Dianna Shandy, director of the African Studies Program and associate professor and chair of anthropology, is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work spans U.S. and international settings, with broad research and teaching interests in gender, migration, political conflict and violence, human rights and humanitarianism, and research methods. Specific research projects have explored African asylum seekers in Ireland; the Nuer (southern Sudanese) diaspora in Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United States; Darfur; the International Criminal Court; and the representation of violence in Africa. Her 2007 book, “Nuer-American Passages: Globalizing Sudanese Migration,” was recently re-released in paperback.
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David Blaney, professor of political science, teaches courses on international politics, global political economy, and development. His research centers on the political theory and political economy of international relations. He is currently working on two edited books that explore the state of international relations as a global discipline. He serves on the editorial board of the Routledge Press series “Worlding Beyond the West,” and the Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs. Professor Blaney teaches courses on international relations, global political economy, development, political economic thought, and global citizenship.
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Jean-Pierre Karegeye, assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies, focuses his research and teaching on African Francophone literature and genocide studies, especially the Rwandan Genocide. He is particularly interested in the growing body of African Francophone literary texts and other artistic works in dialogue with other disciplines. His publications include two edited books and more than 30 articles and book chapters. His recent article, “Rwanda. Littérature post-génocide, écritures itinérantes: témoignage ou engagement?” was published by the International Journal of Semiotics “Protée.” He also serves as director for the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center, an international scholarly association.
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Erik Larson, associate professor of sociology, pursues research in political sociology, economic sociology, and the sociology of law by examining patterns of uniformity and diversity in globalized institutions. To this end, he has studied the formation and operation of new stock exchanges in Ghana, Fiji, and Iceland. A second collaborative project examines political contention and policy formation about indigenous rights, with a focus on economic affirmative action.
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Sowah Mensah, instructor of music, is an ethnomusicologist, composer, and master drummer from Ghana. As director of the popular Macalester African Music Ensemble, he gives private lessons in African drumming, xylophone, singing, and flute.
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Jamie Monson, professor of history, teaches courses including African History, African Environmental History, the Ethics of Volunteer Service, and African Life History Narratives. Her current research studies technology and labor during the construction of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa during the Cold War. Her book “Africa’s Freedom Railway” was recently re-released in paperback by Indiana University Press. Her latest publication, “Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War,” is a co-edited volume about colonial warfare in German East Africa, published by Brill Press.
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David Chioni Moore, associate professor of international studies and English and chair of the International Studies Department, focuses on the literatures and cultures of the Black Atlantic world, with interests in both Africa and African America. He maintains allied interests in postcoloniality, the post- Soviet world, and globalization. He edited Martin Bernal’s 2001 “Black Athena Writes Back,” is currently completing an edition of Langston Hughes’ lost 1934 “A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia,” and has been published in journals such as Transition, Diaspora, PMLA, Frontiers, Genre, Research in African Literatures, and Callaloo.
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William Moseley, associate professor of geography, is a development and human environment geographer. He teaches Human Geography; People, Agriculture and the Environment; Geography of Africa; Geography of Development; and Comparative Environment and Development Studies. Most of his fieldwork has been in West and Southern Africa. He is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is the editor of four books: “Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial African Issues”; “Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization and Poverty in Africa”; “The Introductory Reader in Human Geography: Contemporary Debates and Classic Writings”; and “African Environment and Development: Rhetoric, Programs, Realities.”
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Ahmed Samatar, James Wallace Professor of International Studies and past dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship, is the author and editor of five books that include “The African State: Reconsiderations”; “Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention and Strategies for Political Reconstruction”; “The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal?”; “African Studies and Undergraduate Education: Ideas Toward the 21st Century”; and “Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality,” as well as several dozen scholarly articles. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Studies Review and editor of Macalester International and Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies.
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Joëlle Vitiello, associate professor and chair of the French and Francophone Studies Department, teaches 20th-century French literature; Haitian literature and culture; French, African, and Caribbean cinema; contemporary French culture; women writing in French; as well as French language. She specializes in representations of relationships (love, motherhood, friendship, and transmission of knowledge) in contemporary literature. Besides completing a manuscript on friendship in anthropology, philosophy, and literature, she is working on cinemas of diverse communities in French cities, and on representations of systemic violence (especially in Haiti and Rwanda).
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Jane Rhodes is Macalester’s Dean for the Study of Race and Ethnicity as well as professor and chair of the American Studies Department. She teaches courses on race, ethnicity, gender, social movements, transnationality, and mass media. As dean she provides leadership on curricular and co-curricular matters related to multiculturalism across the college. Among her publications are “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century” (Indiana University Press, 1998) and “Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon” (New Press, 2007).
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Karin Aguilar-San Juan, associate professor, is an urban sociologist with a special interest in Asian American studies. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellowship. She is the editor of “The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s” (South End Press, 1994), and author of “Little Saigons: Staying Vietnamese in America” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
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Duchess Harris, associate professor, teaches courses in African American studies and is a specialist on 20th-century African American political history. Within that broad subject, she is specifically interested in the civil rights movement, the contributions of women of color to feminist theory post-1970, autobiography, and critical legal studies. She is the author of “Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama” (Palgrave Macmillan; Reissue edition, March 2011) and co-editor of “Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity” (Duke, 2009). In 2010, she earned a Juris Doctor degree from William Mitchell College of Law where she held a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship.
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Erik Redix is the Consortium for Faculty Diversity pre-doctoral fellow in Native American Studies. He is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Minnesota. His interests include indigenous culture and politics, Ojibwe language and culture, and American Indian history.

Dianna Shandy, associate professor and chair, is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research projects span southern Sudanese (Nuer) diaspora, African asylum seekers in Ireland, and negotiating work and family in America. She is the author/ co-author of three books: “Nuer-American Passages: Globalizing Sudanese Migration”; “Glass Ceilings and 100-Hour Couples” (with Karine Moe); and “The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society, 2nd edition” (with David McCurdy and James Spradley), which features the work of 10 Macalester students..
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Ron Barrett, assistant professor, is a cultural and medical anthropologist whose research is on religious healing, the social aspects of infectious diseases, and the ways that human beings come to terms with their own mortality. He is the author of “Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India.” He has conducted fieldwork in Northern and Western India as well as in the United States..
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Olga Gonzalez, assistant professor, teaches courses on Latin America, psychological anthropology, violence, and anthropological theory. Her work studies the relationship between memory and secrecy in the context of war and violence, which she explores in her book “Unveiling Secrets of War in the Peruvian Andes.”
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Arjun Guneratne, professor, teaches courses on South Asian society and culture, the anthropology of development, history of anthropological ideas, environmental anthropology, the anthropology of law, and ethnographic interviewing. He is the author of “Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal and Culture and the Environment in the Himalaya.” His current research examines the relationship of biodiversity conservation in Sri Lanka to neo-liberal economic reforms and globalization.
