Archived Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Jack Abecassis, Edwin Sexton & Edna Patrick Smith Modern European Languages Professor, contributed a book chapter, “In Defense of the Evil Brother: An Interpretation of the Hesiod’s Works and Days” in Myths of the Golden Age in European Culture, edited by Stephen Nichols & Claudia Olk (Routelage, New York).

Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, presented a talk titled “Don’t Believe Your Eyes: Debunking Myths about Perception and Memory in Older Adulthood” as part of the Speakers’ Corner series at Mt. San Antonio Gardens in Claremont, California.

Tricia Avant, academic coordinator and gallery manager of art, had her work included in an exhibition at the Rio Hondo College Art Gallery in Whittier, California. The exhibition, titled Sticks and Stones: Materiality and Meaning in Contemporary Art, was curated by artist and educator Martin Durazo. On March 18, Avant and three other artists in the exhibition spoke about their works to an audience of students, faculty and guests. A catalog of the exhibition will be published later this year.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, performed solo viola da gamba works by Marin Marais on March 2 in Newport Beach, California, for the Corona del Mar Baroque Festival’s Winter Musicale, directed by Elizabeth Blumenstock. After a viola da gamba performance with Pomona’s own Cornucopia Baroque on March 7 in Lyman Hall, Bandy played violone with Bach Collegium San Diego in works by Jean-Féry Rebel and Ludwig van Beethoven on period instruments, with performances on March 15 and 16 in San Diego and Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California.

On March 21 at the Renaissance Society of America’s 71st annual meeting in Boston, Bandy presented the paper ​​“‘Ravished,’ ‘Soiled,’ and ‘Gushing’: Harmonizing Sweetness and Mutilation” in Membra Jesu nostri (1680) on a panel he organized, “Bloodbath: Sounding Bodily Fluids in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” which treated visceral rhetorical representation in 17th-century works by Aquilino Coppini and Buxtehude, as well as in musical, political and scientific discourse in early modern England. On March 23 at 92nd St. Y in New York City, Bandy played viola da gamba and G violone basso continuo in a complete performance of Heinrich Biber’s Rosary Sonatas (ca. 1680), organized by the music collective Wild Up, as the finale to their new-music festival Darkness Sounding (March 21–23). Then, on March 27, 28 and 29 in Palo Alto, California, San Francisco and Berkeley, California, Bandy played tenor viol in three performances of the program L’Amorosa Ero, the 2024–25 season finale of the early music ensemble Voices of Music, featuring soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah in 16th-century works for voices and viols by Marenzio, Ferrabosco the Elder, Dowland, Ward, Byrd, Coprario and others.

Mietek Boduszyński, associate professor of politics and international relations, co-authored a new textbook, Research Methods in Politics and International Relations, published by SAGE. The textbook is designed to be a practical guide for undergraduate students through the research process from start to finish.

Boduszyński participated in a panel on “post-populism in eastern Europe” at the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Boston. He also co-organized and moderated a one day-conference titled “Mitigating a Supply Chain Crisis” at the UCLA International Institute. The event was co-sponsored by the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles.

Boduszyński co-led a January term traveling seminar on diplomacy and human rights for 25 undergraduate and graduate students from various universities with the Institute of American Universities/American College of the Mediterranean, with visits to Paris, The Hague, Rabat, Tangier and Madrid.

Boduszyński delivered a talk at the University of San Diego’s graduate program in international relations on next steps for U.S. policy in Ukraine.

Ralph Bolton, emeritus professor of anthropology, received the Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology, the highest honor bestowed by the society, in Portland, Oregon, on March 28. The title of his Malinowski Lecture was “Applied Anthropology: A Way of Life, A Call to Action.” The speech received a standing ovation. As a recipient also of the Franz Boas Award from the American Anthropological Association, Bolton is one of only six anthropologists since the awards were created to garner both awards from the two largest anthropology organizations. The Bronislaw Malinowski Award is given each year to an outstanding individual who has dedicated their career to solving human challenges through social science and honors those who contribute to understanding and addressing global societal needs.

Amelia Bransky, visiting assistant professor of theatre, was the lead production designer for the world premiere of HBO Original series The Last of Us Season 2. The premiere closed the iconic Hollywood Boulevard and took over the historic TCL Chinese Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt on March 24. She led a team of designers, producers and fabricators from conceptualizing the look and design of the premiere's red-carpet experience through finalizing the scenic installation and event execution. She worked with her frequent collaborators at Freehold Group, a Los Angeles-based production company. The event also hosted New York Times photographer Sinna Nasseri, with whom Bransky collaborated on the design for a bespoke portrait studio featuring stars of The Last of Us.

Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, published a journal article, “Weathering Discontent in the Poetry of Ana Merino,” in Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea.

Gary Champi, assistant professor of dance, taught at the Northeast regional conference of the American College Dance Association (ACDA) alongside John Pennington, associate professor and chair of dance. Together they supported 13 students (12 from Pomona, 1 from Pitzer) to attend the four-day conference with two students presenting original choreography for adjudication.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, published a manuscript in Conservation Biology (Special Issue: Trends and Future Directions in the Conservation Social Sciences) describing new horizons and challenges for using transformer language models to analyze vast bodies of evidence for conservation and climate action. Chang’s postdoctoral mentee, Brian Erickson, was also awarded a highly competitive David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program. Chang will serve as Erickson’s academic mentor for analyzing public comments data using large language models to improve adaptive conservation management in the Pacific Northwest.

Karla Cordova, Chau Mellon postdoctoral fellow in economics, gave an invited talk at the Immigrants and the U.S. Economy, Spring 2025 conference organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Cordova presented the paper “Immigration Enforcement and Child Maltreatment,” co-authored with Mary F. Evans, Katherine Rittenhouse and Antonia Vazquez (all at University of Texas at Austin).

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, gave a talk about the Spanish translation of his book, Historias de lo no contado, at Traficantes de Sueños, a bookstore in Madrid.

Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics, published an article in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications titled “Individual autonomy and public deliberation in behavioral public policy.”

Jennifer Friedlander, Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies, co-organized LACKv, a conference devoted to the promotion and development of thought in the tradition of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and German Idealism. She also presented a talk, “An Ethics of Shame: Love, Media Pleasures, and Monsters.”

Robert Gaines, acting president and Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, published the article “Fossil Lagerstätten and the enigma of anactualistic fossil preservation” in the 50th anniversary issue of the journal Paleobiology.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a one-hour plenary address titled “What can chicken nuggets tell us about symmetric functions, positive polynomials, random norms, and AF algebras?” at the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Southeastern Sectional Meeting at Clemson University on March 8.

Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics, attended the 104th Annual Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), which took place March 28-29 at Prairie View A&M University. Goins gave a keynote address on “Clocks, Parking Garages, and the Solvability of the Quintic: A Friendly Introduction to Monodromy.”

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, moderated the education panel “Here and Now: Where to Go from Here?” at the third Latina Leaders’ Summit on March 22 in New York City. The summit was organized by the National Dominican Women’s Caucus (NDWC) and featured the contributions of successful Latinas in politics, education, the business sector and social justice movements. The session included presentations by the new chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education Melissa Avilés-Ramos and seasoned educator Elaine Ruiz López, who founded the first charter high school in the Bronx.

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, was selected as the sole recipient of the Shou-Hsin Teng Pedagogical Innovation Award by the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA.

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, published an article titled “The Japanese Military Has a People Problem: When Depopulation Becomes a National Security Risk” in Foreign Affairs on March 28.

Le, with Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, and Emily Fang ’25 and Becca Choe ’27, released the newest episode in their podcast Prof Talk on March 28.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, gave four concerts with violinist Fritz Gearhart and Andrew Smith as members of the Redfish Piano Trio in the off-season Redfish Music Festival. Along the coast of southern Oregon and northern California, they performed in Port Orford, Bandon, and North Bend, Oregon; and in Crescent City, California.

Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, gave a talk about their research at the Columbia University Human-Computer Interaction Seminar titled “How Design Tools Codify Norms for Visual Artists.”

Nathan Martin, sculpture technician, shares his entrancing path to working at Pomona College in an interview and corresponding article titled “The Journey to 2000 Degrees” in The Montecito Journal.

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, delivered a lecture on James Baldwin, titled “Wondering By Wandering,” at the National Symposium on Classical Education in Tempe, Arizona; spoke to students at Kansas’s Fort Hays State University about major ideas in American political thought; gave a talk titled “Book Banning in 2025” at the Claremont United Church of Christ; and spoke at an event on the debate over birthright citizenship as part of the “Constitutionalism, Democracy, Citizenship” series at the Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College.

On March 26, McWilliams’ article on “Campus Swatting on a Thursday Afternoon” appeared in Current.

Magally Miranda, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Chicana/o-Latina/o studies, published “‘Oh, you’re watching me’: Care workers’ experiences of surveillant assemblages on the platform and in the home” in the journal New Media and Society. This paper was written in collaboration with researchers from Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute.

Nikki Moore, visiting assistant professor of geology, gave an invited talk for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego titled “­Giant plagioclase in the Steens Basalt: Tracking the balance of magma differentiation processes in continental flood basalt evolution.”

Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, was interviewed by Chemical and Engineering News for an article titled “The Great COVID-19 Career Rethink” and described how pandemic-era online teaching prompted curricular innovations in computational chemistry and data visualization that continue to enrich his post-pandemic learning spaces.

At the Spring 2025 American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego, O’Leary gave an invited talk in a symposium titled “3D Printing in Chemistry Education: Active Learning and Engagement.” At the same meeting, his research group members Hiwot Endeshaw ’25 and Jaylyn Gonzalez ’25 presented a poster titled “Development of 3D-printed molecular orbital teaching models for advanced topics in chemistry and biologically relevant systems.”

O’Leary and Jane Liu, professor of chemistry, joined faculty and administrators at the University of La Verne and presented a workshop titled “How to Create an Introduction to Chemistry Course.” The session outlined the process they used, together with Katy Muzikar, biochemistry laboratory coordinator, for creating Chemistry 23: Discovering Chemistry, a new general chemistry course at Pomona that utilizes active learning, context-inspired content, and a course-based undergraduate research experience.

Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, had her book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels announced as the 2025 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Finalist. The award from Columbia University’s School of Journalism recognizes nonfiction writing that exemplifies “literary grace, commitment to serious research, and original reporting.” Prickett also presented on the Arizona Daily Star’s invited author stage at the 2025 Tucson Festival of Books.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German, published a review of William Lycan’s Perceptual Content (Oxford University Press, 2024) on March 5.

Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English and interim director of college writing, published an essay titled “Style” in the Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney, edited by Catherine Bates (Oxford, 2025) and gave three papers at the Renaissance Society of America and the Shakespeare Association of America (Boston, March 20-22), titled “Supposing…” (on the panel Speculative Fiction and Early Modern Studies), “Echo Me” (on the panel Renaissance Collaborations) and “Just One Word” (on the panel Private Utterances).

Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and professor of Russian, served as an external reviewer for Bard College’s Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Program (specifically Russian and Eurasian) on March 1-3.

John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and professor of politics, gave a keynote address at the Power/Knowledge in the Corporate University Colloquium at Northwestern University on March 7.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published two peer-reviewed research papers: “Money and inflation: a case study of the value of transparency” (the lead article in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics) and “MPT and CAPM Mismeasure Risk” (The Journal of Investing). His paper, “Don’t Trust AI for Important Things Such As Investment Decisions,” co-authored with Sam Wyatt ’26, was reprinted in Scientific American, Special Edition, AI: How the machine-learning revolution is transforming science and everyday life. Smith published three opinion pieces: “Intelligence Requires More Than Following Instructions” (MindMatters, March 3); “Why LLMs are Not Boosting Productivity” (MindMatters, March 6) and “Yes, the AI Stock Bubble is a Bubble” (MindMatters, March 31).

Smith was interviewed by Nolan Higdon for the podcast Disinfo Detox on March 6 .

David M. Tanenbaum, Osler-Loucks Professor in Science and professor of physics, and Mia Amberger ’26 presented their research with Finn Cooper ’26 and Alys Korosei ’24 at the American Physical Society Global Summit in Anaheim, California, on March 19. The presentation was titled “Degradation Mechanisms in Carbon Printed Perovskite Solar Cells.”

Tanenbaum was selected as an American Scandinavian Foundation Fellow for the Spring 2026 term to support his sabbatical research project, Developing Solar Energy Technology beyond Silicon Solar Cells, at CAPE and SOLEN Research Centers, Mads Clausen Institute and University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Sønderborg, Denmark.

Friederike von Schwerin-High, professor of German, published her essay “‘Dass ich eins und doppelt bin’. Halbierungen, Doppelungen und Kipppunkte im Theaterstück Katzen haben sieben Leben und seinem intertextuellen Nachleben in Kairos und Kein Roman” in the volume Jenny Erpenbeck, edited by Anke Biendarra and Julia Schöll, in the series Text und Kritik (March 2025). She also published a book review, “Don’t Forget to Live: Goethe and the Tradition of Spiritual Exercises by Pierre Hadot, translated by Michael Chase, Preface by Arnold I. Davidson and Daniele Lorenzini, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2023” in The European Legacy (March 5).

Kevin Wynter, associate professor of media studies, presented a paper titled “Ceci n'est pas sexuel: the Treachery of YouTube Tutorials” at LACK, a conference dedicated to thought in the tradition of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and German Idealism, held this year at Otterbein University.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, gave an invited webinar titled “Teaching Language and Culture Beyond ChatGPT” for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) on March 17. On March 18, he gave an invited talk titled “AI and the Transformation of Higher Education” for the Asia Transformation and Turnaround Association. On March 20, he presented an invited research seminar titled “Generative AI in Second Language Education: Current Trends and Future Directions” for the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. On March 25, he gave an invited talked titled “The AI Gold Rush” for students at Tulane University.

On March 27, Xiao published an editorial titled “AI-Supported Language Education Beyond ChatGPT” with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University for Studies in Chinese Learning and Teaching.

Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, served as a discussant on a roundtable titled “Teaching East Asian Indigeneities and Minority Cultures” at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference held in Columbus, Ohio. This roundtable explored issues of language, coloniality, culture, and interdisciplinary methodologies in the teaching of indigenous cultures and endangered languages of Asia.

Ellie Anderson, assistant professor of philosophy, delivered the keynote presentation “Hermeneutic Labor in Sexual Contexts” at the Toronto Symposium for Sex and Sexuality at the University of Toronto’s Sexual Education Center.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, curated and co-directed a program of 16th- and 17th-century music by Thomas Morley, John Jenkins, Thomas Lupo, Vincenzo Ruffo and Riccardo Rognoni for the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra’s community concert series. The performance, held February 1 at the Los Altos Neighborhood Library (Long Beach, California), featured Artifex Consort members Eva Lymenstull and Leif Woodward, alongside whom Bandy played bass and tenor violas da gamba and presented a lecture.

On February 22 in Pomona College’s Bridges Hall of Music, Bandy supplied program notes and played viola da gamba and G violone in a complete performance of the Rosary Sonatas of Heinrich Biber (c.1680), featuring baroque violinist Andrew McIntosh, baroque harpist Maxine Eilander and historical keyboardist Ian Pritchard. To demonstrate ties between this repertoire and physical artifacts of 17th-century Jesuit multisensory discourse, Bandy designed miniature historically informed devotional booklets for the performance and prepared projected Rosary images from scans of Biber’s 17th-century manuscript.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, presented the paper “Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th Bart., as Collector of Handel’s Music” at the American Handel Society Conference in Boston on February 8. As president of the society, he also introduced the Howard Serwer Memorial Lecture and chaired a meeting of the board of directors.

Mietek Boduszynski, associate professor of politics, co-authored three public-facing pieces: “Models for Transitional Justice in Syria” in Lawfare with Sabina Henneberg; “What Syrians Can Learn from Libya’s Revolution” in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Emissary and “Values and U.S. Foreign Policy in a New Age of Strategic Competition” in Pacific Council Magazine with Holden Tsai ’27.

Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures, published the chapter “Beyond Oneself: Writing and Effacement in Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk” in the volume Lu Xun and World Literature (Hong Kong University Press), 2025.

