Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science Josh Davidson presented two papers at the Transportation Research Board's Annual Meeting in early January: "Is This Your First Time Here?: Older Adults and Mode-Switching on a New Local Bus Route in Philadelphia" and "Navigating Transit Spaces: An Assemblage Approach to Daily Travel". The papers are coauthored with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Senior Writer and Oberlin Alumni Magazine Editor Annie Zaleski authored the book Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs, which cracked bestseller lists for both The New York Times and USA Today in December 2024. Also in December, Zaleski was named one of Cleveland Magazine’s Most Interesting People for 2025. A versatile journalist steeped in rock music writing, Zaleski has authored well-received books on Lady Gaga, Duran Duran, and Harry Styles. Learn more about her on the Cleveland Magazine website and at Oberlin.edu.

Associate Dean for Intercultural Engagement Josh Whitson begins term as Trainer Corps Chair Designate for NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shuming Chen has published an article in ACS Catalysis, "C-H Activation and Sequential Addition to Dienes and Imines: Synthesis of Amines with β-Quaternary Centers and Mechanistic Studies on the Complex Interplay Between the Catalyst and Three Reactants." Coauthors include Gabriel Negrao de Morais ’25 as well as collaborators from Yale University.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jillian Scudder published a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society titled "The reliability of gas-phase metallicities immediately adjacent to non-star-forming spaxels in MaNGA". This paper was in collaboration with two Oberlin student coauthors, and found that a subset of methods to estimate the chemical composition of gas in nearby galaxies are biased to high values if they are found near a region of the galaxy dominated by light coming from a source other than young stars.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista performed in New York City’s The Tank with alum, Nikaio Thomashow ’18. Together, they debuted Echoes, Professor Evangelista’s newest dance theater work incorporating augmented reality, dance, and motion capture to explore themes of history and queerness.

Visiting Assistant Professor Katie Berta published three new poems from a manuscript in progress in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of the Colorado Review and a poem from her book, Retribution Forthcoming, in Verse Daily. Retribution Forthcoming was published by Ohio University Press in March.

On December 2, Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey delivered the Distinguished Alumni Lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Art History, where he earned his PhD in 2014. Rarey's lecture, "Renaming the Fetish in the Eighteenth-Century African Atlantic," was simulcast on Zoom and is publicly available on the Department's YouTube channel.

Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey published his essay, "A Cartographer of the Long Eighteenth Century: Anastácio de Sant’Anna’s Guia de Caminhantes" in a special issue of Arts dedicated to “Black Artists in the Atlantic World." The essay is available open-access and under a Creative Commons license.

Caroline Val of Teen Vogue interviewed Yveline Alexis for an article about the impact of anti-Haitian rhetoric.