Faculty and Staff Notes

Debra Herzog, executive assistant to the vice president and dean of students, was selected to represent the State of Ohio in its largest-ever marketing campaign, aimed at attracting a growing percentage of regional travelers from Ohio and surrounding states.

Herzog made her film debut in "The Enormity of Life," which is scheduled for re-release May 31, 2022. The new release includes special never before seen documentary of the making of the film.

Emily Laurance, visiting associate professor of musicology, presented her paper "At the Nexus of Timbre and Nostalgia: the Pedal Harp in Eighteenth-Century France" at the Nostalgia, Music, and Music Studies Conference hosted by UCLA on May 3, 2022.

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón published El culto a la derrota, a translation into Spanish of Brian Price’s monograph “Cult of Defeat in Mexico’s Historical Fiction: Failure, Trauma, and Loss.” 

Danforth Professor of Politics Emerita Sonia Kruks recently published a paper in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia. Her paper, “Alterity and Intersectionality: Reflections on Old Age in the Time of COVID-19,” uses the experience of old people during the epidemic to reflect on the social exclusion of the old and to criticize intersectional critical theory for its damaging failure to pay attention to old age as a site of otherness.  

Kruks also presented the “2022 Distinguished Lecture” at the School of Critical and Cultural Theory of Södertörns University, in Stockholm, Sweden. Her lecture was titled “Thinking about Old Age with Simone de Beauvoir.”

On April 22, Assistant Professor of Sociology Alicia Smith-Tran delivered The Gene S. Uyeki Memorial Lecture at an event hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Department of Sociology. The lecture was titled "Private Troubles, Peer-Reviewed: On Personal Growth and Writing Sociologically."

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber published an encyclopedia article, "Buddhism and Medicine in Premodern Japan," for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.

Conservatory Librarian Kathleen Abromeit presented “Researching the Negro Spiritual” with Randye Jones. Originally presented at the Music Library Association Midwest Chapter Annual Meeting, October 2020. It was selected as best of chapter paper and presented at the Music Library Association Annual Conference in March 2022.

Abromeit also presented "Using Mindfulness to Beat Mid-Career Burnout" at the Music Library Association Annual Conference, March 2022.

Sandra Zagarell, professor emerita of English, published "Wiring the Midwest: Local Focus, National Apperl" in MidAmerica, The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, XLVII (2021). With Professor Jean Lutes of Villanova University, Zagarell presented a paper titled "Alice-Dunbar-Nelson's Archive: A Case Study in Unpublished Black Writing" at the J19 conference in March-April. The panel, "Unpublished American," was sponsored by the journal ALH.

Professor of Philosophy Todd Ganson presented his paper, "Do selective forces favor sensory accuracy?" at the Pacific meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Vancouver.

Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis was interviewed by Alejandra Bronfman, a Cornell University alumna, for the New Books Network.