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, published a Spanish-language version of his book, Historias de lo no contado: Legados del autoritarismo entre los emigrantes españoles mayores en Francia (Madrid: Postmetropolis). The book was released in English last year by University of Toronto Press.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, published a paper titled “Symmetric and antisymmetric tensor products for the function-theoretic operator theorist” with Ryan O’Loughlin and Jiahui Yu ’23 in Canadian Journal of Mathematics. He also published a paper titled “Numerical semigroups from rational matrices I: power-integral matrices and nilpotent representations” with Arsh Chhabra ’25, Fangqian “Chris” Zhang ’24 and Hechun Zhang in the journal Communications in Algebra.

Garcia gave a Faculty-Student Lecture titled “Fast food for thought: what can chicken nuggets tell us about symmetric functions, positive polynomials, and linear algebra?” and the Gordon Lecture titled “Prime Time Math: Little Green Men, Locust Hordes, and Cybersecurity” at Denison University on February 24.

Heidi Nichols Haddad, associate professor of politics, participated in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development delegation visit to Los Angeles on “Cities and Universities Working Together for Sustainable Development.” She discussed her experiential learning course, Cities, Rights, and Development, which conducted research on local implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs of the City of Los Angeles.

Beth A. Hubbard, assistant director, Pomona Plan, was part of the inaugural Impact Philanthropy Advisor cohort through Daylight Advisors and met all requirements to successfully earn the Impact Philanthropy Advisor (IPA) certification by completing a 20-week program. Daylight is a global professional development community committed to cultivating a thriving philanthropic advising field through learning, practice and research while supporting advisors in their professional and personal growth.

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, published an article titled “Technology, Innovation, and Governance: How Toyama City, Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (SST), and Tsuchiyu Onsen are Building Climate-Resilient Cities and Addressing Demographics Crises” in the journal Asia Pacific Tech-Monitor with Masahiko Haraguchi, Sebastian Maslow, Paul Midford and Kunihiro Nishimura.

Le gave a talk titled “Japan’s Antimilitarism Ecosystem” at Yale University.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, was featured on the chamber music series Village Concerts, performing works by Beethoven, Brahms and Gina Gillie, with artistic director Tomasz Golka, violin, and Preston Shepard, horn. Additionally, the Mojave Trio (with Sara Parkins, violin, and Maggie Parkins, cello) was invited back to appear on the chamber music series Restoration Concerts at South Pasadena Public Library. They performed works of Beethoven, Gao Ping and Rebecca Clarke.

Lee created a new YouTube channel which features a steadily growing number of videos of solo and collaborative performances at Bridges Hall of Music.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, conducted a Playback Theatre debrief for the online symposium, Transforming the Power of Culture with Love and Compassion: Standards and Practices for Creating Anti-Oppressive Spaces. This event was organized by the Sociatry and Social Justice Committee of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama (ASGPP) with support from Tele’drama International on February 8.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics of astronomy, published a paper titled “Effects of galactic environment on size and dark matter content in low-mass galaxies” in Astrophysical Journal. This manuscript was led by Francisco Mercado, postdoctoral fellow, and is an extension of a senior thesis titled “Fluffiness of low-mass galaxies in the FIREbox simulation,” written by Marckie Zeender ’23, who is also a co-author.

On February 8, Moreno participated in a panel titled “Mutualista; towards a new cosmic methodology” at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California.

Moreno chaired a panel on extragalactic ecosystems and participated in an executive telescope time allocation chairs panel for a major space telescope operated by a well-known space agency.

Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, presented his latest research on Moroccan author Abdellah Taïa in a paper titled “Le palimpseste littéraire comme praxis décoloniale dans le bastion des larmes d’Abdellah Taïa” at the symposium on exile and migration in the Arab and Amazigh worlds, held at Florida Atlantic University on February 20-21.

William Peterson, emeritus professor of music and College organist, had his recording of the “Souvenir” of John Cage—recorded on the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music—included in the second hour of the Pipedreams program #2507 American Originals, broadcast on American Public Media on February 17.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published three opinion pieces: “Big Tech’s AI dream demands real money—but even more wishing and hoping” (MarketWatch, February 12); “Why LLMs (Chatbots) Won’t Lead to Artificial General Intelligence” (MindMatters, February 20); and “The Large Language Model (LLM) ‘Superpower’ Illusion Dies Hard” (MindMatters, February 24).

Smith was invited back to SciFoo, an annual invitation-only interdisciplinary scientific unconference at the GooglePlex.

Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, gave an invited talk on positive developmental outcomes in Black children and adolescents at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology convention in Denver. Her talk was part of an invited session, “Insight in inclusivity: DEI in wellbeing research.”

Kevin Wynter, associate professor of media studies, was interviewed by the Why is Amy in the Bathtub podcast to discuss why bathtub scenes are pervasive in horror films.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, had his paper “The ‘Japanese Turn’ in the Art, Architecture and Cuisine of Europe and the United States, 1860-2020” published in the Journal of Japanese Studies.

Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, completed an invited review of a scholarly article for positions: asia critique (Duke University Press), a top journal with theoretical innovations in the area of Asian studies.

Zhang was invited to speak at the 2025 Harvard University 6th International Conference on Chinese Pedagogy for her pedagogical project, “Stimulating Discussions of Race and Ethnicity in Chinese Language Teaching.”

Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, completed his sabbatical visiting scholar position at Pfizer, Inc. in Groton, Connecticut. At Pfizer, Ball worked on high-throughput experimentation and related work in collaboration with Internal Medicine/Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer.

Ball published a paper titled “Lewis Acid-Catalyzed Sulfur Fluorine Exchange” which focused on using a variety of Lewis acid catalysts for sulfur fluorine exchange reactions—useful in making bond connections of high interest in drug discovery. This work featured five Pomona student co-authors, including Theo Yassa ’24, Yuxin (Emily) Fang ’24, Lana Ravelo ’26, Sanah Anand ’26 and Saira Arora ’26.

Ball was the keynote speaker at the University of Manitoba 2SLGBTQIA+ in Stem Day, discussing his research and inclusive excellence. Ball also gave research talks at Smith College, University of Oregon and Pfizer. He also shared his research at the 2025 Winter Fluorine Conference.

Ball was appointed chair of the Beckman Scholars Executive Committee. He will serve a one-year term.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, was awarded a Paul Oskar Kristeller Fellowship by the Renaissance Society of America as well as the 2025 Diversity and Inclusion Research Award by the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music to support archival research for his book project handling esotericism, mysticism, queer theology and embodiment in Dieterich Buxtehude’s 1680 Passion cycle Membra Jesu nostri.

Bandy played viola da gamba and G violone with Bach Collegium San Diego, led by guest director Dana Marsh (artistic director of the Washington Bach Consort and director of the Historical Performance Institute at Indiana University) in the program A French Twist: Music for the Virgin Mary and the Nativity, which featured works by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Francis Poulenc and Pierre Villette in two performances in San Diego.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, published a study in Nature Sustainability with The Nature Conservancy showing that the natural climate solutions which have the highest capacity to mitigate carbon emissions also have abundant evidence for their impacts to human and environmental wellbeing. Chang also co-authored a publication in Ecology Letters focused on insect ecology and conservation in Southeast Asia, which used digital data sources to examine public awareness toward different insect taxa. This work emerged in part from her Steele Leave sabbatical visit to the Asian School of the Environment at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Chang was an invited speaker to the Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology department at UC Riverside and the School of Sustainability and the Environment at the University of Michigan.

Jennifer DesCombes, instructor in computer science, authored a commentary, “Transitioning and women’s sailing,” in Scuttlebutt Sailing News, edited by Craig Leweck. DesCombes’ submission was the lead item in the January 8 issue of Scuttlebutt Sailing Newsletter, a nationally distributed online sailing newsletter.

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, was interviewed by Cécile Evers, assistant professor of anthropology, about his recently published book, Untold Stories. The interview appears on the CaMP Anthropology blog.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a colloquium talk titled “What can chicken McNuggets tell us about symmetric functions, positive polynomials, random norms, and AF algebras?” at Washington State University on January 16.

Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, and corecipients Beth Jager at Claremont McKenna College and Nicole Wallens at Harvey Mudd College received a $5,000 grant from InfoReady and the National Organization of Research Development Professionals for the project “Steps Toward PUI/ERI Presubmission Peer Review Networks (P3RNs).” This project will explore the development of collaborative networks of faculty members across collectives of predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) and other emerging research institutions (ERIs) to critique and strengthen draft grant applications.

Elizabeth Glater, associate professor of neuroscience, co-authored with students in her Genes and Behavior class and her research students an article, “The AWC^OFF neuron is important for attraction to 1-butanol in Caenorhabditis elegans,” in microPublication Biology. The student co-authors are Vaughn E. Brown ^’25, Ella Bradley ’26, Tymmaa A. Asaed ’25, Sokhna B. Lo ’25, Zach S. Bellini ’24, Dylan J. Blackett ’24, Jeremy J. Callaway ’24, Jacob Hallesy ’24, Zoey E. Joshlin ’23, Taryn L. Kaneko ’24, Catie H. Kaneshiro ’24, Kae R. Kidd ’24, Jacinda Lee ’24, Kaitlyn M. Leung ’23, Janelle S. Li ’23, Ben P. Luo ’23, Charlene C. Mbaeri ’24, Alanna O’Neill ’23, Precious Omomofe ’24, James D. Schmidt ’23 and Minh Truong ’24.

Glater was the moderator for a Society for Neuroscience live webinar, Neuroscience Techniques: Ultrasound and the Brain, on January 22.

Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, was active at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle. On January 9, he was a panelist for “Integrating into a New Institution'” as part of the MAA Project NExT Panel. The same day, he gave a talk titled “Adinkras as Origami?” as part of the AMS Special Session on “Number Theory and Field Theory.” On January 10, he gave the keynote address titled “Pomona Research in Mathematics Experience (PRiME): Reflections on a Research Learning Community” as part of the AMS Special Session on “Rethinking Number Theory: Highlighting the Research and Discussions of the RNT Workshops.”

On January 10, Goins led an eight-hour SLMath (MSRI) Special Session on “ADJOINT Mathematics Working Groups.” The ADJOINT program provides opportunities for U.S. mathematicians, especially those from the African Diaspora, to form collaborations with African-American research leaders on topics at the forefront of mathematical and statistical research; Goins is the co-creator and lead director of the NSF-funded project. The special session concluded with a panel discussion titled “ADJOINT: The First Five Years.” It focused on the first five years of ADJOINT and the future of our efforts to foster a community of African Americans in the mathematical and statistical sciences.

Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, senior director of international and domestic programs, presented with colleagues Jenn Fullick, Ph.D., IFSA Director for Health, Safety, and Security, and Wayne James, Ph.D., IFSA Associate Vice President for Partner Engagement, when the International and Domestic Programs Office collaborated with the Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA) to host a workshop on “Mental Health in Study Abroad” on January 10 at Pomona College for professionals in study abroad, student affairs, mental health services, and risk management from institutions across the western region as part of IFSA’s Educator Events series. Gowdy also presented at a webinar titled Let’s Talk China! on January 14 alongside colleagues from CET Academic Programs and Bates College to discuss the current state of programs in China, recent adjustments to the State Department travel advisory for China, and supporting students.

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, shared her research experience on “Lessons about the Participatory Budgeting around the World” at the webinar Why Participatory Budgeting Matters in California on January 16. She was also part of a virtual panel of experts on participatory budgeting (PB) hosted by the Participatory Budgeting Project to foster interest in their new PB Seeds California round of grants to implement new PB projects in the state.

On January 31, Hernández-Medina facilitated the Research Incubator session on “Latin American Feminisms” at the Winter Meeting of Sociologists for Women in Society in Jacksonville, Florida. The feminist sociologists from Latin America and the United States who participated in the session discussed research about Latin American feminist movements and how U.S.-based scholars and activists can learn from and collaborate with them.

Marja Liisa Kay, program administrator of the Department of Theatre, formed a new non-profit Nordic vocal folk music ensemble, Keiju Kollektiv, of which she is now executive director. The Kollektiv celebrates the traditional music of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden in innovative ways. The ensemble recently performed their first concert January 26 in downtown Los Angeles as a benefit for those who faced losses during the recent fires in Los Angeles.

Talya Klein, visiting assistant professor of theatre, was granted full professional certification from Intimacy Directors & Coordinators (IDC), and her latest intimacy coordination project The Surrender (starring Kate Burton and Colby Minifie) will have its world premiere at SXSW this March.

Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, presented a paper at the meeting for the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) on January 10. The paper was titled “Free Will Skepticism, the Quarantine Model of Punishment, and the Right to Self-Defense.”

Rachel Levin, William A. Hilton Professor of Zoology and professor of biology and neuroscience, was quoted in “Trump executive order declaring only ‘two sexes’ gets biology wrong, scientists say” (STAT, January 23) and “After his executive order on sex, is Trump legally the first female president?” (The Guardian, January 25).

Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, received a Sage Concept Grant along with collaborators from UC Berkeley in the Media Education Research Lab for creating resources on teaching undergraduates how to tag and analyze diversity in film and television.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, acted in a performance with High Desert Playback Theatre Company titled Our Freedom Can't Wait: A Playback Theatre Gathering for Racial Healing at Explora! in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 23. The event was sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Sara Masland, associate professor of psychological science, published “Under and Overmentalizing in Personality Disorders: A principal component analysis of nonadaptive personality and the Movie Assessment of Social Cognition” in the journal Psychopathology. This paper results from a collaborative project with researchers at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

April Mayes, associate dean and Warren Finney Day Professor of History, started her term as the president of the Haitian Studies Association, a scholarly organization that “provides a forum for the exchange and dissemination of ideas and knowledge in order to inform pedagogy, practice, and policy about Haiti in a global context.” She delivered the president’s message and hopes to bring the conference to Southern California next year.

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, presented a paper to the University of Washington Political Theory Colloqium on January 16. The paper was titled “A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought.”

McWilliams was awarded the William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellowship from Claremont McKenna College for the 2025-2026 academic year.

McWilliams’s book The American Road Trip and American Political Thought was featured on Faculti.Net.

Bilal Nasir, assistant professor of Asian American studies, published “Internationalist Islam and the Question of Palestine” in Review of Middle East Studies.

Nasir was awarded a research grant from the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) for the project The War Within: Race, Religion, and Rebellion in Muslim Los Angeles.

Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, published “Multicolor 3D-Printed Molecular Orbital Models for a First-Semester Organic Chemistry Course” in the Journal of Chemical Education. The paper describes more than 30 molecular orbital models that provide learners with visual and tactile insights regarding organic chemistry concepts. The project was done in collaboration with Hiwot Endeshaw ’25, Christabel Akowuah ’25, Tymmaa Asaed ’25, Vaughn Brown ’25, Kendrick Cua ’25, Mai Dang ’24, Elizabeth Giwa ’25, Jaylyn Gonzalez ’25, Aysha Gsibat ’24, Sokhna Lo ’25, Santiago Serrano ’25 and Haddi Sise ’25.

Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, co-authored an article titled “EyeDraw: Investigating the Perceived Effects of Shared Gaze on Remote Collaborative Drawing” in the GROUP issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction with Eryn Ma ’24, Priya Dixit ’23, Andy Han ’24, Nicholas Marsano ’22, Brooke Sparks ’23, Ashley Sun ’23, Lucas Tiangco ’23 and collaborators from Brown University. Eryn Ma ’24 presented the work at the ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work on January 14.

Adam Pearson, professor and chair of psychological science, was part of an international multidisciplinary consortium of researchers at 179 institutions around the world that developed the largest post-pandemic survey of public trust in scientists. The consortium surveyed over 72,000 individuals in 68 countries and included faculty in computer science, chemistry and climate science from Harvey Mudd College. Their findings were published in Nature Human Behavior (“Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries”), with coverage in Nature and global news outlets.

Sheila Pinkel, professor emerita of art and art history, had her book Manifestation of a Cube included in the Getty Research Institute exhibition What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women 1843–1999: Twenty Women Artists from Southern California. Pinkel’s photo work is also included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition Works from the Photo Collection.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German, gave a guest lecture titled “Schwarz werden: Wie Friederich Dürrenmatt die Apartheid in Südafrika beendet” (Turning Black: How Friedrich Dürrenmatt ended Apartheid in South Africa) in the German Department at the University of Wrocław, Poland.

Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics, discussed the new Congress and the House Speaker vote on CNN on January 7.

Sadhwani was a panel speaker at the Electoral Systems, Race and Political Equality Conference hosted by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice in Puerto Rico.

Igor Santos, visiting assistant professor of music, was awarded a fellowship with the Lucas Artists Program at the Montalvo Arts Center. This three-month fellowship, spanning 2025 to 2027, will support his work on a series of musical compositions, including a large-scale intermedia and ensemble composition for the Talea Ensemble (NYC), a piano concerto for the Chicago Composers Orchestra and several smaller works.Santos also signed on to compose the score for a feature-length film, “Amálgama,” produced by Autofac Films, a project based in his hometown of Curitiba, Brazil.

Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, published the article “Reclaiming ‘Shenandoah’: A Recovery of Working Chanty Form” in the peer-reviewed journal Folk Music Journal.

Prageeta Sharma, Henry G. Lee ’37 Professor of English, was a recipient of a 2025 National Endowment of the Arts in poetry and signed a contract with Wave Books for a new collection of poetry titled Onement Won, which will be out this fall.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and chair of the department of English, as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, published an article on the legacy of visual artist Laura Wheeler Waring in History Now titled “Laura Wheeler Waring: A Luminous Palette.”

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published five opinion pieces: “Large Language Models (LLMs) Flunk Word Game Connections” (MindMatters, January 6) (cited by The Algorithm from MIT Technology Review on January 13); “Is Trump’s bitcoin embrace the biggest ‘pump-and-dump’ ever?” (MarketWatch, January 16); “AGI Is Not Nearly Here” (MindMatters, January 16); “Sloppy Science Is a Statistical Sin” (MindMatters, January 17); and “Some Lessons From DeepSeek” (MindMatters, January 30). He also did three MindMatters podcasts: The AI Bubble: Lessons from Past Financial Bubbles (January 9); The Hype and Limitations of Generative AI (January 16); and Why Generative AI Will Not End Up Running the World (January 18).

Smith’s paper “Money and inflation: a case study of the value of transparency” was cited by RetractionWatch on January 11.

Smith’s 18th book (and first novel), Reboot: A Business Novel of Money, Finance, and Love, co-authored with Margaret Smith, was published by BEP.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, co-authored a book chapter titled “Assessing Pragmatic Routines in L2 Chinese: A Focus on Rating Scale Functioning and Rater Behavior” in Chinese Language Education and Second Language Chinese Acquisition: An Interface with Chinese Linguistics, edited by Jing Jin and Sihui Ke and published by Routledge.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, gave a talk titled “Chinese Food Along the Pacific Rim” to Pomona alumni in New York City on January 4. It was the 24th alumni talk he has given since he arrived at the College in 1983.

Ellie Anderson, assistant professor of philosophy, co-authored the article “Erotic Ambivalence in Beauvoir’s Student Diaries” in Simone de Beauvoir Studies with Dana Rognlie and Megan Burke.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, published the article “Two Sets of Lessons for Princess Louisa” in the Winter 2024 issue of the Newsletter of the American Handel Society.

Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, was awarded a Future of Work Presidential grant by the Russell Sage Foundation. Beginning in fall 2025, this multi-year project will analyze two decades of “Justice for Janitors” organizing campaigns by the Service Employees International Union in the American South.

Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics, published the introduction to a special issue of Behavioural Public Policy, which he co-edited, titled “Process, Rationality, and Human Wellbeing.”

Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, presented a webinar, “CLASP 2024 Grants Review: First Look,” on December 12. CLASP (College of Liberal Arts Sponsored Programs) solicits data from members each year about grants received for faculty research or institutional programs; in 2024, about one fourth of the member institutions reported on approximately 1,650 individuals grants from 900 public and private funding agencies.

George L. Gorse, Viola Horton Professor of Art History, published “A ‘Royal Republic’: The virgin Mary as ‘Queen of Genoa’ in 1637” in Questioning Republicanism in Early Modern Genoa, edited by Enrico Zucchi and Alessandro Merlica.

Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, published an article, “The Making of a Mathematician: Personal and Professional Growth Through Writing” in Women in MathArt: Research, Creativity, and Teaching, edited by Shanna Dobson. Karaali’s submission was included among with those of eight other college faculty in the article “The Haunting of the Lecture Hall,” published in the Fall 2024 issue of Liberal Education: Reflections.

Nina J. Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, published a book chapter titled “Marine Birds” with co-author Maria Gavrilo in the book Elements of a pan-Arctic Ocean Ecology, edited by P. Wassmann and published by Orkana Akademisk.

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, co-authored the article “Second Language Motivational Selves and Interactional Pragmatics in Study Abroad: A Qualitative Study” with Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, and Minghua Zhang ’26. The article, published in Languages on December 20, is an invited contribution to a special issue exploring individual differences in second language (L2) pragmatics in study abroad contexts. This study is the first to examine the complex relationship between the integrated model of motivation and L2 Chinese interactional pragmatics while also uncovering how L2 social contact mediates this relationship in a study abroad context.

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, co-published with Lina Chang ’27 the article titled “Trump’s Return Debunks the Natural Alliances Myth” with East Asia Forum.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, co-produced, co-conducted and acted in a joint performance featuring members of LA Playback Theatre Company and High Desert Playback from Albuquerque, New Mexico. This performance, titled “We’ve Come A Long Way: Journeys Towards Collective Liberation,” was presented at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California, on December 15.

Magally Miranda, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, spoke at the opening plenary of the Southern Border Region AI Conference that took place on December 16-17, hosted by the UC San Diego Labor Center. The conference, titled “Good Tech for Good Jobs: Strategies for Building Worker Power in the Age,” invited scholars, workers, policy makers and organizers to discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence and robotics on a changing labor landscape.

Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, presented a paper titled “Rethinking Queer and Racial Community Building in France with the Podcast Extimité” at the 32nd Annual Conference of the Australian Society for French Studies on December 11.

Gilda L. Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o Latina/o studies, had her latest article “Activist Legacies: Connecting Current Struggles for K-12 Ethnic Studies to Local Histories, the Example of La Puente High School in the 1960s-1970s” published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnic Studies Pedagogies.

Lina Patel, lecturer in theatre, had her new play Traces of Desire, commissioned from Playwright's Arena and UCLA, published by Bloomsbury on December 12.

Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, had her book The Unclaimed included in The Atlantic’s 10 best books of 2024.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German, gave a guest lecture titled “A Russian/Soviet History in the Modality of the Olfactory” in the Department of Slavic Philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University, München, Germany. Rindisbacher also delivered a guest lecture on “Vincent O. Carter at One Hundred: A Black American Voice in Swiss Literature” in the American Studies program at the English Department of the University of Wrocław, Poland.

Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, gave the presentation “My Hidden Childhood in WWII Occupied France” at the Webb Schools in Claremont, California, on December 16.

Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, published the essay “One Transnation Under a Groove: ‘Chaal’ and the Modern Punjabi Soundscape” in the edited volume Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region (Routledge, 2025).

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published an article, “Money and inflation: a case study of the value of transparency,” in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics and wrote an opinion piece, “The Promise of Artificial General Intelligence is Evaporating” (Mind Matters, December 5). His article “Big Data and the Assault on Science” (International Higher Education, September 2024) was reprinted as “Saving science from temptations of big data: A worthy fight,” University World News, and a German translation was featured in DUZ Magazine.

The Kinzai Institute for Financial Affairs, under the jurisdiction of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, published a Japanese translation of Smith’s book The Power of Modern Value Investing: Beyond Indexing, Algos, and Alpha (co-authored with Margaret Smith). Smith also signed contracts with CRC for two books to be published in 2025: Some Pretty Good Stats Questions and Some Pretty Good Finance Questions.

Jessie Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, had her research on adolescents’ empathy selected by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley to be featured in their list of the Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life in 2024, which “highlights what we see as the most important, provocative, and inspiring findings published in our field.”

Kevin Wynter, associate professor of media studies, was interviewed by WIRED for a piece titled “The Year Villainy Won.”

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, gave an invited workshop titled “Transforming Language Learning with AI: A Deep Dive into Luduan.ai" at the Language Educators Symposium (LES) 2024, hosted by the Penn Language Center and the Educational Linguistics Division, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, on December 6. On December 7, Feng, Lilach Mollick (co-director of Generative AI Labs at the Wharton School of Business) and Abraham López Lee (CEO of Correcto and Forbes 30 Under 30, 2024) each gave an invited talk on AI and language education at LES 2024.

Xiao was invited to review a grant proposal for Hong Kong Metropolitan University and proposals for the Tao-Chung Ted Yao Memorial Award by the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA). Additionally, he became the program co-chair of the 2025 CLTA Conference.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, was interviewed for and quoted in “7 New Year’s food traditions that will bring good luck,” which appeared on the National Geographic website on December 31.

Megan Zirnstein, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, co-authored a paper with Kinsey Bice (Alexa AI team, Amazon) in The American Journal of Psychology titled “Unraveling the multilingual mind: Exploring individual differences in bilingual language learning and regulation.” The article was included in a festschrift collection in honor of the work that Judith F. Kroll (UC Irvine) has done to advance the science of bilingualism.

Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, co-authored two poster presentations at the 65th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, held November 21-24 in New York. These posters, “Bitchwaffle or Asspalace: Predicting the Plausibility of Novel Taboo Compound Words” and “Notetaking Reexamined: Are There Student Learning Differences When Comparing Typing Versus Handwritten Approaches?” were collaborations with colleagues at Rhodes College and the University of Florida, respectively.

Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, traveled to the National Humanities Center in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, for a leadership workshop with directors of humanities centers around the country. Bahng also traveled to the American Studies Association annual meeting in Baltimore, where she presented her work on “Coral Futures: Banking on Resilience” and chaired another panel on “Sovereign Exposures: Cultures of Health on Toxic Grounds,” which will be developed into a series of published essays in Masculine Toxicities.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, was a featured soloist (viola da gamba, violone, and tenor viol) in the Warner Bros. major motion picture Joker: Folie à Deux, with music by Hildur Guðnadóttir and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Additionally, the documentary film Norman/Norman, featuring Bandy as a nyckelharpa soloist in Grant Fonda’s original score, premiered at the Cambridge Film Festival. Bandy was also featured as a viola da gamba soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to season 7, part II of the STARZ historical drama Outlander (all episodes), which premiered on November 22 on streaming platforms worldwide.

Bandy presented the paper “Musical Theologies of Time and Memory in Buxtehude’s Jesu dulcis memoria (BuxWV 57)” at the fall meeting of the American Musicological Society Pacific Southwest Chapter, held at La Sierra University (Riverside, California).

In San Diego and Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, Bandy performed with Bach Collegium San Diego and GRAMMY®-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan, in a program of Bach and Buxtehude cantata arias also recorded for later release in Phan’s international media project Bach 52. On November 2 in Pasadena, California, Bandy played baroque double bass in Con Gioia Early Music Ensemble’s program “Sublime Vocal Gems of the German Baroque Era,” directed by Preethi de Silva and featuring works by Christoph Graupner, J. A. Hasse and J. S. Bach. On November 15 and 17, Bandy joined the Pomona College Choir for their fall performances directed by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music, as a member of the instrumental ensemble Harmonologia Pomona, performing on G violone, viola da gamba and modern double bass. He also contributed the program note for Dieterich Buxtehude’s Ad Manus from Membra Jesu nostri (1680).

Bandy programmed and led a workshop handling Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other ſhort Æirs (1599) for SoCal Viols (chapter, Viola da Gamba Society of America), held November 2 in South Pasadena, California.

Colin J. Beck, professor of sociology, published an article co-authored with Mlada Bukovansky: “Streets and Elites: Corruption Grievances in Contemporary Revolutions” in Political Power and Social Theory.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, performed as continuo harpsichordist in three arias by Johann Sebastian Bach in a November 2 concert by Con Gioia in Pasadena, California.

Ralph Bolton ’61, emeritus professor of anthropology, presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Tampa, Florida. His presentation was part of a session organized by the Association of Senior Anthropologists titled “Dynamic Reciprocity in Ethnographic Research: Explorations in Giving Back and Collaborative Praxis.” In his paper “Beyond Reciprocity: Solidarity? An Ethnographer's Commitment to Friends, Colleagues and Community in Peru,” Bolton urged anthropologists to move beyond mere reciprocity to solidarity with the people whose cultures they study.

Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, published a journal article, “‘Mejor esto que nada’: Employment and Exploitation in Pablo García Casado’s Dinero,” in Cincinnati Romance Review.

Cahill presented a paper, “Multilingual Memory in Reyes Mate’s ‘Relatos de un viaje por los campos de exterminio,’” at the 17th biennial Lessons and Legacies Conference: Languages of the Holocaust, held at Claremont McKenna College and the University of Southern California from November 14-17.

Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures and faculty director of Oldenborg Center, delivered a paper, “Aesthetics of the Ephemeral in Eileen Chang’s Wartime Memoir, Written on Water” at the annual PAMLA conference in Palm Springs, California, on November 7.

Erin Michelle Collins, registrar, was voted in as president-elect of the Executive Board for the Pacific Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (PACRAO) at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Seattle. She served as secretary of the Executive Board November 2022-November 2024. Collins will serve as president-elect beginning November 2024 and then as president November 2025 through November 2026. The mission of PACRAO is to provide its members opportunities to learn, engage, collaborate, inform, gather, contribute and promote the best practices and general advancement of higher education and our professions.

Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romance languages and literatures, participated in the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Palm Springs, California, discussing the use of AI in French advanced literature classes in general (and the peculiar case of her fall 2023 Surrealism class) November 10.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, was a panelist at the Teaching and Learning Center panel discussion “Supporting Student Thesis and Independent Research” at the Claremont Colleges Library on November 11.

Garcia gave a talk titled “The linear targeting problem” at the conference Advances in Operator Theory with Applications to Mathematical Physics at Chapman University on November 18.

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, presented the paper “La Contraofensiva Conservadora Anti-Género y Anti-LGTBQ en la República Dominicana” (“The Anti-Gender and Anti-LGTBQ Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic”) on November 6 at the congress of the Latin American Sociological Association (ALAS 2024) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. On November 14, Hernández-Medina presented the paper “The Right to a Complete Life: The Feminist Movement and the Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic” at the 2024 National Women’s Studies Annual Conference in Detroit as part of the panel “The Right-wing War on Women and Gender, and Feminist/LGBQ+ Responses in Latin America” with colleagues from Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.

Ben Keim, associate professor of classics, delivered two lectures in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On November 8 he delivered a conference paper, “The Rhetoric of Honor in Xenophon’s Anabasis,” at the triennial meeting of the International Xenophon Society; on November 11 he delivered an invited paper, “Xenophon and the Fourth-Century Politics of Athenian Honour,” at the second Sokratikoi logoi, Platonikoi logoi conference hosted by the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina.

Talya Klein, visiting assistant professor of theatre, was selected to present her research at the first annual Intimacy Directors’ and Coordinators’ Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this coming April. Her presentation is titled “The Balanced Badass: Having Your Own Back During Difficult Conversations.”

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, delivered a talk titled “Toxic Language in Chinese Online Communication: Shifting Meanings and Usages” for the panel “Language, Culture, and Linguistics” at the 121st Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Conference in Palm Springs, California, on November 9.

Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, had three articles accepted for publication: “Reasons-Responsiveness and the Demarcation Problem” (with co-author Taylor W. Cyr) in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, “Time Travel, Foreknowledge, and Dependence: A Response to Cyr” in Faith and Philosophy and “The Fixity of the Past, the Fixity of the Independent, and Local-Miracle Compatibilism” in Theoria.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, performed with Pangea Playback Theatre Company, directed by Hannah K. Fox, as part of a residency at the University of Oregon hosted by the Division for Equity and Inclusion.

