Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of English Sarah Jane Kerwin recently published a chapter in the edited collection Redefining Land Management in North American Literature and Culture: From Resource to Reciprocity (Routledge 2026) titled "'For sheer joy in wild terrain': Rock Climbing Literature and Public Lands."

Emeritus Professor of History Steve Volk coauthored the chapter "Powers of Attention: To Walk a Fine Line" in Practice Dialogues: Listening to the Wisdom of Care Work (ed. Alice Lesnick; Lever Press, 2026).

Associate Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber presented the paper “Nightmare-Touch: Visualizing Disease Demons in Tendai Buddhist Medical Manuscripts” at "Buddhism and Medicine: People, Paradigms and Perspectives," an international conference held at the University of Bristol, UK, May 21–May 23.

James O'Leary, the Frederick R. Selch Associate Professor of Musicology, was recently interviewed by the New Books Network about his book, "The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America" (OUP, 2025).

Donald R. Longman '32 Professor of Physics Jason Stalnaker and three former Oberlin students have co-authored a paper on a "Search for a solar-bound axion halo using the global network of magnetometers for exotic physics searches" in the journal Physical Review D.

Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith published “Violence, Legalism, and the Evolution of Sovereignty in the Mandates, 1923-1939” in Haakon Ikonomou, Karin van Leeuwen, and Morten Rasmussen, eds., Handbook on the League of Nations and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026): 364-386. The article argues for a reciprocal relationship between violence and the law in reordering the international system.

On May 28, Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey gave an invited lecture to the Afro-Amerindian Performance Studies Nucleus of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Rarey's talk covered his 2023 book, Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic.

Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion Shari Rabin’s piece, “(1790) Enthusiastic Citizens” has been published in “Under Gods,” a digital project commemorating the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence, from the Indiana University journal American Religion, in collaboration with the Center for the Understanding of Religion in American History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Rabin also appeared on episode 2 of “All We Have Standing Between Us: 250 Years of American Jews and Democracy,” a podcast accompanying an exhibit, on which she worked as a guest section curator, opening July 21 at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Stephen Crowley, Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics, wrote an article titled “On the Eve of the NATO Summit, Is Europe Rearming Against a Phantom Russia?" that appeared in The Nation.

Professor of Comparative Literature Stiliana Milkova and Max Kassoy ’27 co-authored an essay, "Ghosts of the Mother Tongue: Exophony, Trauma, Translation in Nataliya Deleva's 'Arrival'," published in the inaugural issue of the journal "The Third Wheel" (July 2026).