April 2026
Lise Abrams, Peter W. Stanley Chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, gave a talk, “How Emotional Content Influences Younger and Older Adults’ Speech Production,” as part of an invited panel on cognitive aging at Scripps College; the other panelists were Lori James (University of Colorado Colorado Springs), Robert Kennison (Cal State Los Angeles) and Stacey Wood (Scripps College).
Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, was selected to serve on the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) for a five-year term. The Scientific Advisory Council provides strategic guidance for the foundation’s grant programs and the development of new program directions in consultation with the board. Ball’s term starts in August.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, presented the guest lecture “Music, Text, and Image in Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri (1680)” for graduate students studying early modern music and visual culture at the School of Music, College of Fine Arts, at the University of Kentucky on April 1. On April 17, Bandy presented a paper titled “‘What are these wounds?’ Fauxbourdon as ‘Sweet’ Mutilation in Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri (1680)” at the annual meeting of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, held at the University of Northern Colorado on April 16-19. Bandy delivered an expanded version of this talk (“Dismembering, Remembering, and Sensing Jesus’s Body in Membra Jesu nostri”) as invited colloquium speaker for the Music Department, College of Arts and Letters, at the University of Notre Dame on April 23, after presenting the guest lecture “Musical Meaning-Making in the Liberal Arts and the Stylus phantasticus” for students in a first-year undergraduate seminar also in the Music Department at the University of Notre Dame on April 22.
Allan Barr, professor emeritus of Chinese, contributed to a volume edited by James Hargett, Wading Barefoot through a Mountain Stream: The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake (1587-1641), published by University of Washington Press. He wrote a portion of the book’s introduction and translated excerpts from Xu Xiake’s Zhejiang, Guangxi and Guizhou diaries.
Graydon Beeks, professor emeritus of music, conducted the Pomona College Band in a pair of concerts on April 24 and 26 in Bridges Hall of Music, featuring premier performances of In this Breath by composer Shuying Li, which was commissioned by the ensemble and 74 other ensembles and institutions to commemorate the death of Glen Adsit, president of the College Band Directors National Association, in 2024.
Robin Brooks, visiting fellow in global policy and governance, was interviewed by Radio Kosovo, to comment on the latest Constitutional crisis in Kosovo as well as on the Serbia-Kosovo normalization dialogue and how Kosovo can remain resilient against foreign malign influence as it navigates evolving regional relations and shocks to the international system.
Brooks was invited to join the International Advisory Committee of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy for its new term beginning in May.
Paul Cahill, associate professor of Spanish, presented two papers. The first, “(Re)membering the Baroque in Manuel Mantero’s Poemas exclusivos,” was presented at the 60th Annual Comparative World Literature Conference: Legacies: Nostalgia, Adaptation, and Reimaginings, held at Cal State Long Beach from April 22-24. The second, “‘Esta ciudad de raro nombre’: Naming Displacement in Manuel Mantero’s Poemas exclusivos,” was presented at the spring meeting of the Southern California Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), held at Cal State San Bernardino on April 25.
Jordan Daniels, assistant professor of environmental analysis, delivered a paper titled “Ecofeminist Ecologies of Practice” at the Western Political Science Association meeting in San Diego on April 4. Daniels was also invited to present at a workshop on nihilism, catastrophe and the work of French philosopher Jean Vioulac at the Humanities and Social Change Center at UC Santa Barbara on April 23-24. Her talk was titled “Walter Benjamin on Natural History and Place.”
Virginie A. Duzer, chair and professor of Romance languages and literatures, published “De la ‘femme’ invisible du Chef-d’œuvre inconnu” in a special Balzac issue dedicated to women, “Balzac et la question femme. Des filles d’Ève.”
Joanna L. Dyl, visiting assistant professor of environmental analysis, published an article titled “Coastal Waters: Nature’s Agency and the Shaping of the California Coast” in Modern American History. Her article is part of the journal’s first special issue, with the theme “A Water’s History of the United States.”
Bob Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, together with colleagues from UC Riverside, published the article “The relationship between organic matgrounds and sedimentary packaging: examples from the Ediacaran and early Cambrian” in the journal Sedimentology.
Roberto A. Garza-López, professor of chemistry, attended the 2026 North Carolina PKAL Regional Network Meeting on April 10, participating in discussions on STEM education and leadership. In the realm of chemical education, an abstract titled “Bridging the Opportunity Gap: Using Open-Source Computational Tools to Democratize Access to Inquiry-Based and Project-Based Chemical Education” was accepted for the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education 2026 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, scheduled for July 26-30. Co-authored with Kaitlyn Lee ’23, the work highlights the use of computational tools to expand educational access; notably, Lee’s contributions were also instrumental in supporting research and outreach for the California Pediatric Cancer Research Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund (AB 703).
Garza-López’s lab celebrated a significant milestone for the PAYS (Pomona Academy for Youth Success) program, as recent lab PAYS member Chintan Shah has officially committed to joining the Pomona College class of 2030.
Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, presented early analytic results from the NSF-sponsored national data collection project Support Networks at Diversified Research Institutions (SUNDRI), first at the Research Analytics Summit in Newport, Rhode Island, on April 21, and then at the annual meeting of the National Organization of Research Development Professionals in Indianapolis on April 29, where he also co-authored a poster on the Grant Development Ecosystem Inventory, an institutional self-assessment instrument produced by another NSF-sponsored project, Building a National Network of Enterprise Research Support at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (BANNERS-PUI.)
Gizem Karaali, professor of mathematics and chair of the department of mathematics and statistics, together with Edwin Villafane Hernandez ’18 and Jeremy A. Taylor ’19, director of CRM administration and strategy, published a paper, “What’s in a Name? A Critical Review of Quantitative Literacy, Numeracy, and Quantitative Reasoning” in 2016 in Numeracy. In April 2026, this paper was the main citation for the definition of quantitative literacy, as used in the revised VALUE Rubric for Quantitative Literacy developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
Nina Karnovsky, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology, and students in her class, Aquatic Ecology, as well as research students in her lab, participated in the Southern California Academy of Sciences annual meeting. Students in the Aquatic Ecology class carried out studies in the intertidal zone and presented their results. Ava Santos-Volpe ’26, Kevin Ye ’27 and Mark Price ’28 presented the poster “The Impact of Rockweed Presence on Intertidal Macroinvertebrate Diversity.” Fiona Herbold ’26 and Adelina Grotenhuis ’28 presented the poster “Effect of Water Temperature on Golden Rockweed Coverage” with Adam Akins PZ ’27 as a co-author. Pitzer students in Karnovsky’s research lab, Shiori Terretta PZ ’28 and Liliana Costello-Wiginton PZ ’27, presented the poster “Plastic Ingestion of Translocated Black-footed Albatross Chicks.” Co-authors on the poster were Brooke Bailey ’27, collaborator Lyndsay Young, and Karnovsky.
Karnovsky was a member of a panel of ocean conservationists moderated by Tom Le, associate professor of politics, after Chad Cannon’s “Music for the Ocean” concert at Lyman Hall.
Jill Knox, guest lecturer in theatre, had her fourth episode of Shrinking air on Apple TV+ and two of her visual art pieces featured in Giving You the Best That I Got, a group exhibition on Black motherhood at Art + Practice in Leimert Park, California. The show recently closed after a successful six-month run.
Alexandra Lippman, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, was interviewed about the documentary film Chulas Fronteras on its 50th anniversary by Madeleine Brand for Press Play on KCRW on April 13.
Sara Masland, associate professor of psychological science, contributed to a piece in the New York Times, “What is Borderline Personality Disorder?”
As a member of the North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (NASSPD) board of directors, Masland organized roundtable discussions at their biennial conference in Toronto. She also presented her work, “Limited Training, Lasting Impact: Personality Disorder Curriculum and Clinical Exposure in U.S. Doctoral Programs,” which includes student co-authors Isabella Sofia Lindsay SCR ‘26 and Laura Furtado Fernandes ‘25.
Wallace “Marty” Meyer, associate professor of biology and director of the Robert J. Bernard Field Station, published an article titled “Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope variation in semi-arid woody plant species growing in managed and natural settings across southern California” with undergraduate and faculty coauthors across six institutions in Southern California. Meyer was an author and advised undergraduates on six presentations at the Southern California Academy of Sciences Meeting.
Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, co-authored a peer-reviewed article titled “Understanding Adoption, Use, and Abandonment Practices in Baby Tracking” at the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of human-computer interaction, with Mustafa Taha Dişbudak ’28, Lily Galvan ’27, Chau Vu ’26 and collaborator Daniel Epstein from UC Irvine. Papoutsaki presented the work in Barcelona, Spain, on April 14.
Mary Paster, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, published an article, “Phonological constraints and conditioning in diachronic morphology,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Diachronic and Historical Linguistics, edited by Adam Ledgeway, Edith Aldridge, Anne Breitbarth, Katalin É. Kiss, Joseph Salmons and Alexandra Simonenko and published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
William Peterson, emeritus professor of music and College organist, presented an organ demonstration in Associate Professor of Music Joti Rockwell’s music theory class, Advanced Theory Topics, on April 6. The presentation included an introduction to the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music, and he explored both brilliance of sound and breadth of sound using different combinations of stops on the three keyboards and the pedalboard of the organ built by C. B. Fisk.
Sheila Pinkel, professor emerita of art and art history, had her mural, “growth of incarceration in the UNited States: 1930-2010,” acquired by the Getty Research Institute. Her work is included in the opening exhibition of the new LACMA museum. Her one-person show just opened at Higher Pictures in Brooklyn, New York.
Carolyn Ratteray, associate professor of theatre, performed in Talene Monahon’s world premiere play, Eat Me, at South Coast Repertory, which ran through May 3. She also directed the staged reading of A Long Time Ago in a Dark Yard at Night by Enid Graham at Chance Theatre in Anaheim, California.
