November 2024
Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, co-authored two poster presentations at the 65th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, held November 21-24 in New York. These posters, “Bitchwaffle or Asspalace: Predicting the Plausibility of Novel Taboo Compound Words” and “Notetaking Reexamined: Are There Student Learning Differences When Comparing Typing Versus Handwritten Approaches?” were collaborations with colleagues at Rhodes College and the University of Florida, respectively.
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, traveled to the National Humanities Center in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, for a leadership workshop with directors of humanities centers around the country. Bahng also traveled to the American Studies Association annual meeting in Baltimore, where she presented her work on “Coral Futures: Banking on Resilience” and chaired another panel on “Sovereign Exposures: Cultures of Health on Toxic Grounds,” which will be developed into a series of published essays in Masculine Toxicities.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, was a featured soloist (viola da gamba, violone, and tenor viol) in the Warner Bros. major motion picture Joker: Folie à Deux, with music by Hildur Guðnadóttir and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Additionally, the documentary film Norman/Norman, featuring Bandy as a nyckelharpa soloist in Grant Fonda’s original score, premiered at the Cambridge Film Festival. Bandy was also featured as a viola da gamba soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to season 7, part II of the STARZ historical drama Outlander (all episodes), which premiered on November 22 on streaming platforms worldwide.
Bandy presented the paper “Musical Theologies of Time and Memory in Buxtehude’s Jesu dulcis memoria (BuxWV 57)” at the fall meeting of the American Musicological Society Pacific Southwest Chapter, held at La Sierra University (Riverside, California).
In San Diego and Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, Bandy performed with Bach Collegium San Diego and GRAMMY®-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan, in a program of Bach and Buxtehude cantata arias also recorded for later release in Phan’s international media project Bach 52. On November 2 in Pasadena, California, Bandy played baroque double bass in Con Gioia Early Music Ensemble’s program “Sublime Vocal Gems of the German Baroque Era,” directed by Preethi de Silva and featuring works by Christoph Graupner, J. A. Hasse and J. S. Bach. On November 15 and 17, Bandy joined the Pomona College Choir for their fall performances directed by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music, as a member of the instrumental ensemble Harmonologia Pomona, performing on G violone, viola da gamba and modern double bass. He also contributed the program note for Dieterich Buxtehude’s Ad Manus from Membra Jesu nostri (1680).
Bandy programmed and led a workshop handling Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other ſhort Æirs (1599) for SoCal Viols (chapter, Viola da Gamba Society of America), held November 2 in South Pasadena, California.
Colin J. Beck, professor of sociology, published an article co-authored with Mlada Bukovansky: “Streets and Elites: Corruption Grievances in Contemporary Revolutions” in Political Power and Social Theory.
Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, performed as continuo harpsichordist in three arias by Johann Sebastian Bach in a November 2 concert by Con Gioia in Pasadena, California.
Ralph Bolton ’61, emeritus professor of anthropology, presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Tampa, Florida. His presentation was part of a session organized by the Association of Senior Anthropologists titled “Dynamic Reciprocity in Ethnographic Research: Explorations in Giving Back and Collaborative Praxis.” In his paper “Beyond Reciprocity: Solidarity? An Ethnographer's Commitment to Friends, Colleagues and Community in Peru,” Bolton urged anthropologists to move beyond mere reciprocity to solidarity with the people whose cultures they study.
Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, published a journal article, “‘Mejor esto que nada’: Employment and Exploitation in Pablo García Casado’s Dinero,” in Cincinnati Romance Review.
Cahill presented a paper, “Multilingual Memory in Reyes Mate’s ‘Relatos de un viaje por los campos de exterminio,’” at the 17th biennial Lessons and Legacies Conference: Languages of the Holocaust, held at Claremont McKenna College and the University of Southern California from November 14-17.
Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures and faculty director of Oldenborg Center, delivered a paper, “Aesthetics of the Ephemeral in Eileen Chang’s Wartime Memoir, Written on Water” at the annual PAMLA conference in Palm Springs, California, on November 7.
