american.edu/cas/connections | spring 2014
In the
Mind’s I
A
Bridge to
Bangladesh
Chance
of Solar
Flares
The
Rhodes Less
Traveled
Guy
Noir
Letter
from
the
Dean
On the cover
Magazine production
Jess // The Enamord
Mage: Translation
#6, 1965 // Oil on
canvas over wood
// Collection of the
M. H. de Young
Memorial Museum
Publisher: College of Arts and Sciences // Dean: Peter Starr
// Managing Editor: Mary Schellinger // Writers: Abbey
Becker, Jamie McCrary, Alyssa Röhricht // Editor: Ali Kahn,
UCM // Designer: Nicky Lehming // Webmaster: Thomas
Meal // Senior Advisor: Mary Schellinger // Send news
items and comments to casnews@american.edu.
Join our conversation
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The choices that make us who we are can often be traced to the influence of a single
individual. A cherished professor sets us to thinking in a bold, new direction. A mentor helps us to
reach higher. Thanks to a single conversation, a door sometimes opens onto a very promising line
of inquiry. These life changing interactions happen every day, in ways large and small, throughout
AU’s College of Arts and Sciences.
This issue of Connections highlights just a few of those transformational moments. Among
them is a story that reveals how faculty mentoring in AU’s Department of Economics changed
the intellectual paths of two PhD students. In another, Dhanesh Krishnarao, BS physics and
mathematics ’14, talks about how he got “a giant leap” closer to his dream of becoming an
astronaut when U. J. Sofia, the College’s associate dean of research, recommended him for a
NASA internship. Sajid Islam, BS ’99/MS ’03 computer science, discusses how the fruits of his
AU education have helped him to bolster, almost single-handedly, entrepreneurial opportunities for
Bangladeshi youth.
Longtime AU arts patron Sylvia Greenberg literally set the stage for the expansion of the
performing arts at AU when she and her late husband, Harold, helped establish the Greenberg
Theatre in 2003. Recently, Greenberg realized her lifelong dream of acting in a play when she
read with students on the very stage she helped to build.
Studio art professor Tim Doud explores the relationship between clothing and identity through a
series of fascinating portraits, including Blue, a serial self-portrait of the artist wearing 30 different
blue shirts. Professor Erik Dussere’s new book on film noir, America Is Elsewhere: The Noir
Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture, argues that the dark underbelly of culture portrayed
in the genre serves as an “antidote” to the optimism of postwar consumerism.
Environmental science professor Stephen MacAvoy’s latest research on urban waters has
detected elevated concentrations of sodium and other minerals in the Anacostia River, a trend
that will likely prove problematic for the river’s aquatic life.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recently granted SETH professor Vivian
Vasquez an Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award in recognition of her 30-year
teaching career and extraordinary advocacy on behalf of young learners. NCTE further honored
Vasquez by creating the Vivian Vasquez Teacher Scholarship, to be awarded to an outstanding
early childhood teacher or researcher.
Happy reading,
Peter Starr
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
american.edu/cas/connections | Spring 2014
Letter from the Dean
Alumna Named National Book Award Finalist 2
High honors for Wendy Lower’s new book, Hitler’s Furies
Dean Receives French Medal of Honor 3
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques for francophile Peter Starr
In the Mind’s I 4
Artist Tim Doud explores how we choose to create ourselves online
A Bridge to Bangladesh 6
Computer science alum Sajid Islam’s collaborative technology startup
Kudos for Education Professor 7
Vivian Vasquez marks a milestone with a national award and an eponymous scholarship
Chemistry Text Redux 8
New focus on terrorism in James Girard’s classic volume
Guy Noir 9
Film noir and consumer culture converge in new book by literature professor Erik Dussere
“Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On” 10
Sylvia Greenberg finally gets her stage debut
Hate That Dirty Water 12
Stephen MacAvoy, environmental studies, tracking nutrient movement in urban waters
The Rhodes Less Traveled 13
Doors open for scholarship finalist Hanaleah Hoberman, BA psychology ’13
All the World’s a Stage 14
Jeff Gan ’14 finds his sweet spot at the junction of international relations and theatre
For Love of Economics 15
Alumni on why they came—and where they’re going
Chance of Solar Flares 16
Dhanesh Krishnarao, BS physics and math ’14, forecasting space weather at NASA
Achievements 17
Courtesy of Wendy Lower
humanities
by
Abbey
Becker
Last November at a
benefit dinner in New York
City, AU alumna Wendy
Lower learned that
she had been named a
National Book Award nonfiction finalist for her critically acclaimed new book,
Hitler’s Furies: German
Women in the Nazi
Killing Fields (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
“This is beyond my
wildest dreams—nothing that I could have
2
imagined when I started
the history graduate
program at American
University in autumn
1991,” she says.