Lu’s Sustenance project was featured in a trailer filmed and edited by Lola Salgado. Sustenance was supported by a Neighborhood Engagement Arts Residency Grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Richard McKirahan, Edwin Claremont Norton Professor of Classics and professor of philosophy, was one of three invited presenters at the annual (Zoom) meeting of the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy on November 16. The title of his paper was “Introducing Philolaus.” Philolaus was a Greek philosopher who until recently has received only a little attention. McKirahan presented a version of the same paper in a colloquium at the University of California at Santa Barbara on November 22.

McKirahan was elected as a member of KOMVOS-node, which describes itself as “a think-act, because it undertakes initiatives for the implementation of actions that, taking advantage of the dynamic of Hellenism, will have immediate effect on Greek society, throughout the improvement of the everyday life of Greeks, through the improvement of the economic, cultural, and scientific level.”

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, published “Why Study the Humanities When People Are Dying?” in the peer-reviewed journal Public Humanities on November 6.

On November 15, McWilliams published two pieces on the 2024 election: “Thinking With the Enemy” in a forum on “The Campus in the Age of Trump” in The Chronicle of Higher Education and “We Just Watched the Last Television Election” in a forum on “Election 2024” in Current.

McWilliams was featured in an article in Newsweek about “How to Talk to Kids About Post-Election Stress.” On November 7, she appeared on “Houston's Morning Show” on Fox 26 to discuss the same subject and she was also quoted in a November 11 Psychology Today article that asked the question: “How Do We Help Our Children Post-Election?”

McWilliams spoke at a Claremont McKenna College Open Academy Forum on “Should SCOTUS be reformed?” She also gave a talk to students at Williams College on interpretive methods in political science. On November 22, McWilliams served as a discussant at the “Baldwin At 100” conference at Claremont McKenna, in honor of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday.

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, guest edited the Journal of Arizona History’s special issue devoted to the environmental history of the Grand Canyon State. He commissioned and edited the contributions, including a co-authored article for which Lisa Crane, Western Americana Manuscripts Librarian at The Claremont Colleges Library, was the lead author. Miller also contributed two essays, “Narrative Possibilities” and “Throughlines.”

Miller was appointed to the inaugural board of editors for Journal of Texas History.

Miller co-organized the ninth annual meeting of the Eastern Sierra History Conference and presented on his new book Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, From Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning. Miller also shared insights on the book in a Q&A with OSU Press.

Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, chaired the panel “Utopian and Dystopian Imaginaries in the Francophone World” at the 121st Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference on November 8.

Jeff Noh, visiting assistant professor of English, delivered an invited lecture titled “Floppy Disk Counterfactuals: The Korean War Orphan in Octavia E. Butler’s Unfinished Novels” as part of the visiting speaker series at Loyola University Chicago’s Department of English on November 13.

Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, co-authored the review article “In Memoriam: The Life and Scientific Accomplishments of Frank A. L. Anet (1926-2024),” which was featured on the cover of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. A UCLA chemistry professor, Anet built some of the first high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, now standard equipment in chemistry laboratories worldwide, and used the instruments to discover bedrock principles in organic chemistry and magnetic resonance.

Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, co-authored an article titled “Exploring Patient-Generated Annotations to Digital Clinical Symptom Measures for Patient-Centered Communication” in the CSCW issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction with collaborators from UC Irvine.

Karen Parfitt, professor of neuroscience, published a paper in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience with Jessica Phan ’19, Jiwon Yi ’17, Julia Foote ’18, Asia Ayabe ’15, Kevin Guan ’15, and Theodore Garland Jr. (UC Riverside). The title of the paper is “Hippocampal long-term potentiation is modulated by exercise-induced alterations in dopaminergic synaptic transmission in mice selectively bred for high voluntary wheel running” and includes senior thesis data from these alumni.

Mary Paster, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, presented a talk titled “Language and food as sites of shaming and resistance” at the Food x Language International Conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Venice, Italy.

Paster published a peer-reviewed article co-authored with Jackson Kuzmik ’20: “Vowel hiatus resolution in Kikuyu” in Pushing the Boundaries: Selected Papers from the 51st-52nd Annual Conference on African Linguistics.

Lina Patel, lecturer in theatre, shot a guest-starring role in ABC’s hit show Will Trent in Atlanta.

Patel was named director of Rogue Machine Theatre’s next New Play Festival.

Frances Pohl, emerita professor of art history, published a short essay titled “How Free is Free? Ben Shahn, the Statue of Liberty, and the History of American Art” in the online publication Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.

Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, published the coauthored article “Unclaimed and unclaimable deaths: weaponizing migrant mourning” (with Stefan Timmermans, UCLA, and Mirian Martinez-Aranda, UC Irvine) in Mortality.

Prickett’s recent book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City Angels made three “best of 2024” lists: NPR Books, BookPage and AirTalk Host Larry Mantle’s favorite L.A. books at LAist.

Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English, published the essay “Shakespeare’s Canvas” in a special issue of Shakespeare Survey 77 dedicated to Shakespeare’s poetry, edited by Hannah Crawforth and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann.

Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor of Modern Languages and professor of Russian, gave a guest lecture, “Out of the Closet: Russian YA Writers Exploring Gender Issues,” at the Institute of German Literature, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, on November 4. She also delivered a guest lecture, “Queer Characters and Familial Ties in Mikita Franko’s Fiction,” at the Institute of Slavic Studies, University of Wrocław on November 6.

Rudova presented a paper, “The School Uniform: What does this Object of Materiality Represent?/Die Schuluniform: Was verkörpert dieses Objekt der Materialität?” at the online research colloquium (Kinderliterarisches Kolloquium), “The Things of Childhood: Materiality of/in the Culture for the Young/Die Dinge der Kindheit. Materialität (in) der Kultur für Kinder” on November 15.

Adolfo J. Rumbos, Joseph N. Fiske Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, published an article, “Multiplicity results for Schrodinger type fractional p-Laplacian boundary value problems,” co-authored with Emer Lopera (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales, Colombia) and Leandro Recôva (Cal Poly Pomona) in Electronic Journal of Differential Equations on November 11.

Monique Saigal Escudero, emerita professor of French, discussed her book with visitors at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., on November 3-4.

Saigal Escudero presented “A Hidden Child of the Holocaust Shares Her Story” to young students at Fauquier Hospital in Warrenton, Virginia, on November 7. Also in Warrenton, she presented “A Holocaust Survivor Tells Her Story” to retired teachers at Bethel United Methodist Church. She presented “A Hidden Child of the Holocaust Shares Her Story” at Oldenborg Center on November 15.

Igor Santos, visiting professor of music, had his composition carve performed by the Flannau Duo on November 13 at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, and November 8 at the 12th NIU New Music Festival in DeKalb, Illinois. Carve was also recently performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Polyaspora Festival in Washington, D.C. (Peabody Conservatory), as part of a program curated by George E. Lewis and Felipe Lara, moderated by Alejandro L. Madrid. Santos also received performances of two other duos— anima and flautando—by Ensemble Dal Niente at the National Association of Schools of Music in Reston, Virginia.

Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, published the article “‘A Very Ingenious and Superior Invention’: Sailing Ship Windlass Technology and the Burgeoning of Sailors’ Chanties” in the Fall 2024 issue of American Music. This research article is the third and final piece of a project begun during Schreffler's previous sabbatical, the earlier-completed companion pieces of which were an audio album of sailors’ chanties in collaboration with Claremont Colleges student performers and the documentary film Songs of the Windlass: Singing Chanties on Gazela.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published a book, Standard Deviations: The Truth About Flawed Statistics, AI and Big Data, and wrote an opinion piece, “Do Fantasy Sports Tell Us Something About Artificial Intelligence?” in MindMatters on November 15.

Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored a paper examining the push-and-pull of family dynamics during adolescence. The paper was published in the journal Developmental Psychology. She also co-authored a tribute paper reviewing psychologist Mary Main’s concept of conditional strategies in children and adults, published in the journal Attachment & Human Development.

Stern was recently quoted in Women’s Health Magazine in an article about the distinction between empathy and compassion. She was also interviewed about her research on teens’ empathy for The Kids’ Table podcast.

Keri Wilson, assistant professor of biology, published the article “Parenthood and gene expression of oxytocin receptors and vasopressin receptors in sensory cortices of the male California mouse (Peromyscus californicus)” in Hormones and Behavior. She and her colleagues demonstrate for the first time that receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin, which regulate parental sensory processing, are lateralized in the auditory cortex in males with higher expression in the left versus the right cortex.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages & literatures, and Jonathan Becker ’24 led an online workshop titled “AI Optimization in the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese” at the 2024 conference of the Latin American Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning (LatinCALL) on November 9. Xiao and Cecilia Wade ’25 gave an online presentation titled “AI in Second Language Learning: A Review” at the 2024 conference of LatinCALL on November 10.

Xiao joined a team at the University of Maryland on a research project titled “Does dynamic writing sequence facilitate written word production in Chinese L2?” The findings were presented at the poster session of the 2024 Psychonomic Society Conference on November 23.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, contributed “Second Thoughts on Confucianism in Wartime Japan, 1937-1945” to New Horizons in Confucianism: Essays in Honor of Tu Weiming, a festschrift for Tu Wei-ming (Harvard University), published by Lexington Books.

Tricia Avant, academic coordinator and gallery manager of art, had a drawing included in HYENA, a recent HEXENTEXTE publication honoring the legacy of women in surrealism. The launch occurred at 2220 Art + Archives in Los Angeles on October 3.

Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, presented new research on “Coral Futures: Banking on Resilience” as an invited speaker to a Mellon symposium at UC Davis’s Department of Asian American Studies. The “Stars, Earth, and Coral: Pacific Entanglements and Futures Beyond the Human” roundtable was followed by a performance lecture by artist Astria Suparak: “Asian Futures, without Asians” on October 24.

Kim Bruce, emeritus Reuben C. and Eleanor Winslow Professor of Computer Science, was presented the Most Notable Paper of 2012 award for his co-authored paper “Grace: the absence of (inessential) difficulty” at the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery international symposium in Pasadena, California, on October 25. The prize recognizes a paper from the 2012 Onward! symposium that has had a significant impact on computing a decade after its publication.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a talk titled “What can chicken McNuggets tell us about symmetric functions, positive polynomials, random norms, and AF algebras?” at the Claremont Colleges Analysis Seminar on October 3.

Garcia published a paper, “What is… the Bateman-Horn conjecture?” in the November 2024 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Ernie González, Jr., lecturer in theatre, received a Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination for the 2024 Orange Curtain Review Awards for his performance of Manny/Sancho Panza in Quixote Nuevo at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, California. He was also nominated for a Best Supporting Performer Los Angeles Area Broadway World Award for the same role and production.

Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, associate professor of economics, co-authored a policy brief, “How did the higher minimum wage in the City of Los Angeles impact the earnings and employment of low-wage workers?”

Christine Inzer, administrative assistant for the Office of Stewardship, published her first graphic novel Halfway There on October 15. The graphic memoir is an exploration of her mixed Japanese American identity and has received starred reviews from Kirkus and the School Library Journal.

Malkiat S. Johal, professor of chemistry, gave an invited research seminar titled “Quantatative Analysis of Protein-Ligand Interactions and Lipid Bilayer Modifications using the Quartz Crystal Microbalance” at Cal State Long Beach on October 9.

Kirk Jones, professor of physical education and head athletic trainer, was honored as the 2024-25 SCIAC Distinguished Service Award recipient. Jones has developed programs for prevention and treatment of athletic injuries and conditioning and nutritional programs for 21 varsity, intramural and club sports as well as the college community.

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, gave a lecture on Japanese politics to military personnel at the Air University (Air Force) on October 1, a talk on Japan-South Korea relations and provided graduate student advising at USC on October 2, a talk at Claremont McKenna College on politics and political writing October 5, and a talk on Japanese politics to military personnel at Pacific Air Force on October 14.

Le participated in the Institute for Global Affairs Fellowship workshop October 15.

Le co-published an article titled “Russia and North Korea’s treaty exposes blind spots in the security community” in East Asia Forum with international relations students Annalise Chang ’27 and Munique Tan ’25 on October 24.

Jon Moore, lab coordinator and associate professor of biology, presented a talk titled “A Rich Long-Running Inquiry-Based Introductory Dictyostelium Chemotaxis Teaching Lab” at the 2024 International Dictyostelium Conference on October 14 in Durham, North Carolina.

Nikki Moore, visiting assistant professor of geology, along with coauthors Conner Toth, Wendy Bohrson, Anita Grunder, and Nolan Clark ’23, published the research article “Giant plagioclase in the Steens Basalt, southeast Oregon, USA: Tracking the balance of differentiation processes in continental flood basalt evolution” in GSA Bulletin on October 30.

Adam Pearson, professor and chair of psychological science, was an invited keynote panelist for a discussion on challenges and future directions for climate activism and public engagement at the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology (American Psychological Association Division 34) 3rd Annual Global Conference on “Psychology for a Resilient Future: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Coping in a Changing World.” Xuwen Hua ’23 and Pearson co-authored and presented a conference talk at a plenary session titled “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Lay beliefs about life adversity impact judgments of climate vulnerability and resilience.” This work began as a senior thesis. Hua was the only non-graduate/postdoctoral-level or faculty speaker of over 30 invited conference speakers.

William Peterson, emeritus professor of music and College organist, performed music of J.S. Bach on the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music. The program included Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in C Major” (BWV 545), the “Sonata in D Minor” (BWV 527) and four chorale preludes from Great Eighteen Organ Chorales.

Peterson presented a paper, “Constructing Cultural Markers of Czechoslovak Solidarity, 1918-1928,” in a panel at the 2024 Virtual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) on October 18. The panel was titled “Liberation from Uncertainty and Instability in Eastern Europe.”

Kathy Guillen Quispe, assistant director of international student & scholar services, wore a couple of hats at the 2024 NAFSA Region XII Conference in Orange County, California, on October 19-23. She began the conference by co-leading the F-1 Student Advising for Beginners workshop. She also served on the conference planning committee’s special events and local arrangements team and volunteered to mentor seven new advisors in the field of international student advising. Additionally, Quispe had a session with members of the Southern District which she will chair starting January 2025.

Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and professor of Russian, delivered a guest lecture, “Disrupting the Canon of Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Meet Mikita Franko,” at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, on October 28.

Monique Saigal-Escudero, emerita professor of French, gave a presentation titled “A Jewish Holocaust Survivor’s Remarkable and Unfolding Story of Survival though Desperate Actions and the Kindness of Strangers” in the chapel of the Claremont Center for Spiritual Living.

Gibb Schreffler, associate professor of music, was awarded Honorable Mention for the Helen Roberts Prize for his article “Remembering the Cotton Screwmen: Inter-racial Waterfront Labor and the Development of Sailors’ Chanties” in Journal of the Society for American Music at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology on October 26. The Roberts Prize recognizes the most significant article published by a member of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published a paper on p-hacking, HARKing, and the replication crisis, “Big Data and the Assault on Science,” in International Higher Education.

Smith wrote four opinion pieces: “Presidential Pundits—a P-Hacking Parable” (MindMatters, October 7), “P-Hacking: The Perils of Presidential Election Models” (MindMatters, October 8), “The AI bubble is looking worse than the dot-com bubble” (MarketWatch, October 21) and “The World Series of Coin Flips” (MindMatters, October 22), with the MarketWatch piece being the most read article on MarketWatch in October.

Smith’s talk “AI Systems Are Still Faux Intelligence,” was selected for the O’Reilly AI Academy, which has 2.8 million active subscribers.

Luis Edward Tenorio, visiting assistant professor of sociology, published two papers: “Disclosure and the Evolving Legal Consciousness of Sexual and Gender Minority Central American Unaccompanied Minors” in Law & Social Inquiry and “Work After Lawful Status: Formerly Undocumented Immigrants’ Gendered Relational Legal Consciousness and Workplace Claims-Making” in Law & Society Review.

Tenorio published the chapter “Detained Homemaking: The Liminal Homemaking of Sexual and Gender Minority Central American Unaccompanied Youth,” in the edited volume Kids in Cages: Surviving and Resisting Child Migrant Detention published with University of Arizona Press.

Valorie Diane Thomas, emerita Phebe Estelle Spalding Professor of English and Africana Studies, published a chapter titled “Breath. Fugitivity. Wild Horses.: Black Ecocritical Feminist Strategies for Healing in a Predatory Empire,” in Practicing Liberation: Transformative Strategies for Collective Healing and Systems Change, (North Atlantic Books, 2024), edited by Tessa Hicks Peterson and Hala Khouri.

