May 2025
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, played G violone with Tesserae Baroque in their 2024-2025 season finale. The program, titled Pathopoeia: Music of 17th Century Vienna, was curated and guest-directed by Andrew McIntosh, with the performance held at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, California, on May 18.
On May 31, Bandy presented the paper “The Tortoise and The Herr: Dismemberment and Transfiguration in German Baroque Passion Meditations” at the spring meeting of the American Musicological Society Pacific Southwest Chapter, held at the University of San Diego. Bandy also adjudicated the Ingolf Dahl Award, the chapter’s graduate-student paper competition.
Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, gave presentations on “The challenges and pleasures of translating Xu Xiake’s travel diaries” at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on May 8; “Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People in historical context” at the Symposium on Civilizational Exchange and Cultural Communication at Shaanxi Normal University on May 17; and “Travel Accounts and Cultural Heritage: thoughts on translating Xu Xiake and Chen Yizhong” at the Symposium on the Translation and Dissemination of Shaanxi’s Intangible Cultural Heritage at Weinan Normal University on May 19.
Graydon Beeks, professor emeritus of music, contributed the article “William Croft’s References to Henry Purcell’s Settings of the Funeral Sentences” to the volume “Und alle Sphären klingen”: Musikgeschichtliche Entdeckungen und Reflexionen, a Festschrift published in honor of the 65th birthday of Wolfgang Hirschmann of the Martin Luther University of Halle and Wittenberg, Germany.
Beeks conducted two performances by the Pomona College Band of Adventure in the Air, a commissioned work by composer Mark Winges, featuring soprano saxophone soloist Kenneth Foerch, lecturer in saxophone at Pomona College.
Ralph Bolton ’61, professor emeritus of anthropology, published a chapter, “‘AIDS and the Social Imaginary’ Thirty Years Later: A Controversial Early Skirmish in the De-Colonizing of Anthropology,” in the book Invisible Contrarian: Stephen O. Murray as (Inter)disciplinary Historian, edited by Regna Darnell and Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz and published by University of Nebraska Press.
Bolton published an article, “Expanding Educational Opportunities for Rural Youth in Peru: The Scholarship Program of the Chijnaya Foundation and the Asociación Pro-DIA,” in Practicing Anthropology, a journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology, co-authored with a Peruvian colleague, Jhuver Aguirre, and Ann Stromberg ’64. He also published an article titled “Sueños Qollas: Una Muestra de Textos del Altiplano” (“Qolla Dreams: A Sample of Texts from the Altiplano”) in the Revista Peruana de Antropología. The article includes commentaries by three Peruvian anthropology colleagues, Armando Medina, Carolina Espinoza and Javier Ávila.
Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science and neuroscience, authored a paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science about analytic methods for studying social interaction titled “Interdependent Minds: Quantifying the Dynamics of Successful Social Interactions.”
Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, presented two papers, “Moving Memories in Lázaro Santana’s Recordatorio USA (1971)” at the spring meeting of the Southern California Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), held at Pasadena City College, and “Fragmento, pensamiento, silencio: (re)visiones del lenguaje en la poesía española del siglo XXI” at the Seminario Internacional Nuevas miradas sobre la poesía española actual, hosted online by the Universidad de Granada and Università degli Studi di Bergamo from May 29-30.
Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, was selected to participate as a reviewer for the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship for the artificial intelligence cohort.
Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures, published “Beyond the Borders: Lu Xun, ‘Professor Fujino,’ and the Possibilities for World Literature,” co-authored with Shu Akiyoshi, in Linguistic Science.
David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, gave a talk titled “Gay Gen X: Aging and Community among Queer Men in Midlife” at the Society for Linguistic Anthropology conference at the University of Chicago.
Joanna L. Dyl, visiting assistant professor of environmental analysis, presented her paper “Coastal Waters and Moving Sand: Science, Engineering, and Agency in the Development of California’s Beaches” at the international conference A Water’s History of the United States hosted by the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in Middelburg, The Netherlands. The conference also saw the launch of the Blue History Network.
KJ Fagan, executive director of strategic innovation, gave a talk titled “Assist, Build, Buy, Lend, Empower: A Survey of Workforce Housing Solutions” at the annual Conference on Academic Workforce Housing on May 2. The presentation reviewed best practices among institutions with faculty and staff housing programs and engaged participants in a discussion about the future of workforce housing.
Fagan was elected to the board of directors of the American Council on Education (ACE) Women’s Network of Southern California, which provides strategic leadership, oversight and guidance to advance the organization’s mission of empowering women in higher education. She will serve a two-year term beginning July 2025.