The National Book
Award is an American
literary prize presented
annually by the National
Book Foundation to
distinguished authors
in four award categories. Lower is in good
company: past nonfiction
winners include Rachel
Carson, Barry Lopez,
Thomas Friedman,
and Joan Didion.
Lower is the John
K. Roth Professor of
History at Claremont
McKenna College and
a consultant for the
United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C. She
received her master’s
and doctorate in history
at American University
under the guidance of
renowned historian and
faculty adviser Richard
Breitman, whose scholarship had inspired her.
“I decided to focus my
research in Holocaust history after reading professor Richard Breitman’s
excellent study of Heinrich
Himmler,” she says.
“Professor Breitman is a
model scholar and mentor and an outstanding
example of the first-rate
history faculty at AU.”
Of Lower, Breitman
says, “At AU she
advanced steadily from
graduate student to fellow researcher on Nazi
Germany and [was]
a sounding board for
me for my own work.”
Breitman’s most recent
book, FDR and the Jews
(Belknap, 2013), was
coauthored with fellow
AU history professor
Allan J. Lichtman. “Her
outstanding dissertation
Photo by Jeff Watts
humanities
“Wendy Lower’s book
is a powerful study
of a sample of some
half a million German
women who inhabited
the Nazi empire in
Eastern Europe.”
— Richard Breitman
became the basis for
her first book, which
launched her scholarly
career,” Breitman adds.
“I was gratified when
she gained a chair at
Claremont McKenna,
and now I am equally
pleased to see her latest book receive such
wide recognition.”
Hitler’s Furies is the
first book to examine the
role of German women
on the eastern front in
World War II. Lower's
research exposes the history of 500,000 German
women who participated
directly in the genocide of the Holocaust.
“The consensus in
Holocaust and genocide studies is that the
systems that make mass
murder possible would
not function without the
broad participation of
society,” she says. “And
yet, nearly all histories of
the Holocaust leave out
half of those who populated that society, as if
women’s history happens
somewhere else.”
Previous scholarship
identified women serving as prison guards at
concentration camps,
but Lower found evidence that women were
involved more broadly
in the Jewish genocide, including office
workers and, disturbingly, nurses, social
workers, and teachers.
“Wendy Lower’s book
is a powerful study of a
sample of some half a million German women who
inhabited the Nazi empire
in Eastern Europe,” says
Breitman. “Her research
shows how these women
exploited opportunities
to share in the spoils of
Nazi rule. They witnessed
widespread Nazi atrocities and mass murder,
and more than occasionally, they participated as
enablers or as direct perpetrators, too. The Nazi
beliefs in racial superiority
and racial enemies corrupted German women
as well as men.” 
Adapted from an article by Abbey Becker at
american.edu/cas/news/wendy-lower-hitlers-furies.cfm
Dean Receives French
Medal of Honor
by
Abbey Becker
In the fall of 2013, Peter Starr,
dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences, was named a
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes
Académiques—a knight in the
Order of Academic Palms—for his
work in promoting French language
and culture in the United States.
“I am honored and humbled
that the French government has
chosen to recognize my work
with such a distinguished award,”
says Starr. “As both a scholar
and as a dean, I can testify that
France understands the power
of cultural diplomacy in a way
that few other nations do.”
Before joining the College as
dean in July 2009, Starr was a
professor of French and comparative literature at the University of
Southern California. A renowned
scholar of French literature and
literary theory, he is the author
of three books: Logics of Failed
Revolt: French Theory after
May ’68 (Stanford, 1995);
Commemorating Trauma: The
Paris Commune and Its Cultural
Aftermath (Fordham, 2006);
and We the Paranoid (2008), a
“France
understands
the power
of cultural
diplomacy
in a way that
few other
nations do.”
— Peter Starr
web-based, multimedia project.
Starr received a BA from Stanford
University and an MA and PhD
from Johns Hopkins University.
The French Order of Chivalry
was created by Emperor Napoleon
in 1808 to honor members of
the University of Paris. In 1955,
French president René Coty
expanded the order to its current
decoration for academics and cultural and educational figures. 
3
3
Tim Doud. Room and Board. 2010. Oil on linen
arts
by
Alyssa
Röhricht
Think about how
you portray yourself
online—on all those
profiles and platforms
and social media sites.
You might post your
occupation, your hometown, your hobbies and
favorite foods, a link to
your blog. Maybe you
4
feature a favorite quote.
