Summer 2015 Faculty Updates

Highlighting the professional activities of our faculty, including awards, conferences, exhibitions, performances, and publications. 

Associate Professor of Fine Arts Markus Baenziger's sculptures were part of the Summer Group Exhibition at Edward Thorp Gallery in New York City. The show ran from June 18 through Aug. 1.

Assistant Professor of Economics Carola Binder published a paper, "Whose Expectations Augment the Phillips Curve?," in Economics Letters.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo composed a jazz-inspired set of three impromptus for solo piano: Somnamble, August Rose, and Sharon’s Song, which he premieres in Europe in September. He also composed a concert etude for solo bassoon, subtitled Séance.  His media posts include two new video-choregraphed additions:  "Piece for the Swans," which visually traces the movement of a family of swans at Cape Cod with his playing; and "Curt Cacioppo, Music for Ying Li," which brings his music together with the art of Professor of Fine Arts Ying Li, both of which were inspired by vistas of Switzerland and Northern Italy.

Visiting Assistant Professor Thomas Devaney was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire in February and March. His book Runaway Goat Cart was published by Hanging Loose Press in May, and he gave readings for the new collection at Rutgers University, The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, The Print Center in Philadelphia, The Poetic Research Bureau in Los Angles, Poets House in New York City, and as part of the "In Your Ear" series in Washington, D.C. Devaney also had three poems published in the May/June issue of The American Poetry Review, one poem published in The Massachusetts Review’s spring issue, and had a poem featured at Poetry Daily on May 30.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing J. Ashley Foster contributed "Roundtable: Woolf and Violence," co-authored with  Mark Hussey, Sarah Cole, Christine Froula, and Jean Mills, to Virginia Woolf Writing the World: Selected Papers from The Twenty-Fourth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf (Clemson University Press). She also published "Writing was her Fighting: Three Guineas as a Pacifist Response to Total War in Spain" in Virginia Woolf & 20th Century Women Writers (Critical Insights Series). Foster also gave a paper, "Intersections: Three Guineas and Quaker Women Relief Workers in Spain," and chaired a session on "Narrative Versions of War Suffering" at the 25th International Virginia Woolf Conference in June at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, Pa. 

C.V. Starr Professor of Asian Studies and Associate Professor of Chinese and Linguistics Shizhe Huang presented a talk, "Ineligibility for Ellipsis: Type <e,t> or Functional Category Status?," at the 10th International Workshop on Theoretical East Asian Linguistics (TEAL-10), at Tokyo University of International Studies in Japan in June.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Suzanne Amador Kane gave an invited plenary talk at "BFY II: Conference on Physics Laboratory Instruction Beyond the First Year of College" at the University of Maryland in July.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Nimisha Ladva wrote and performed her play When Sita's Daughter's Cross the Line at the Painted Bride's Short Play Festival (aka "Get Into Our Shorts") on August 3 and August 5.

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Wyatt MacGaffey recently published "Franchising Minks in Loango: Questions of Form and Function," in Res, and was the recipient of a Golden Eagle award for community service from the National Association for Black Veterans. 

Professor of Biology Philip Meneely presented a poster on the research thesis work of Sedona Murphy '15 and Anna Malawista '15 at the "20th International C. elegans Conference" at UCLA in June. He also served on a panel about professional expectations aimed at new faculty members at liberal arts colleges.                                                         

Associate Professor of Mathematics Weiwen Miao gave an invited talk, "Statistical Issues Arising in Class Action Cases: A Reanalysis of the Statistical Evidence in Dukes v. Wal-Mart II," at the the Joint Statistical Meeting in Seattle in August.                                                                                                

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth gave an invited plenary lecture, "Logical Form, Mathematical Practice, and Frege's Begriffsschrift," at the 2015 meeting of the Logic Colloquium in Helsinki, Finland, in August. The Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science had its 2015 meeting in Helsinki at the same time, and held a symposium on Macbeth’s book, Realizing Reason (Oxford, 2014), at which two philosophers spoke and Macbeth responded.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Independent College Programs John Muse preesnted at "Visible Evidence XXII" in Toronto in August as part of the panel "Present-Time: Contingency and Resistance in Expanded Documentary Forms." Muse's paper explored Bill Nichol's claim that reenactments "effect a fold in time."

Associate Professor of Political Science Paulina Ochoa Espejo published an article, "Taking Place Seriously: Territorial Presence and the Rights of Immigrants," in The Journal of Political Philosophy. She also co-authored an article, "The Analytical-Continental Divide: Styles of Dealing With Problems," in The European Journal of Political Theory with Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Thomas Donahue.             

