Faculty and Staff Notes

Beyond Civil Disobedience: Social Nullification and Black Citizenship (African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora), by Associate Professor of Africana Studies Charles Peterson, was published in July by Palgrave Macmillan. The book interrogates the nature and state of African American citizenship through the prism of Social Contract Theory. Challenging the United States’ commitment to African American citizenship, the book explores the idea of Social Nullification, the decision to reject, revoke and re-define the social contract with a state and society. 

Assistant Professor of Politics David Forrest published an essay about Steven Lubet and urban ethnography in Politics, Groups, and Identities.

Assistant Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Paul Brehm presented at the SEA Annual Conference (November 21-23, 2020, virtual). He presented joint work with Professor Margaret Brehm, "Drill, Baby, Drill: Resource Shocks and Fertility, Evidence from Indonesia” and chaired the session.

Dustin Evatt-Young, interim director of the Career Development Center, co-authored an article in the Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE). The article titled "White Higher Education Leaders on the Complexities of Whiteness and Anti-Racist Leadership" examines the manifestations of whiteness in higher education and offers insight into the development of anti-racist policies, practices, and tools.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Lisa Ryno gave the keynote presentation, "The Impact of Undergraduate Research: A Personal Vignette" for Trinity University's 2021 Summer Experiential Learning Symposium. An alumna of TU (Class of 2008), Ryno was honored to reflect on some of the most meaningful aspects of undergraduate research as a student and how she now applies them as a mentor to undergraduate researchers in her lab.

Assistant Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Paul Brehm presented at the AERE Annual Summer Conference (June 2-4, 2021, virtual). He presented joint work with Professor Margaret Brehm, "Drill, Baby, Drill: Resource Shocks and Fertility, Evidence from Indonesia.” 

Assistant Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Paul Brehm presented at the MEA Annual Conference (March 22-26, 2021, virtual) in an AERE session. He presented joint work with Yiyuan Zhang, "The Efficiency and Environmental Impacts of Market Organization: Evidence from the Texas Electricity Market,” and chaired a separate session.

William Parsons, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and six recent Oberlin graduates (Charlotte Andrews '19, Joaquin Cardozo '20, Alyssa Chow '20, Jennifer Crainic '20, Nicholas Rutland '20, and Brendan Sheehan '19) published an article title "Development of succinimide-based inhibitors for the mitochondrial rhomboid protease PARL" in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

Billy Hart, the conservatory's longtime associate professor of jazz percussion, was named a 2022 Jazz Master. This is the nation’s highest honor for jazz musicians, bestowed annually by the National Endowment for the Arts. He will be honored at the Jazz Masters Tribute Concert on Thursday, March 31, 2022.

A member of Oberlin's faculty since 2000, Hart has performed on more than 600 recordings. This June he released the album All Things Are (Smoke Sessions Records) alongside pianist Kevin Hays and bassist Ben Street. It was recorded live—for a streaming audience, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic—at New York’s Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in December 2020.

Professor of Classics Drew Wilburn will be a collaborator on the Books of Karanis Project, for which C. Michael Sampson, University of Manitoba is the Principal Investigator. 

The Books of Karanis was recently awarded a $94,000 Insight Grant from Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council. The Books of Karanis will contextualize seventy-four fragmentary books from the ancient site of Karanis, a Greek, Roman, and Egyptian settlement occupied from around 200 BCE  to 600 CE. The collaborative project brings together the research expertise of papyrologists, literary specialists, and archaeologists to reconstruct ancient Greek literary culture. The research project is investigating who read these texts, how they might have read them, and in what contexts reading took place.

Wilburn will bring archaeological expertise through his work as the principal investigator of the Karanis Housing Project, which has been developing a digital map of the archaeological site and populating the map with all of the finds from the University of Michigan excavations (1924-1935). The Karanis Housing Project includes current student research collaborators Emily Hudson '22, Grace Burns '23, Elliot Diaz '23, Henri Feola '23, and many former Oberlin students.