September 2026
Jack Abecassis, Edwin Sexton & Edna Patrick Smith Modern European Languages Professor and professor of Romance languages and literatures, published “Montaigne entre ‘croire à’ et ‘croire en’ — Penser L’Apologie de Raimond Sebond avec Jean Pouillon” in L’Apologie de Raimond Sebond, edited by Desan, Ferrari, Gontier, Perona and published by Classiques Garnier.
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, published a research article, “Coral Refugee Refusals in the Shadow of Climate Resilience Finance,” in the peer-reviewed journal Amerasia in a special issue on “Between Refuge and Refuse: New Mediums/Methods for Theorizing Refuge(e) Environments,” edited by Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi ’13, Emily Hue and Heidi Amin-Hong.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, presented the talk “Remembering Your Wounds: Sensing Jesus’s Body in Membra Jesu nostri (1680)” as invited speaker on the Duke Musicology Lecture Series at the Department of Music at Duke University, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences (Durham, North Carolina) on September 25.
On September 11 in Lyman Hall, Bandy performed as a viola da gamba soloist with Pomona’s own Cornucopia Baroque Ensemble on the Friday Noon Concert Series.
On September 9, with the support of a grant from the Faculty Fund for Collaboration and Innovation, Bandy and Jordan Kirk, associate professor of English, launched a Working Group on the Source of the Liberal Arts, which will engage faculty colleagues of all ranks and appointments in monthly conversation (through May 2027) about The Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella.
Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, gave talks on issues in literary translation at Xi'an Fanyi University and Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an, China, and at Shaanxi University of Technology in Hanzhong, China.
Graydon Beeks, professor emeritus of music and harpsichordist, joined his Cornucopia Baroque Ensemble colleagues violinist Alfred Cramer, professor of music; viola da gambist Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor music; theorbist Jason Yoshida, lecturer in music; flutist Sherrill Herring, general manager, music facilities & Bridges Hall of Music; and guest oboe and recorder player Aki Nishiguchi, viola da gambist Eva Lymenstull and cellist Dane Little in a Friday Noon Concert of music by Telemann on September 11 in Lyman Hall.
Mietek Boduszyński, professor of politics and international relations, appeared on a Los Angeles World Affairs Council panel titled “Iranian Drones Evolved: How Western Sanctions Created a Drone Superpower.”
In Just Security and Foreign Policy, Boduszyński published two op-eds responding to the Trump administration’s coercive diplomacy against U.S. allies and the rule-based order: “The Road to Dismantling the ICC Runs Through Tokyo” and “How U.S. Allies Can Resist Washington’s Bullying.”
Robin Brooks, visiting fellow in global policy and governance, was quoted in the September 25 Wall Street Journal article on “The Mystery Man Shadowing Kimberly Guilfoyle as She Pushes Deals Across Europe.” In the article, Brooks explains why the inclusion of corporate lobbyists in official diplomatic meetings is problematic. Brooks also was interviewed for a BBC-Serbia Service article titled “A Small Signal from Washington, or Something More?" about a bill in the U.S. Congress that would require sanctions on individuals responsible for repressing peaceful protesters demanding anti-corruption reforms in Serbia.
From September 5–7, Brooks participated in the LSE IDEAS! Forum/Ratiu Foundation Dialogues on Democracy in Turda, Romania, delivering a keynote address on the future of democracy and speaking on a panel about “European security in Challenging Times.”
Paul Bump, assistant professor of biology, published the paper “Distinct cell states define larval and adult body plans in a hemichordate” in the journal Nature Communications. The study of a marine worm’s metamorphosis found surprising signs that the original larval cells don’t just die or assume the same role in the adult organism; most of them undergo a genetic overhaul.
Gary Champi, assistant professor of dance, was invited to lead a three-day workshop on commercial dance at Bainbridge Dance Center in Seattle on September 14, 21 and 28.
Karla Cordova, assistant professor of economics, presented “The Intergenerational Relevance of Latinos in the Inland Empire Economy” alongside Fernando Lozano, Morris B. and Gladys S. Pendleton Professor of Economics, at the Inland Empire Latino Economic & Policy Summit 2026, hosted by the Inland Empire Economic Partnership at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California.
Jordan Daniels, assistant professor of environmental analysis, published the essay “On the Domination of Nature” in a special issue of The Montréal Review dedicated to critical theory. The issue grew out of a symposium on Martin Shuster’s recent book, Critical Theory: The Basics, held at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy’s annual meeting in September 2025.