Erin Michelle Collins, registrar, was voted in as president-elect of the Executive Board for the Pacific Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (PACRAO) at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Seattle. She served as secretary of the Executive Board November 2022-November 2024. Collins will serve as president-elect beginning November 2024 and then as president November 2025 through November 2026. The mission of PACRAO is to provide its members opportunities to learn, engage, collaborate, inform, gather, contribute and promote the best practices and general advancement of higher education and our professions.
Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romance languages and literatures, participated in the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Palm Springs, California, discussing the use of AI in French advanced literature classes in general (and the peculiar case of her fall 2023 Surrealism class) November 10.
Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, was a panelist at the Teaching and Learning Center panel discussion “Supporting Student Thesis and Independent Research” at the Claremont Colleges Library on November 11.
Garcia gave a talk titled “The linear targeting problem” at the conference Advances in Operator Theory with Applications to Mathematical Physics at Chapman University on November 18.
Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, presented the paper “La Contraofensiva Conservadora Anti-Género y Anti-LGTBQ en la República Dominicana” (“The Anti-Gender and Anti-LGTBQ Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic”) on November 6 at the congress of the Latin American Sociological Association (ALAS 2024) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. On November 14, Hernández-Medina presented the paper “The Right to a Complete Life: The Feminist Movement and the Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic” at the 2024 National Women’s Studies Annual Conference in Detroit as part of the panel “The Right-wing War on Women and Gender, and Feminist/LGBQ+ Responses in Latin America” with colleagues from Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.
Ben Keim, associate professor of classics, delivered two lectures in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On November 8 he delivered a conference paper, “The Rhetoric of Honor in Xenophon’s Anabasis,” at the triennial meeting of the International Xenophon Society; on November 11 he delivered an invited paper, “Xenophon and the Fourth-Century Politics of Athenian Honour,” at the second Sokratikoi logoi, Platonikoi logoi conference hosted by the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina.
Talya Klein, visiting assistant professor of theatre, was selected to present her research at the first annual Intimacy Directors’ and Coordinators’ Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this coming April. Her presentation is titled “The Balanced Badass: Having Your Own Back During Difficult Conversations.”
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, delivered a talk titled “Toxic Language in Chinese Online Communication: Shifting Meanings and Usages” for the panel “Language, Culture, and Linguistics” at the 121st Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Conference in Palm Springs, California, on November 9.
Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, had three articles accepted for publication: “Reasons-Responsiveness and the Demarcation Problem” (with co-author Taylor W. Cyr) in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, “Time Travel, Foreknowledge, and Dependence: A Response to Cyr” in Faith and Philosophy and “The Fixity of the Past, the Fixity of the Independent, and Local-Miracle Compatibilism” in Theoria.
Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, performed with Pangea Playback Theatre Company, directed by Hannah K. Fox, as part of a residency at the University of Oregon hosted by the Division for Equity and Inclusion.
Lu’s Sustenance project was featured in a trailer filmed and edited by Lola Salgado. Sustenance was supported by a Neighborhood Engagement Arts Residency Grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Richard McKirahan, Edwin Claremont Norton Professor of Classics and professor of philosophy, was one of three invited presenters at the annual (Zoom) meeting of the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy on November 16. The title of his paper was “Introducing Philolaus.” Philolaus was a Greek philosopher who until recently has received only a little attention. McKirahan presented a version of the same paper in a colloquium at the University of California at Santa Barbara on November 22.
McKirahan was elected as a member of KOMVOS-node, which describes itself as “a think-act, because it undertakes initiatives for the implementation of actions that, taking advantage of the dynamic of Hellenism, will have immediate effect on Greek society, throughout the improvement of the everyday life of Greeks, through the improvement of the economic, cultural, and scientific level.”
Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, published “Why Study the Humanities When People Are Dying?” in the peer-reviewed journal Public Humanities on November 6.
On November 15, McWilliams published two pieces on the 2024 election: “Thinking With the Enemy” in a forum on “The Campus in the Age of Trump” in The Chronicle of Higher Education and “We Just Watched the Last Television Election” in a forum on “Election 2024” in Current.