Thomas delivered the keynote lecture “How to Implement Belonging in Your Organization and Curriculum” at the HERD Institute Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy and Equine Facilitated Learning retreat held at Green Chimneys in Brewster, New York.

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” in the California Society of Culinary Historians fall lecture series at the Richard J. Riordan Central Library in downtown Los Angeles on October 12. Food historian Charles Perry introduced Yamashita and moderated the post-lecture discussion.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, played viola da gamba and violone basso continuo in a rare complete performance of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s cycle of 15 Rosary Sonatas (ca.1680), with violinist Andrew McIntosh, baroque harpist Maxine Eilander and keyboardist Ian Pritchard. The performance, which included 15 scordatura violin tunings on four violins (one tuning for each Mystery of the Rosary), was presented September 14 at Shigemi Matsumoto Recital Hall at Cal State University Northridge on the series ChamberMusic@CSUN, sponsored by the Colburn Foundation and the CSUN Foundation.

On September 27 in Lyman Hall, Bandy performed as a viola da gamba soloist with Cornucopia Baroque on the Friday Noon Concert Series.

Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, gave invited talks on literary translation at several Chinese universities: Shanghai Normal University on September 3; Zhejiang University, Hangzhou Normal University and Zhejiang International Studies University on September 10, 11 and 12; and Sichuan International Studies University on September 26.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, collaborated with his Cornucopia Baroque Ensemble colleagues September 27 as harpsichordist in a program of music by Johann Krieger, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann on the Friday Noon Concert Series. Other faculty performers were Alfred Cramer, violin, Malachai Komanoff Bandy, viola da gamba, and Jason Yoshida, theorbo, who were joined by Aki Nishiguchi, oboe and recorder, Eva Lymenstull, viola da gamba, and Roger Lebow, cello.

Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science and neuroscience, published a paper in Nature Communications about the neural dynamics underlying social interaction titled “Hyperscanning shows friends explore and strangers converge in conversation.”

Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, published a journal article, “‘A modo de huella’: desaparición y desafío en la poesía de Antonio Méndez Rubio,” in Perífrasis: Revista de Literatura, Teoría y Crítica and a book chapter, “Viral Variation(s): Juan Eduardo Cirlot and the Poetics of Permutation,” in Art and Biotechnology: Viral Culture from CRISPR to COVID, Bloomsbury, edited by Claire Correo Nettleton and Louise Mackenzie.

Karla Cordova, Chau Mellon postdoctoral fellow in economics, was awarded the 2024 Professional Development Grant for Emerging Scholars Studying Poverty and Economic Mobility among Latino Populations from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families.

Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, joined in a celebration of Arnold Schoenberg’s 150th birthday September 13 with a presentation, “Klangfarbenmelodie: Phantasy for Violin & Piano, op. 47.” He argued that Schoenberg’s concept of Klangfarbenmelodie (melody of tone-color) provides an important structural and interpretive framework for his music. The presentation included a demonstration on two different violins, one strung in early-20th-century fashion. The celebration was held at the Westside Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, near the Brentwood neighborhood where Schoenberg lived for the last 16 years of his life.

Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics, published the article “Taking psychology seriously: a self-determination theory perspective on Robert Sugden’s opportunity criterion” in Journal of Economic Methodology on September 28. The article was co-authored with Elias van Emmerick ’21.

Robert Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, with colleagues from Harvard, described a new species of fossil sponge, which is named for the artist James Turrell ’65. The paper “A new sponge from the Marjum Formation of Utah documents the Cambrian origin of the hexactinellid body plan” was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on September 18.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, published an editorial, “A Word From…,” in the September 2024 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, presented a paper (virtually), “Assessing Research Culture: The Grants Development Ecosystem Inventory,” at the plenary session of Building a Sustainable Research Culture, the 2024 Annual Meeting of the NORDP MSI Consultants program, at Florida Memorial University, Miami Gardens.

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, guest co-edited and wrote the introduction for the book Embodiment and Representations of Beauty along with Sharina Maíllo-Pozo. The book is volume 35 of the series Advances in Gender Research (editors Vicky Demos and Marcia Segal) and was published by Emerald on September 6.

Jade Star Lackey, professor of geology, presented “Chlorine concentrations in metamorphic wallrocks in the Sierra Nevada: implications for arc halogen budgets” and “How to read the oxygen isotope system in Cordilleran arcs: lessons from 190 million years of Sierran magmatism” at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America on September 22–25. Lackey was also a co-author on three other presentations with two current and two former Pomona students, and he served as a session convener.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, was a guest performer at Oakland University (Michigan) where she performed solo, four-hand and two-piano works in concert.

Piano Spheres posted Lee’s entire March solo concert on YouTube. The San Francisco Classical Voice gave her a glowing review for this recital.

Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, had a two-volume omnibus edition of two of his novels, Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, included in The Everyman’s Library.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, read the part of Anne in a staged reading of American Hunger by Nikhil Mahapatra in the Jean-Claude Carrière New Works Festival, produced by EnActe Arts at the Hammer Theatre in San Jose, California.

Lu appeared in a public service announcement for Alzheimer’s Los Angeles.

Alessia Lupo Cecchet, visiting assistant professor in media studies, received recognition for her experimental film balaena (2023), which won second place at the juried exhibition organized in Aosta, Italy, by ArteAlta Foundation and third place at the 32nd Annual Emerald Coast National Juried Art Exhibition, organized by the Mattie Kelly Arts Center Galleries (Niceville, Florida). Watch the trailer for balaena.

Cecchet will have a two-person show with artist Jasmine Baetz at the Sprague Gallery at Harvey Mudd College in October, where her sculptural work will be displayed along with her video work.

Denise Machin, assistant director of the Smith Campus Center and director of the ballroom dance program, successfully defended her title as the number one woman/woman Latin couple from the North American Same Sex Partner Dance Association (NASSPDA) alongside her partner Viola Ni CMC ’25 on September 21. Machin also excelled in various woman/woman salsa categories with Amy Rubinstein, art studio technician at Pitzer College.

Sara Masland, associate professor of psychological science, presented a talk, “Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Test GPM Theory and Enrich Clinical Care,” at the European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD) conference in Antwerp, Belgium.

Richard Mawhorter, professor of physics and astronomy, recently received word of acceptance by Physical Review A of a manuscript with four Pomona student co-authors titled “Rotational and near-infrared spectra of PbF: Characterization of the coupled X₁ ²Π_1/2 and X₂ ²Π_3/2 states.” Sean Jackson ’23 is lead author. Also, a poster with three Pomona student co-authors titled “SrF Rotational and Hyperfine Global Fit (and YbO)” was presented at the American Physical Society DAMOP meeting in Fort Worth, Texas.

Preston McBride, assistant professor of history, delivered a keynote research webinar for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition on September 25 titled “Hidden Epidemics within Indian Boarding Schools.”

Richard McKirahan, Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and professor of philosophy, published the book The Sophists. The book is part of Routledge’s Ancient Philosophies series in which the fifth-century BCE Sophists are presented in a radically different and more positive way than the traditional view of them as subversive foreigners who took money for teaching young men how to gain political power and win lawsuits through dishonest means and misleading rhetoric.

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, participated in three panels at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia during the week of September 5: as the chair of a panel on African-American political thought; as the chair of a panel titled “The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50 and Its New Generations of Readers” and as a presenter on a panel on “Liberalism, Republicanism, and Communal Freedom in American Political Thought.”

On September 10, McWilliams delivered the Constitution Day Lecture at Skidmore College, titled “A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought.”

McWilliams published an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times on September 9, titled “Do You Remember Politics Before Trump? My Students Don’t.” On September 16, she published an article in Ms. Magazine titled “The U.S. Political Reality (Taylor’s Version).”

On September 25, McWilliams appeared on LiveNOW From FOX to discuss the upcoming American presidential election as part of the network’s You Decide 2024 series.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, organized the 2024 GalFresca conference at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, on September 19-20.

Moreno was interviewed on Astrobites and wrote an invited guest post titled “Astro sequoia: a blueprint for spaces of learning and discovery.”

Lina Patel, lecturer of theatre, was one of eight playwrights from across the country invited to The New Harmony Project’s inaugural PlayFest Indy new works festival to workshop her new play “Sick Girl or... Don't Hate Me Cuz I’m Pretty” about the intersection of immigration, misdiagnosis, chronic illness and disability. The play was helmed by director Daniel Talbott, with Lexy Leuzsler providing dramaturgical support. PlayFest Indy partners invited playwrights with local theaters and provided funding, travel, housing and casting support to work on and ultimately present their work to a public audience.

Sheila Pinkel, professor emerita of art and art history, will have two large bodies of work included in the Getty PST show Digital Capture at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, California, opening October 26. The museum enlarged one of her small works and wrapped the front of the museum with it. Also, her work will be included in the exhibition Work at the Wellcome Collection in London. This large modular piece addresses prison labor in California prisons. It is also included in the show at the University of Alabama Birmingham Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts’ Outside Lines group exhibition from their collection. It is also included in the exhibition Presidential Rogues: Satirical Posters from the 1950s to the Present at the Mercado La Paloma in Los Angeles.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German, presented a paper titled “Proud or Sorry to be Neutral? Swiss Political Self-Representation in the Nebelspalter, 1930s and 1940s” at the German Studies Association 48th Annual Conference in Atlanta on September 26-29.

Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, professor of English, interviewed Jonathan Kramnick (Yale University) about the art of close reading for Public Books.

Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and professor of German and Russian, delivered a paper, “The Rise of the Detective Genre in Post-Soviet Children’s Literature: Enid Blyton and Middle-Class Values,” at the international conference “Writing a British Childhood in a Global Context? Critical Perspectives on Enid Blyton” at the University of Potsdam, Germany on September 25-27.

Patricia Smiley, professor emerita of psychological science, published a paper with colleagues at UC Irvine and the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Infant Mental Health Journal. Among other findings, undergraduate interveners from The Claremont Colleges showed higher fidelity in implementing a weekly savoring intervention than those with more education, and mothers, in turn, displayed more sensitive caregiving.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published a MarketWatch opinion piece, “AI-powered stock ETFs were hyped as superior investments. Then reality hit.” on September 11.

Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored two papers on adolescents’ social development: “Emotional engagement with close friends in adolescence predicts neural correlates of empathy in adulthood,” an fMRI study published in Social Neuroscience, and “Beyond delinquency and drug use: Links of peer pressure to long-term adolescent psychosocial development,” published in Development and Psychopathology. Working with Theresa Pfister ’13, she also published an education practice brief, “Rehumanizing Education Through Relationships,” for the American Psychological Association, Division 15: Educational Psychology.

Luis Edward Tenorio, visiting assistant professor of sociology, published a paper, “Legal Care Work: Emotion and Care Work in Lawyering with Unaccompanied Minors,” in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Friederike von Schwerin-High, professor of German, published the essay “Lessings Naturbegriff laut den Schriften seines Bruders Karl Gotthelf Lessing” in September in the book Natur‘ in der Romantik, volume 15 in the series Schriften der internationalen Arnim-Gesellschaft, edited by Christof Wingertszahn.

Andrew Wilson, director of research computing, published an article titled “Visual affordances and social interactions at Early Iron Age Khirbat al-Mudayna al-ʽAliya, Jordan” in Levant, The Journal of the Council for British Research in the Levant.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, and Jonathan Becker ’24 led a workshop on AI-supported language learning for the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) on September 27. Founded in 1983, CALICO is a leading international organization dedicated to advancing computer-assisted language learning (CALL).

Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, won the 2024 Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies, a national grant given by the American Council of Learned Societies.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, was a featured soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon MGM Studios), which premiered on August 29, with eight episodes being released through October 3. Bandy can be heard playing both yaylı tanbur and viola da gamba throughout the season and on the Amazon original series soundtrack.

Allan Barr, emeritus professor of Chinese, presented a paper on the topic “Exploring the Boundary between Translation and Editing: Thoughts after translating Jin Renshun’s Chunhyang” at the International Conference on Regional and National Literatures and Cultures, held at Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities, Tongliao, on August 22-23. He also gave a talk on literary translation at Northeastern Normal University in Changchun on August 26.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, attended the conference “’Endless Pleasure’: George Frideric Handel and French Musical Culture,” sponsored by the International G.F. Handel Society in Halle, Germany, where he chaired a paper session and read a paper submitted by a colleague who could not attend. In addition, he participated in the meetings of the board of directors of the society, of which he is a vice president, and the editorial board of the Hallische-Händel-Ausgabe, the ongoing edition of the composer’s complete works.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, presented at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) on a large-scale analysis of over 2 million scientific abstracts to construct an evidence map for natural climate solutions. Chang’s thesis student Rohan Gowda Thanh-Quang ’23 also presented at ESA on his research examining investment patterns for climate technology venture capital and carbon mitigation or climate adaptation potential.

Karla Cordova, Chau Mellon postdoctoral fellow in economics, was awarded the 2024-25 Lowe Faculty-Student Research Program grant from the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at Claremont McKenna College.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a talk titled “Fast food for thought: what can chicken nuggets tell us about linear algebra?” at the inauguration of the Saint Louis University Mathematics Mentoring Lab on August 23.

Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, convened a workshop on August 1-2 for research administrators from 15 campuses in seven states, funded by “Building A National Network of Enterprise Research Support at Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (BANNERS-PUI),” an 18-month $100,000 conference grant from the National Science Foundation, on which Gerstein is a coprincipal investigator.

Gerstein presented at the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) 66th annual meeting in Washington, DC, on August 6, at a session on “’The Write Stuff’—Writing for NCURA,” representing the editors of NCURA’s Research Management Review. He also published a brief article titled “SPy versus FRy: Grey Areas in Allocating Work and Credit at Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions” in the August 2024 NCURA Magazine.

Gerstein was on a virtual panel hosted by Colleges of Liberal Arts Sponsored Programs, a 500-member organization, on August 28 to discuss BANNERS and complementary awards from NSF’s GRANTED program.

Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, attended the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) MathFest in Indianapolis from August 6-10. In his role as past chair of MAA Congress, Goins led a discussion and vote to update the congress bylaws August 7; gave a talk and participated in the Project NExT Special Session “Nurturing Mathematical Minds: Mentoring a Math Related Student Group’’ on August 7; and introduced the screening of the documentary “Journeys of Black Mathematicians: Forging Resilience’’ on August 9.

Goins visited Bard College from August 12-14 as part of a week-long conference titled “MathScape 2024: The Mathematics of Supersymmetry.” On August 13, he gave an hour-long address titled “Adinkras as Origami?”

Heidi Nichols Haddad, associate professor of politics, published the book chapter (with Madeline Baer) “The City of Los Angeles and the UN Sustainable Development Goals” in Implementing Sustainable Cities (Routledge 2024).

Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, associate professor of economics, published the paper “A Kinky Consistency: Experimental Evidence of Behavior under Linear and Nonlinear Budget Constraints” in the August issue of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, together with Lew Ludwig of Denison University, facilitated a webinar titled “No Robot Left Behind: Crafting an AI-Smart Syllabus” hosted by the Mathematical Association of America.

Karaali published a poem, “ode to the california sun,” in the online gallery The Nature of Our Times on August 26.

Talya Klein, visiting assistant professor of theatre, was the intimacy coordinator for the horror film The Surrender, which wrapped principal photography on August 16 in Los Angeles. The film is written and directed by Julia Max and stars Kate Burton and Colby Minifie.

Jade Star Lackey, professor of geology, saw two papers published. One in Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research focuses on development of two garnet samples in the Pomona College mineral collections as standard materials for use by the international geochronology community. A second in Geosphere titled “Revised geologic map and structural interpretation of the Mineral King pendant, southern Sierra Nevada, California (USA)” is the culmination of a 12-year collaboration between Lackey and colleagues at Denison University. Many of the new uranium-lead dating ages published in the paper were measurements in the College’s Oxtoby Environmental Isotope Laboratory.

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, was invited to join the editorial board of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer Nature.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, coached chamber music groups at the Redfish Music Festival in early August and performed with fellow faculty members at Oregon coast venues in Gold Beach, Port Orford and Langlois.

