Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Professor of Psychology Cindy Frantz has received the 2014 Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Her award citation made note of her classroom application of psychological theories to current social issues and her guidance of student research. The SPSSI also invited to speak at the this summer at the 2014 SPSSI Conference in a special SPSSI teaching session.

This past April 27, in New York City, Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber presented the fourth Annual ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, a $100,000 prize, to Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative. Earlier in April, Prof. Faber delivered keynote addresses at CUNY’s Annual Graduate Conference for Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures & Languages, and at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in Lexington.

Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature Tim Scholl was part of a symposium, sponsored by Princeton University, called “‘Chronicling the Recent Past: Russian Writers on the Post-Soviet Ballet.” He presented a talk entitled “The Choreography of Power: Dance and Politics in Russia," which explored the changing institutional landscape of the arts in Russia, specifically ballet.

Professor of Psychology Nancy Darling was quoted in the Chicago Tribune article, “Creating support when you're raising kids away from family.”

Associate Professor of History and Comparative American Studies Shelley Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology Rick Baldoz, and Assistant Professor of English Harrod Suarez participated in the Association for Asian American Studies annual meeting held in San Francisco, April 16 to 19. This is the largest association for scholars of the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies.

Lee presented new research in a paper titled, “Koreagate: Race, Gender, and the Return of the Yellow Peril in 1970s America,” and participated in a state-of-the-field roundtable discussion on Asian American history. Baldoz participated in a pedagogy roundtable discussion titled, “Teaching Asian American Studies: Strategies, Trajectories, and Philosophies.” Suarez presented his research in a paper titled, “The Maternal Diaspora in Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son.”

Professor of Politics and East Asian Studies Marc Blecher attended the Conference on Governance, Adaptability and System Stability under Contemporary One-Party Rule: Comparative Perspectives at Nanchang University, in Nanchang China from March 27 to 29. He presented a paper jointly written with Daniel Zipp ’13, titled “Migrants and Mobilization: Sectoral Patterns in China, 2010-2013.”

Blecher will present a new version of the this paper as the annual keynote lecture, entitled “Migrants and Mobilization: Labor Politics and Political Stability in China”, at the University of Glasgow Confucius Institute, Glasgow, Scotland, on May 12.

Kazim Ali, associate professor of creative writing, and Jafar Mahallati, presidential scholar of Islam, were named as finalists for the Best Translated Book of Poetry given by the, University of Rochester’s Three Percent Initiative for their translation of Sohrab Sepheri’s The Oasis of Now. Mahallati presented and read from Sepehri on Wednesday April 23 at the Lakewood Public Library, while Ali will be giving a reading at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 11.

Steve Volk, professor of history, gave a talk entitled "The Border Murders as Palimpsest: The Historiography of 'Feminicide' in Ciudad Juárez" at the 60th Anniversary Conference of the European Association for American Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, on April 4, 2014.

Donald R. Longman Professor of English Sandra Zagarell has published an article, “Portrait of a Lady: ‘Not Inclined to be Deamericanised,’” in the Henry James Review. Along with a companion piece which will appear in another publication , this article analyzes James’s 1881 novel as a queer, outsider take on genteel Americans of the era.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Simanti Banerjee participated in the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Spring 2014 Colloquia at Indiana University. On March 24, she presented a lecture entitled “Participation and Spatial Coordination in Conservation Incentive Schemes: Role of Transaction Costs and Localized Communication."