Sometimes you pick a
unique username. And
almost always you select
a photo of yourself that
reflects who you are as
you want to be seen.
The process by which
we create our fantasy self
for public presentation is
complex and involves a
series of choices, some
of which we may not
be able to explain—but
all of which reflect our
desires, wishes, hopes,
and realities. We put
it out there in cyberspace, this imagined
self, and we invite others
to connect and engage
with this reflection of our
personal fantasy. It is this
interaction between the
self and the imagination
that inspires artist and
art professor Tim Doud.
For two series of
portraits, Doud visited
online dating sites to find
his models. He sees the
dynamic between artist
and model as collaborative. “I pay attention to the
choices people make,”
says Doud. “The model
is a collaborator [in that]
she or he makes decisions about their public
self for presentation.”
Tim Doud. Blue. 2008–2012. Oil on linen
arts
“It is about the psychology of the
choice and the expectations brought
to those choices by viewers.”
— Tim Doud
Doud’s models choose
their clothes, their makeup, and, to some extent,
the setting and staging.
The “meaning” of the
portrait, he says, lies in
the interaction between
the model’s choices of
“self material” and his
or her imagined life and
the artist’s ability to bring
this material into focus.
His series Angie (Mac)
features a makeup artist.
Angie made herself up,
literally and figuratively;
the craft of the portraiture,
says Doud, is to make
the model’s choices visible. So, for example, in
the painting Polly Vinyl,
Angie wears a white
fur ski cap with a puffy
blue winter coat and
bright white eye shadow,
while in Wanderlust, she
chooses braided pigtails,
bright pink lips, and electric blue makeup.
Doud’s work draws
attention to the theatricality of everyday life.
The model in his Rodney
series chooses clothing
that is elaborate and fun.
In See, Rodney poses
in black and leather with
reflective glasses, fingerless gloves, and an elaborate headpiece. In Buzz,
he wears a black hat
with a bow tie and a
green and black flamenco shirt with puffy
sleeves. In Designer,
Rodney reclines in a
wooden chair, now wearing a pinstriped suit with
green striped shirt and
red tie and glasses.
It’s about more than
dressing up, says Doud.
Each different outfit is a
part of Rodney’s identity.
The idea is to consider
the choices we make
and how they “flesh us
out” into public identity.
In the multiframe series
titled Blue, Doud created
30 self-portraits that are
meant to be viewed as
one unified piece. Each
portrait depicts Doud
from the chest up and
wearing a different blue,
button-up shirt. “I made
the choices of what
shirts to wear, I chose
my glasses,” says Doud.
“I problematize these by
arranging them in systems
across a structure of color
and hue choices. Each
portrait, then, examines
how commodity makes
personality present.”
In each series, including Blue, the facial expression of the model remains
the same. That is because
it isn’t about the psychology of the face, says
Doud. “It is about the
psychology of the choice
and the expectations
brought to those choices
by viewers.” The artist
directs focus away from
what a portrait means
to the means by which
it signifies—what our
clothing signifies, the
brands we choose,
which bring up larger
questions of consumerism
and self-representation.
Doud currently is working on part two of his Blue
series, which more directly
questions the Westerncentric fashion industry.
Doud’s work has
been exhibited in San
Francisco, Chicago,
New York, and Washington, D.C., as well as
in Switzerland, Germany,
and Italy. A finalist in
the 2013 Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery’s
Outwin Boochever
Portrait Competition, his
portrait Room and Board
from the Rodney series
was featured on the
cover of the catalog. 
Tim Doud is curating two exhibitions at the American University Museum
at the Katzen Arts Center. Sightlines (through April 6) features works by
Ann Pibal, Jill Downen, Frank Trankina, and Dean Smith, all of whom had
an influence on Doud’s vision.
The Neighbors, which he is co-curating with Zoë Charlton, is a threepart colloquium series highlighting the relationships between art programming at AU and the greater D.C. area. Residence is the third and final
installment in the series (April 1–June 1).
5
sciences
Courtesy of Sajid Islam
by
Alyssa Röhricht
“I wasn’t seeing many startups
from Bangladesh on the global
stage. There was not much
innovation happening.”
— Sajid Islam
Sajid Islam found his
passion. The “double
Eagle” with two computer science degrees
from AU—a BS in 1999
and an MS in 2003—
works in Washington
as a global software
program manager at
Hewlett-Packard, where
he oversees software
programs that generate
$100 million a year in
revenue. It’s a fantastic
6
job, he says—but that’s
not what excites him.
Islam’s passion is
Shetu, a business he
founded in Bangladesh
in 2013. Named after
the Bengali word for
bridge, Shetu grew out
of Islam’s desire to give
back to the place where
he was born and raised.
