April 2025
Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, co-authored three poster presentations at the 2025 Rocky Mountain Psychological Association annual meeting, which was held April 10-12. Primary authors were five students who are research assistants in Abrams’s PRIME (Psycholinguistic Research in Memory) laboratory, four of whom presented the posters: Wendy Zhang ’26 and Emma Constable ’26: “I TOTally Know That Face: Shared First Names Influence Name Retrieval” and Maria-Elisabeth Lootus ’25, Kalyani Nair ’27 and Alexa Tapia-Plazola ’26: “Moron-Factory or Moral-Factory? How Taboo Words Affect Memory for Novel Compounds.” Abrams’s other poster was titled “That Sh** is Yellow! Humor Reduces Taboo Stroop Interference” in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Abrams received a Language & Linguistics Grant from Gorilla, a software company that provides a platform for creating online experiments (five grants were awarded from over 140 applications). The grant gives a one-year research standard subscription along with $300 to support the proposed research project, which will be conducted this summer in conjunction with a SURP awarded to Alexa Tapia-Plazola ’26.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, programmed and led a workshop handling 15th-century music theory and rhetoric in works by Guillaume Dufay for the Orange County Recorder Society, held April 11 in Orange, California.
On April 18 at St. Augustine-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church (Santa Monica, California), Bandy organized, played tenor viol with and led Artifex Consort in a Good Friday service presenting two major 17th-century German Passion works with which his written scholarship engages: Die sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz (SWV 478) of Heinrich Schütz and the cantata Ad Cor from Membra Jesu nostri (BuxWV 75) of Dieterich Buxtehude.
Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, gave talks on literary translation at several venues in China: Guangxi Foreign Languages University in Nanning on April 8, China West Normal University in Nanchong on April 10, Wuyi University in Wuyishan on April 23 and the Timeless World bookshop in Fuzhou on April 26.
Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, was awarded a working group through the NSF ESIIL synthesis center based at CU-Boulder. Chang’s working group (EnviroLLM Guidelines) will focus on developing tools and best practices for using large language models in environmental evidence synthesis and policy analysis.
Julia Schwartz ’25 presented the poster “Global analysis of biodiversity co-benefits across natural climate solutions pathways,” which stemmed from her work with Chang, at the Southern California Academy of Sciences annual meeting at UC Irvine on April 25.
David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, published the article “Remaking a monument: The troubled meaning of fascist remains in contemporary Spain” in History and Anthropology.
Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, presented her paper “Complaining as Citizenship? Race, gender, nationality, and claim-making in Dublin and Belfast” at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Seattle. At the same conference, she participated in a Q&A for a separate panel on the far-right that included a paper co-authored with three Pomona students (Elias Diwan ’25, Bianca McNeely ’25 and Grace Zheng ’26) titled “Down with this sort of thing? The limits of far-right populism in Irish local elections.” On April 28, Dobbs and her co-author Peggy Levitt gave an invited lecture on global migration and labor titled “Transnational Social Protection: Labor Rights and Changing Social Welfare in a World on the Move” at the University Duisburg-Essen (via Zoom).
Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romance languages and literatures, presented a talk dedicated to the color yellow in French art, literature, fashion, decoration and culture April 30, as part of the interdisciplinary workshop on colors “Chromatismes: perspectives interdisciplinaires” organized by the ENS Paris-Saclay.
Joanna L. Dyl, visiting assistant professor of environmental analysis, was interviewed for a KPFA 94.1 (San Francisco) news story on the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
Josh Eisenberg, dean of campus life, joined the College Admissions Decoded podcast as a panelist to discuss “Setting Your College-Bound Student Up for Success in 2025.” The podcast was hosted by Eddie Pickett, senior associate dean of admissions and recruitment, and is produced by the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a talk titled “Prime Time Math: Little Green Men, Locust Hordes, and Cybersecurity” at the California Mathematics Council Community Colleges (CMC3) Spring Speaker Series on April 14.