From August 17-18, Lee was a guest artist at the Garth Newel Music Center 2024 Summer Festival where she played two-piano works of Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens and Brahms and eight-hand arrangements of works by J. S. Bach and Vivaldi. The August 17 and August 18 concerts were live streamed.

Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, published an article titled “Toward Appropriating Tools for Queer Use” in the Halfway to the Future symposium.

Alexandra Lippman, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, curated and organized Grand Performances’ 38th season finale with a show highlighting transnational cumbia and featuring Chucho Ponce Los Daddy's, Yeison Landero, Turbo Sonidero, DJ Chihuahua and others. She hosted this alongside her record label partner artist Gary “Ganas” Garay and recorded a radio show on Dublab with the invited musicians. Their record label Discos Rolas was mentioned in The Wire (August 2024) in Juan San Cristóbal Lizama’s “Global Ear: Monterrey.”

Preston McBride, assistant professor of history, participated at the World Congress of Environmental History conference in Oulu, Finland, on August 20 with Pey-Yi Chu, associate professor of history, and Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History. Their roundtable “Settler colonial knowledge and practices in the United States and Siberia” included McBride’s presentation on “Boarding School Transformations of Native American Communities.”

Richard McKirahan, E.C. Norton Professor of Classics and professor of philosophy, attended the annual meeting of Aristotle scholars at a village on Mount Pelion, Greece, and for the first time for any foreigner was honored by being the first speaker. He also attended a conference on Protagoras, the fifth-century BCE Sophist, where he gave two presentations. He also attended the biennial meeting of the International Association for Presocratic Studies, of which he is president. It was held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and McKirahan participated in the organization of the event and presented an overview of his forthcoming book on the Sophists. Lastly, he sent in the final version of his book which will be published by Routledge Publishing in their series “Ancient Philosophies.”

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, participated in the “Musing with Melville” program at Arrowhead, Herman Melville's house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The program allows writers to spend time working at the desk where Melville wrote Moby-Dick, the subject of McWilliams’ fall ID1 course.

On August 28, McWilliams appeared on “Live Now With Fox” to discuss the 2024 election. On August 30, she was interviewed by Newsweek about CNN’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz.

Wallace Meyer, director of the Bernard Field Station and associate professor of biology, was an invited panelist at the Ecological Society of America Meeting. He was also an author on multiple talks at the American Malacological Conference, with his student Isabel Ramos ’24 winning best student poster. He also presented a talk and was an author on two talks at the Ecological Society of American meeting. Lastly, he was an author on three talks at the Hawaii Conservation conference.

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, is the editor of the just-published book Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State University Press, 2024).

At the recently concluded World Congress for Environmental History, held in Oulu, Finland, Miller convened and moderated a roundtable on “Settler Colonial Knowledge and Practice in the United States and Siberia” and presented a paper titled “Collecting Nature, Building Nations: Botany and Settler Science in Finland and the United States.” Joining him on the panel were Pey-Yi Chu, associate professor of history, and Preston McBride, assistant professor of history, as well as historian Tamara Polyakova of the University of Eastern Finland.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, delivered an invited talk titled “Intergalactic Pachamama: a blueprint for decolonizing astronomy,” as part of the All-Inclusive AGN session at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. Moreno also gave a public talk on galaxies with and without dark matter at Lick Observatory in Hamilton Mountain, California, as part of the Music of the Spheres series. Moreno also delivered an invited talk and participated in a panel at the Astronomers Bridging Culture, Tradition, and Research event, sponsored by NASA.

Zhiru Ng, professor of religious studies, inaugurated the new Foo Hai Buddhist Seminar Series at Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore on August 21. She delivered a talk titled “Using Chinese Theory of Ritual to Study Ritual: Stove or Alms Bowl? Meal Rites and Cultural Borrowing from Myanmar in Taiwanese Female Monasticism.”

Gilda L. Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o Latina/o studies, published an article on community and activism in 1960s-1970s East San Gabriel Valley in Zócolo Public Square on August 15.

Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, co-authored the review article “In Memoriam: The Life and Scientific Accomplishments of Frank A. L. Anet (1926-2024)” in the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. A UCLA chemistry professor, Anet built some of the first high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, now standard equipment in chemistry laboratories worldwide, and used the instruments to discover bedrock principles in organic chemistry and magnetic resonance.

Igor Santos, visiting assistant professor of music, premiered his large-scale music composition titled “nossas mãos” (“our hands”) at the TIME:SPANS festival in New York City. This 30-minute work, written for piano trio and video, explores the profound symbolism of hands—celebrating them as instruments of human agency, affection, protest and as technologies for music-making. The composition was commissioned by the New York City-based trio Longleash and funded by Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Program, with generous support from The Mellon Foundation.

Santos performed his piano and video work “offering” on Louisville Public Media’s NEW LENS program. In Kentucky, he also attended a residency at the Loretto Project, where, along with workshopping new music, he mentored doctoral composition students from Columbia University and Cornell University.

John Seery, George Irving Thomson Memorial Professor of Government and professor of politics, had his full-feature screenplay Jone judged as one of 12 finalists in the 2024 Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Diversity Initiative Competition. Seery also played baritone saxophone with the city of Pomona Concert Band in separate concerts on August 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29.

Anthony Shay, professor of dance, was named “honored fellow” by the Iranian Studies Association for his numerous writings on Iranian dance and Persian popular music on August 12 at its biennial conference in Mexico City.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, wrote six opinion pieces: “Big Tech’s AI bubble is alive and unwell” (MarketWatch, August 1), “The Government-Debt Tipping Point Is Nonsense” (MindMatters, August 9), “What the Luck? How Luck Matters to Olympic and Major League Wins” (MindMatters, August 16), “Bad Luck Seldom Persists — But It Never Guarantees Good Luck” (MindMatters, August 21), “Don’t Trust AI for Important Things Such As Investment Decisions” (Scientific American, August 23) and “A Sloppy ‘AI Scientist’ Could Make the Science Crisis Much Worse” (MindMatters, August 29). The Scientific American piece was widely reported, including an in-depth article by Andrew Isbester, “AI Does a Fickle Investor Make,” (Finews.asia, August 27). Smith was also quoted extensively in an article by Edward Yardeni on the limitations of AI, “On AI, Payrolls, & Global Economy,” (Yardeni Research, August 22).

Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, was interviewed about her research on empathy across generations of parents and children for the podcast Purposeful Empathy with Anita Nowak.

Luis Edward Tenorio, visiting assistant professor of sociology, presented a paper titled “The Intergenerational Citizenship Effects of Public Benefits for Non-Citizen Mothers and Their Citizen Children” at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Montreal, Canada.

Kevin Wynter, associate professor and chair of media studies, published an essay titled “When the woman speaks” in the peer-reviewed journal Porn Studies.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History and coordinator of Asian studies, moderated two alumni conversations with Soma Mei Sheng Frazier ’95 about her first novel Off the Books, published by Macmillan in July. The first was held on August 3 at Village Well Books in Culver City, California, and the second on August 4 at Arvida Book Co. in Tustin, California. Both events were organized by Pomona alumni.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, organized and chaired a panel on Musica Poetica at the Twenty-Fourth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, held July 23–26 at the University of British Columbia. Bandy presented the paper “‘Through All Eternity’: Musical-Temporal Rhetoric in Dieterich Buxtehude’s Jesu dulcis memoria (BuxWV 57),” which highlighted concordances between 17th-century Lutheran orthodox and Western esoteric theologies of time and memory, toward a new understanding of North German Baroque basso ostinato (repeating bassline) works as rhetorically self-conscious measurers of human temporality.

Bandy was a featured soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to Season 2 of The Serpent Queen, the STARZ historical drama about Catherine de’ Medici, which premiered on July 12 with eight episodes being released through Aug. 30. Bandy can be heard playing viola da gamba throughout the season, as well as on the official STARZ original series soundtrack.

Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, presented a paper, “Hacia una poética de la ‘antilogía’ poética: el caso de Jorge Urrutia,” virtually at the I Congreso Internacional de Teoría de la Lírica y Poéticas Comparadas, held at the Universidad de Salamanca from July 3-5.

Gary Champi, assistant professor of dance, co-choreographed and performed at the Fini Dance Festival in Calabria, Italy, with local dancers from July 13-20.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, was invited to present on her research to the World Resources Institute and gave a talk titled “Leveraging Large-Scale Data Mining for Socio-Environmental Impact.”

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, published “Back to Spain? Return Migration on Stage among Aging Migrants in France,” a chapter in the edited volume States of Return: Rethinking Migration and Mobility (NYU Press).

Virginie A. Duzer, professor of Romance languages and literatures, presented her work in progress on an ecocritic approach to Balzac, “Le Chef d'Oeuvre inconnu,” at the 16th edition of the annual workshop series on 19th-century French studies titled “Cultural Production in the 19th Century (Tissages et Métissages)” at the American University of Paris.

Lorn Foster, emeritus professor of politics, spent four days in Alabama along with staff from the National Trust for Historic Preservation doing a site visit to four historical African American churches: Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery; Old Ship AME Zion Church, Montgomery; Brown Chapel AME Church, Selma; and Old Sardis Baptist Church, Birmingham. Each church is on the National Registry for Historic Places and has received funding from the National Trust.

Robert Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, published three articles in July. With collaborators from Australia and Colorado College, he published the article “The Emu Bay Shale: a unique early Cambrian Lagerstätte from a tectonically active basin” in the July 26 issue of Science Advances. With collaborators from the American Museum of Natural History, he published the article “Late Ordovician eurypterid preserves oldest euchelicerate musculature in pyrite” in Biology Letters on July 10. He joined an international community project on the paper “Sustained increases in atmospheric oxygen and marine productivity through the Neoproterozoic and Paleozoic Eras,” published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, was appointed as a member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Fellows Program Selection Committee for a term of three years, effective Feb. 1, 2025, through Jan. 31, 2028. The Fellows of the AMS program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.

Garcia gave a talk titled “Quotient sets, Fibonacci numbers, and related curiosities” at the 21st International Fibonacci Conference at Harvey Mudd College on July 11.

Garcia published a book chapter (with Albrecht Boettcher and Mishko Mitkovski) titled “The Reciprocal Schur Inequality” in Analysis without Borders, edited by Sergei Rogosin.

Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, associate professor of economics, published the paper “Minimum Wage Employment Effects and Labour Market Concentration” in the July issue of The Review of Economic Studies.

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, published a book article titled “Japan’s Quiet Leadership: Between Vision and Necessity” with Asia Policy.

Le gave an invited lecture on Japan’s aging and declining population at Meiji Gakuin University in Japan. He also led a benkyoukai on the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump to the U.S.-Japan Leadership Program. Le completed the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Fellowship with a four-day conference in Washington, D.C. where he presented his research to policymakers on Capitol Hill.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, returned as a faculty member at the Chamber Music Conference, held at Colgate University, New York. For one week in July, she coached high-level amateur musicians in chamber music groups and performed J. S. Bach’s Trio Sonata from Musical Offering with other faculty members.

As a faculty member at the Redfish Music Festival in late July, Lee performed piano quartets of Mozart and Schumann at the Cultural Center in Crescent City, California, and two venues in Oregon (Port Orford and North Bend).

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, appeared on The Tavis Smiley Show on July 23 to discuss the question “Is Democracy on the Ballot?”

Miriam Merrill, chair of physical education, was inducted into the Tuscarawas County Sports Hall of Fame (TCSHOF). The TCSHOF is dedicated to honoring individuals prominent in the history of athletics in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. Merrill’s induction class included four teams, one foundation and 19 other individual athletes.

Lynne Miyake, emerita professor of Japanese and Asian studies, published a study of Japanese comics versions of an 11th-century tale, titled The Tale of Genji Through Contemporary Manga: Challenging Gender and Sexuality in Japan on July 11.

Nikki Moore, visiting assistant professor of geology, was awarded a $198,248 grant from the National Science Foundation EMBRACE program through the Division of Earth Sciences for her research proposal titled “Magmatic Evolution and Timing of the Independence Dike Swarm.” With a host of undergraduate research assistants, she will conduct field, geochemical and geochronological work on the dikes to develop a comprehensive model for the generation and emplacement of the swarm. This grant will provide research and networking opportunities for about six Claremont Colleges students and expand the analytical capabilities of the Pomona College Oxtoby Lab.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, published an article titled “Effects of multi-channel AGN feedback in FIRE cosmological simulations of massive galaxies” in the Astrophysical Journal.

Moreno and collaborators were awarded time to observe 450 galaxies in the local universe on the Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array, under a proposal titled “Star formation efficiency and quenching patterns in and between galaxies.” Moreno is serving as theory deputy director of this collaboration with principal investigators Timothy Davis and Amelie Saintonge. Moreno is also co-investigator on a National Science Foundation award titled “Multiphase Analysis of (U)LIRG Nuclear Activity” with principal investigator Vivian U.

Moreno and postdoctoral fellow Francisco Mercado were awarded $49,990 by the National Science Foundation under a program titled “Conference: 23rd Annual Symposium of the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows.”

Moreno was selected as the first distinguished guest by the undergraduate interns enrolled in the Carnegie Astrophysics Summer Student Internship program at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. Moreno represented the American Astronomical Society on a site visit to oversee the publishing of American astronomy journals at the Institute of Physics headquarters in Bristol, UK. On July 11, Moreno delivered a research talk at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. During the week of July 23, Moreno attended and co-organized the first meeting of the Society of Indigenous Physicists in Seattle.

Thomas Muzart, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, presented a paper titled “Futurité queer dans Viendra le temps du feu de Wendy Delorme” at the 65th annual conference of the Society for French Studies on July 2.

Muzart published an article, “L'émancipation décoloniale en toutes lettres d'Abdellah Taïa,” in the special issue of Contemporary French Civilization, “Queer flight: Rethinking Maghrebi sexualities” (July 2024).

Zhiru Ng, professor of religious studies, presented “Māra as the Problem of Evil: East Asian Variants of a Global Indian Myth” at the 2024 Association of Asian Studies-in-Asia Meeting at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yojyakarta, Indonesia.

Lina Patel, lecturer of playwriting, was invited to present her play The Ragged Claws at The Road Theater Company’s Summer Playwright’s Festival in North Hollywood, California. Also in July, Patel participated in and co-moderated Rogue Machine Theater's inaugural Playwright’s Roundtable, a culmination of a six-month workshop and new play presentations at the historic Matrix Theater in West Hollywood, California.

Larissa Rudova, professor of German and Russian, delivered a paper, “The Queering of Russian Childhood in Mikita Franko’s Fictional World,” at the workshop “Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond,” organized by the International Workshop of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and International Youth Library in Munich from July 18-19. Rudova also moderated a panel, “Politics of Memory: East and West,” at the same conference.

Santiago Sandi-Urena, visiting professor of chemistry, was an invited speaker at the 27th International Conference on Chemistry Education, the specialized event in the field organized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The conference was held in Pattaya, Thailand, from July 15-19. His talk “Cross-institutional study: Propositional instruction and competence in chemical symbolic language in college students” included valuable research contributions by Jason Xu ’26 and Nate Rubin ’26. Sandi-Urena was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the conference and organized and chaired the symposium “Emerging Educational Trends in Chemistry in the 21st Century.”

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, wrote three opinion pieces: “Fisker, Invitae and other fallen ‘unicorns’ are casualties of Silicon Valley’s broken venture capital system” (MarketWatch, July 11), “How Can Someone Who Fails be Faulted When Everyone Else is Failing? (MindMatters, July 22) and “Big Tech’s AI Bubble is Alive and Unwell” (MarketWatch, July 31).

Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored a book chapter, “The Neuroscience of Social Relationships in Early Development,” for the new edition of Child Development at the Intersection of Emotion and Cognition, published by the American Psychological Association.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, gave an invited online workshop on how to address individual differences in learning with AI for a diverse group of instructors and researchers from elementary and high schools in Singapore to the Ministry of Education and National Institute of Education on July 9.

Xiao published an invited paper titled “The 80/20 Rule in the Era of Artificial Intelligence” in International Chinese Learning and Teaching Resources by Joint Publishing (Hong Kong) on July 10.