Emeritus Professor of Astronomy Bruce Partridge, who has been working on cosmic microwave background radiation (heat left over from the Big Bang origin of the Universe) since the field’s very earliest days, gave historical talks on CMB science at several meeting celebrating the anniversary– one at Princeton, another in Vietnam. In addition, the Planck satellite mission released much of its data on the CMB this year, so Partridge gave several talks on Planck results, including one at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, held in Honolulu. As part of the Planck team, he received two Group Achievement Awards from NASA, one for data analysis, the other for outreach to the public. He also continued his involvement with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope,  a facility designed for detailed study of the CMB. He spent two weeks there with Walter ‘13, working at the site in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. 

Professor of Chemistry Rob Scarrow presented a talk, "Anion binding by cobalt complexes of a Hydrogen-bond donor triguanidine ligand," at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston, Mass., in August. Jeffrey A. Schneider '12, Sarina C. Schwartz '11, Sumin Park '13, and Toan M. Nguyen '14 contributed to that research and were listed as co-authors on the paper. Additionally, Scarrow and Karina Gomez '16 spent two months as visiting researchers in the laboratory of their collaborator, Nicolai Lehnert, at the University of Michigan. While in Michigan, they studied the reactivity of nitric oxide gas with iron complexes of guanidine-based ligands that were previously synthesized at Haverford and designed to mimic the chemical reactivity of metalloenzymes. The collaboration was supported by a Research Opportunity Award from the National Science Foundation, and by a student summer stipend from Haverford's Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier published a paper on "EQeq+C: An Empirical Bond-Order-Corrected Extended Charge Equilibration Method" in The Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation with Geoffrey Martin-Noble '16, David Reilley '16, Luis M. Rivas '16, and Matthew D. Smith '13 as co-authors. He also participated in the "Education" working group at an NSF Workshop on "The Rise of Data in Materials Research," held at the University of Maryland in June. He also brought Daniel Hopkins '16, Richard Phillips '18, and Julian Taylor '18 to the MERCURY Conference on Undergraduate Computational Chemistry at Bucknell University in July, where they presented posters on their research.                       

Associate Professor of Anthropology Jesse Weaver Shipley published his book, Trickster Theater The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa, via Indiana University Press in June. Trickster Theatre traces the changing social significance of national theatre in Ghana from its rise as an idealistic state project from the time of independence to its reinvention in recent electronic, market-oriented genres. This performance style tied Accra’s evolving urban identity to rural origins and to Pan-African liberation politics. Contradictions emerge, however, when the ideal Ghanaian citizen is a mythic hustler who stands at the crossroads between personal desires and collective obligations. Shipley examines the interplay between on-stage action and off-stage events to show how trickster theatre shapes an evolving urban world.                                                                                                 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Concentration Jill Stauffer published her book, Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard, via Columbia University Press in September. As part of the research for her next book, she spent three weeks in The Hague, The Netherlands, watching the Mladic trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she met with lawyers, scholars, and activists working in international law and human rights.

Emeritus Professor of History Susan Mosher Stuard contributed a chapter, "Women, Family, Gender, and Sexuality," to The Cambridge History of the World, Volume Five.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Helen K. White published a paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin journal, "Degradation of Oil by Fungi Isolated from Gulf of Mexico Beaches," co-authored with Haverford undergrads Carolyn Poutasse '15, Alana Thurston '16, Jen Reeve '14, and Miranda Baker '17. Her paper "Marsh plants mediate the influence of nitrogen fertilization on the degradation of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill" was published in Ecosphere journal with colleagues from Villanova.

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography William Earle Williams’ work was featured in Take One: Contemporary Photographs, a Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibit that ran from April 25 to August 9. The exhibit focused on works from 1975 to the present and included photographers who engaged with new artistic and social trends that emerged over the last 40 years as well as those who continued to work creatively within the established traditions of the medium. Williams also gave a lecture, "A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom, 1619 to 1865 and Beyond," based on his show of the same name, which he presented at Haverford in 2013, at the Williams Research Center in New Orleans in June.                                                                                                                                

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing published " ‘Hands off my constitution’: Constitutional reform and the workings of democracy in Mali," in The Journal of Modern African Studies in September. Wing also receieved two U.S. Department of State Speaker and Specialist Grants: one to give lectures in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana, on electoral accountability, consensus building, and electoral reporting in August, and another to give a series of lectures on women’s roles in politics in Port au Prince and Cap Haitien, Haiti, in June. Both trips included radio, TV, and newspaper interviews.