Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jonathan van Harmelen’s article “Preacher, Immigrant Defender, World War II-Era Rebel” was recently published in Zoćalo Public Square.

Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Joshua Sperling delivered the lecture "Beyond Ideology: John Berger Before and After Ways of Seeing" for the National Gallery, London as part of the educational series "From Canvas to Canon: Six Texts that Shaped Art History."

An Index to Spirituals, a 592-page book by Head of the Conservatory Library Kathleen Abromeit, was recently published by SUNY Press. The book is a new edition of her 1999 book An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice (Greenwood Press). It indexes the printed music of spirituals with publications dating from 1867 to the present.

Conservatory Librarian Krista Mitchell presented at the Pop Culture Association's annual conference in Atlanta on April 10. Her paper was titled "Lady Gaga at Coachella 2025: Music and Mayhem as Feminist Gothic."

Department of Psychology Research Technician Peter Naegele was the featured guest DJ on one of Cleveland's longest-running underground dance shows, Beatatrix, on Case Western Reserve University radio station WRUW on April 20. Naegele mixed an hour of hard techno and house. The archive of the show can be found on the station’s website; the full set is available on Naegele’s MixCloud.

Sam Yang, director for intercultural engagement in International Student and Scholar Services, coauthored a chapter in the book Rethinking Mobility, Access, and Belonging in International Higher Education. The chapter, “Crisis, Compliance, and Care: Institutional Response and International Students’ Sense of Belonging During Uncertain Times,” examines how campus crisis responses shape international students’ experiences and introduces the Compliance and Care Matrix, a framework for understanding the relationship between institutional compliance and student-centered support.

Alicia Smith-Tran, William G. Smith Associate Professor of Sociology and Comparative American Studies, spoke at a virtual event hosted by Spelman College titled, "Black Feminist Theory and Praxis." The panel discussion was held on March 24.

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber presented the paper “Aromatics and the Construction of Buddhist Worlds in Medieval Japan” at the ASIANetwork annual conference in Naperville, Illinois. He also gave a guest lecture and discussion on his forthcoming monograph, Cadaverous, for Marta Sanvido’s “Body and Margins in Japanese Buddhism” seminar at Yale University.

Associate Professor of Music Theory Andrew Pau presented a paper titled "Modality in the Choral Music of Lili Boulanger" at the second edition of the international conference La modalité dans la musique française à l'orée du XXe siècle (Modality in French Music at the Turn of the Twentieth Century). The conference took place in Paris from March 26 to 28.

Morgenstern-Sloan Assistant Professor of Economics Emir Murathanoglu published a paper in the American Economic Review titled "Abundance from Abroad: Migrant Income and Long-Run Economic Development,” with co-authors Gaurav Khanna, Caroline Theoharides, and Dean Yang. Their research shows that international migration can be a powerful engine of long-run economic development in the places migrant people come from.