Xiao was invited to join the review team of research priorities and grants for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) on July 25.

Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, co-authored the introduction to the special issue of Psychology and Aging “Adult Age Differences in Language, Communication, and Learning from Text,” along with co-editor Elizabeth Stine-Morrow (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Abrams also published two research articles in this issue: “Age-Related Differences in the Evaluation of Highly Arousing Language,” co-authored with collaborators Meredith Shafto and Lori James (University of Colorado Colorado Springs) and “Do Pictures’ Emotional Valence and Arousal Affect Younger and Older Adults’ Narratives?” co-authored with cognitive science majors Benjamin Cote ’23, María José Najas ’24 and Aysha Gsibat ’24 and collaborator Katherine White (Rhodes College).

Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, completed his Downing Fellowship at University of Cambridge. Hosted by Matthew Gaunt (chemistry), he learned about new high-throughput techniques for synthesis. He also gave research talks at University of Bristol, University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

Lisa Beckett, professor of physical education, was honored with a scoreboard naming dedication at the Pauley Tennis Courts. Student-athletes, alumni, colleagues, family and friends gathered for a dedication ceremony at court 7. The evening included a formal program of speakers, the unveiling of the naming of the scoreboard, a reception and dinner.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, published an article on “Coroliano Transformed: The Early History of Ariosti's First Royal Academy Opera” in the 2024 issue of the Handel-Jahrbuch.

Amelia Bransky, visiting assistant professor of theatre, collaborated with Detroit Public Theatre on their production of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s as the scenic designer.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, co-organized a symposium titled Text Analysis for Conservation at the 2024 North American Congress for Conservation Biology in Vancouver, Canada.

Toni Cook, visiting assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, published an article with Case Miranda ’24 and Clara McGilly PZ ’24, “Innovative use of Shona ideophones within an adolescent community of practice,” in the journal Linguistics Vanguard.

Anne Dwyer, associate professor of German and Russian, was an associate at the Summer Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in June, where she conducted research for her book manuscript Viktor Shklovsky after Russian Formalism and a related article on Soviet cultural production/propaganda around the 1939 annexation of Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine. The award was made possible by the U.S. Department of State through its Title VIII Program for Research Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union.

KJ Fagan, senior director of public programming and strategic initiatives, was appointed to the Professions Committee of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), a global organization dedicated to advocating for the discipline of change management, supporting the global community of change managers through educational and professional development, and maintaining a standard for the accreditation of professionals working in the field. As a board-appointed member of the Professions Committee, Fagan will be responsible for implementing ACMP’s strategic initiatives in the areas of education, partnerships and advocacy.

Robert Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, and a team of international colleagues published the article “Rapid volcanic ash entombment reveals the 3D anatomy of Cambrian trilobites” in the journal Science. This “Trilobite Pompeii” was featured on the cover of the June 28 issue of Science and was featured in news outlets including Science News and The New York Times.

Melissa Givens, assistant professor of music, was one of five Davidson College alumni selected by the alumni association to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award for “providing leadership or attaining recognition on a national or regional level in their profession or business” during the recently concluded 2024 Reunion Weekend. The citation read in part, “Because of her deep and varied contributions to the worlds of music and art; and because of her commitment to the liberal arts and preparing the next generation of leaders who will serve in the world, the Alumni Association is pleased to present Melissa Givens, class of 1989, with the Distinguished Alumni Award, on the occasion of her 35th Reunion, June 2024.” Givens also co-chaired the reunion for her class.

Elizabeth Glater, associate professor of neuroscience, presented “Chemical Basis of Behavioral Preference for the Microbiome” at the C. elegans Topic Meeting: Neuronal Development, Synaptic Function & Behavior in Madison, Wisconsin. The co-authors were Dylan Blackett ’24, Emily Church ’23, Victor Chai ’23, Tiam Farajzadeh ’23 and Charles Taylor, chair and professor of chemistry.

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, participated June 13 in the roundtable “Todavía pensamos, todavía escribimos: ¿Qué tiene para decir la academia frente a la encrucijada que vivimos?” (“We still think, we still write: What can the academy say about the crossroads we are living in?”) at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Congress in Bogotá, Colombia. On June 14, she was part of the LASA book presentation session about the edited volume Women’s Rights in Movement: Dynamics of feminist change in Latin America and the Caribbean along with the editors and other authors and talked about her chapter “The Right to a Complete Life: Struggles of the Dominican Feminist Movement.” On June 15, she presented the paper “The Anti-Gender and Anti-LGTBQ Conservative Backlash in the Dominican Republic” in the LASA section panel “Presentes de odio, futuros distópicos” (Hateful presents, dystopic futures).

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, delivered a talk titled “New Practices in Chinese Courses at a Liberal Arts College: Richness, Diversity, and Timeliness” at the 2024 Forum on the Research and Teaching of Chinese Language and Culture, organized by the China-U.S. Alliance of College Teachers of Chinese at Xiamen University in China. In the presentation, she shared her recent pedagogical innovations in teaching Mandarin Chinese, including collaborative grading and creative project-based learning approaches in foreign language classrooms.

Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, will have a collection of his art writings Cellophane Bricks published on July 25.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, participated in a roundtable discussion titled “Leading with Performance: Interdisciplinary Arts-led Innovations Inside the Neoliberal University" at the Canadian Association of Theatre Research Conference: Staging Justice, moved from McGill University to Université de Montreal, Teesri Duniya Theatre and Concordia University.

Lu was a discussant in The Dramaturgy and Ethics Working Group and participated in the Critical Race Studies Working Group at The Performance Studies International Conference in London at Senate House and Hoxton Hall.

Denise Machin, assistant director of the Smith Campus Center and director of the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company, was elected as president of the College Dancesport Association, the tri-state ballroom dance circuit the Claremont Colleges belongs to. Machin was also elected as a board member of NASSPDA (North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association).

Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, spoke at the Oxford Union at the University of Oxford, where she was part of a panel titled “Intrigue & Insiders: American Politics in the Age of Trump vs. Biden” on June 3.

McWilliams gave a talk titled “The Book Banning Epidemic,” first to the residents of Pilgrim Place in Claremont and later to the members of the United Nations Association of Pomona Valley.

On June 24, McWilliams published an essay on “The End of Roe: Two Years Later” in Current.

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, is the author of “Wild, Managed, and Reclaimed: The Complex Environmental History of the San Antonio River Watershed,” in Greg Gordon, ed., Rewilding the Urban Frontier: River Conservation in the Anthropocene. Miller also chaired a session devoted to the anthology at the recent meetings of the American Society for Environmental History.

Miller was featured in “A Tale of Two Rivers: Los Angeles and San Antonio,” Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservation podcast.

Miller published an essay on his participation in a series of humanities Texas teacher programs in the Humanities Texas Newsletter.

Jon Moore, lab coordinator and associate professor of biology, presented a poster with co-authors Anaya Ramkumar ’24 and Bernice Sule ’26 titled “Assessing Local Ecological Genetic Diversity as an Introductory Biology CURE” at the Association for Biology Laboratory Education’s annual conference in College Park, Maryland.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, published a paper titled “Size-Mass Relations for Simulated Low-Mass Galaxies: Mock Imaging versus Intrinsic Properties” in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On June 3, Moreno delivered an invited talk titled “The intriguing lives of galaxies lacking dark matter” at the Cosmic Signals of Dark Matter Physics: New Synergies conference held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California.

Moreno served as reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Gilda L. Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o Latina/o studies, presented “The Branches of Greenberry Drive: African Americans and Activism in the East San Gabriel Valley Suburbs, 1960s-1970s” at the Inland Empire People’s History Conference at California State University, San Bernardino on June 1.

Mary Paster, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, gave a keynote address titled “What, if anything, is ‘myopia in grammar’?” at the Workshop on Myopia in Grammar, University of Leipzig on June 13.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German, delivered a plenary address at an online conference at the Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College of the University of London titled “Work and Smell: Comparative Perspectives.”

Richard S. Savich, lecturer in economics, was awarded a Wig Curriculum Development grant to update ECON 131, Economics of Entrepreneurship, for possible offering during the 2025-2026 academic year. The course was last offered in 2018.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, wrote two opinion pieces: “AI is Still a Delusion” (MindMatters, June 27) and “Why AI Can’t Replace Science” (FastCompany, June 28).

Smith signed a contract for a second edition of Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics.

Smith’s co-authored paper Associations of Physical Inactivity and COVID-19 Outcomes Among Subgroups, American Journal of Preventative Medicine, was selected as the AJPM paper of the year.

Ken Wolf, John Sutton Miner Professor of History and professor of classics, recently returned from his 14th alumni trip May 29 to June 9, this one focused on 12th- and 13th-century papal responses to heresy in Languedoc and Catalunya. This year marked the 25th anniversary of his first such medieval-themed trip in 1999.

Patria Aziz, assistant women’s tennis coach, led the team to winning the SCIAC championships and the NCAA semifinals. 

Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, gave a series of talks sharing the latest research from his group at University of California San Diego, Scripps Research and the University of Manchester (UK).

Ball published a paper with Natalie Schur ’24 titled “Poison to Promise: The Resurgence of Organophosphorous Fluorides” in the journal Chem. The paper is a collaboration with the Sammis (U. British Columbia) and Melvin (Bryn Mawr) labs. It is a perspective highlighting the historical challenges of these compounds as chemical weapons, their safety profile and the potential for innovation toward addressing challenges in chemical and biomolecular sciences.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, played the viola da gamba on The Singularity, a rock concept album released May 3 by composer Bear McCreary and featuring artists such as Slash and Rufus Wainwright. Bandy can be heard on the track “Antikythera Mechanism (Ft. Raya Yarbrough).”

Bandy contracted, organized and played violone for the ensemble Harmonologia Pomona, a group of professional instrumentalists specializing in Baroque performance practice, which collaborated with the Pomona College Glee Club in performances of Handel’s Dixit Dominus, directed by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music. Performances took place in Bridges Hall of Music on April 25 and 27 and May 11, followed by a West Coast tour (May 14-22), with concerts in Berkeley, Palo Alto, Portland and Seattle.

On May 10 in Orange, California, Bandy programmed and led a workshop handling musical rhetoric in works by Lassus, Morales and Marenzio for the Orange County Recorder Society, and on May 26, Bandy played violone with Tesserae Baroque in their 2023/24 season finale in Beverly Hills, California, a complete performance of Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio Cain, overo Il primo omicidio (1707).

Tatiana Basáñez, visiting assistant professor of psychological science, had a symposium titled The World of Three Cultures Model: Honor, Achievement, and Joy/Easygoingness accepted for presentation at The XXVII International Congress of International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology 2024 where she is scheduled to present a paper titled Psychometric Properties of Values and Behavior Measures Using the World of Three Cultures Model: Honor, Achievement, and Joy. Also, along with students from her Social Psychology and Health (SOPAH) research lab, she was awarded a grant to present two scientific posters at the Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention in San Francisco, May 23-26.

Colin J. Beck, professor of international relations, gave two invited talks. First, he spoke to master’s students in the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University on revolutionary waves in modern history. On May 3, he presented a paper on the role of corruption grievances in 21st century revolutions at the Wisconsin Historical Analysis Table at the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Graydon Beeks, emeritus professor of music, performed as harpsichordist with his Cornucopian Baroque Ensemble colleagues—violinist Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music; theorbist Jason Yoshida, lecturer in music; and cellist Roger Lebow—in a Friday Noon Concert of music by Handel and Telemann in Lyman Hall.

Gary Champi, assistant professor of dance, taught a masterclass on Cunningham Technique at the University of Washington, Seattle, on May 24.

Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis, co-authored a publication titled “Communication and Deliberation for Environmental Governance” in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources. Chang also co-authored a preprint titled “Automating the Analysis of Public Saliency and Attitudes towards Biodiversity from Digital Media” on the arXiv preprint server with two non-profits, Conservation Science Partners and On The Edge Conservation.

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, gave a talk titled “Memoria de la migración de las mujeres españolas en Francia” at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid on May 10. The talk, which was based on his recently published book Untold Stories: Legacies of Authoritarianism among Spanish Labour Migrants in Later Life (Toronto, 2024), was sponsored jointly by the museum and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, was an invited speaker at a Zoom workshop co-hosted by the UC San Diego Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration on May 17. She and Peggy Levitt gave a talk based on their recently published book Transnational Social Protection: Social Welfare Across National Borders (Oxford University Press).

Virginie A. Duzer, professor and chair of Romance languages and literatures, remotely presented the paper “Calques et Copies des amitiés tardives” during the Sorbonne nouvelle journée d’étude Goncourt dedicated to copy and double May 16.

Robert Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, with colleagues from Harvard University and Freie Universitat Berlin, published the article “Benthic pterobranchs from the Cambrian (Drumian) Marjum Konservat-Lagerstätte of Utah” in Papers in Palaeontology.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, W.M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor and chair of mathematics and statistics, gave a talk titled “Fast food for thought: what can chicken nuggets tell us about linear algebra?” at the Cal State Long Beach Mathematics Colloquium on May 3.

Garcia published an article, “Norms on complex matrices induced by random vectors II: extension of weakly unitarily invariant norms,” with former Visiting Assistant Professor Ángel Chávez and Jackson Hurley ’23 in Canadian Mathematical Bulletin.

Ernesto R. Gutiérrez Topete ’17, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in linguistics and cognitive science, presented his research project titled “Production Leads Perception: Linguistic Variation Effects on Speech Perception” at the Colloquium Seminar for the Linguistics Department at UCLA.

Heidi Nichols Haddad, associate professor of politics, participated in the invited workshop “Surfacing Social Justice Solutions in Voluntary Local Reviews” sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University/Heinz College and the Brookings Institution Center for Sustainable Development in Washington D.C. on May 1-2.

Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, co-organized and moderated a panel on women’s political participation on May 31 evaluating the results of female candidacies in the Dominican presidential and congressional elections. Hernández-Medina also gave an interview on the feminist radio program Libertarias the same day to publicize the event.

Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and statistics, together with Kira Hamman of Pennsylvania State University Mon Alto and Lew Ludwig of Denison University, led a virtual four-day workshop (May 13-16) titled “Who’s Afraid of Generative AI? Promises and Challenges for the Mathematics Classroom” hosted by the 2024 OPEN MATH Workshop series of the Mathematical Association of America.

Karaali gave a talk titled “A New Elephant Enters the (Chat)Room: Why Teach Math Now?” at the 2024 FYMSiC (First-Year Mathematics and Statistics in Canada) one-day online conference Why Are We Teaching Mathematics Today? on May 9. A recording of the talk is available.

Karaali published an article titled “ChatGPT and New Ethical Considerations for the Mathematics Classroom” in the April/May 2024 issue of FOCUS, the newsletter of the Mathematical Association of America.

Jade Star Lackey, professor of geology, co-authored the study “Multi-scale, open-system magmatic and sub-solidus processes contribute to the chemical and isotopic characteristics of the Jurassic Guadalupe Igneous Complex, Sierra Nevada, California, USA,” published in Geosphere.

Lackey presented the talk “Subduction to Sequoias: How Cretaceous Magmatism Set the Vitality and Vulnerability of Sierran Forest Ecosystems” at the 2024 Sierra Nevada Science Symposium convened by the National Park Service, USGS and University of California System.

Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, and fellow members of the Mojave Trio were artists-in-residence at University of California, Davis, from May 15-17. They recorded and presented the premiere of graduate composer works in concert. Mojave Trio also performed a live-streamed concert of works by Nico Muhly, James Diáz, Gao Ping and Rebecca Clarke. Each member of the group coached undergraduate individuals and chamber ensembles.

Lee was invited to give a solo recital for the May meeting of the local Foothill Philharmonic Committee, a support group for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, led a qigong workshop at a Hike for Wellness in Lincoln Heights offered by Roots in Motion Bike Collective on May 11.

Lu led an online exploration in contracting and expanding for the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA) on May 20.

Sara Masland, associate professor of psychological science, presented an invited talk, “Knowledge is Power(ful): Harnessing Education to Destigmatize Borderline Personality Disorder,” at the annual Yale-National Education Alliance for BPD conference.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, published a paper titled “HI discs of Lstar galaxies as probes of the baryonic physics of galaxy evolution” in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Moreno delivered a colloquium titled The intriguing lives of galaxies lacking dark matter at Harvard University (May 8) and MIT (May 14).

