Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of Politics Harry Hirsch has published Office Hours: One Academic Life, a memoir and critique of contemporary higher education. Read more about the book on this website.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand recently published two articles. The first, “Toward Iambic Obscenity,” appears in Ancient Obscenities: Their Nature and Use in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, edited by Dorata Dutsch and Ann Suter (University of Michigan Press, 2015). Ormand’s contribution explores the narrative and literary uses of invective obscenities in the fragmentary poems of the archaic Greek poet Hipponax, with particular attention to the story of how “iambic” poetry got its name and became associated with obscene invective.

The second article, “Buying Babies in Euripides’ Hippolytus,” argues that Hippolytus’ famous misogynistic speech in Euripides’ is framed in terms of an ongoing discursive conflict between short-term, lower-class, economic exchange and long-term, upper-class, aristocratic gift-giving. As such, Hippolytus’ misogyny also marks him as an aloof aristocrat living in the household of Theseus, legendary founder of Athenian democracy, a conflict that is played out through the rest of the drama. This article appears in a special edition of Illinois Classical Studies (volume 40.2, fall 2015).

Rick Baldoz, associate professor of sociology, and Shelley Lee, associate professor of comparative American studies and history, published the article "Donald Trump fails history: How the right’s failure to understand Japanese-American internment drives anti-Muslim hatred" on Salon.

James H. Fairchild Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies James Dobbins' first book Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2002) has been named by The Japan Times to its Essential Reading for Japanophile list. Published in Tokyo, The Japan Times is the largest English-language newspaper in Japan.

Holly Handman-Lopez, visiting assistant professor of dance, danced in the Where Were We: on intimacy, body, writing festival in Aarhus, Denmark, December 3 and 5 with her Berlin-based collaborators: Poet Esther Dischereit, DJ Ipek, and Percussionist Ray Kaczyski. The festival featured artists from Turkey and France, as well as Germany, Denmark, and the U.S.

The article The Modern Career of the Oldest Profession, and the Social Embeddedness of Metaphors by Greggor Mattson, associate professor of sociology and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, is the second-most downloaded social science article in 2015 from publisher Palgrave. The article tracks the diffusion of this euphemism for prostitution from its coinage by Rudyard Kipling in 1888. From the 17th century to the 1960s, many careers were the oldest profession, including pirates, lawyers, clowns, doctors, and the lady embalmers of Cincinnati.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Janet Fiskio contributed the chapter “Where Food Grows on Water: Food Sovereignty and North American Indigenous Literatures” to the book The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature (Ed. Deborah Lea Madison. New York: Routledge, 2015. 238-48).

Professor of Mathematics Jim Walsh was profiled by the Mathematics and Climate Change Research Network (MCRN) about his climate-modeling research. Walsh has been a member of MCRN since 2011, and he currently co-organizes a weekly webinar that focuses on mathematical models arising in the study of paleoclimate.

Rick Baldoz, associate professor of sociology, and Shelley Lee, associate professor of comparative American studies and history, published the article “Decades of Xenophobia Shape US Response to Syrian Refugees” on Truthout.

Baldoz also recently published the article “The 1965 Immigration Act: Its Legacy and Lessons” in the same publication.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Chie Sakakibara visited the Inupiaq community of Barrow, Alaska, November 22-28 for two current projects: 1) climate change and indigenous cultural resilience; and 2) the community-partnered Inupiaq music repatriation project for which she collaborates with the Center for Ethnomusicology at Columbia University, New York.