McWilliams was featured in an article in Newsweek about “How to Talk to Kids About Post-Election Stress.” On November 7, she appeared on “Houston's Morning Show” on Fox 26 to discuss the same subject and she was also quoted in a November 11 Psychology Today article that asked the question: “How Do We Help Our Children Post-Election?”
McWilliams spoke at a Claremont McKenna College Open Academy Forum on “Should SCOTUS be reformed?” She also gave a talk to students at Williams College on interpretive methods in political science. On November 22, McWilliams served as a discussant at the “Baldwin At 100” conference at Claremont McKenna, in honor of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday.
Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, guest edited the Journal of Arizona History’s special issue devoted to the environmental history of the Grand Canyon State. He commissioned and edited the contributions, including a co-authored article for which Lisa Crane, Western Americana Manuscripts Librarian at The Claremont Colleges Library, was the lead author. Miller also contributed two essays, “Narrative Possibilities” and “Throughlines.”
Miller was appointed to the inaugural board of editors for Journal of Texas History.
Miller co-organized the ninth annual meeting of the Eastern Sierra History Conference and presented on his new book Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, From Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning. Miller also shared insights on the book in a Q&A with OSU Press.
Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, chaired the panel “Utopian and Dystopian Imaginaries in the Francophone World” at the 121st Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference on November 8.
Jeff Noh, visiting assistant professor of English, delivered an invited lecture titled “Floppy Disk Counterfactuals: The Korean War Orphan in Octavia E. Butler’s Unfinished Novels” as part of the visiting speaker series at Loyola University Chicago’s Department of English on November 13.
Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, co-authored the review article “In Memoriam: The Life and Scientific Accomplishments of Frank A. L. Anet (1926-2024),” which was featured on the cover of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. A UCLA chemistry professor, Anet built some of the first high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, now standard equipment in chemistry laboratories worldwide, and used the instruments to discover bedrock principles in organic chemistry and magnetic resonance.
Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, co-authored an article titled “Exploring Patient-Generated Annotations to Digital Clinical Symptom Measures for Patient-Centered Communication” in the CSCW issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction with collaborators from UC Irvine.
Karen Parfitt, professor of neuroscience, published a paper in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience with Jessica Phan ’19, Jiwon Yi ’17, Julia Foote ’18, Asia Ayabe ’15, Kevin Guan ’15, and Theodore Garland Jr. (UC Riverside). The title of the paper is “Hippocampal long-term potentiation is modulated by exercise-induced alterations in dopaminergic synaptic transmission in mice selectively bred for high voluntary wheel running” and includes senior thesis data from these alumni.
Mary Paster, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, presented a talk titled “Language and food as sites of shaming and resistance” at the Food x Language International Conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Venice, Italy.
Paster published a peer-reviewed article co-authored with Jackson Kuzmik ’20: “Vowel hiatus resolution in Kikuyu” in Pushing the Boundaries: Selected Papers from the 51st-52nd Annual Conference on African Linguistics.
Lina Patel, lecturer in theatre, shot a guest-starring role in ABC’s hit show Will Trent in Atlanta.
Patel was named director of Rogue Machine Theatre’s next New Play Festival.
Frances Pohl, emerita professor of art history, published a short essay titled “How Free is Free? Ben Shahn, the Statue of Liberty, and the History of American Art” in the online publication Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, published the coauthored article “Unclaimed and unclaimable deaths: weaponizing migrant mourning” (with Stefan Timmermans, UCLA, and Mirian Martinez-Aranda, UC Irvine) in Mortality.
Prickett’s recent book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City Angels made three “best of 2024” lists: NPR Books, BookPage and AirTalk Host Larry Mantle’s favorite L.A. books at LAist.
Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English, published the essay “Shakespeare’s Canvas” in a special issue of Shakespeare Survey 77 dedicated to Shakespeare’s poetry, edited by Hannah Crawforth and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann.
Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor of Modern Languages and professor of Russian, gave a guest lecture, “Out of the Closet: Russian YA Writers Exploring Gender Issues,” at the Institute of German Literature, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, on November 4. She also delivered a guest lecture, “Queer Characters and Familial Ties in Mikita Franko’s Fiction,” at the Institute of Slavic Studies, University of Wrocław on November 6.
