Faculty News
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Salute to Faculty 2009
Each April the Clark community comes together to celebrate the scholarly publications and creative projects authored by Clark faculty over the previous year. Read about the recent work of Clark faculty.
Meet our new tenure-track faculty: 2008-2009
Taner Akçam
Associate Professor, Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen
and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies, History Department
Sociologist and historian Taner Akçam most recently taught at the
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Professor Akçam grew up in Turkey, where he was imprisoned for editing
a political publication and was adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty
International in 1976. Professor Akçam later received political asylum
in Germany, where he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hannover and
worked with the Hamburg Institute for Social Research on issues concerning
the history of violence and torture in Turkey. Professor Akçam is
widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively
and authoritatively on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in the early
20th century. He is the author of 10 scholarly works of history and sociology,
as well as numerous articles in Turkish, German, and English. His most recent
book is A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish
Responsibility (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
John Aylward
Assistant Professor of Music, Visual & Performing Arts Department
Composer John Aylward is a musician actively involved in numerous modern
expressions of today's concert music. Informed by his work as an active
pianist, his work features a combination of rigorous technique with experimental
formal, textual and harmonic concepts. At home with acoustic and electronic
media, Professor Aylward's work strives to capture the inter-cultural expressions
that speak to the zeitgeist of our time. Recently, Professor Aylward's work
for cello and piano, Dragonfly, won the 2008 International Society of Contemporary
Music. In May and June this year, Professor Aylward will be a fellow at
the Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, where he will continue research
on the late works of Elliott Carter. Later in the summer, Professor Aylward
will be in residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts where he will
collaborate with Karl Nussbaum from the New York production company Filmcrash
on a multimedia project based on the famous hypnotherapist Milton Erickson.
Maricella Correa-Chávez
Assistant Professor, Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology
Professor Correa-Chávez received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is currently finishing
an AERA/IES postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. Her research examines cognition
and learning as cultural activities tied to people's participation in community
traditions and institutions (like school) in a number of cultural communities:
Mexican heritage in the United States and Mexico, Guatemalan Maya, and middle-class
European-American. Of particular interest is how children use attention
in learning, in social interaction, and in communication. Professor Correa-Chávez
also examines how patterns of attention are related to family participation
in community traditions and institutions over generations. Her work examines
issues of immigration and globalization especially with regard to Mexico
and Central America. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation,
the Spencer Foundation, the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute, and
by the Institute of Educational Sciences through AERA.
Anita Häusermann Fábos
Associate Professor, International Development, Community, and Environment
Department
Professor Fábos is a "first-generation immigrant Western Massachusetts
native" who has lived in the Middle East and Europe for the last 20 years.
This composite identity is reflected in her academic interests as an anthropologist
of migration, as her own migratory background continues to stimulate her
research questions around home, belonging, and socio-cultural identity.
The main participants in her research are Muslim Arab refugees and migrants
from the northern part of Sudan who now make up a diaspora with main communities
in the Arab Gulf, Egypt, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada,
and Australia. Her research also asks methodological questions about mapping
population flows and networks in the context of national immigration frameworks.
In her teaching, Professor Fábos draws upon her work as a development
consultant for projects on migration, health and non-governmental organizations
in the Middle East and Africa. The study of population movement brings up
the question of borders, and Professor Fábos asks students to think
about how and why different borders and boundaries are created, maintained,
and crossed.
John Garton
Assistant Professor of Art History, Visual & Performing Arts Department
Professor Garton received his Ph.D. in art history at the Institute of Fine
Arts, New York University in 2003. For the past five years he has taught
at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received the Dean's Teaching
Award in 2005 and the College Art Association Innovative Course Design Award,
sponsored by Art Historians Interested in Pedagogy and Technology, in 2007.
He is a specialist in Renaissance and Baroque art history with a secondary
expertise in Latin American art. His book Grace and Grandeur: The Portraiture
of Paolo Veronese (London & Turnhout: Harvey Miller & Brepols Publishers,
2008) considers Venice's golden age through the lens of one of her best
painters, and his articles have addressed topics ranging from Titian's votive
paintings to the architecture of I.M. Pei.
Sergio Granados-Focil
Assistant Professor, Carlson School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Professor Granados-Focil's research group focuses on better understanding
the physico-chemical principles governing charge transport within polymeric
matrices and establishing a roadmap toward nano-structured, multifunctional
materials with improved ionic conductivity or optoelectronic properties.
Renewable energy alternatives, flexible optoelectronic devices and better
energy storage are three promising areas that will benefit from tailoring
the materials properties via a precise control of their structure at the
molecular and supramolecular scales. The interdisciplinary nature of this
work allows students to acquire experience not only in organic or polymer
synthetic chemistry, but also in a wide variety of characterization techniques
routinely used to study the materials they will prepare. Furthermore, students
will have the opportunity to closely collaborate with their peers from other
disciplines working toward the same broad objective.
