Faculty and Staff Notes

Crystal Biruk, assistant professor of anthropology, was awarded a Wenner-Gren Foundation postdoctoral research grant to fund research in Malawi and South Africa.

Renee Romano, professor and chair of history and professor of comparative American studies and Africana studies, delivered the 14th Annual American Studies Lecture at the University of Leicester in Leicester, England, on October 19. The title of her lecture was “‘The Great Force of History’: Collective Memory, White Innocence, and Making Black Lives Matter."

Shelley Lee, associate professor of comparative American studies and history, was an invited panelist at the multidisciplinary symposium on immigration in the United States titled Politics, Promises, and Possibilities: The 1965 Immigration Act At 50 held October 16 at Indiana University. Lee spoke on a panel about labor in post-industrial America. 

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Karl Offen was the contributing guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Geography titled “Mapping Latin American Geographies." The table of contents can be viewed on this webpage.

Assistant Professor of Integrated Media Art Julia Christensen presented on Upgrade Available, a body of work that explores our cultural relationships with obsolete electronic material, at the 2015 Creative Capital Retreat this summer. The presentation is now available to view online.

Professor of Medieval Art History Erik Inglis published the article "Remembering and Forgetting Suger at Saint-Denis, 1151-1534: An abbot’s reputation between memory and history.” Download a PDF of the article on this webpage.

Ben Fitch-Fleischmann, assistant professor of economics and environmental studies, presented his paper “Extreme Heat and Early-Life Health: Evidence from Peru” at CANUSEE 2015, a joint conference presented by the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics and the United States Society for Ecological Economics, in Vancouver, Canada, on October 4. Information about his paper can be found on this webpage.

Rick Baldoz, associate professor of sociology, and Shelley Lee, associate professor of comparative American studies and history, delivered the joint keynote address “Pilipino American History: Between Empire and Diaspora” on October 6 at the University of San Francisco for Pilipino/a American History Month. The event was hosted by the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program and the University of San Francisco Kasamahan.

Professor of History and Director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence Steven Volk delivered the invited talk “Between Danger and Discomfort: Trigger Warnings, Academic Freedom, and How to Create Productive Spaces for Learning” on October 1 at the Center for Teaching Excellence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The paper “On the Budyko-Sellers energy balance climate model with ice line coupling” by Professor of Mathematics Jim Walsh (lead author) and Christopher Rackauckas ’13 appeared in the September issue of Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems - Series B (DCDS-B). The paper presents an analysis of a mathematical model of an ice sheet-surface temperature coupled model. This work was carried out with Rackauckas.

Walsh was also invited to participate in a Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 workshop held September 30-October 2 at the National Institute of Mathematical and Biological Synthesis in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the workshop, Walsh spoke about the Mathematics and Climate Research Network, an organization funded by an award from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences of which he is a member.