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Scott Legge, assistant professor, is a biological anthropologist with research interests in human and non-human primate skeletal biology as well as areas of growth and development in both skeletal and living populations. He has academic and research experience in human variation, human population biology, bioarchaeology, and skeletal biology, as well as extensive experience in historic and prehistoric archaeology. He teaches courses on human biology and adaptation, osteology and paleopathology, human evolution, and bioarchaeology.
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Sonia Patten, visiting assistant professor, teaches courses on medical anthropology, African ethnography, ethnographic methods, world ethnography, and the anthropology of tourism. Her current research focuses on household food security and child nutrition in rural Malawi. Recent publications include chapters in “Conformity and Conflict” and co-authored chapters in “The Behavioral Sciences and Health Care, Family Practice Currents, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Cultural Dimension of Development.”
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Jack Weatherford, DeWitt Wallace Professor, holds an honorary doctorate from Chinggis Khan College of Mongolia. His most recent book is “The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire.” His book “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” was a New York Times best-seller and won the 2005 Minnesota Book Award for history and biography. He has published seven other books, and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages.
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Stanton Sears, associate professor and program advisor, teaches sculpture and 3-D design. His professional career includes public sculpture throughout the United States. He and his collaborative partner Andrea Myklebust ’95 completed architecturally integrated artworks for the new microbial sciences building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2007 and the World War II memorial at the Minnesota State Capitol. Their mosaic floor inlays can be seen at the Lindbergh Terminal at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. Works in progress include wall-mounted sculptural works based on maps and aerial landscapes for the ticket lobby of Anchorage International Airport, Alaska.
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Gary Erickson, visiting assistant professor, teaches ceramics. He has been awarded both a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and a McKnight Artist Fellowship for ceramic artists. He was one of only four international ceramic artists accepted for a residency at the Taller Cultural in Santiago de Cuba. On a Freeman grant in 2007, he traveled to Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute in Jingdezhen, China, the city where porcelain was invented. His work is included in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Ruthann Godollei, professor, teaches printmaking and senior seminar. Her prints reflect concerns about social justice, such as two commissions by the Minneapolis Family Housing Fund about homelessness. In 2008 her work was in a two-person exhibit at the MAEP gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. She had six prints in the International Triennial of Printmaking in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2007.
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Joanna Inglot, chair of the Art and Art History Department, associate professor, and Edith M. Kelso Chair of Art History, has an expertise in modern and contemporary art. She has received awards from the Fulbright Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, International Exchanges Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Curator and author of several exhibition catalogs, Inglot has also written two books: “The Figurative Sculpture of Magdalena Abakanowicz: Bodies, Environments, and Myths” and “WARM: Feminist Art Movement in Minnesota, 1970s–1990s,” which was published with an exhibition she curated at the Weisman Art Museum.
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Gary Erickson, visiting assistant professor, teaches ceramics. His organic abstract sculpture has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Galeria Oriente in Santiago de Cuba, and Gallery 101 in Melbourne, Australia. He won a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists. His work is included in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Ruthann Godollei, professor, teaches printmaking and a senior seminar. She has been a six-time resident artist at the Frans Masereel Print Centre in Belgium. Her prints about social justice are in many collections, including the Belgian Royal Museum of Art and the Polish National Museum of Art in Poznan. Her work was included in the Clemson University Juried National Print Exhibit, 2011. She was in The Political & the Poetical, an international juried printmaking triennial in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2007. She participated in a two-person exhibit at the MAEP gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2008. Her book “Road Show: Art Cars & the Museum of the Streets,” co-authored with Eric Dregni ’90, was released in 2009.
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Stanton Sears, associate professor, teaches sculpture and 3-D design. His public sculptures include The Hamilton Gateway, a 66-foot-tall lantern sculpture in Ohio, artwork at the Law Library of Cleveland State University, and the World War II Memorial at the Minnesota State Capitol. He and partner Andrea Myklebust ’95 completed work on the Microbial Sciences building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their mosaic-floor inlays can be seen at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport.
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Christine Willcox, associate professor, teaches painting, figure painting, and mural painting. She has recently been a part of group painting exhibits at Oberlin College and the Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis. In 2005 she won a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant, and the following year she had work in a touring exhibit through Arthouse gallery in Austin, Texas. In 2007 she participated in a group show dealing with environmental and social justice issues at the University of Minnesota. In 2010 she had a solo show titled “Into the Woods” at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wis.
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Satoko Suzuki, DeWitt Wallace Professor, is chair of the department. She is a specialist in Japanese linguistics and teaches all levels of the language courses as well as Japanese linguistics courses. Her research interests are in linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis. She is the editor of Emotive Communication in Japanese and the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters.
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Frederik Green, assistant professor, teaches elementary Chinese, various culture courses and a translation course. A native of Germany, Green received a BA in Chinese studies from Cambridge University in England. He also studied at the Institute for Oriental Cultures in Tokyo. His dissertation discusses the modern Chinese writer Xu Xu in the context of literary romanticism.

Christopher Scott, assistant professor, completed his dissertation on the racialization and gendering of Zainichi Koreans (Korean residents of Japan) as “invisible men” in postwar Japanese literature, film, and popular culture. His other research interests include Japanese colonial literature, the Cold War in East Asia, and Nihongo bungaku (diasporic writing in Japanese).
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Xin Yang, assistant professor, received her BA from Beijing Foreign Studies University and her PhD in Chinese literature from the University of Oregon. She specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture and film, women’s writing, cyber fiction, urban culture, gender, and sexuality. Her book, “From Beauty Fear to Beauty Fever: A Critical Study of Contemporary Chinese Female Writers,” was published in 2011.
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Mark Davis, DeWitt Wallace Professor and chair of the Biology Department, is an ecologist with teaching interests in regional and global ecological issues. His nationally funded research into the effects of fire and climate change and non-native species on prairies and oak savannas has involved more than 50 Macalester students and has resulted in numerous co-authored publications with students. He has recently authored a book on invasion biology.
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Lin Aanonsen, O.T. Walter Professor, director of the Health Professions Advisory Committee, is a neuroscientist and teaches cell biology, human physiology and various neuroscience courses. Her research focuses on the neurochemicals and receptors that may be involved in the spinal processing of chronic pain. Students are actively engaged in her research, present their work with her at regional and national scientific meetings, and have co-authored publications in major journals.
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Sarah Boyer, assistant professor, is an evolutionary biologist with interests in animal diversity and biogeography. Her research uses phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences and morphology to reconstruct evolutionary trees. She has worked closely with undergraduate researchers in lab settings and on field collecting trips to New Zealand and Sri Lanka.
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Christopher Calderone, assistant professor of biology, is a biochemist. His research aims to understand the protein machinery used by microorganisms to produce molecules that could have clinical use as antibiotics. His work has been published in national and international peer-reviewed journals.
