April 2024
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies (GWS) and program coordinator of GWS and American Studies (AMST), was nominated for the Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and was awarded an honorable mention at the national conference awards ceremony in Seattle on April 27.
Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry gave a talk titled “Synthetic Strategies toward Fluorosulfurylation of Organic Molecules and Sulfur-Fluoride Exchange (SuFEx)” at Portland State University.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, served on the program committee for the 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, held April 4–7 at Princeton University and hosted by Princeton University Department of Music, with support from the Center for Human Values, Council of the Humanities, Program in Italian Studies, Department of Art and Archaeology, Department of French and Italian and Department of Comparative Literature.
On April 11, Bandy presented a lecture-performance titled “‘Drawing’ the Bow: Process, Passaggi, and Gendered Sociality in Italian and English Viol Music, ca. 1580–1680” at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, as part of the event Gender and the Italian Arts. Bandy’s lecture-performance featured members of Artifex Consort and drew connections between 16th-century cartoon tracing, the viola da gamba as a gendered object, and the rhetorical “abundant” style of divisions (variations) practice as instrumental reworkings of Italian Renaissance vocal polyphony. The event also featured a lecture by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer (to which Bandy’s musical portion responded), curator and head of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art, in honor of the current Benton exhibition 500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum.
Gayle Blankenburg, lecturer in music, performed in a new-music concert at Symphony Space in New York City on April 20. She performed a solo piano work, a work for cello and piano, and a work for violin, piano and two dancers.
Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science and neuroscience, presented a symposium talk titled “Coordinated neural states during joint decision-making” at the Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society in Toronto on April 11.
Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, presented two papers: “‘El que habla no es el que sufre’: Witnessing Testimony in Juan Carlos Mestre’s ‘Fechado en Auschwitz,’” at the 44th Cincinnati Conference on Romance & Arabic Languages and Literatures, held at the University of Cincinnati from April 4-6 and “Economic Exile and Migratory Identity in the Writings of Azahara Palomeque,” at Cal State Long Beach’s 58th Annual Comparative World Literature Conference (April 17).
On April 20, Cahill hosted the Spring Meeting of the Southern California Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese at Pomona College.
Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures and faculty director of Oldenborg, published an annotated bibliography of sources on the modern Chinese writer “Lu Xun” in Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, edited by Tim Wright and published by Oxford University Press.
Cecilia Conrad, emerita professor of economics, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024 in recognition of her nonprofit leadership.
David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, was recognized by the Queer Resource Center at Lavender Graduation for his support of students and his contributions to the community.
Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, had an article, “What’s new about new destinations: Cinderella states and the comparative study of migration,” published online in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics, published the article “Hayekian Psychological Economics: A Preliminary Look” in Behavioural Public Policy.
Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, attended the American Mathematical Society 2024 Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting from April 6-7 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. On April 6, Goins organized a special session called “GranvilleFest 100: A Celebration of the Legacy of Evelyn Boyd Granville,” celebrating the 100th birthday of the second African American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. On April 7, Goins gave a talk in the special session on Elementary Number Theory and Elliptic Curves titled “{Quasi-Critical Points of Toroidal Belyi Maps.”
Goins has been traveling around the country serving as a section visitor for the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). On April 5, he attended the MAA Oklahoma-Arkansas Section 2024 Annual Meeting at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He gave a keynote address titled “Clocks, Parking Garages, and the Solvability of the Quintic: A Friendly Introduction to Monodromy.” On April 12-13, Goins attended the MAA Wisconsin Section 2024 Annual Meeting at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, Wisconsin. He gave a keynote address titled “Indiana Pols Forced to Eat Humble Pi: The Curious History of an Irrational Number.”
Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, senior director of international and domestic programs, presented a session on case studies and table top scenarios with colleagues Stacey Bolton Tsantir (DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia) and Susan Lochner Atkinson (University of Wisconsin—Madison) at the U.S. Department of State’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) Academia Sector Committee (ASC) Spring 2024 Seminar on Health, Safety, and Security held at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities on April 26 in St. Paul.
Ernesto R. Gutiérrez Topete ’17, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in linguistics and cognitive science, presented his research project titled “Occlusive salience among Spanish-English bilinguals: Evidence from code-switching” in a Blue Room Talk for the series “Return to Pomona” for Pomona College faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Gutiérrez Topete participated in an alumni panel hosted virtually on April 7 by the Office of Graduate Diversity at UC Berkeley.