Chang Hong
Assistant Professor, Economics Department
Professor Hong's fields of interest are international economics, econometrics,
and development. Her current research focuses on the economic impacts of
trade liberalization, exchange rate economics, and the economic issues of
East Asia (particularly China). Upon obtaining a Ph.D. in economics from
the University of California, Davis, in 2006, Professor Hong worked at the
International Monetary Fund research department for two years.
Arpita Joardar
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Management
Professor Joardar joins Clark from the University of Texas—Pan American,
where she was an assistant professor of international business. She received
her Ph.D. in international business with a management concentration at the
University of South Carolina. Her research interests include cross-cultural
group phenomena, group acceptance issues and international entrepreneurship.
She has both published as well as presented her research at many prestigious
national and international conferences. She has experience teaching undergraduate,
master's and doctoral classes. Her teaching interests include international
management, cross-cultural behavior and management, and international business.
Robert Johnston
Director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute and Professor of Economics
Professor Johnston comes to Clark from the University of Connecticut, where
he served as associate professor of agricultural and resource economics
and associate director of the Sea Grant College Program. Professor Johnston
holds a B.A. in economics from Williams College and a Ph.D. in environmental
and natural resource economics from the University of Rhode Island. He is
the Vice President of the Marine Resource Economics Foundation and is on
the Board of Directors of the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics
Association. He is an internationally recognized expert in the valuation
of non-market resources and ecosystem services, management of coastal and
marine resources, the economics of land use and preservation, and tourism
economics. Among numerous awards and honors, Professor Johnston was recently
presented with the 2007 Research Excellence Award and the 2008 Award of
Excellence in Teaching, both by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources,
University of Connecticut.
Olga Litvak
Associate Professor, Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish
History, History Department
A graduate of Columbia University, Professor Litvak specializes in Eastern
European and modern Jewish history. Her first book, Conscription and the
Search for Modern Russian Jewry (Indiana UP, 2006), analyzed the enduring
cultural impact of Russian Jewry's first experience of conscription into
the imperial army under Tsar Nicholas I. Professor Litvak has written and
lectured on a wide range of subjects related to the study of Russian Jewry,
including urban violence, literary and artistic life, war, revolution and
migration. The editor of the "Painting and Sculpture" section of the landmark
YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (Yale, 2008), Professor Litvak
has also been pursuing the study of Jewish participation in the making of
modern Russian visual culture. Her current project is a biography of the
Jewish writer and cultural entrepreneur, Sholem-aleichem. Professor Litvak
has taught at Columbia College, the Russian State University for the Humanities
in Moscow and most recently at Princeton and SUNY Albany, where she also
served as the director of the Center for Jewish Studies. She offers courses
in modern Jewish and Russian history, with a special emphasis on art and
literature.
Robert Tobin
Professor and Henry J. Leir Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures,
Foreign Languages and Literatures Department
Robert Tobin (A.B. Harvard 1983, Ph.D. Princeton 1990) has been teaching
at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., since 1989. Based in the German
department, he has also taught courses in world literature, gender studies,
politics, rhetoric and film studies, and general studies. At Whitman, he
also did extensive administrative work, most significantly as associate
dean of the faculty and chair of the arts and humanities. His research has
been funded by numerous agencies, including the National Endowment of the
Humanities, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Rockefeller Foundation,
and the Fulbright Commission. The author of two books (Warm Brothers: Queer
Theory and the Age of Goethe and Doctor's Orders: Goethe and Enlightenment
Thought), he has most recently co-edited A Song for Europe: Politics and
Popular Music in the Eurovision Song Contest. He is currently completing
a manuscript called Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex. He
is looking forward to taking on the challenges and taking advantage of the
opportunities associated with the Henry J. Leir Chair of Foreign Languages
and Cultures. In the fall he will be teaching a course called "Sexuality
and Textuality."
Heather Wiatrowski
Assistant Professor, Biology Department
I am interested in stress responses of microorganisms in metal contaminated
environments and other polluted sites. I am also interested in microbial
contributions to the mercury cycle in groundwater aquifers. In my teaching,
I strive to make primary scientific literature accessible to students as
early as possible. One great way to interest students in primary literature
is to discuss topics that have been covered by the mainstream media. This
allows students to appreciate the processes behind scientific discoveries.
Christopher Williams
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Geography
Trained as a land surface hydrologist and ecosystem scientist, Professor
Williams joins Clark's Graduate School of Geography as a member of the Earth
System Science team. His research investigates how earth's biosphere responds
to natural and human forces such as climate variability and change, and
deforestation, focusing on how these forces modify the biophysical and biogeochemical
characteristics of earth's surface and correspondingly influence energy
and material flows through the biosphere. Combining intensive field study
with satellite remote sensing and process-based computer simulation, Professor
Williams' work is staged around the world, primarily in Africa, Europe,
and North America. Clark's expertise in human-environment interactions,
economic geography, risk and vulnerability, and GIScience offers particularly
exciting opportunities for Professor Williams' program to better address
concerns about human welfare impacts of global environmental change.