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Devavani Chatterjea, assistant professor, is an immunologist and a co-director of the interdisciplinary concentration in Community and Global Health. She teaches courses in immunology and public health. Her research focuses on the immune mechanisms underlying inflammatory pain and actively engages student collaborators, with 8 to 10 students working in the laboratory each year. She is also involved in a study of pathogenic disease mechanisms in Uganda in collaboration with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Makarere University, Kampala, Uganda.
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Elizabeth Jansen, adjunct professor of biology, is a neuroscientist with expertise in the areas of neural regeneration and plasticity and neuroprotective drug therapies. She has employed behavioral, neurochemical, and molecular biological techniques in her research on ischemic stroke. She serves on the steering committee for Macalester’s concentration in Community and Global Health and directs the Taylor Fellowship Program.
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Mary Montgomery, associate professor, examines the evolution of the molecular genetic pathways that direct the earliest stages of animal development. Grants from the National Science Foundation have allowed her to purchase additional related equipment. Students participating in her research program often present their work at national conferences. She also serves as a health professions advisor.
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Paul Overvoorde, associate professor, is a plant biologist with teaching interests in cell biology, synthetic biology, genomics, and plant physiology. His research focuses on understanding the role of the plant hormone auxin during root development. An ongoing collaboration with colleagues in Ghent (Belgium) involves Macalester students in a “chemical genetics” project that aims to define the role of auxin during lateral root formation. The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program, and the University of Ghent have funded this project..
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Rebecca Hoye, professor and chair, is an organic chemist with a background in strained ring chemistry and natural product synthesis. Her current research encompasses new synthetic methodology, natural product synthesis, and stereochemistry, and the investigation of organic reaction mechanisms. Recently, work in her laboratory has centered around the synthesis of biologically active marine natural products and other small molecules for chemical genetics assays.
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Ronald Brisbois, professor, is a synthetic chemist. His varied research interests include synthetic methodology development, ligand and catalyst design, cyclophane construction, and transition metal-mediated supramolecular self-assembly. On a sabbatical in the Biomaterials Technology Center at 3M, he initiated and is now continuing investigations regarding highly fluorescent hexaazaanthracene derivatives. In 1993, President Clinton designated him a Presidential Faculty Fellow, a five-year award given to support teaching and research efforts.
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Paul Fischer, professor, is an organometallic chemist. His research program targets transition metal complexes with novel properties. For example, Macalester students have prepared the first substances exhibiting hydrogen bonds with chromium and tungsten acceptors, and developed a methodology to permit rare nucleophilic attack at metal-copper bonds in his laboratory. His research program is presently funded by two grants from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. He served as a visiting scholar in the College of Chemistry at the University of California–Berkeley while on sabbatical during 2008–2009. He teaches general chemistry and inorganic chemistry.
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Keith Kuwata, professor, has a background in spectroscopy, atmospheric chemistry, and computation. His main research interests include simulations of oxidation reactions in the troposphere, and modeling organic and inorganic systems in collaboration with experimentalists. His research students use quantum chemistry and statistical rate theory for these studies, which are supported by grants from the American Chemical Society, the Dreyfus Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. He teaches general, analytical, physical, computational, and environmental chemistry.
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Kathryn Splan, assistant professor, is a bioinorganic chemist with a background in porphyrin chemistry and medicinal biochemistry. She teaches in both the biochemistry and introductory chemistry sequences. Her current research focuses on Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins (IAPs), which play a key role in the control of programmed cell death. Specifically, her current work focuses on the development and characterization of multivalent peptide inhibitors that target IAPs and explores the metal binding properties of IAPs from a bioinorganic and biophysical perspective. She teaches biochemistry and general chemistry.
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Thomas D. Varberg, professor, is a physical chemist. Trained at MIT, he was a NATO Fellow at Oxford University before coming to Macalester in 1993. He teaches introductory and physical chemistry. His collaborative research with students is focused on the spectroscopy of gas-phase free radicals. To support this work, he has in the last eight years received $900,000 in funding through five different research grants from NSF and ACS. He has spent sabbaticals at NIST (Boulder, Colo.), Oxford, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Sydney, Australia.
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Beth Severy-Hoven, associate professor and chair, has a PhD from the University of California–Berkeley and degrees from Oxford University and Bryn Mawr College. Her research focuses on Rome in the Age of Augustus and gender studies. She has taught in Rome at the Intercollegiate Center, and at Mac teaches Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome; Greek Myths; The Roman World; as well as Greek and Latin courses. She is the director of the department’s popular January in Rome program, and helped develop the new study away opportunity in Egypt.
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Nanette Scott Goldman, adjunct professor, is a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota. She teaches Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek, and is an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic crisis literature. She helps coordinate study abroad programs in Rome, Israel, Turkey and Egypt.
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Brian Lush, assistant professor, completed his PhD in classics in 2008 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the subject of recognition and epistemology in Euripides. His research deals with issues of identity, perception and recognition in Greek tragedy and epic, and he is currently comparing the soldier’s experience of battle trauma and PTSD to Euripides’ depiction of Medea. He teaches Greek and Latin language courses, Greek World, Greek Myths, and a seminar on Athenian Tragedy.
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Andrew Overman, professor, specializes in religion, culture, and ethnicity in the Greco-Roman world, having earned a PhD at Boston University. He has written widely on the development of Judaism and Christianity in the Roman world; the interaction between cultures and races within the Roman Empire; diaspora Judaism; and the archaeology of the Roman world. His courses include Pagans, Christians, and Jews; India and Rome; Introduction to Archaeology; and Greek language. He directs Macalester’s archaeological excavations in Israel, which began in 1999.
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Susan Fox, who completed her PhD at Indiana University, works in the area of artificial intelligence, programming robots that can navigate in the world and learn from their experiences. She enjoys working one-on-one with students from both MSCS and the Neuroscience Studies program, doing independent projects, capstone projects, and summer research.
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Shilad Sen, who received his PhD from the University of Minnesota, helps people become more effective contributors to online communities such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Professor Sen teaches a variety of classes including object-oriented programming, algorithms, Internet programming, and collective intelligence.
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Libby Shoop, who completed her PhD at the University of Minnesota, conducts research with students in bioinformatics, data visualization, and parallel computation over very large datasets, using cluster and cloud computing. She teaches courses in software development, parallel computing, databases, operating systems, and computational biology.
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Gary Krueger, professor and chair, studies reforms in Russian industrial enterprises. He teaches classes in econometrics, comparative economic systems, and the economics of transition.
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Amy Damon, assistant professor, has research interests that include investigating the impact of international migration from Central America to the United States and the impact that this migration process has on families living in Central America. She teaches principles of economics, international economic development, and a course on the economics of global food problems.
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Liang Ding, assistant professor, is a financial economist with research interests in financial economics and monetary economics. He teaches principles of economics, finance, and capital markets.
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Peter Ferderer, professor, is a macroeconomist whose teaching interests include international finance, macroeconomics, and behavioral economics. His research is in economic history, financial markets, and business cycles.