Kevin Dettmar, W.M. Keck Professor of English, published Punk in 50 Pieces: Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave, and the Five Years That Changed Pop Music Forever (HarperCollins).
David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, gave a talk titled “From Plague to PrEP: Gay Gen X and the Meaning of Midlife” at the Lavender Languages & Linguistics conference, held at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from September 2–4.
Susanne Mahoney Filback, associate director of preprofessional programs and prelaw advisor, was named among the 50 best prelaw advisors in the United States by Juris Education. Her selection was based on a rigorous evaluation combining student sentiment, pre-law experience and knowledge, and performance data by the Law School Admission Council. The ranking also highlights her leadership on national prelaw advising boards, including PLANC (Pre-Law Advisors National Council) and PCAPLA (Pacific Coast Association of Pre-Law Advisors).
Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and professor of mathematics, and Theo Chinn ’26, Junshu Feng ’26 and Peiting Jiang ’27 published the article “Numerical semigroups from rational matrices IV: computation of the matricial dimensions of numerical semigroups with small Frobenius number or genus” in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society. Garcia also published a paper titled “Explicit conditional bounds for the residue of a Dedekind zeta-function at s = 1” (with Loïc Grenié, Ethan Simpson Lee and Giuseppe Molteni) in the Journal of Number Theory.
Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, participated in a workshop, “Reenvisioning the Future of STEM Research at Emerging Research Institutions: A Summit,” at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C., from September 1–2.
A research team Gerstein leads published the SUNDRI Data Visualizer, a portal of interactive access to selected data from their NSF-supported national study of academic research development and administration.
Nina Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, attended the 4th World Seabird Conference in Hobart, Tasmania, from September 7–11. She presented the results of her study on the impact of a field trip she carried out in her upper division course, Advanced Animal Ecology, on the lives of students after they have graduated in the poster “Sowing Seeds of Futures in Seabird Conservation Through Participation in Habitat Restoration Work on Anacapa Island, Channel Islands National Park, California.” Also in attendance were three former students of Karnovsky: Jacob Ligorria ’23, Clare Flynn ’19 and Kay Garlick Ott ’18. Flynn gave an oral presentation on her Ph.D. research while at Stonybrook University, “Three decades of pan-Antarctic satellite imagery connects colony shape complexity and population trends of Adélie penguins.” Garlick-Ott, a graduate student at UC Davis, presented the poster “The Common Tern aggression landscape.” In addition, Karnovsky chaired the session “Diet and Trophic Ecology of Seabirds.”
Benjamin Keim, associate professor of classics, delivered a paper titled “The Economies of Honor in Xenophon’s Athens” on September 18 at the International Xenophon Society’s conference on Xenophon & Economy at the Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City.
Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, published her book, Feminist Subversion of Linguistic Sexism in Contemporary China: Discursive Warfare, with Routledge on September 22.
Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, performed as part of the Redfish Piano Trio in Las Vegas. The Redfish Trio presented a program of Mélanie Bonis, Mozart and Dvořak, as the opening concert of the UNLV Chamber Music Society season.
Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, published the article “From Calling Out to Calling In: Virginie Despentes’ Feminist Ethics in Podcasting” in the special issue “Virginie Despentes: an intersectional author(?)” of the journal CFC Intersections, and the article “La mélancolie du métis: troubles postcoloniaux et identitaires dans Comment sortir du monde de Marouane Bakhti” in the special issue “Politiser les enfances irrégulières: normes, imaginaires et agentivités des minorités LGBTIQ+ dans les mondes francophones (dix-neuvième–vingt-et-unième siècle)” of the journal CFC.
Sarah E. Noll, assistant professor of chemistry, was invited to give a seminar, “Insights into Chia Oil with Mass Spectrometry,” at the Department of Chemistry, Occidental College.
Edward (Eddie) Pickett III, assistant vice president and director of admissions, was interviewed by the live radio show Southern California Business Report, where he discussed tips and tools for parents and applicants considering college in the Inland Empire.
Nicolette Rohr, visiting assistant professor of history, attended the joint conference of the National Council on Public History and American Association for State and Local History, titled “The Work of Revolution,” in Providence, Rhode Island. Rohr participated in a working group titled “The Afterlives of Sacred Spaces,” which established a community of public historians to discuss work with congregations and faith communities in transition and facing closure and the preservation of congregational archives, buildings and histories.
