Faculty and Staff Notes

In celebration of Arab American Heritage Month, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine gave a virtual talk about his story collection, Dearborn, at Penn State University in April. He also moderated and participated in the Arab Culture Panel at the National Arab American Youth Conference in Dearborn, Michigan.

Professor of Sociology Greggor Mattson was interviewed on April 8 for NPR's Crosscurrents about his book Who Needs Gay Bars? The book profiled the White Horse Inn in Oakland on what it takes for a queer bar to survive in California's Bay Area.

Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy Jillian Scudder was a live guest on WWL Louisiana to discuss the Artemis II mission and the future of the NASA space program on April 13. 

Program Director for Community-Engaged Research and Learning and Lecturer Jo Line partnered with Biochemistry and Law and Society double major Kiersten Schilk to co-present a poster at the Campus Compact annual conference about building an archive of women's sport history in Northeast Ohio in partnership with Play Gap. Line also led a teaching workshop on facilitating optimal performance through creativity and play at the Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium.

Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca presented results from two studies, coauthored with Kenean Kejela ’25, at a conference at the Bank of England (the U.K.’s central bank). They find that a more rigorous measure of money improves forecasts of GDP and inflation using deep learning models. Their AI results support the findings from Duca’s coauthored article “Broad Divisia Money, Supply Pressures, and U.S. Inflation Following the COVID-19 Recession,” published in the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Assistant Professor of Data Science and Computer Science Joshua Davidson presented the paper “A classification methodology to prioritize roadways for traffic calming measures” at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting in March. The paper was coauthored with Oberlin students Sydney Paunan ’25, Ezra Pemberton '27, Roman Lafia '27, Emmy Saarnio '27, and Jess Nadler '27, as well as Matthew Moss and Calley Mersmann (city of Cleveland).

Associate Professor of Voice Katherine Jolly released the album No Ordinary Woman (Navona Records/PARMA) in January. Her first release since her 2019 debut Preach Sister, Preach, the album features three song cycles that are intimate reflections on womanhood and different sorts of love. Learn more about the album and hear from Jolly on Oberlin.edu.

Head of the Conservatory Library Kathy Abromeit presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Music in March. She discussed her forthcoming book, An Index to Spirituals (SUNY Press 2026), as part of the society’s Resource and Research Interest Group Panel on Spirituals.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Nicholas Anderman published "Tropicana, Tropicana, Tropicana: An Interview with Fred Moten" in the journal Qui Parle. It’s part of a special issue on sound studies edited and introduced by Anderman and Be Schierenberg. Learn more about the issue on the Duke University Press website.

On March 14, Longman Professor of English Emerita Sandra Zagarell presented a paper titled “Lewis H. Latimer’s Poetry: A Lens on Late Nineteenth Century Black Readers” at the biannual conference of C 19, the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.