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Joyce Minor ’88, Karl Egge Professor, earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1993. She has worked at several companies including her last position at Lehman Brothers in New York as a senior vice president, Equity Research. She teaches classes in investment banking, securities analysis, and business communications.

Karine Moe, F. R. Bigelow Professor, has research and teaching interests in labor and demographic economics. She teaches courses on economics of gender, economics of poverty in the United States, and labor economics.
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Raymond Robertson, professor, researches the effects of globalization on labor markets. He teaches courses in international economics, econometrics, and economic restructuring in Latin America.
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Vasant Sukhatme, Edward J. Noble Professor, is interested in microeconomics and the economic prospects of developing countries. He was given the college’s Thomas Jefferson Award in 2002 for lifetime teaching, research, and service contributions to the college.
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Sarah West ’91, professor, has teaching and research interests in the areas of environmental economics, public finance, and microeconomics. She teaches courses in those areas as well as principles of economics.
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Ruthanne Kurth-Schai, professor and chair, teaches courses on social, philosophical, and political issues in education and teacher preparation. Her scholarly interests include philosophic and policy analyses of the role of public education in addressing social justice, environmental, aesthetic, and spiritual issues, and in promoting democratic civic participation.
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James Dawes, professor and chair, teaches American literature. He is the author of “That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity and The Language of War,” as well as numerous articles on topics including narrative theory, human rights law, and pedagogical technique. His teaching interests include interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies (ethics, law, psychology, sociology) and U.S. literature. He is the founder and director of Macalester’s Human Rights and Humanitarianism program.
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Neil Chudgar, assistant professor, studies the British literature of the 18th century. His scholarship and teaching aim to explore the ways in which literary language helps modern people think, feel, and believe in relation to the tangible objects that surround us. He is currently at work on “The Augustan Touch,” a book about the ethics and aesthetics of touching in British literature from the late 1600s to 1740.
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Daylanne English, associate professor, has published essays on African American literature in scholarly journals such as American Literature and Critical Inquiry. She is the author of “Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance” (an ALA Outstanding Academic Book in 2004). Her teaching interests include the Harlem Renaissance, contemporary African American novels, and detective fiction. She is currently at work on a second book, “Political Fictions: Time and Justice in African American Literature, 1773–2007.”
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Nathan Hensley, assistant professor, teaches courses in Victorian literature and critical theory. His work has appeared in Victorian Studies, the minnesota review, and an essay collection, “The Politics of Gender in Anthony Trollope’s Novels.” He is currently working on a book about political theory, violence, and literary form in Victorian England. His teaching interests include Victorian literature and culture, Marxism, globalization, aesthetics, and the novel.
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Marlon James, assistant professor, teaches creative writing and literature. His second novel, “The Book of Night Women,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the 2010 Dayton International Literary Peace Prize and the 2010 Minnesota Book Award. His other publications include the novel “John Crow’s Devil” (Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Commonwealth Prize) as well as numerous short stories and essays. His teaching interests include fiction, nonfiction, travel writing, prose poetry, Caribbean literature, American literature post-1945, post-colonial literature, and literary perspectives on 9/11.
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Casey Jarrin, assistant professor, teaches 20th-century British/Irish literature, international film/visual culture, diaspora studies, ethics/aesthetics of violence, working-class studies and subcultural theory, and cultural legacies of the Vietnam War. She has published essays in Eire-Ireland and Geographies and Genders, and is completing a book project, “Confessional Enactments: Penitents, Prisoners, and Embodiment in Irish Literary/Visual Culture.”
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Theresa Krier, professor, teaches courses on medieval and Renaissance literature, and on literature and environment, with interests in gender theory, poetics, and pre-modern ways of understanding the natural world. She has published books and essays on ancient classical and biblicalpoetry, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Irigaray, including Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser, Classical Imitation, and the Decorums of Vision, and Birth Passages: Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare.
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Kristin Naca, assistant professor, teaches creative writing and 20th-century American, Latino, and Asian American literature. She has earned fellowships and grants from the Consortium for Small Colleges, Macondo Writers Workshop, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Astraea Foundation. Her book of poetry, “BIRD EATING BIRD” (2009), was selected for the National Poetry Series mtvU Prize.

Wang Ping, associate professor, teaches creative writing with special interests in environment, public health and social justice. She is a poet, fiction writer, photographer, and translator. She is the recipient of grants and awards from the NEA, and the Bush, Lannan, and McKnight foundations, among many others. Her numerous publications include “The Last Communist Virgin” (Minnesota Book Award and the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award) and “Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China” (Eugene M. Kayden Book Award).
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Dan Hornbach, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Biology and chair of the Environmental Studies Department, is an aquatic ecologist. His research focuses on freshwater ecology, and he works closely with the National Park Service. He teaches Environmental Science; Lakes, Streams and Rivers; Ecology; and Aquatic Ecology.
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Louisa Bradtmiller, assistant professor, is a climate scientist and geochemist whose research focuses on global climate changes since the last ice age. She teaches Environmental Science, Earth’s Climate System, Climate and Society, Paleoclimate, and the department’s senior seminar.

Roopali Phadke, associate professor, teaches in the area of environmental policy and politics. Her research is at the nexus of environmental studies, international development, and science and technology studies. Her current research focuses on water and wind energy development. She teaches Environmental Politics and Policy, the Environmental Leadership Seminar and Practicum, Water and Power, Science and Citizenship, and Sustainable Development and the Global Future.
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Chris Wells, assistant professor, is an environmental historian whose research focuses on 20th-century U.S. environmental history. He combines the perspectives of environmental history, intellectual and cultural history, and the history of technology to examine the history of human interactions with the natural world. He teaches American Environmental History, Consumer Nation, Imperial Nature, U.S. Urban Environmental History, Car Country, and Three Rivers Environmental History.
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Joëlle Vitiello, associate professor and chair, received her PhD in French and Italian from Stanford University. She specializes in 20th-century French literature and culture. She teaches contemporary French culture and literature; cinema (French, North African, and Sub-Saharan African); and Haitian literature and culture. She has co-edited two books/special issues on women writers, including “Elles écrivent des Antilles: Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique,” and co-authored a book on American culture. Recent publications include articles and book chapters on Haitian writers and artists, representations of friendship in literature, the teaching of African literature, African women writers, and representations of violence in contemporary literature and cinema. She is completing a book-length manuscript on Haitian literature and is preparing a course on Haiti, Human Rights, and Humanitarianism.
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Andrew Billing, assistant professor, recently completed his PhD at the University of California–Irvine, and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Macalester in 2008–09. His current research explores the “animal/human relation” as well as intersections between literary fiction and moral and political philosophy in the French Enlightenment. His teaching interests include 18th-century French literature, Enlightenment political and moral philosophy, colonialism, and critical theory.
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Anne Carayon, visiting instructor, is an artist who has exhibited in France and the Twin Cities. She teaches art and ideas in French culture, and French at all levels. She is interested in contemporary aesthetics. She completed a video documentary project centered on women immigrant artists in France and is editing a series of on-site interviews with French-speaking Polynesian artists and writers.
