Faculty and Staff Notes

Yumi Ijiri, Francis D Federighi Professor in Natural Sciences/Professor of Physics, coauthored the article "Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition of MgGeN2 films on GaN and sapphire" in Applied Physics Letters-Materials, with collaborators from Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University.

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber published a translation of an article in Japanese for the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, "The Cultural Meaning of Setsuwa: Ono no Takamura’s Journey to Hell and Back."

An article by Robert S. Danforth and Ben W. Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca and Franklin Sanchez-Colburn ’25 has been accepted by the Journal of Financial Stability. This article, "What Drives U.S. Corporate Private Equity? An Historical Perspective," arose from a private reading (independent study) course that Franklin had initiated with this professor.

Conservatory Library Head Kathy Abromeit receives Best of Chapters Award from the Music Library Association. "Stop Being a Fatphobe: Bringing a Larger Conversation to Critical Information Literacy" was coauthored with Grace Elliott and was delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Music Library Association on March 18.

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager gave a talk on April 18 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on her forthcoming book with Jiyul Kim, The Korean War: A Local History (Cambridge University Press).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shuming Chen has published an article, "Ligand-Controlled Regioselective Dearomative Vicinal and Conjugate Hydroboration of Quinolines," in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Her coauthors include Elizabeth Barta ’26 as well as collaborators from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Merck & Co.

In celebration of Arab American history month, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine gave talks about his short story collection, Dearborn, at Temple University, Haverford College, Villanova University, and the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor, respectively. 

Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith gave a lecture on March 26 at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, on liberalism in Texas and French Algeria in the 1830s and 1840s. Smith will continue work on this project in 2025-26 as Bill and Rita Clements Senior Fellow at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published two new scholarly essays. The first, “Postmodern in a Domestic Sense: Carlos Pabón and the Postmodern Critique of the Nation in Puerto Rico, 1993–2003” , surveys and reconstructs the so-called “postmodern debate” in Puerto Rico, circa 1991–2004, by focusing on the work of a historian and critic who played a central role in this influential dispute. The second, “Labor, Colonization, and the Freedom from Restraint in Nicolás Pizarro Suárez's El monedero (1861)”, analyzes how a novel was used in the 19th century to propose a new path for the Mexican economy centered on labor.

Three members of the Division of Music Theory — Associate Professor Andrew Pau, Assistant Professor Christa Cole, and Visiting Assistant Professor Sylvie Tran — presented a special session titled "Constructing Identity in Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels's Omar (2022)" at the annual meeting of the Music Theory Society of New York State on April 5. The session was based on a panel that the three faculty members gave in conjunction with Omar at Oberlin in December 2024.