Carolyn Ratteray, associate professor of theatre, received the Integrity Award from the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival for her outstanding work in Los Angeles theatre.

Ratteray’s one-woman show Both And (A Play About Laughing While Black) was invited to be a part of the International Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this summer along with her episodic film (Un)Claimed. (Un)Claimed also screened at the Diva Film Festival in London this past month.

Hans J. Rindisbacher, professor of German, published a review of A Date with Language by David Crystal (Oxford, Bodleian Library Publishing, 2023) in The European Legacy.

Joti Rockwell, associate professor of music, performed in a pair of concerts at Claremont’s Folk Music Center as a member of Peter Harper’s band, playing a variety of instruments including pedal steel, banjo and theremin. On vihuela, he joined Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, and Ursula Kleinecke, lecturer in music, in a performance as part of Claremont Colleges Faculty Mariachi, led by Cándida Jáquez. On a custom-made Balinese bamboo slide guitar, he was a guest musician with gamelan Burat Wangi at the CalArts 2024 World Music and Dance Festival, performing the new composition Fantasy by I Nyoman Wenten, lecturer in music.

Rockwell published a review of Nicholas Stoia’s book Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared American Vernacular in the Journal of Music Theory.

On May 18, Rockwell delivered the keynote lecture titled “Music in Motion, Music as Motion” at the joint meeting of the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, held at UC Irvine.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and chair of English, published her edited collection The Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature on May 16. The Companion assembles a coalition of expert scholars, both emergent and established, to ensure comprehensive and incisive coverage of literary texts featuring the Black body over a wide historical range and from a variety of theoretical perspectives. This book provides an invaluable guide for teachers, students and general readers interested in literary and artistic representations of Blackness and embodiment. The cover design features Wardell Milan’s The Black Male Body, one of five billboards commissioned by Pomona’s Benton Museum during the 2022-2023 academic year.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, published two peer-reviewed papers: “LLMs Can’t Be Trusted for Financial Advice” in Journal of Financial Planning and “MPT and CAPM Mismeasure Risk” in Journal of Investing. He also wrote two opinion pieces: “A Man, A Boat, and a Goat—and a Chatbot!” (MindMatters, May 15) and “AI replicating human thinking is more Big Tech ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ hype” (MarketWatch, May 29).

Gary was interviewed by Derek Thompson for “How the Modern University Became a Bureaucratic Blob” in The Atlantic (May 8) and signed a contract for a traditional Chinese translation of Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics, which has also been translated into Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Turkish.

Andrew Wilson, director of research computing, ITS, published an article, “Virtual Reality Based Simulated Hallucinations to Enhance Empathy Toward Individuals With Schizophrenia,” in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

Keri Wilson, assistant professor of biology, published the article “Early-life silver spoon improves survival and breeding performance of adult zebra finches” in the journal American Naturalist.

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, organized a panel on AI-generated content and second language teaching at the 2024 Conference of Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) held by Carnegie Mellon University on May 23. Xiao and Jonathan Becker ’24 showcased an AI-based adaptive learning platform, “Luduan.ai,” at CALICO 2024 on May 23.

Xiao co-authored a paper titled “Effects of Lexical Properties in L2 Chinese Compound Processing: A Multivariate Approach” in Journal of Psycholinguistic Research on May 24.

Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies (GWS) and program coordinator of GWS and American Studies (AMST), was nominated for the Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and was awarded an honorable mention at the national conference awards ceremony in Seattle on April 27.

Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry gave a talk titled “Synthetic Strategies toward Fluorosulfurylation of Organic Molecules and Sulfur-Fluoride Exchange (SuFEx)” at Portland State University.

Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, served on the program committee for the 32nd Annual Conference of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, held April 4–7 at Princeton University and hosted by Princeton University Department of Music, with support from the Center for Human Values, Council of the Humanities, Program in Italian Studies, Department of Art and Archaeology, Department of French and Italian and Department of Comparative Literature.

On April 11, Bandy presented a lecture-performance titled “‘Drawing’ the Bow: Process, Passaggi, and Gendered Sociality in Italian and English Viol Music, ca. 1580–1680” at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, as part of the event Gender and the Italian Arts. Bandy’s lecture-performance featured members of Artifex Consort and drew connections between 16th-century cartoon tracing, the viola da gamba as a gendered object, and the rhetorical “abundant” style of divisions (variations) practice as instrumental reworkings of Italian Renaissance vocal polyphony. The event also featured a lecture by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer (to which Bandy’s musical portion responded), curator and head of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art, in honor of the current Benton exhibition 500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum.

Gayle Blankenburg, lecturer in music, performed in a new-music concert at Symphony Space in New York City on April 20. She performed a solo piano work, a work for cello and piano, and a work for violin, piano and two dancers.

Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science and neuroscience, presented a symposium talk titled “Coordinated neural states during joint decision-making” at the Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society in Toronto on April 11.

Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, presented two papers: “‘El que habla no es el que sufre’: Witnessing Testimony in Juan Carlos Mestre’s ‘Fechado en Auschwitz,’” at the 44th Cincinnati Conference on Romance & Arabic Languages and Literatures, held at the University of Cincinnati from April 4-6 and “Economic Exile and Migratory Identity in the Writings of Azahara Palomeque,” at Cal State Long Beach’s 58th Annual Comparative World Literature Conference (April 17).

On April 20, Cahill hosted the Spring Meeting of the Southern California Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese at Pomona College.

Eileen J. Cheng, professor of Asian languages and literatures and faculty director of Oldenborg, published an annotated bibliography of sources on the modern Chinese writer “Lu Xun” in Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies, edited by Tim Wright and published by Oxford University Press.

Cecilia Conrad, emerita professor of economics, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024 in recognition of her nonprofit leadership.

David Divita, professor of Romance languages and literatures, was recognized by the Queer Resource Center at Lavender Graduation for his support of students and his contributions to the community.

Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, had an article, “What’s new about new destinations: Cinderella states and the comparative study of migration,” published online in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics, published the article “Hayekian Psychological Economics: A Preliminary Look” in Behavioural Public Policy.

Edray Herber Goins, professor of mathematics and statistics, attended the American Mathematical Society 2024 Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting from April 6-7 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. On April 6, Goins organized a special session called “GranvilleFest 100: A Celebration of the Legacy of Evelyn Boyd Granville,” celebrating the 100th birthday of the second African American to receive a doctorate in mathematics. On April 7, Goins gave a talk in the special session on Elementary Number Theory and Elliptic Curves titled “{Quasi-Critical Points of Toroidal Belyi Maps.”

Goins has been traveling around the country serving as a section visitor for the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). On April 5, he attended the MAA Oklahoma-Arkansas Section 2024 Annual Meeting at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He gave a keynote address titled “Clocks, Parking Garages, and the Solvability of the Quintic: A Friendly Introduction to Monodromy.” On April 12-13, Goins attended the MAA Wisconsin Section 2024 Annual Meeting at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, Wisconsin. He gave a keynote address titled “Indiana Pols Forced to Eat Humble Pi: The Curious History of an Irrational Number.”

Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, senior director of international and domestic programs, presented a session on case studies and table top scenarios with colleagues Stacey Bolton Tsantir (DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia) and Susan Lochner Atkinson (University of Wisconsin—Madison) at the U.S. Department of State’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) Academia Sector Committee (ASC) Spring 2024 Seminar on Health, Safety, and Security held at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities on April 26 in St. Paul.

Ernesto R. Gutiérrez Topete ’17, Chau Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in linguistics and cognitive science, presented his research project titled “Occlusive salience among Spanish-English bilinguals: Evidence from code-switching” in a Blue Room Talk for the series “Return to Pomona” for Pomona College faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Gutiérrez Topete participated in an alumni panel hosted virtually on April 7 by the Office of Graduate Diversity at UC Berkeley.

Nina Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, and biology majors Philip Duchild ’24 and Teodelina Martelli ’24 presented their bird-related research at the April Pomona Valley Audubon Society meeting. Karnovsky presented her work assessing the diets of Antarctic penguins and south polar skuas from the ear bones of fish found in the “puke and poop” of those seabirds. Duchild presented results from his senior thesis in which he quantified and characterized the plastic consumed by Laysan albatross breeding at two colonies on Oahu, Hawaii. Martelli presented a RAISE (Remote Alternative Independent Summer Experience) project she did in which she translated the bird field notes of her late grandfather from Argentina and put his sightings into ebird, a citizen science app for recording birds.

Karnovsky performed in two dances choreographed by Anthony Loa in Village Dance Arts’ recital Steppin’ Out at the Haugh Performing Arts Center in Glendora, California, on April 21.

Jun Lang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, co-authored the article “New Developments in Pomona College’s Chinese Program: Implementation of Gender-Inclusive Curriculum Practices” with Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, published in Chinese Language Globalization Studies.

Lang gave a talk titled “Chinese Language and Gender: Exploring Gender-Inclusive Pedagogy” at the 2nd Annual Gender-Inclusive Language Conference hosted by the Center for Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California.

Lang joined a panel at the 2024 Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, where she presented her recent pedagogical practices titled “Teaching Chinese to Gen Z: Project-based Learning.”

Tom Le, associate professor of politics, published an article in The Diplomat on the death and impact of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama.

Le served as a discussant on a panel concerning social movements in Japan at the Associate of Asian Studies annual conference.

Le gave a talk at Soka University of America on Japan-South Korea reconciliation.

Le served on a panel, “The Future of East Asia,” at the West Coast International Relations of Asia Conference at USC.

Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, won The New York City Book Award for his 2023 book Brooklyn Crime Novel.

Alexandra Lippman, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, presented “‘Queen of the Favela’: Ludmilla's Queer Funk” at the Brazilian Studies Association in San Diego on April 3 in a panel on queer and trans performance, necropolitics and the Brazilian state.

Joyce Lu, associate professor of theatre and Asian American studies, led a Playback Theatre workshop at the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama conference April 4. She also performed playback with The Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble as part of Armand Volkas’ plenary speech titled “Healing the Wounds of History Through Psychodrama” on April 6.

Jorge Moreno, associate professor of physics and astronomy, delivered an invited talk titled “from excursion sets to today: a random walk through the history of cosmological simulations” at the 2024 April Meeting of the American Physical Society on April 4. This presentation was also featured in astrobites.

From April 15^-19, Moreno co-organized an international conference called Recipes to Regulate Star Formation at All Scales: From the Nearby Universe to the First Galaxies at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Moreno published three peer-reviewed research articles in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: “Dense stellar clump formation driven by strong quasar winds in the FIRE cosmological hydrodynamic simulations,” “Inflow and outflow properties, not total gas fractions, drive the evolution of the mass-metallicity relation” and “Hooks & Bends in the Radial Acceleration Relation: Discriminatory Tests for Dark Matter and MOND.” The third article was led by Francisco Mercado, postdoctoral fellow working under the supervision of Moreno and lecturer in physics and astronomy.

Zhiru Ng, professor and chair of religious studies and program coordinator of Asian studies, presented “To beg or to cook? Food ethics, cross-cultural borrowing, and the meal rituals of South Forest (Nanlin) Buddhist nuns in Central Taiwan” at the conference on “Buddhism and Food Ethics,” University of Oxford China Center, March 19-20. The conference was hosted by the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.

Kun Nie, visiting instructor of Asian languages and literatures, gave a presentation titled “Strengthening Cultural Roots through Community-Centric Projects for the Heritage Chinese Classes” at the 31st International Conference on Chinese Language Instruction, held at Princeton University on April 27.

Gilda L. Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, was an invited panelist on “Claiming Belonging and Witnessing Joy: New Directions in Latinx Studies” at the Latinx Studies Association, Arizona State University on April 19.

Ochoa co-facilitated a daylong workshop for Santa Ana Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Steering Committee on April 24 in Santa Ana, California.

Dan O’Leary, Carnegie Professor of Chemistry, had his six-year effort with the University of Washington to reconcile its role in a decades-old case of child sexual abuse at a Seattle elementary school featured on NPR affiliate KUOW.org.

Adam Pearson, associate professor and chair of psychological science, published the article “Social psychological pathways to climate justice: Emerging insights and intersecting challenges,” co-authored with Stella Favaro ’23 and Brooke Sparks ’22. The article is part of a 25th anniversary special issue of the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations focused on the role of psychology in addressing global challenges.

Pearson co-authored the article “Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries” in Science Advances with a global team of 250 behavioral scientists.

William Peterson, professor emeritus of music and College organist, performed music from the WWI era in a concert on the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music. The program included a number of works that were originally published in an anthology, Les Voix de la douleur chrétienne (“The Voices of Christian Sorrow”). The concert program included music composed between 1914 and 1924 by Louis Vierne, Camille Saint-Saëns, Joseph Jongen, Jacques Ibert and others.

Sheila Pinkel, professor emerita of art and art history, has a large cyanotype work currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Alexis Reyes, director of sustainability and energy management, was featured in a case study with Patch, a carbon credit marketplace, for her work on sourcing and vetting high-quality carbon credits. Reyes worked with a subcommittee of the Pomona College Board of Trustees to establish criteria for purchasing high-quality carbon credits. The Sustainability Office launched a pilot program under which departments can purchase carbon credits to offset emissions from College-funded air travel.

Hans Rindisbacher, professor of German and Russian, published a review of Kellers Erzählen. Strukturen – Funktionen – Reflexionen. Herausgegeben von Philipp Theisohn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022); and Kellers Medien. Formen – Genres – Institutionen. Herausgegeben von Frauke Berndt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022) in Monatshefte.

Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, gave a presentation, “My Hidden Childhood in WWII in Occupied France,” during Alumni Weekend on April 27.

Bri Sérráno, assistant dean and director of the Queer Resource Center, defended and passed his dissertation defense for a doctor of philosophy in education and human resource studies degree with a specialization in higher education leadership from Colorado State University on April 29. His dissertation is titled “I Love the Work, But the Work Doesn’t Love Me: A Constructivist Study on the Lived Experiences of Transgender Staff of Color Who Report Discrimination in Higher Education.”

Anthony Shay, professor of dance, wrote his first novel Death Along the Silk Road. The novel follows Omar Khayyam through the period 1090-1092, when the Seljuq Empire of Persia fell apart. Most of the events, though fictionalized, occurred. Shay translated Khayyam’s poems anew for the novel.

Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics, wrote five opinion pieces: “The AI hype machine just rolls on, living on exhaust” (MindMatters, April 11), “Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than a human in 2025: Why he's wrong” (MindMatters, April 16), “Universities Should Prioritize Critical Thinking Over Large Language Models” (MindMatters, April 23); “Large Language Models are Often Wrong, Never in Doubt” (MindMatters, April 29) and “A Modest Proposal to Save Higher Education” (Washington Post, April 23).

Smith signed a contract for a Japanese translation of the book The Power of Modern Value Investing: Beyond Indexing, Algos, and Alpha, co-authored with his wife Margaret Smith.

Kevin Wynter, assistant professor of media studies, signed a contract with Edinburgh University Press for his second book, Feeling Absence: Horror, Memory, and Language in Cinema.

Wynter organized and hosted the Media Studies Department’s 2024 Eckstein Symposium. The theme of this year’s symposium was Expressing the Inexpressible. The symposium’s invited speakers were film scholars Aaron Kerner (San Francsico State) and Hilary Neroni (University of Vermont).

Feng Xiao, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, was appointed chair of the media and publicity committee at Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA) on April 5. He participated in a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities of generative AI for Chinese teaching and co-presented a paper titled “Assessing pragmatic routines in L2 Chinese: A focus on rating scale functioning and rater behavior” at the 2024 CLTA Conference on April 6.

Xiao was invited to join the international roundtable discussion on Chinese curriculum design and pedagogical practice held by Princeton University on April 26.

Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, discussed Professor Ch’en Shouyi, who headed Pomona College’s Asian Studies program for nearly three decades, in a short talk titled “Ch’en Shouyi and the Development of Asian Studies at Pomona College” that was part of a special program, “Remembering Professor Ch’en Shouyi’s Legacy: A Discussion,” held at The Claremont Colleges Library on April 3.