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Annick Fritz-Smead, visiting assistant professor, teaches French at all levels. She specializes in 20th-century French literature and culture, with research interests in poetry, women writers, and cinema. She has published a book on the poetry of Francis Ponge, “Francis Ponge: De l’écriture à l’oeuvre.”
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Jean-Pierre Karegeye, assistant professor, recently completed his PhD at the University of California–Berkeley. Trained in social ethics, philosophy, African linguistics, and literary analysis and theory, he specializes in African literature. His research focuses on the 1994 Rwandan Genocide in literature in dialogue with ethical, political, and philosophical discourses. He is the cofounder of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Kigali, Rwanda. Publications include edited books: “L’Eglise catholique à l’épreuve du génocide” and “Récits du génocide, traversée de la mémoire.” His teaching interests include testimonial literature, children and war, and genocide studies.
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Juliette Rogers, associate professor, received her PhD from Duke University. She specializes in 19th-century French literature and in Quebec literature. She is the author of “Career Stories: Belle Epoque Novels of Professional Development” and the guest co-editor of “Eclectic Expressions: Selected Essays” of the 2006 Women in French 19th-Century Conference. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript, “Travailler et vivre: Recent Women’s Fiction from Quebec and France.” She is the current president of the Women In French organization.

David Lanegran, John S. Holl Professor of Geography and chair, teaches courses in human and urban geography. His interests have led to extensive studies and comparisons of urban planning processes around the world. He has published several books, including “Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas,” and articles on urban and cultural geography.
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Holly Barcus, associate professor, teaches introductory and advanced courses in GIS and population geography. Her recent projects include analysis of housing issues and local consequences of urban-rural migration in rural America and Mongolia.
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Laura Smith, assistant professor, teaches courses in urban economic geography, transportation, the regional geography of the U.S. and Canada, and quantitative methods. She also teaches an urban GIS seminar that connects the class with a community project. Her recent research projects have focused on mortgage foreclosures in the Twin Cities and on issues of American Indian law and land use.
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Daniel Trudeau, assistant professor, teaches Urban Social Geography, Qualitative Methods, Political Geography, Introduction to Urban Studies, and Cities of the 21st-century. His research focuses on urban governance, racial segregation and integration, and sustainable urban planning movements.
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Kelly MacGregor, associate professor and chair, joined the department in 2003. She earned her PhD from the University of California–Santa Cruz, where she studied glacial geology. She regularly conducts fieldwork in Montana and British Columbia.
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John Craddock ’80, professor, came to Macalester in 1989 from the University of Michigan, where he obtained his PhD. He is a structural geologist and his research interests include the mechanics of mountain belt formation, rock strain analysis, the Keweenawan rift, and Antarctic geology..
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Raymond Rogers, professor, received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1995 and came to Macalester in 1997. He studies the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and taphonomy of fossil-rich rocks, with field areas in Montana and Madagascar.
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Kristi Curry Rogers, assistant professor, received her PhD from Stony Brook University in 2001 and came to Macalester in 2008. She is a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in the largest of all dinosaurs, the sauropods. She is also an assistant professor in the Biology Department.
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Karl Wirth, associate professor, came to Macalester in 1990 from Cornell University, where he earned his PhD. He is an igneous petrologist with research interests that focus on the origin of igneous rocks and the chemical evolution of the Earth’s crust.
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Linda Schulte-Sasse, DeWitt Wallace Professor and chair of the department, teaches 18th- and 20th-century literature and specializes in film and cultural studies. She has written widely on German and American cinema and political discourses. In 1996 Duke University Press published her book on Nazi cinema, “Entertaining the Third Reich.”
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Kiarina Kordela, professor, writes on and teaches critical theory and the relationships among philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, social and political theory, cultural studies, and ideology. She has published numerous articles in academic journals, as well as the book “Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan” (SUNY Press, 2007) and the co-edited collection of essays “Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011).
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David Martyn, professor, teaches 18th and 19th-century German literature and cultural studies. He has published numerous articles on German and French literature and philosophy of the romantic period and on literary theory. His book, “Sublime Failures: The Ethics of Kant and Sade,” was published in 2003 by Wayne State University Press.
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Margaret (Molly) Olsen, associate professor and chair, specializes in Trans-Atlantic literatures of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Afro-Caribbean texts of the colonial and contemporary periods.
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Susana Blanco-Iglesias is from Bilbao, Spain. She teaches language and linguistics, and is practicum coordinator for 100- and 200-level Spanish courses. Her research focuses on Spanish acquisition, and her interests are in sociolinguistics, dialectology, and language contact issues (Spanish/English in the U.S. and Basque/Spanish).
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Antonio Dorca, professor, was born in Barcelona, Spain. His interests include peninsular prose fiction, modern Catalán literature, Spanish intellectual history, and critical theory and narrative techniques.
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Galo Gonzalez, professor, teaches and researches primarily 20th-century Latin American literatures and cultures, especially the literature of social protest movements, the study of race relations in Latin American narrative fiction, and the study of Hispanic/Latino literature and culture in the U.S. He is the author of “Love and Eroticism in the Narrative of José María Arguedas” and “The Island of Gold: A Brief Account of the Exploration of Upper and Lower California.”
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Cynthia Kauffeld, assistant professor, teaches Hispanic linguistics. Her interests include Spanish and Latin American dialectology, phonology, historical linguistics, and paleography. Her current research focuses on documents relating to the settlement of New Mexico during the colonial period.
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Alicia Muñoz, assistant professor, teaches 20th-century Latin American literature and U.S. Latino Studies. Her current research has been on representations of women who kill in Latin American literature and popular culture, and articulations of urban space in Latino literature. Areas of interest include border studies, the Latino immigrant experience, and crime fiction..
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Lynn M. Hudson, associate professor and chair, teaches courses on slavery and abolition in the United States, western history, social movements, and the history of gender and sexuality. She specializes in African American history and U.S. women’s history. Her publications examine the lives of free black men and women during the age of slavery and the possibilities for freedom in the U.S. West. Her recent research investigates legal, cultural, and social manifestations of Jim Crow discrimination in California in the 19th and early 20th centuries..
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Ernesto Capello, assistant professor, teaches courses on colonial and modern Latin American cultural and social history, urban history, migration, and the relationship between state power and the production of scientific and artistic knowledge. He is completing a book on the impact of early 20th-century constructions of collective memory on the spatial and social map of his hometown of Quito, Ecuador. Other research includes a study of a French cartographic expedition to Ecuador and a comparative analysis of popular responses to Nelson Rockefeller’s 1969 presidential mission to Latin America.
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Andrea Robertson Cremer, assistant professor, teaches courses on early American cultural and social history, women’s and gender history, the history of sexuality, Native American history, and history of the early modern Atlantic world. Her dissertation examines the political function of religious belief and its effect on the construction of race, gender, and sexuality in colonial New England.