Garcia published a paper titled “Moments of Gaussian periods and modified Fermat curves” (with Brian Lorenz ’19 and George Todd) in The Ramanujan Journal, Volume 67.
Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, and a colleague at Research Triangle Institute (RTI) presented a talk about the design of a national survey on research development at diversified research institutions April 29 at the annual meeting of National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP). This collaborative project is funded by NSF grants to Pomona (with RTI) and UMass Dartmouth. Gerstein and colleagues from Bryn Mawr College, Seattle University, UMass Dartmouth and University of Southern Indiana also received one of this year’s NORDP Innovation Awards for building and deploying a Grants Development Ecosystem Inventory (GDEI) funded by an NSF conference grant to Bryn Mawr.
Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics, hosted 50 sixth through eighth graders at Pomona College on April 19. This was the second time in three years that Goins coordinated the event which brought together the Los Angeles-based Bridge Builders Foundation and the Long Beach based Hesabu Circle for the Dr. Ernest E. Just Saturday Science Academy, a day where students explore physical, earth and life sciences while gaining exposure to STEM careers and academic paths through culturally relevant field trips. Travis Brown, director of the Institute for Inclusive Excellence, and Eric A. Hurley, professor of psychological science and Africana studies, intercollegiate department chair of Africana studies, both gave presentations, and several students from the Black Student Union helped run mathematics activities for the largely African American group of students.
Goins participated in a screening of the documentary Journeys of Black Mathematicians at San Bernardino Valley College on April 21. He gave a keynote address to kick off the event, then participated in a panel discussion following the screening. The event was held at the KVCR studios located on the SBVC campus.
Ernesto R. Gutiérrez Topete ’17, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in linguistics and cognitive science, presented his research project titled “Place Difference Index (PDI): Measuring phonetic categorical differences” at the 11th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech (New Sounds 2025) hosted by the University of Toronto in Canada. Additionally, Gutiérrez Topete and colleague Yevgeniy Melguy from the University of Chicago co-authored and presented a research project titled “Effect of L2 accent and cognate status on bilingual word recognition and discrimination” at New Sounds 2025.
Beth A. Hubbard, assistant director of the Pomona Plan, attended the Charitable Estate Planning Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, from April 28 to May 1 and earned the Fellow in Charitable Estate Planning (FCEP) designation.
Eric A. Hurley, professor of psychological science and Africana studies, Intercollegiate department chair of Africana Studies, and members of his research lab (the Shop) gave a talk in a presidential session of the American Educational Research Associate annual meeting in Denver. The talk was titled “Diasporic Applications and Extensions of A. Wade Boykin’s Triple Quandary: Theory, Research & Some Cautions.” Hurley also spoke at a Bridge Builders Foundation event on campus that hosted sixth to eighth grade students and parents from Los Angeles. The event was organized on campus by Edray Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics. Hurley’s remarks were titled “Africana Studies as Black Psychology, and in other Sciences.”
Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, together with Kamden Baer ’23 and Oscar Scholin ’24, published an article, “Computo, Ergo Sum: Teaching and Learning Mathematics in the Age of ChatGPT,” in Mathematics and Education in an AI Era: Cognitive Science, Technological, and Semiotic Perspectives.