Rudova presented a paper, “The School Uniform: What does this Object of Materiality Represent?/Die Schuluniform: Was verkörpert dieses Objekt der Materialität?” at the online research colloquium (Kinderliterarisches Kolloquium), “The Things of Childhood: Materiality of/in the Culture for the Young/Die Dinge der Kindheit. Materialität (in) der Kultur für Kinder” on November 15.
Adolfo J. Rumbos, Joseph N. Fiske Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, published an article, “Multiplicity results for Schrodinger type fractional p-Laplacian boundary value problems,” co-authored with Emer Lopera (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales, Colombia) and Leandro Recôva (Cal Poly Pomona) in Electronic Journal of Differential Equations on November 11.
Monique Saigal Escudero, emerita professor of French, discussed her book with visitors at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., on November 3-4.
Saigal Escudero presented “A Hidden Child of the Holocaust Shares Her Story” to young students at Fauquier Hospital in Warrenton, Virginia, on November 7. Also in Warrenton, she presented “A Holocaust Survivor Tells Her Story” to retired teachers at Bethel United Methodist Church. She presented “A Hidden Child of the Holocaust Shares Her Story” at Oldenborg Center on November 15.
Igor Santos, visiting professor of music, had his composition carve performed by the Flannau Duo on November 13 at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, and November 8 at the 12th NIU New Music Festival in DeKalb, Illinois. Carve was also recently performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Polyaspora Festival in Washington, D.C. (Peabody Conservatory), as part of a program curated by George E. Lewis and Felipe Lara, moderated by Alejandro L. Madrid. Santos also received performances of two other duos— anima and flautando—by Ensemble Dal Niente at the National Association of Schools of Music in Reston, Virginia.
Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, published the article “‘A Very Ingenious and Superior Invention’: Sailing Ship Windlass Technology and the Burgeoning of Sailors’ Chanties” in the Fall 2024 issue of American Music. This research article is the third and final piece of a project begun during Schreffler's previous sabbatical, the earlier-completed companion pieces of which were an audio album of sailors’ chanties in collaboration with Claremont Colleges student performers and the documentary film Songs of the Windlass: Singing Chanties on Gazela.
Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published a book, Standard Deviations: The Truth About Flawed Statistics, AI and Big Data, and wrote an opinion piece, “Do Fantasy Sports Tell Us Something About Artificial Intelligence?” in MindMatters on November 15.
Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored a paper examining the push-and-pull of family dynamics during adolescence. The paper was published in the journal Developmental Psychology. She also co-authored a tribute paper reviewing psychologist Mary Main’s concept of conditional strategies in children and adults, published in the journal Attachment & Human Development.
Stern was recently quoted in Women’s Health Magazine in an article about the distinction between empathy and compassion. She was also interviewed about her research on teens’ empathy for The Kids’ Table podcast.
Keri Wilson, assistant professor of biology, published the article “Parenthood and gene expression of oxytocin receptors and vasopressin receptors in sensory cortices of the male California mouse (Peromyscus californicus)” in Hormones and Behavior. She and her colleagues demonstrate for the first time that receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin, which regulate parental sensory processing, are lateralized in the auditory cortex in males with higher expression in the left versus the right cortex.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages & literatures, and Jonathan Becker ’24 led an online workshop titled “AI Optimization in the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese” at the 2024 conference of the Latin American Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning (LatinCALL) on November 9. Xiao and Cecilia Wade ’25 gave an online presentation titled “AI in Second Language Learning: A Review” at the 2024 conference of LatinCALL on November 10.
Xiao joined a team at the University of Maryland on a research project titled “Does dynamic writing sequence facilitate written word production in Chinese L2?” The findings were presented at the poster session of the 2024 Psychonomic Society Conference on November 23.
Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, contributed “Second Thoughts on Confucianism in Wartime Japan, 1937-1945” to New Horizons in Confucianism: Essays in Honor of Tu Weiming, a festschrift for Tu Wei-ming (Harvard University), published by Lexington Books.