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Jamie Monson, professor, teaches courses in African history, with interests in China-Africa historical relations; eastern and southern African history; African environmental history; Maji Maji War; and memory and narrative in African history.
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Peter Rachleff, professor, conducts research in U.S. labor, immigration, and African American history. He also teaches theme-focused courses between the Civil War and World War II. He ties much of his teaching and service to the college’s interdisciplinary programs in urban studies, African American studies, American studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Active in the community around Macalester, from the Minnesota Historical Society to the labor movement, he is a frequent sponsor of internships and student research projects.
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Yue-him Tam, professor, researches modern Japanese intellectual history and Sino-Japanese relations. He teaches modern and traditional periods of China and Japan, East Asian civilizations, and war crime and memory in contemporary East Asia. He holds visiting professorships in China, Japan, and the United States.
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Peter Weisensel, professor, specializes in modern Russian history. He wrote two monographs on Russia in the 19th century and is at work on another about Central Asia through Russian eyes. In addition to courses in Russian/Soviet history and film in the USSR, he teaches courses in modern German history, the history and philosophy of socialism, and survey courses on Europe.
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David Chioni Moore, associate professor of international studies and English, chair of the International Studies Department, focuses on the literatures and cultures of the black Atlantic world, with interests in both Africa and African America. He maintains allied interests in postcoloniality, the post-Soviet world, and globalization. He has published a score of articles and dozens of reviews in journals such as Transition, Diaspora, PMLA, Frontiers, Genre, Research in African Literatures, and Callaloo.
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Amanda Ciafone, assistant professor and a recent Yale University PhD, is a specialist in global media studies, emphasizing the comparative study of the Americas. Ciafone's dissertation focused on the global media-political-economic impact of the Coca-Cola corporation in the United States, Latin America, and India. At Macalester, she teaches global media industries, Latin American media and cultural studies, and other subjects.
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Nadya Nedelsky, associate professor, is a specialist in the areas of human and minority rights, comparative nationalisms, and transitional justice. She has authored multiple essays on comparative Czech and Slovak nationalisms, and leads a multi-national, multi-scholar Cambridge University Press research project on transitional justice. Her book on Central European nationalisms, “Defining the Sovereign Community: The Czech and Slovak Republics,” was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
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James von Geldern, professor of international studies and of Russian studies, holds a PhD from Brown and a JD from Minnesota. As a Russianist, he is a widely published author on Soviet mass and popular culture and, more broadly, a cultural historian. As a legal scholar and practitioner, his work focuses on international codes of conduct, immigration, and transborder rights. His courses include focused offerings on the European Union as well as the post-Soviet sphere.
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John Haiman, professor and chair, has done research on syntactic change in Germanic languages, the grammar of Hua (Papua New Guinea) and Khmer (Cambodia), iconicity in syntax, and the Rhaeto-Romance languages of Switzerland and Italy. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 for the study of sarcasm. His latest book, a grammar of Cambodian, was published in 2011.
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Christina Esposito, assistant professor, is a specialist in acoustic and articulatory phonetics. She has done fieldwork on Zapotec, a language of Southern Mexico.
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Karen Saxe, who completed her PhD at the University of Oregon, is department chair and teaches all calculus and analysis courses. She is especially interested in operator theory, functional analysis, the mathematics of elections and voting, and the history of mathematics.
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Andrew Beveridge, who completed his PhD at Yale University, is interested in the intersection of combinatorics and probability. He studies random walks, random graphs, and their applications to real world networks, such as the Internet and ad-hoc wireless networks.
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David Bressoud, who completed his PhD at Temple University, is past president of the Mathematical Association of America, author of six textbooks in number theory, combinatorics, vector calculus, and analysis, and of many research and expository articles in mathematics. He is particularly interested in using the history of mathematics to motivate and illuminate its important ideas.
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Daniel Flath, who finished his PhD at Harvard University, has research and teaching experience ranging from algebra to applications, with research expertise in group representations, and often engages in collaborative projects. A permanent interest in curricular reform has led him to collaborate in the writing of several popular calculus textbooks.
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Tom Halverson, who completed his PhD at University of Wisconsin–Madison, teaches courses in linear and abstract algebra, discrete math, and calculus. His research on interactions between algebra and combinatorics is often done in collaboration with others—including students—and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
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Danny Kaplan, who completed his PhD at Harvard University, coordinates the Applied Math and Statistics major. He comes from a background in biomedical engineering. He’s the author of several textbooks on scientific computing, statistical modeling, and nonlinear dynamics.
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Chad Topaz, who finished his PhD at Northwestern University, uses applied mathematical tools to study the spontaneous emergence of patterns in biological swarms, chemical reactions, and other natural systems. He advises students on theoretical and experimental research projects, and teaches a variety of courses in mathematical modeling, differential equations, and calculus.
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Stan Wagon, who completed his PhD at Dartmouth College, is most interested in the use of computers to enhance our understanding of mathematics and science. He has authored 11 books, five of them about the software system Mathematica, which he uses in all his courses.
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Leola Johnson, associate professor and chair, teaches courses on television, the press, and other mass media as social and cultural institutions. Her most recent publication, in the spring 2010 issue of the International Journal of Communication, is “Barack Obama’s Body and the Body Politic.” She is currently editing an essay about representations of Michelle Obama’s body, based on a paper she presented at the American Studies Association conference in November 2009.
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John Kim, assistant professor, is the most recent addition to the MCS faculty. He comes to Macalester having taught at the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, and Williams College. He is a theorist and practitioner of new media who has exhibited interactive installations at museums and galleries across the country. Before returning to teaching, he also worked as a programmer and designer at a handful of Internet startups.
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Clay Steinman, professor, specializes in cinema studies and critical media theory and has been a journalist, writing for magazines and news organizations such as The Nation and Xinhua, the New China News Agency. His most recent essay, “Sign,” appeared in the International Encyclopedia of Communication (Blackwell, 2008). He co-authored “Consuming Environments” (Rutgers, 1999) and serves on the editorial board of Critical Studies in Media Communication.
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Mark Mazullo, associate professor and chair, is a musicologist and pianist. His writing on wide-ranging subjects has appeared in The Yale Review, The Musical Quarterly, American Music, Popular Music, and other publications. His book “Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues: Contexts, Style, Performance” was published by Yale University Press in 2010. Mazullo appears regularly as a pianist in solo, chamber, and concerto settings in the Twin Cities. He teaches piano as well as courses in the history of Western art music and American popular music.
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Randall Bauer, assistant professor, teaches music theory, ear training, and composition, as well as courses on jazz and improvisation. He holds a PhD from Princeton University, where he completed a dissertation on Keith Jarrett. Bauer is a recognized composer in both Western classical and jazz idioms.

Cary John Franklin, assistant professor, conducts the orchestra and directs the chamber ensembles program. Currently music director of the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis, he has been staff conductor and chorus master of the Opera Theater of St. Louis, and he has been a guest conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Washington National Opera, and others. An accomplished composer, he has received a fellowship in composition from the National Endowment for the Arts..