Alex Rodriguez, professor of physical education, head coach, men’s and women’s water polo, and the Sagehens coaching staff, guided the 2026 Pomona‑Pitzer women’s water polo program to its fifth consecutive Division III national championship, earning a 15–10 victory over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Rodriguez and his staff were named SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year after leading the team to a 12–0 conference record and a league‑high six First Team All‑SCIAC selections. The honors included SCIAC Offensive Player of the Year Mia Amberger ’26, SCIAC Defensive Player of the Year Isabella Dova PZ ’29 and SCIAC Character Award Lauren Valentin ’26.
Benjamin Rosenberg, visiting assistant professor of neuroscience, co-authored a paper with colleagues from UCLA titled “Expectancy updating predicts anxiety symptom reduction from exposure therapy: Predictive analyses from a randomized clinical trial” in Behaviour Research and Therapy. This work uses computational modeling and supports expectancy change (i.e., prediction error learning), over and above fear change, as a key mechanism of exposure therapy for anxiety disorders.
Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages, professor of Russian, delivered the keynote lecture “‘Heroes’ and ‘Extras’: Gender Hierarchy in the Canon of Soviet Children’s Literature During the Period of ‘Totalitarian Androgyny’” at the conference “Come On, Girls! Research on Russian and Soviet Girls’ Culture” at Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences on April 18-19.
Rudova published a review of Masha Salazkina’s Romancing Yesenia: How a Mexican Melodrama Shaped Global Popular Culture, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.
Monique Saigal Escudero, professor emerita of French, gave the presentation “My Hidden Childhood in Occupied France during WW2” at Village Academy High School in Pomona, California. With Michelle Jones, author of The Art Spy, Saigal Escudero gave a presentation on women in the resistance in WWII whom she interviewed at Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles on April 19.
Anthony Shay, emeritus professor of dance, published an article, “Dance and Memory in the Persianate World: The Politics of Reconstruction of Historical Dance,” in Oxford Handbook of Dance and Memory, edited by Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera and published by Oxford University Press.
John Seery, George Irving Thompson Memorial Professor of Government and Professor of Politics, participated in an “author meets critics” roundtable panel on his forthcoming book, American Incest: How White Superiority Became White Lawlessness, at the Western Political Science Association conference in San Diego on April 3.
Seery was a featured soloist (on alto sax) with the Pomona College Concert Band on April 24 and 26 in Bridges Hall of Music. Seery also performed (on baritone sax) with the city of Pomona Concert Band at the “Festival at Fairmount” event in Riverside, California, on April 25.
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and chair of English, published “Cloistered Gardens: Jane Crow’s Ecofeminist Poetics” in Jim Crow Modernism from Oxford University Press.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, co-authored a paper, “Disentangling the association between climate emotions and mental health outcomes,” published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Two students from Stern’s lab, Jamila Abdilahi ’26 and Edwin Wu ’28, presented a poster titled “Vertical collectivism exacerbates adverse effects of parental psychological control on adolescent depressive symptoms” at the Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting in Toronto.
Samuel Thomas, assistant professor of computer science, published an extended abstract titled “Characterizing and Optimizing Cache Placement for Secure Memory Metadata” at the IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS), where he presented a poster on the work.
Ania Vu, assistant professor of music, had a West Coast premiere of her piece small tenderness for vocal sextet and string quartet that was selected for the Hear Now New Music Festival in Venice, California. Vu was invited to give a talk about her music at Chapman University and UCLA.
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, participated in an invited online panel discussion on AI in the Chinese higher education classroom for the Modern Language Association on April 21.
Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, wrote a long review of The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries, and Politics (University of Hawai`i Press, 2023), a ground-breaking study of the globalization of Japanese cuisine written by James Farrer and David Wank and a team of scholars at Sophia University in Tokyo. The review appeared in the Journal of Japanese Studies, Spring 2026.
The Department of History and the Asian Studies program held a conference in honor of Yamashita, who will be retiring on June 30, after 47 years of college teaching. Thirteen of his former students gave presentations on their research, with most journeying from the Northwest, East Coast and Europe. Yamashita’s closing remarks were titled “How I Got Here and Survived.” Xiuying Zou, the head of the Asian Library at The Claremont Colleges Library, prepared an exhibition featuring Yamashita’s four books and the 35 books that his former students have written since graduating.
Yamashita was interviewed by a writer for the Australian magazine Mindfood about Hawai`i Regional Cuisine on April 22.
Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, organized an art exhibition with students from her spring course, China from the Borders, to showcase and educate the public about contemporary and traditional art from multiethnic Asia. Titled “Asian Indigeneity Past and Present: Contemporary Chinese Artist Jingui Zhang in Conversation with the Scripps Asian Art Collection,” this exhibition is ongoing at the Clark Humanities Museum at Scripps College until May 15. Students collaborated with Zhang on creating educational labels, producing documentary films, and curating this exhibition to highlight ethnic cultural heritage from Asia. This exhibition is also part of Zhang’s ACLS national grant on diversifying humanistic pedagogy about China and Asia in North America.