Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine participated in the panel “Innovations in Arab American Fiction” at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Los Angeles and also gave two off-site readings.

Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science Josh Davidson presented a paper at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting in March: “Socio-spatial Disparities in Access to Driver Education for Teens.” The paper is coauthored with Oberlin students Noah Elazar ’25 and Sangeetha Ramanuj ’25, and Dr. Megan Ryerson (University of Pennsylvania).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Communication Nate DeProspo gave the virtual talk “Animality and/as Alterity in Posthumanist Thought” at the Centre for Research in Posthumanities in Bankura, India. The presentation aimed primarily to complicate Heidegger’s infamous thesis that the animal is “poor in world,” while the human is “world-building.”

Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion Shari Rabin published The Jewish South: An American History with Princeton University Press.

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber published an article for the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, "Disease, Defilement, and the Dead: Buddhist Medicine and the Emergence of Corpse-Vector Disease."

The Black River Audubon Society (local chapter of the National Audubon Society) awarded their annual Hog Island birding camp scholarship to Lab Coordinator/Lecturer in Biology Darla French. Thanks to this sponsorship, Darla will spend an action-packed week in August at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine learning from accomplished naturalists, birders, and educators, with an aim to integrate what she’ll learn into department curriculum.

Assistant Professor of Musicology Lena Leson presented a paper with Dr. Lila Ellen Gray of Dickinson College at the Society for American Music's annual conference in Tacoma, WA. Their paper was titled “Sounding the Worlds of American Girls" and investigated the power of advertising, fiction, soundtracks, and toy musical objects in constructing the affects and historical imaginaries that circulate with these popular dolls.

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager has won the 2024 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History for her book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia. The book examines Russia, Japan, and China's Great Power struggles surrounding Korea's opening in the late 19th century. The medal is awarded annually by the Royal United Services Institute for the best English-language writing on military history.

Associate Dean and Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology Christopher Jenkins will give a preconcert lecture on March 28 for the Cleveland Orchestra's "Black Panther In Concert," for which TCO performs the score of Black Panther alongside a screening of the movie.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jillian Scudder's latest book, Forty Ways To Know A Star, was released in the U.S. by Princeton Architectural Press, an imprint of Chronicle Books, on March 25. The book offers forty essays that explore how the stars have illuminated our understanding of the cosmos, illustrated throughout with custom diagrams. This is Dr. Scudder's fourth book for the general public.