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Chuen-Fung Wong, assistant professor, was a Chancellor’s Fellow at UCLA, where his dissertation focused on the music and culture of the Uyghur people of northwest China. He teaches courses in ethnomusicology and world music topics. Wong recently received a highly competitive fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to complete his book on Uyghur music..
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Martin Gunderson, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Philosophy and chair, specializes in ethics. He is also interested in philosophy of law and bioethics. Within these areas he is especially interested in right-to-die issues, civil liberties, and human rights. He is co-author of “AIDS: Testing and Privacy” and has published numerous articles in the areas of bioethics and ethics.
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Janet Folina, professor, specializes in the philosophy of mathematics. She also works on the philosophy of science and on the epistemological foundations of science. Her broader philosophical interests include Kant, Wittgenstein, realism-antirealism debates, the concepts of objectivity and normativity, and other topics in 20th-century analytical philosophy. She is the author of “Poincaré and the Philosophy of Mathematics.” Her current research interests include the philosophy of mathematics of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the concept of proof in mathematics..
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Geoffrey Gorham, associate professor, specializes in the history of philosophy, especially the intersection of philosophy and science in the 17th century in figures such as Descartes, Newton, and Locke. He is also interested in problems in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science, such as space and time, freedom and causality. He has published numerous articles, such as “Cartesian Causation: Continuous, Instantaneous, and Over-determined” (Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2004), “Descartes on Time and Duration” (Early Science and Medicine, 2007), and “How Newton Solved the Mind-Body Problem” (History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2011). Professor Gorham recently published “Philosophy of Science: A Beginner’s Guide” (2009).
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Joy Laine, adjunct professor, specializes in the philosophy of mind and language. Her work in these areas encompasses both Western and Indian philosophical traditions. She has spent extensive periods in India pursuing her own research and accompanying students on study abroad programs. She has published articles in the areas of personal identity and Indian philosophy, and has written entries for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy on topics in Indian philosophy. She is currently working on a book, “Philosophical Persons,” in which she examines the development of philosophical theories of personal identity and how such theories relate to broader cultural concerns.
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Diane Michelfelder, professor and former provost and dean of the faculty at Macalester, specializes in the European philosophical tradition, particularly existentialism and hermeneutics, as well as in the philosophy of technology. Her publications include the influential, coedited work “Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter,” as well as numerous articles and book chapters. In her current research, she focuses on ethical issues emerging from information and communication technologies. She is an editor of Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology and a past president of the international Society for Philosophy and Technology.
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Tonnis ter Veldhuis, associate professor and chair, is a theoretical elementary particle physicist. His interests include the physics of the Higgs boson, the elusive particle currently being hunted at the world’s most powerful particle accelerators, and the physics of dark matter, the stuff recent observations indicate to be the dominant component of particles in our universe. He also studies supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, and he investigates scenarios in which our universe is embedded in a higher dimensional space-time.
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John Cannon, assistant professor, is an observational astronomer with a focus on nearby, low-mass galaxies. Using data from a variety of ground- (e.g., the newly commissioned Expanded Very Large Array) and space-based (e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope) observatories, he works with students to understand the nature and evolution of these galaxies in the local universe.
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James Doyle, professor, is an experimentalist in plasma and materials physics with an emphasis on materials used in thin film solar cells. Students are regular participants in his studies of reactive sputtering, computer modeling of plasma systems, plasmaenhanced chemical vapor deposition, and electrodeposition.
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Sung Kyu Kim, professor, is the author of “Physics: The Fabric of Reality” and coauthor of “Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers.” He directs the Macalester Summer Physics Institute for pre-medical students. He is the recipient of the 1993 Burlington Northern Excellence in Teaching Award.
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Julie Dolan, associate professor and chair, teaches courses on American politics, legislative politics, women and politics and political participation. Her research focuses on public administration, representative bureaucracy, and women in politics.
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Franklin Adler, G. Theodore Mitau Professor, is interested in political and social theory and the comparative politics of Europe.
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David Blaney, professor, teaches courses on international politics, global political economy, and development. His research centers on the political theory and political economy of international relations.
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Paul Dosh, associate professor, teaches courses on comparative politics and Latin America. He recently published a book about urban social movements in the shantytowns of Peru and Ecuador.
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Andrew Latham, associate professor, teaches courses on international politics, comparative foreign and defense policy, and international security. His research includes the changing nature of war, the social construction of the land-mine ban, and various issues related to Canadian foreign policy.
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Patrick Schmidt, associate professor, teaches courses on American politics and law. His research focuses on lawyers in America, judicial politics, and the Supreme Court. He is currently writing a book on disclosure laws in the United States.
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Wendy Weber, visiting instructor, teaches courses on global governance, gender and global politics, and humanitarianism. Her research focuses on changing patterns of governance in the contemporary era, especially in the areas of international law and human rights.
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Brooke Lea, professor and chair, teaches courses in cognitive psychology, psychology of language, and research methods and statistics. He specializes in human cognition, with an emphasis on higher mental processes such as language processing and deductive reasoning. His research interests include theories of discourse comprehension, models of human logical competence, and the interaction between literary devices and memory.
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E. Darcy Burgund, assistant professor, teaches courses on cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging techniques, and research methods. Her research specializes in high-level visual cognition and memory, with a particular focus on object recognition and reading processes in adults and young children. She currently uses behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to pursue two main lines of inquiry: the effects of age and ability on perceptual tuning for letters and the extent to which visual form systems are dedicated to processing particular stimulus types.
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Rachel Lucas-Thompson, assistant professor, is a developmental psychologist who specializes in the ways by which family relationships influence child and adolescent development. Her research more specifically addresses the mechanisms by which qualities of the marital relationship predict parentchild relations and child development, including physiological stress functioning as well as mental and physical health. She teaches introductory and advanced courses in developmental psychology as well as courses in the Research in Psychology series.
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Sun No, assistant professor, teaches courses in cultural psychology, social psychology, and research methods and statistics. She studies social cognition in relation to cultural identities. She is particularly interested in Asian and Asian- American identities and ideologies about race and culture.
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Joan Ostrove, associate professor, teaches courses in psychology of gender, health psychology, personality and history of psychology. Her research concerns the connections between individual psychology and social structure. She is particularly interested in the ways in which our social structural positions (especially with respect to gender, race, social class, and disability) shape our individual and interpersonal experiences.
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Jaine Strauss, professor, teaches courses in clinical and community psychology. She studies gender and mental health with a particular focus on body image, eating concerns, and depression. Her recent research focuses on women’s internalization of body ideals throughout the lifespan.
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Eric Wiertelak, DeWitt Wallace Professor, teaches courses in behavioral neuroscience, drugs and society, and sensation and perception. He conducts behavioral and physiological research to investigate the role of environmental stressors and learning in neurophysiological response mechanisms such as pain modulation. A current emphasis of his work with student collaborators is investigating the scientific/biomedical basis of natural, homeopathic, and aromatherapeutic medicines.
