March 2026
Yuki Arita, associate professor of Japanese, published an article titled “Multiple saying of Japanese negation token iya iya iya as a compliment response” in Journal of Pragmatics. She also presented the paper at the American Association for Applied Linguistics.
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies (GWS), was featured in the latest issue of Catalyst: feminism, theory, technoscience as part of a scholarly roundtable addressing “What’s Racial About Matter?” alongside Mel Y. Chen (University of California, Berkeley), Michelle N. Huang (Northwestern University) and Rachel C. Lee (UCLA). This special issue on Racial Matters of Asian/America was co-edited by two of Bahng’s mentees, Keva X. Bui (Northwestern) and Natalia Duong (UC Davis), both of whom formerly taught at Pomona GWS as visiting instructors.
Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, gave the 2026 Jeannette Brown Lectureship at the University of Minnesota. Ball shared his research group’s work and his personal journey. The lectureship honors the legacy of Jeannette Brown, the first Black chemistry graduate student at UMN, highlighting outstanding academic and industrial contributions to the chemical sciences.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, is featured as a viola da gamba soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to all episodes of Season 8 of the STARZ historical drama Outlander, which premiered March 6 on streaming platforms worldwide. On March 27 in Pomona College’s Bridges Hall of Music, Bandy programmed, supplied program notes, made several new editions and arrangements, and played bass viol with his ensemble Artifex Consort in a performance of rarely-heard 17th-century works for viols by Benjamin Hely, Johann Michael Nicolai, Johannes Schenck, Christopher Simpson and others. The performance featured fellow viol players Eva Lymenstull (University of Michigan) and Rebecca Landell (Oberlin Conservatory), baroque harpist Maxine Eilander (USC, The Juilliard School), harpsichordist Ian Pritchard (The Colburn School) and lutenist, baroque guitarist, opera director and 2026 GRAMMY®-winner Stephen Stubbs.
Colin J. Beck, professor of sociology, co-authored an article, “All the Terrorism Fit to Print: A New Dataset on Media Coverage of Militant Groups,” in Critical Studies on Terrorism that publicly releases a dataset of five decades of English-language news coverage on terrorist groups across the world. The dataset is available for download at Harvard Dataverse.
Graydon Beeks, professor emeritus of music, conducted the Commencement Brass, assembled by trumpeter John Aranda, lecturer in music, and guest organist Juhee Willow Lee in a concert of music for brass and organ in Bridges Hall of Music on March 8. The ensemble included trombonist Phil Keen, lecturer in music, and tuba and euphonium player Stephen Klein, lecturer in music, and the program featured the world premiere of Semiquicentennial Spangles for brass ensemble and organ by composer Tom Flaherty, professor emeritus of music.
Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, published a book chapter, “Fragmento, pensamiento, silencio: (re)visiones del lenguaje en la poesía española del siglo XXI,” in Nuevas miradas a la poesía española del siglo XXI, edited by Sergio Navarro, Maria Maffei and Marina Bianchi.
Cahill presented a paper, “‘Una sólida trayectoria’: (In)visible Hierarchy in the Circulation of 21st Century Spanish Poetry,” at the 57th Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from March 5-8.
Gary Champi, assistant professor of dance, performed an excerpt of Merce Cunningham’s Interscape (2000) with dance partner Eleanor Hullihan to original music by John King as part of Pasadena Art Night on March 13.
Champi was invited to teach a masterclass in commercial dance at the University of Washington, Seattle, on March 31.
Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romances languages and literatures, and Andrew Wilson, director, research computing and digital scholarship and lecturer in computer science and French, co-presented “From Madeleine to Machine Learning: AI Tools in the French Literature Classroom” on March 18, as part of the Honnold Mudd March Library Town Hall Meeting. Along with Mark Allen, professor of art, and Dustin Stokes, she participated in the “Art in the Age of AI” discussion organized by the 5C Artists’ Coalition and the Pomona Student Union on March 25. During the Hahn Grant Showcase in the Frank Blue Room on March 30, she talked about French 184, her spring 2026 class on Proust and AI supported by a Hahn Grant and co-taught with Wilson.