Nina Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, and biology majors Philip Duchild ’24 and Teodelina Martelli ’24 presented their bird-related research at the April Pomona Valley Audubon Society meeting. Karnovsky presented her work assessing the diets of Antarctic penguins and south polar skuas from the ear bones of fish found in the “puke and poop” of those seabirds. Duchild presented results from his senior thesis in which he quantified and characterized the plastic consumed by Laysan albatross breeding at two colonies on Oahu, Hawaii. Martelli presented a RAISE (Remote Alternative Independent Summer Experience) project she did in which she translated the bird field notes of her late grandfather from Argentina and put his sightings into ebird, a citizen science app for recording birds.
Karnovsky performed in two dances choreographed by Anthony Loa in Village Dance Arts’ recital Steppin’ Out at the Haugh Performing Arts Center in Glendora, California, on April 21.
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, co-authored the article “New Developments in Pomona College’s Chinese Program: Implementation of Gender-Inclusive Curriculum Practices” with Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, published in Chinese Language Globalization Studies.
Lang gave a talk titled “Chinese Language and Gender: Exploring Gender-Inclusive Pedagogy” at the 2nd Annual Gender-Inclusive Language Conference hosted by the Center for Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California.
Lang joined a panel at the 2024 Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, where she presented her recent pedagogical practices titled “Teaching Chinese to Gen Z: Project-based Learning.”
Tom Le, associate professor of politics, published an article in The Diplomat on the death and impact of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama.
Le served as a discussant on a panel concerning social movements in Japan at the Associate of Asian Studies annual conference.
Le gave a talk at Soka University of America on Japan-South Korea reconciliation.
Le served on a panel, “The Future of East Asia,” at the West Coast International Relations of Asia Conference at USC.
Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, won The New York City Book Award for his 2023 book Brooklyn Crime Novel.
Alexandra Lippman, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, presented “‘Queen of the Favela’: Ludmilla's Queer Funk” at the Brazilian Studies Association in San Diego on April 3 in a panel on queer and trans performance, necropolitics and the Brazilian state.
Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, led a Playback Theatre workshop at the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama conference April 4. She also performed playback with The Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble as part of Armand Volkas’ plenary speech titled “Healing the Wounds of History Through Psychodrama” on April 6.
Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, delivered an invited talk titled “from excursion sets to today: a random walk through the history of cosmological simulations” at the 2024 April Meeting of the American Physical Society on April 4. This presentation was also featured in astrobites.
From April 15-19, Moreno co-organized an international conference called Recipes to Regulate Star Formation at All Scales: From the Nearby Universe to the First Galaxies at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Moreno published three peer-reviewed research articles in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: “Dense stellar clump formation driven by strong quasar winds in the FIRE cosmological hydrodynamic simulations,” “Inflow and outflow properties, not total gas fractions, drive the evolution of the mass-metallicity relation” and “Hooks & Bends in the Radial Acceleration Relation: Discriminatory Tests for Dark Matter and MOND.” The third article was led by Francisco Mercado, postdoctoral fellow working under the supervision of Moreno and lecturer in physics and astronomy.
Zhiru Ng, professor and chair of religious studies and program coordinator of Asian studies, presented “To beg or to cook? Food ethics, cross-cultural borrowing, and the meal rituals of South Forest (Nanlin) Buddhist nuns in Central Taiwan” at the conference on “Buddhism and Food Ethics,” University of Oxford China Center, March 19-20. The conference was hosted by the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.
Kun Nie, visiting instructor of Asian languages and literatures, gave a presentation titled “Strengthening Cultural Roots through Community-Centric Projects for the Heritage Chinese Classes” at the 31st International Conference on Chinese Language Instruction, held at Princeton University on April 27.
Gilda L. Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies was an invited panelist on “Claiming Belonging and Witnessing Joy: New Directions in Latinx Studies” at the Latinx Studies Association, Arizona State University on April 19.
Ochoa co-facilitated a daylong workshop for Santa Ana Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Steering Committee on April 24 in Santa Ana, California.
Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, had his six-year effort with the University of Washington to reconcile its role in a decades-old case of child sexual abuse at a Seattle elementary school featured on NPR affiliate KUOW.org.
Adam Pearson, associate professor and chair of psychological science, published the article “Social psychological pathways to climate justice: Emerging insights and intersecting challenges,” co-authored with Stella Favaro ’23 and Brooke Sparks ’22. The article is part of a 25th anniversary special issue of the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations focused on the role of psychology in addressing global challenges.
Pearson co-authored the article “Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries” in Science Advances with a global team of 250 behavioral scientists.
William Peterson, professor emeritus of music and College organist, performed music from the WWI era in a concert on the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music. The program included a number of works that were originally published in an anthology, Les Voix de la douleur chrétienne (“The Voices of Christian Sorrow”). The concert program included music composed between 1914 and 1924 by Louis Vierne, Camille Saint-Saëns, Joseph Jongen, Jacques Ibert and others.
Sheila Pinkel, professor emerita of art and art history, has a large cyanotype work currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Alexis Reyes, director of sustainability and energy management, was featured in a case study with Patch, a carbon credit marketplace, for her work on sourcing and vetting high-quality carbon credits. Reyes worked with a subcommittee of the Pomona College Board of Trustees to establish criteria for purchasing high-quality carbon credits. The Sustainability Office launched a pilot program under which departments can purchase carbon credits to offset emissions from College-funded air travel.
Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German and Russian, published a review of Kellers Erzählen. Strukturen – Funktionen – Reflexionen. Herausgegeben von Philipp Theisohn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022); and Kellers Medien. Formen – Genres – Institutionen. Herausgegeben von Frauke Berndt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022) in Monatshefte.
Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, gave a presentation, “My Hidden Childhood in WWII in Occupied France,” during Alumni Weekend on April 27.
Bri Sérráno, assistant dean and director of the Queer Resource Center, defended and passed his dissertation defense for a doctor of philosophy in education and human resource studies degree with a specialization in higher education leadership from Colorado State University on April 29. His dissertation is titled “I Love the Work, But the Work Doesn’t Love Me: A Constructivist Study on the Lived Experiences of Transgender Staff of Color Who Report Discrimination in Higher Education.”
Anthony Shay, professor of dance, wrote his first novel Death Along the Silk Road. The novel follows Omar Khayyam through the period 1090-1092, when the Seljuq Empire of Persia fell apart. Most of the events, though fictionalized, occurred. Shay translated Khayyam’s poems anew for the novel.
Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, wrote five opinion pieces: “The AI hype machine just rolls on, living on exhaust” (MindMatters, April 11), “Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than a human in 2025: Why he's wrong” (MindMatters, April 16), “Universities Should Prioritize Critical Thinking Over Large Language Models” (MindMatters, April 23); “Large Language Models are Often Wrong, Never in Doubt” (MindMatters, April 29) and “A Modest Proposal to Save Higher Education” (Washington Post, April 23).
Smith signed a contract for a Japanese translation of the book The Power of Modern Value Investing: Beyond Indexing, Algos, and Alpha, co-authored with his wife Margaret Smith.
Kevin Wynter, assistant professor of media studies, signed a contract with Edinburgh University Press for his second book, Feeling Absence: Horror, Memory, and Language in Cinema.
Wynter organized and hosted the Media Studies Department’s 2024 Eckstein Symposium. The theme of this year’s symposium was Expressing the Inexpressible. The symposium’s invited speakers were film scholars Aaron Kerner (San Francsico State) and Hilary Neroni (University of Vermont).
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, was appointed chair of the media and publicity committee at Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA) on April 5. He participated in a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities of generative AI for Chinese teaching and co-presented a paper titled “Assessing pragmatic routines in L2 Chinese: A focus on rating scale functioning and rater behavior” at the 2024 CLTA Conference on April 6.
Xiao was invited to join the international roundtable discussion on Chinese curriculum design and pedagogical practice held by Princeton University on April 26.
Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, discussed Professor Ch’en Shouyi, who headed Pomona College’s Asian Studies program for nearly three decades, in a short talk titled “Ch’en Shouyi and the Development of Asian Studies at Pomona College” that was part of a special program, “Remembering Professor Ch’en Shouyi’s Legacy: A Discussion,” held at The Claremont Colleges Library on April 3.