Jennifer Friedlander, Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies, published “An Ethics of Shame: Love, Media Pleasures, and Monsters” in Death and Love: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Julie Reshe and Todd McGowan and published by Routledge.
Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, published a paper titled “The Linear Targeting Problem” with Kyle Bierly ’23 and Roger A. Horn in Linear Algebra and Applications.
Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, attended the American Mathematical Society (AMS) 2025 Spring Western Sectional Meeting held at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. On May 4, Goins gave a presentation titled “Adinkras as Origami?” in the AMS Special Session “Number Theory at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions.’’
Goins spent several days at York College / CUNY in Jamaica, New York, as a distinguished visitor. He interacted with students, faculty and staff at the Converge 2025 conference, a meeting which celebrated three years of the Queens Experiences in Discrete Mathematics (QED), REU and S-STEM Program at the community college. On May 8, Goins gave a presentation titled “A Dream Deferred: 50 Years of Blacks in Mathematics,” and on May 9, Goins gave the keynote address with a presentation titled “An Introduction to Dessins d’Enfants: The Intersection of Graph Theory, Group Theory, and Differential Geometry.”
Goins attended his final meeting of the MAA Board of Directors from May 19-20 in Washington, DC. For the past year, he has served as the Past Chair of the MAA Congress. He will continue as a representative of the MAA Congress, serving as representative for the Southern California/Nevada Section through June 2026.
Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, together with three colleagues, organized and facilitated a four-day virtual workshop titled “Who’s Afraid of Generative AI? Promises and Challenges of AI for the Mathematics Classroom” as part of the Mathematical Association of America’s annual Open Math Summer Professional Development workshop series. The workshop ran May 12-16 and introduced 26 mathematics faculty from across the United States to the topic.
Nina J. Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, published the paper “A decade of diving: responses of Cassin’s auklets to variable foraging conditions in the California Current System” in the journal Frontiers in Bird Science with co-authors Andre Cavalcanti, professor of biology, and Jo Hardin, professor of mathematics and statistics, as well as Zachary W. Brown ’07, Eleanor Caves ’11, Clare M. Flynn ’19, Gail Gallaher ’17, Nicole McDuffie ’15 and Kristina McOmber ’12. Other co-authors are Pete Warzybok, Russell W. Bradley, Meredith L. Elliott, Benjamin T. Saenz and Jaime Jahncke. This paper summarizes how a small planktivorous seabird that breeds on the Farallon islands off San Francisco responded to changes in food availability over 10 breeding seasons.
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, and Ernesto Gutierrez Topete, postdoctoral fellow in linguistics and cognitive science, co-presented a talk titled “Utilizing AI-Powered Tools as Supplementary Resources for L2 Chinese Learners” at the interdisciplinary workshop PedAIgogy: Teaching Chinese Language, Literature, and Culture in the Age of AI. The event was hosted by the Asian Languages and Literatures Department at Pomona College for Southern California instructors May 3.
Lang received the inaugural Shou-hsin Teng Pedagogical Innovation Prize (2024-2025) at the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA-USA) Annual Conference in New York City on May 10. The award recognizes her “outstanding contribution to the field” and “her inspiring innovation in Chinese language teaching.” At the conference, she also delivered a talk titled “AI-Supported Pronunciation Learning for L2 Chinese Beginners.”
Tom Le, associate professor of politics, gave a series of invited lectures in May. He gave a talk titled “Japan’s Contemporary Economy and Security Dilemmas” at UC Irvine (Zoom) on May 20 and a talk titled “Japan’s Strategic Culture as a Global Actor” for a symposium on Japan at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey (Zoom), also on May 20. He gave two in-person lectures for the LEAP-ACE program at the Yokota Air Base in Fussa City, Japan, on May 28. The Language Enabled Airmen Postured for Agile Combat Employment program is designed to train interpreters to help strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance.
Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, published “Reimagining misuse as creative practice: impressions and implications of usage norms on digital artists” to the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI), in collaboration with undergraduate authors from UC Berkeley.
Li was interviewed by PAGE magazine on their views on generative AI and art.
Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, edited and wrote the introduction to a collection of essays titled “The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50: A Symposium” that appeared in The Political Science Reviewer.
McWilliams gave a lecture titled “The Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education” to the University Club of Claremont.