Roberto A. Garza-López, professor of chemistry, and his undergraduate research group presented several accepted works at the ACS Conference in Atlanta. These contributions featured an oral presentation by Liam Kwak ’26 on “The mechanistic insights of µ-opioid receptor allosteric modulation” and three poster presentations: “An in silico characterization of T. thermophilus Polysulfide reductase” by Ian Tam ’27 and Andrew Chung ’28; “An investigation of inhibitors for resistant P. Falciparum” by Noah Baoerjin ’29; and “A study on novel treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy” by Benjamin Roh ’29 and Andrew Zheng ’29.
Two of Garza’s students secured prestigious summer research placements for 2026. Tam was accepted into the NSF-funded Catalyzing Careers in Chemistry REU at Emory University, where he will work under the mentorship of Fang Liu. Chung was accepted into the Gateways to the Laboratory Program at Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering, where he will work under the mentorship of Gretchen Diehl ’94. This premier track for aspiring physician-scientists provides a stipend, clinical shadowing opportunities and the opportunity to present at the Leadership Alliance National Symposium (LANS).
Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, senior director of international and domestic programs, presented “The Case for Doubling Down on Language Learning in Study Abroad” with Mark S. Lenhart (president, CET Academic Programs), Hang Du (Middlebury College) and Allegra O’Donoghue (director, Europe and Middle East Programs, CET Academic Programs) on March 12 at the Forum on Education Abroad Annual Conference in Nashville.
Nina J. Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, presented the talk “Engaging Undergraduates in Seabird Conservation in a Study Away Course” at the 2026 Pacific Seabird Group Annual Meeting. This talk described the faculty-led study away course that she and Marty Meyer, associate professor of biology, taught in spring 2025, Conservation of Biodiversity in a Changing World. In addition, Karnovsky and Brooke Bailey ’27 were co-authors on a poster presented by Shiori Terretta PZ ’28 and Liliana Costello-Wiginton PZ ’27, “Plastic Ingestion in translocated Black Footed Albatross chicks.”
Benjamin Keim, associate professor of classics, delivered a paper titled “The Political Economies of Honor in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus” on March 27 at the International Xenophon Society’s conference on Xenophon’s Oeconomicus at the Universidad San Sebastián in Santiago, Chile.
Tom Le, associate professor of politics, released three episodes of Prof Talk with Nicholas Ball, professor of chemistry. Episodes covered mentorship, conferences and events at Pomona College.
Le’s co-authored articles, “Understanding Global Responses to Terrorism: What Drives Opinions on Terror” and “Demographic Decline as Idiom of Distress: Rethinking Gender (In)Equality in Japan,” were published by Social Science Quarterly and Japan Forum.
Le gave a talk titled “Democratic Challenges at the Local Level” at the Wright Symposium at Texas Christian University. He also gave a lecture titled “Japan’s Politics and Military Ecosystem” for Pacific Air Forces GOPAC program to help onboard incoming military officers to the Asia theatre. Additionally, he served as a moderator on a panel about coral conservation following Chad Cannon’s Music for the Ocean concert at Lyman Hall.
Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, performed as a member of the Redfish Piano Trio in four concerts along the southern Oregon coast, bringing classical chamber music to underserved communities. With violinist Fritz Gearhart and cellist Andrew Smith, Lee presented trios by Mélanie Bonis, Frank Martin and Robert Schumann. As part of the Redfish Music Festival winter season, they appeared in Port Orford, North Bend, Brookings and Bandon.
Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, presented “A bias against the present: Recurring sociotechnical oversights in HCI’s cyclical visions of the future” at the Undone Computer Science conference in Luxembourg. Li also gave a talk about their research on artistic support tools at Inria (The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) in Paris.
Scott Lisbin, Return-to-Pomona Scholar, had one of his books, Principles of Healthcare Financial Management, recognized by The Medical Practice as one of the “14 best medical leadership books in 2026,” ranking third on the list.
