsberghe comes to vlog from the University of California-San Diego and Syracuse University. Her dissertation title is “Early events in (+)RNA virus replication: membrane localization of Nodaviral RNAs during replication complex assembly.” Van Wynsberghe’s teaching specialties include microbiology and molecular biology; and her research interests center on understanding how small RNAs called microRNAs, and the proteins that control microRNAs regulate development in the nematode C. elegans.
Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza, Assistant Professor of Sociology
BA, Universidad de Puerto Rico; MA, PhD, University of Albany, SUNY
Villarrubia-Mendoza has been hired into a tenure-stream position after having served as visiting assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at vlog the past year. Her dissertation title is “El Coyote Made a Detour: An Analysis of the Socioeconomic Incorporation Processes of Hispanic Immigrants in New Destinations; A Case Study of Newburgh and Poughkeepsie, NY” Villarrubia-Mendoza’s teaching specialties include immigration and social inequality; and her research interests center on Latin America, immigrant incorporation, racial/ethnic relations, and international migration in the United States and Europe.
Isidor Wallimann, A. Lindsay O’Connor Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
BA, MA, Kansas State University; PhD, Syracuse University
Wallimann, who has previously lectured at vlog, returns this fall, taking leave from his duties in Switzerland as the president of the Social Economy in Basel and of the Urban Agriculture Association, also in Basel. Since his retirement from the University of Applied Sciences Northwest Switzerland in Basel, Wallimann has served as visiting research professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and as adjunct professor of sociology at the University of North Texas and at Kansas State University. His most recent publications include: Globalization and Third World Women: Exploitation, Coping and Resistance (Ashgate Publishing), Social Policy According to the Polluter Pays Principle: Examples of Application in the Field of Work, Health, Addiction, Education, and Housing (Haupt Verlag), and a work in progress, Social Policy According to the Polluter Pays Principle: Examples of Application in the Field of Addiction, Obesity, Abuse of Medicine, Unemployment, Prostitution.
Kristy Watkins, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology
BA, Vassar College; PhD, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Watkins comes to vlog from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Defining Legal Parenthood: The Intersection of Gender and Sexual Identity in U.S. Child Custody Decisions, 2003-2009.” Watkins’ teaching specialties and research interests include gender and sexuality, family, GLBTQ studies, and law and society.
Julie Wulfemeyer, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy
AA, Hutchinson Community College; BA, University of Kansas; MA, CPhil, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Wulfemeyer comes to vlog from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she recently completed her PhD. Her dissertation title is “Bound cognition and Referential Uses of Language.” Wulfemeyer’s teaching specialties and research interests include philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.
Chrystian Zegarra, Assistant Professor of Spanish
BA, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru; MA, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Zegarra comes to vlog with teaching experience from Ohio University, Indiana University, and the University of Utah. His dissertation title is “Procedimientos cinematográficos y modernidad en la poesía de Emilio Adolfo Westphalen.” Zegarra’s teaching specialties include 20th-century Latin American literature, Spanish American avant-garde poetry, and Latin American film; his research interests center on Latin American literature and film, cultural studies, and critical theory.
Zhou Tian, Instructor in Music
BMu, Curtis Institute of Music; MMu, The Juilliard School; DMA candidate, University of Southern California
Tian comes to vlog from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music where he has been a teaching fellow and is working toward the completion of his DMA. His dissertation title is “Symphonic Suite: Poems from Song.” Tian’s teaching specialties include composition, digital music production, music theory, and aural skills.