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James Laine, Arnold C. Lowe Professor and chair, specializes in the religions of South Asia and Islam. He works with the study abroad program in India sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and continues to research Hindu-Muslim relations in 17th-century India.
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Paula Cooey, Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Christian Theology and Culture, teaches courses on the history of Christian traditions, comparative ethics, theory and method, religion and environmental ethics, and religion and globalization. Her scholarly expertise lies at the intersection of history of Christian thought, theory of religion, and gender studies. She is currently working on a project tentatively titled “Getting Religion: The Ethics of the Study of Religion.”.
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Erik Davis, assistant professor, teaches courses on Buddhism, Asian religions, and concepts in theory of religion. His research focuses on Buddhism and Religion in Cambodia; thematically, he focuses on funerals, memory, ritual, and the connection between agriculture and the religious imagination.

Susanna Drake, assistant professor, offers courses in biblical studies and early Christian history. Special interests include early Christian and Jewish relations, the construction of orthodoxy and heresy, and gender studies.

Brett Wilson, assistant professor, specializes in Islamic studies. His research focuses on Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Currently, he is exploring the history of translating the Qur’an.
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Khaldoun Samman, associate professor and chair, specializes in world historical comparative sociology, urban sociology, globalization, the sociology of religion, and classical and modern sociological theory. His latest book is “The Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge to Jewish, Turkish and Arab Nationalism” (2011). His research explores three modes of identities in the Middle East: occidentalizing, modernizing, and orientalizing nationalist identities. Drawing comparisons between Turkey, Israel, and the Arab World, Professor Samman’s research surveys the origins of the present strife in the region and suggests alternative strategies that may help peacefully resolve conflicts in the Middle East.
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Terry Boychuk, associate professor, specializes in comparative-historical sociology, social policies, and nonprofit organizations. His latest publication, “The Making and Meaning of Hospital Policy in the United States and Canada,” is a comparative study of why movements to establish national health insurance failed in the United States and succeeded in Canada. More recently, he has devoted his attention to a study of the historical origins of the legal frameworks that define the nature and scope of the charitable nonprofit sector in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the British Commonwealth.
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Mahnaz Kousha, professor, specializes in the sociology of race, ethnicity, and immigration, and sociology of the family. Professor Kousha’s latest book, “Voices from Iran: The Changing Lives of Iranian Women,” explores intimate family relationships between parents and daughters within the context of broader sociocultural changes during the last three to four decades. Her recent publication is a translation of the novel “My Bird,” by Fariba Vafi, one of the most acclaimed contemporary Iranian writers. Professor Kousha’s current work explores issues regarding men’s gender roles, and family relationships.She is one of the co-founders of the journal Critique: Critical Studies of the Middle East.
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Erik Larson, associate professor, specializes in economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of law. His research focuses on the emergence and transformation of legal, economic, and political institutions in relation to global and national developments. For this research, he has traveled to Fiji, Ghana, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, China, and Taiwan. Three of his projects have received funding from the National Science Foundation. Professor Larson’s publications include “Institutionalizing Legal Consciousness: Regulation and the Embedding of Market Participants in the Securities Industry in Ghana and Fiji” in the Law & Society Review and “Emerging Indigenous Governance: Ainu Rights at the Intersection of Global Norms and Domestic Institutions” in Alternatives: Global, Local, Political (co-authored with two Macalester students).
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Beth Cleary, associate professor, chair and director, teaches a range of courses that combine theory and performance-making practice. In 2009-10 she piloted two new courses: “Brain to Bone: Aliveness from Rehearsal through Performance,” and “Staging Hard Times,” both of which involved devising new work. Cleary regularly teaches directing and has directed more than 20 productions at Macalester.
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Becky Heist, director of the dance program, created a dance film that explores the transformative capabilities of the five Ayurvedic elements. In Fall 2009 she presented a live piano and dance concert to the music of John Cage, in collaboration with music professor Mark Mazullo.
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Dan Keyser, associate professor and resident designer, is an active member of USITT and OISTAT (the international design association). He recently worked on his hundredth show at Macalester. His particular design interest is in German and Eastern European theater, with a special interest in Action Design of the Czech Republic. He recently attended the Prague Quadrennial ’11 Scenofest and Performance Arts Festival.
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Lara D. Nielsen, assistant professor, teaches critical theory in performance and theater studies, with an emphasis on hemispheric cultural productions; gender and feminist criticism; and orality, ethnography, and multimedia documentary methodologies. Her research addresses the intersections of subjectivity movement, and the state in the wake of modernist projects.
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Harry Waters, Jr., associate professor, teaches Acting Theory and Performance I and Performance II, as well as Community Based Theater, Hip Hop Performance, and African American Theater. He has appeared on many stages in the Twin Cities as an actor. He worked with the West Side Theater Project in presenting plays in 2009 and 2010. He will be continuing his collaborative work with Jewelle Gomez on “Waiting for Giovanni – A Dream Play” about James Baldwin, the African American writer/activist.
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Jane Rhodes, co-chair of WGSS and professor of American studies, specializes in the study of race, gender and mass media; the black press; and media and social movements. Rhodes’ first book, “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century” (Indiana University Press, 1998), was named the best book in mass communication history by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her latest book, “Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon” (The New Press), was published in 2007. Her writing has been published in numerous books and journals including The Harvard International Journal of Press/ Politics, Feminist Media Studies, The Canadian Review of American Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Media History.
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Corie Hammers, assistant professor in WGSS, has published essays in a variety of journals such as Sexualities, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Gender Studies and Journal of Homosexuality. Her main research project has been one of examining lesbian/queer public sexual cultures, and sexual spaces in Canada and the U.S. She is particularly interested in interrogating the linkages between sexuality, space and identity formations, and the sexual politics within nonnormative sexual communities. She has just begun a new project exploring the politics of (non)belonging among African American women within the LGBT community and their networking practices. Her core courses include Race, Sex and Work in the Global Economy; Feminist/Queer Theories and Methodologies; and Sexuality, Race and Nation: Introduction to LGBT Studies.
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Sonita Sarker, professor in WGSS and the English department, co-edited “Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia” (2002) and is sole editor of “Sustainable Feminisms” (2007). She is currently writing a book on transnational receptions of fascism and empire by women writers of the 1920s and 1930s. She has published essays on Shashi Deshpande, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, and Virginia Woolf in publications by The Feminist Press, in Archiv Orientalni, and in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Modernism/Modernity, and other journals. She is the recipient of awards from the Ford, Mellon, Bush, Hewlett, and Wallace foundations. She was also a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford in England (2007) and a fellow of the American Council on Education (2007). She offers courses in feminist postmodern and postcolonial theories, 20th- and 21st-century transnational comparative women’s writing, and sociopolitical activism.
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