Nina J. Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, and Wallace Meyer, associate professor of biology and director of the Bernard Field Station, participated in the Southern California Academy of Sciences annual meeting at UC Irvine on April 25 along with 15 students. Karnovsky chaired a session on marine science. Two students in Karnovsky’s lab gave talks on their senior thesis research. Zora Beaty ’25 presented “Visual health assessment of Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops erebennus) in Albemarle Sound, North Carolina.” Eli Taub ’25 presented his senior thesis “Abundance-based systematic conservation planning of North American birds using macroecological principles.” Jack Stein ’26 presented a poster on the research he and Karnovsky are conducting on the impact of invasive species on native dragonfly species, “Impacts of largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) and American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) on Southern California odonate populations at the Bernard Field Station.” Brooke Bailey ’27 and Pildo Moon ’28, along with Liliana Costello-Wiginton from Pitzer College, presented a poster on the research they have been carrying out in Karnovsky’s lab in collaboration with biologists from Pacific Rim Conservation on the characteristics of the plastic pollution that albatross in Hawaii ingest, “A problem with the Pacific: Color analysis of plastic consumed by Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabillis).” Mark Price ’28 and Lily Galvan presented a poster on the research they have been conducting with Karnovsky and Meyer on the long-term changes in the birds that utilize the Bernard Field Station, “Changes in bird assemblages: a multi-decadal assessment of changes in an isolated sage scrub fragment.”
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, gave a talk titled “Student-Centered Innovations in Chinese Language Teaching” at the Bridge 2025 Conference: International Chinese Education Symposium & First Expo of Specialized Chinese Programs and Study Abroad Projects, hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara. She shared innovative pedagogical insights into how Pomona College's Chinese program has maintained healthy enrollment despite nationwide declines in foreign language studies in higher education in recent years.
Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, had his paper “Articulating the Threats of Foreknowledge and Determinism: Moving Beyond Modality” accepted for publication in the journal Erkenntnis.
Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, was named a 2025 Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation.
Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, facilitated a workshop for Encounter Playback Theatre Company in Hong Kong titled “Imaginary Bodies: Using Chekhov Technique in Playback Theatre” on April 5. She co-facilitated a workshop with Michael Cheng titled “Echoes of Identity: Exploring Privilege and Bias in Playback Theatre” at the Asian Playback Theatre Gathering in Tagaytay, Philippines, on April 10.
Denise Machin, director of the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company and assistant director of the Smith Campus Center, performed as the featured show couple at the Catalina Conservancy Ball on April 26, presenting a foxtrot in support of the Conservancy’s efforts to raise awareness for the endangered Catalina Island fox. The performance took place at the 42nd Annual Catalina Conservancy Ball hosted by the Catalina Island Conservancy.
Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, had an article, “Hells Angels in the White House: Trumpism and the Politics of Total Retaliation,” published in The Journal of Illiberalism Studies. In addition, McWilliams’s review of an article by Sean Beienburg ’08, Prohibition, the Constitution, and States’ Rights, appeared as part of the “Law and Constitution Roundtable” in the Federal History Journal.
On April 26, McWilliams spoke on “Civic Partisanship” as part of the Ohio Civic Centers Symposium at The Ohio State University’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. Earlier in the month, she was a featured speaker at an event titled “The Impact of Leo Strauss” at Claremont McKenna College.
Wallace Meyer, associate professor of biology and director of the Bernard Field Station, had several students present the research they have been carrying out in his lab at the Southern California Academy of Sciences annual meeting at UC Irvine. Oscar Roering ’25 presented a poster on his senior thesis research, “Assessing differences in water use efficiency across 11 species of street oaks in Claremont, CA.” Belinda Diaz ’28 and Carmen Velasquez ’28 presented research they carried out with Meyer and Jon Moore, laboratory coordinator and associate professor of biology, in a poster titled, “Decline of native milkweed populations (Asclepias eriocarpa) in an isolated California sage scrub fragment: conservation implications.” In addition, Meyer was co-author on the poster “Role of affluence on soil ecosystem services in urban street buffer strips,” presented by Dani Gaspar, an undergraduate from Cal State San Marcos, and the poster “Integrative taxonomy of native California Channel Island cactus snails (Xerarionta)” along with S. Crowell and J. Vendetti from the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, presented a paper on the Cameroonian author Léonora Miano titled “Politique du faire corps avec la terre dans Rouge Impératrice" at the 5th Global Africas: Afrotopias Conference, hosted by the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University on April 10 and 11.
Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, co-authored a peer-reviewed article titled “Understanding Temporality of Reflection in Personal Informatics through Baby Tracking” at the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of human-computer interaction, with Julianne Louie ’26, Tara Mukund ’26, Chau Vu ’26 and collaborator Daniel Epstein from UC Irvine. Vu presented the work in Yokohama, Japan, on April 29. The paper received an honorable mention award reserved for the top 5% of submitted papers.
William Peterson, emeritus professor of music and College organist, presented an organ demonstration in Joti Rockwell’s music theory class April 7. The presentation included an introduction to the Hill Memorial Organ, and he explored both brilliance of sound and breadth of sound using different combinations of stops on the three keyboards and the pedalboard. He played J.S. Bach’s Fugue in C Major (BWV 545) before inviting the students to come up to the organ case.
Frances Pohl, professor emerita of art history, published two book reviews. The first was of Zachary L. Brodt’s From the Steel City to the White City: Western Pennsylvania and the World’s Columbian Exposition (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023), published in the March 2025 issue of The Journal of American History. The second, of Jordana Moore Saggese’s Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation (Duke University Press, 2024), appeared April 16 in the online art history journal caareviews.
Carolyn Ratteray, associate professor of theatre, directed The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at Antaeus Theatre Company this spring. The show runs through June 2.
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, visiting assistant professor in gender and women’s studies, had their book Afterlives of Discovery: Speculative Geographies in the Settler Colonial Imaginary released by Duke University Press.
rhodes participated in the Movement+Crip Haptics Mini-Lab in Los Angeles with choreographer Vanessa Cruz and media artist Selwa Sweidan.
Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German and Russian, co-organized, co-hosted and presented in the Scent Forum on April 25. Pomona College’s first-ever Scentevent, a Gesamtkunstwerk of sorts with audience participation, drew a sizable crowd to the Benton Museum.
Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English, was awarded the 2025 Halifax Prize from American Short Fiction for her story “The Skilled Anatomist.”
Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics, was appointed by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to serve on the Governance Reform Task Force, which is tasked with developing the implementation plan for Measure G, which was approved by voters in 2024 and will transform county governance.
Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, presented “My Hidden Childhood in WWII Occupied France and Several Women in the Resistance Whom I Interviewed” for Claremont Heritage at Memorial Park in Claremont and at Pasadena City College. She was interviewed by both Claremont Courier and The Student Life.
Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, published an 8,000-word article on Music of the Sikhs in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Volume 2.
Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published four opinion pieces: “Another stock market crash? Don’t just do something—sit there” (MarketWatch, April 8); “Machine Learning Algos Often Fail: They Focus on Date, Ignore Theory” (MindMatters, April 8); “Large Language Models: A Lack-of-Progress Report” (MindMatters, April 14); and “LLMs Still Cannot be Trusted for Financial Advice,” coauthored with Valentina Liberman ’25 and Isaac Warshaw ’25 (MindMatters, April 21).
Smith had a Sagecast interview with Mikey Dickerson ’01 (April 23) and was interviewed by the Polish news network TVN24 (April 8).
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, published a paper, “Heroes, villains, and everything in between: Children’s assessment of morally ambiguous characters,” in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, joined the higher education advisory board of Cheng & Tsui Publishing, the leading Asian language publisher in the U.S., and published an invited blog article titled “Effective Use of AI in Chinese Teaching” on April 3. On April 26, he joined the AI task force at the Chinese Language Teachers Association USA.
On April 12, Xiao delivered the keynote talk titled “Applications Are All We Need” at the 2025 Chicago Language Symposium, which was co-sponsored by DePaul University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and University of Illinois Chicago. On April 14, he gave an invited webinar titled “Training AI for Pragmatics Assessment” alongside a senior language engineer at Amazon, presented to graduate students at Northern Arizona University.
Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, delivered “The ‘Japanese Turn’ in the Art, Architecture and Cuisine of Europe and the United States, 1860-2020” at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County on April 4. He also presented a lecture titled “Vendettas and the Tokugawa Order” at the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California, on April 26.