Thomas A. Moore, Ruben C. and Eleanor Winslow Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science, gave a talk titled “The Exuberant Universe: Re-thinking Creation in a Scientific Age” to the Process Explorations group supported by the Cobb Institute at the Center for Process Studies on May 27. This talk discussed the scientific evidence regarding whether the universe is “fine-tuned” for complexity and some of the philosophical implications of that evidence, including possible links to process philosophy.
Kathy Guillén Quispe, assistant director of international student & scholar services, co-presented a poster at the 2025 NAFSA Annual Conference & Expo at San Diego Convention Center on May 28. The poster “Size Doesn't Matter: Orientation Programming Does!” compares Rutgers University and Pomona College to demonstrate how synchronous J-1 orientations are more beneficial to J-1 exchange visitors for understanding their responsibilities while also establishing personal connections not found in asynchronous presentations.
Nicolette Rohr, visiting assistant professor of history, presented at the Inland Empire People’s History Conference at California State University, San Bernardino on May 3. This conference “seeks to bridge university research and community activism to explore the art, culture, and histories of Inland Southern California.” Rohr’s presentation explored histories of the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s in Claremont, San Bernardino and Riverside.
Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English, received the 2025 Isabel MacCaffrey Award from the International Spenser Society for her essay, “The Contingency of Form in Renaissance Poetics,” published in PMLA in 2023.
Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages, professor of Russian, gave a talk titled “On the Rainbow Spectrum: Queer Characters in Contemporary Russian Children’s and Young Adult Literature” in the UC San Diego Department of Literature on May 15.
Rudova published a book review of Moscow Conceptualism, 1975-1985. Words, Deeds, Legacies by Mary A. Nicholas in The Russian Review.
Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics, received a formal recognition by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for her leadership on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and the County’s historic Measure G to transform county governance.
Sadhwani published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on May 30 launching the beginning of the Measure G Taskforce, which she will serve on.
Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, gave the presentation “My Hidden Childhood in WWII Occupied France” in Seaver Auditorium on May 3 for Alumni Weekend.
Shahriar Shahriari, William Polk Russell Professor of Mathematics, published a paper (coauthored with Gabriel Currier ’16), “3-cluster-free families of subspaces,” in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.
On May 3, Shahriari gave an invited talk, “EKR-type problems for Vector Spaces and Graphs,” at the American Mathematical Society’s Western Sectional Meeting at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Shahriari was selected as an associate editor for The American Mathematical Monthly, the flagship journal of the Mathematical Association of America.
Anthony Shay, professor of dance, wrote an article, “Dancing the Other: The Aman Folk Ensemble and Avaz International Dance Theatre,” in Dance Research, Summer 2025.
Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published three opinion pieces: “Yes, Large Language Models May Soon be Smarter than Humans” (MindMatters, May 9); “What is AI really giving back to tech investors? Here’s the hard truth” (MarketWatch, May 14); and “LLMs are bad at good things, good at bad things” (MindMatters, May 28).
Smith signed a contract with Elsevier for the third edition of his popular textbook Essential Statistics, Regression, and Econometrics.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, was quoted in The New York Times article “25 questions to bring you closer to your mom” for Mother’s Day.
Stern served as a moderator and planning committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) workshop “Unraveling the neurobiology of empathy and compassion: Implications for treatments for brain disorders and human well-being.”
Stern gave a research talk, “Depressive symptoms across three generations: The role of father mental health and marital satisfaction,” at the Society for Research in Child Development biennial conference in Minneapolis.
Stern’s forthcoming book Beyond difficult: An attachment-based guide to dealing with challenging people is available for pre-order.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, and Cecilia Wade ’25 gave a presentation titled “AI in Second Language Learning: A Review” at the 2025 Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) conference May 9. He was also invited to join a panel discussion at the AI 2030 reception, along with three other panelists including the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). On May 22, he delivered an invited talk titled “AI Empowerment for Chinese Schools: From Vision to Action” for the Chinese School Association in the United States. On May 30, he gave a presentation titled “Training AI for Pragmatics Assessment: A Preliminary Study on Chinese Routines” at the 2025 Conference of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO). Luduan.ai, the AI-powered adaptive learning platform he co-founded, won first place in the LaunchPad startup competition at CALICO. Established in 1983, CALICO is a leading international research organization dedicated to the field of computer-assisted language learning.
On May 10, Xiao was selected as co-chair of the 2026 CLTA conference and appointed as one of five members of the CLTA executive committee.
Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, delivered the keynote address at this year’s Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony in Lyman Hall on May 16. His presentation was titled “Fear, Passion and Fiction on a Kauai Farm.”