Benjamin Rosenberg, visiting assistant professor of neuroscience, mentored two student-led posters presented at the Flux Congress in La Jolla, California. One poster was led by Matthew Chang ’27, titled “Differences in emotional working memory and task-related brain activation in adolescents with social anxiety disorder.” The other poster was co-led by Kate Todd ’28 and Benjamin Wolters CMC ’22, titled “Neural patterns of reward anticipation and receipt as predictors of emerging anxiety in adolescence: A multi-voxel pattern analysis.”
Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages, professor of German and Russian, published a chapter titled “Transformative Vision and Abiding Traditionalism: Gender in the Canon of Soviet Children’s Literature” in The Moving Canon(s) of Slavic Children’s Literature, edited by Mateusz Świetlicki, Dorota Michułka and Zofia Zasacka and published by John Benjamins Publishing.
Sara Sadhwani, associate professor of politics, gave a talk at Washington State University’s Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service titled “Climate justice among Latino and Asian American Voters” on September 24.
As chair pro tem of the Los Angeles County Governance Reform Taskforce, Sadhwani led the taskforce in the development of a ballot initiative creating the first ever Ethics Commission for the county. Measure E was approved by the Board of Supervisors and will appear on the ballot this fall.
Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of Romance languages and literatures, gave a presentation titled “Heroines 1940-1945. Courage, Strength, and Ingenuity” at Claremont Manor in Claremont on September 17.
John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics, participated in a roundtable “author-meets-critics” panel on his forthcoming book, American Incest: How White Supremacy Became White Lawlessness, at the American Political Science Association conference in Boston on September 5. He also presented a paper on Joan of Arc on the “Go Figure! Thinking with Figures as Political Critique and Imagination” panel September 4.
On September 26, Seery participated as an invited speaker at a conference at Amherst College titled, “Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved from Themselves?” The other participants were all professors from small liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Colby, Williams, Tufts, Rhodes, Haverford, Bowdoin, Wheaton, Smith and Hamilton). The Amherst president and the provost and dean of the faculty also attended.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, signed a contract with Guilford Press to edit the Handbook of Attachment (Fourth Edition), with co-editor Jeffry Simpson at University of Minnesota and consulting editors Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver. The Handbook has been the authoritative source for clinicians and researchers in the field of attachment since its first edition in 1999; in the fourth edition, the new editors hope to highlight the work of promising early-career scholars and researchers studying underrepresented populations.
Saida Heshmati (Claremont Graduate University), Stacey Doan (Claremont McKenna College) and Stern were awarded a BLAIS Challenge Grant for their collaborative research project, “Relational AI Use, Stress Physiology, and the College Transition: A Pilot Study of AI Substitution of Human Attachment.” The project will examine the potential consequences of AI chatbot use on college students’ stress physiology, social relationships and mental health.
Jody Valentine, assistant professor of classics, published an essay titled “What is a Classic? Experimenting with Engaged Scholarship,” which demonstrates how disciplinary critique and self-reflective analysis enable scholars to create change within the field of classical studies.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, gave a presentation titled “Supervised Fine-Tuning for Speech Act Assessment” at the 4th Conference on Artificial Intelligence Research in Applied Linguistics (AIRiAL), organized by Columbia University. At AIRiAL, he also gave two technology demonstrations: “Luduan.ai: A System Solution to AI-Enhanced Pedagogy” and “Bruhh.ai: An AI-Based System for College Advising,” the latter presented with Prince Bashangezi ’27. He was also selected by the Modern Language Association’s Task Force on World Languages and Generative AI to participate in the seminar “Leading World Language Programs in the Age of AI” at the 2027 MLA Convention in Los Angeles.
Xiao was selected as the guest editor for a special issue of Education Sciences titled “Beneficial AI for Education.”
Samuel Yamashita, professor emeritus of history, delivered a lecture titled “Old and New Hyperlocal Cuisines Along the Pacific Rim” at two venues in the Los Angeles area: first, to the Mt. San Antonio Gardens community September 2 and then September 12 to the Culinary Historians of Southern California at the Los Angeles Public Library.
Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, received a positive review of her scholarly book, Creative Belonging: The Qiang and Multiethnic Imagination in Modern China, from Choice, the premier review platform for academic books for the American Library Association.
Michael Zlatin, assistant professor of computer science, published the article “Approximation Algorithms for Matroid-Intersection Coloring with Applications to Rota’s Basis Conjecture” in Foundations of Computer Science. The paper is a joint work with Stephen Arndt, Benjamin Moseley, Kirk Pruhs and Chaitanya Swamy.