Sergio Maldonado, visiting assistant professor of history and Chicana/o Latina/o studies, presented his research paper, “Lessons in Ruin: The Veracruz Earthquake of 1973, Floods, and Disaster Politics,” at the Spring History Colloquia. Maldonado also presented his paper at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies in Las Vegas on March 26.
Maga Miranda, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, gave a talk at Georgia Tech in the School of Literature, Media and Communication titled “Scrolling on #ChambaTok: Latinx Workers and the Politics of Visibility.” She delivered the keynote address at Circuit Breakers, the annual symposium for the Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program at North Carolina State University. Her talk was titled “Who Gets to be Disruptive? Who Gets to be Modern? On Innovation and the Struggle Over Technological Belonging.” They also delivered a talk “On Scrolling, Memory Work, and Archiving Latinx Digital Cultural Heritage” at Cal State Fullerton for the Coming of Age Soul Research Retreat, a project of the Mellon-funded Latinx Lab for Storytelling and Social Justice.
Miranda is serving on the review committee of the Association of Internet Researchers 2026 annual meeting.
Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, participated in the panel “Sonic Identities: Contemporary French Queer & Black Soundtracks and Soundscapes” at the 43rd Annual 20th and 21st Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium, held at University of Notre-Dame. He presented his paper titled “Résonances queer et musulmanes : la bande-son de La petite dernière comme espace de l’entre-deux” March 27.
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, visiting assistant professor of gender & women’s studies, was named as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards for LGBTQ+ Poetry for their second full-length poetry collection, Wayward Creatures (2025).
Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics, chaired the subcommittee of the Governance Reform Taskforce that developed and advanced recommendations establishing Los Angeles County’s first independent Ethics Commission, including a 2026 interim body and proposed charter language for the ballot. Sadhwani also gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative along with leading scholars on the impact of redistricting on the 2026 midterm elections.
Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, was awarded the Eileen Southern Fellowship by the Society for American Music, for archival research on sound recordings of African American and maritime music at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.
Anthony Shay, professor emeritus of dance, edited and contributed to a new collected volume, Middle Eastern Dance: Histories, Theories, Performances (Palgrave Macmillan). The volume was a result of the first MENACA (Middle East, North African, Central Asia) conference held at Pomona College in 2023.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored a paper, “Adolescent empathy predicts reduced neural responses to social rejection in adulthood,” published in Development and Psychopathology.
Stern was interviewed by The Telegraph to comment on a recent study linking relationship stress to faster biological aging.
David M. Tanenbaum, Osler-Loucks Professor in Science, professor of physics, co-authored the research poster “Probing Photodegradated Surfaces of OPV Active Layers using Photothermal AFM-IR Mearsurements” at the MATSUS Conference held in Barcelona, Spain, on March 26. Tanenbaum also served as a judge for the poster session at the conference.
Andrew Wilson, director of research computing, co-authored a paper titled “A New Method for Studying Ancient Cities: Mapping and Estimating Labor and Production with OIKoS” in Urban Science. The paper presents OIKoS, a parametric method for analyzing construction labor at city scale, applied to the ancient Greek city of Olynthos.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, delivered the keynote talk titled “PedAIgogy: Progress and Preauction” for the 2026 CLTAC conference hosted by Stanford University on March 8. He also gave a presentation titled “Model Training for Pragmatics Assessment: The Case of Chinese Formulaic Expressions” for a GenAI colloquium at the 2026 American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference on March 21.
Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, gave two lectures about her new scholarly book, Creative Belonging: The Qiang and Multiethnic Imagination in Modern China. She was invited by Duke University’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute to give a talk, and she also engaged with Duke’s undergraduate and graduate students in special workshops on creativity, identity and minority discourses. Additionally, she gave a book talk at the invitation of the MIT Club of Southern California for the MIT SoCal Author Series.
A roundtable devoted to Zhang’s interdisciplinary book appeared in the annual Association for Asian Studies Conference held in Vancouver, Canada, which is the largest professional organization of Asian studies in the world.