Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Dean and Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology Christopher Jenkins will give a preconcert lecture on March 28 for the Cleveland Orchestra's "Black Panther In Concert," for which TCO performs the score of Black Panther alongside a screening of the movie.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jillian Scudder's latest book, Forty Ways To Know A Star, was released in the U.S. by Princeton Architectural Press, an imprint of Chronicle Books, on March 25. The book offers forty essays that explore how the stars have illuminated our understanding of the cosmos, illustrated throughout with custom diagrams. This is Dr. Scudder's fourth book for the general public.

Assistant professor of Jewish studies Matthew Berkman presented at the 4th Annual Law vs. Antisemitism Conference at the UCLA Law School. His paper was entitled "10/7 and the 'New Anti-Semitism Paradigm': A Third Critical Juncture?"

Associate Dean and Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology Christopher Jenkins will host two webinars about diversifying music curricula, through the College Music Society on March 18 and through New England Conservatory's alumni office on March 19.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine’s creative nonfiction essay, “In Pain and Solidarity: Four Narratives from Michigan’s Twelfth Congressional District,” appears in the recently published anthology, Beyond Refuge in Arab Detroit (Wayne State University Press, 2025).

Assistant Professor of German Jessica Resvick's article, "Freud's Media: Transference, Metaphor, and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture" appeared in Theory, Culture, and Society. The article, which incorporates material from Oberlin Libraries Special Collections, explicates the significance of nineteenth-century print culture to early psychoanalytic thought.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón will serve as judge for the 2025 National Book Awards’ Translated Literature Award.

Professor of Politics Stephen Crowley wrote an article titled “No Donald: The US Owes Ukraine, Not the Other Way Around” for The Nation. He was interviewed about Trump’s meeting with President Zelensky for the radio program Background Briefing.

Associate Professor of Sociology Alicia Smith-Tran published an article in Contexts with coauthors Sunny Hunt ’27, Dakota Wynn ’27, Izze Powell ’27, Charlie Kline ’25, and Jonah Covell ’24. Their article, "Seeing Tensions in Adulthood," is based on a photovoice research project they conducted during Winter Term 2024. 

Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Matt Elrod recently published an article, "A New Potential Atmospheric Accretion Mechanism: Acid-Catalyzed Hetero-Michael Addition Reactions," in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. His coauthors are Becca Fenselau ’22, Ali Alotbi ’23, Caroline Lee ’24, Julia Cronin ’25, and Dan Hill ’21, as well as Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Jason Belitsky.