Like a bridge which
serves to connect and
to facilitate free transfer,
Shetu’s mission is to
span the gap between
talent and opportunity
in Bangladesh. As Islam
explains, this means
building an ecosystem in
the country to create a
space for free exchange
of ideas and real-world
support for entrepreneurs and tech startups.
Islam worked for
more than 13 years in
Silicon Valley and saw
the need to bring that
creative and collaborative technology environment to Bangladesh.
“I wasn’t seeing many
startups from Bangladesh on the global
stage,” he says. There
was not much innovation
happening because the
country lacks the infrastructure and a support
system for it. Bangladesh
has rampant unemployment and underemployment, especially among
college graduates. That’s
where Islam is focusing his attention: on
the country’s educated
youth, who have lots of
ideas and energy but
nowhere to work. He
is looking to set them
up in new ventures that
will help to improve and
expand the infrastructure.
Islam flew to Bangladesh in November
(he travels there every
six weeks or so) to host
the first Global Entrepreneurship Week, a free
event for entrepreneurs
who need basic training
in how to jump-start their
business. It was a heavily
curated event, says Islam,
and not open to just anyone. “We asked a series
of questions to see how
prospective entrepreneurs
[would] take the knowledge and apply it to their
community. . . . We want
them to use it for good.”
The goal of the event,
he says, was to “light the
fire” in Dhaka, the capital
of Bangladesh, through
workshops focused on
business models, marketing, networking with
other entrepreneurs and
established businesspeople, building a knowledge base for running a
business—and generally encouraging young
people to explore their
potential and be inspired.
“We want to show the
power of we. That’s the
main thing we’re driving
at, and it has created a
lot of buzz in the country.”
Networking and building knowledge are not
the only ways that Shetu
is investing in youth. The
organization also offers a
means of financial support
for tech startups. Young
entrepreneurs agree to
contribute 10 percent
of ownership equity and
10 percent of profits
to Shetu in exchange
education
for funds to launch
their businesses.
Islam has already
invested all of his own
money in Shetu. As
yet, he has not raised
any outside funds
for the organization.
“That’s how much I
believe in it,” he says.
At present he runs
the organization, almost
single-handedly, from
the opposite end of the
world. He typically starts
his day around 3 a.m.
(2 p.m. Bangladesh time),
communicating with his
two staff members there
and student volunteers.
While he may be going
it alone to build Shetu,
Islam believes in the
power of collaboration
and in sharing ideas with
peers. His goal, and
his goal for Shetu, is to
create a space where
that dynamic can happen. Space is hard to
come by in Bangladesh,
and in Dhaka it doesn’t
come cheap. But Islam
has managed to secure
a 3,000-square-foot
meeting space where
entrepreneurs can
gather and share ideas
and build relationships.
“We need to create
this atmosphere,” Islam
says, because “people
should mingle, network.
Things could come out
of there, good things.”
He wants to see young
people coming together,
not isolating themselves.
There’s an African
proverb he likes to quote:
“If you want to go fast,
go alone. If you want to
go far, go together.” And
that is precisely where
Islam wants to go. 
by
Abbey Becker
In 2013, Vivian Vasquez, profes-
sor of education at the School
of Education, Teaching, and
Health, marked her 30th year
of teaching with high honors:
she received the Advancement
of People of Color Leadership
(APCL) Award from the National
Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE), and a scholarship
was established in her name.
The APCL Award recognizes
a person of color who has made
a significant contribution to the
NCTE. The first Asian to receive
this award, Vasquez is also the
youngest. “The sustained and
rigorous trajectory of leadership
in Dr. Vasquez’s work—including
her ongoing mentorship, advocacy, and scholarship—speaks
for itself about her commitment
to the advancement of people
of color within and beyond
NCTE,” said the nomination
letter submitted by members
of Indiana University’s School
of Education and Teachers
College, Columbia University.
The Early Childhood Assembly
of NCTE went a step further
and created the Vivian Vasquez
Teacher Scholarship, to be
awarded to an early childhood
teacher or teacher researcher
who honors the work of Vasquez
by encouraging young children
to be critical inquirers and activists for social change.
“Throughout her career, Dr.
Vivian Vasquez has advocated
for critical literacy by supporting
young children in deconstructing
and reconstructing texts in their
everyday worlds and situating
inquiry within young children’s
rich repertoires of interests and
practices, such as technology
and popular culture,” said the
“I realized what critical literacies could
mean for my young students in terms
of helping them to critically read the
word and the world.”
— Vivian Vasquez
scholarship announcement at
the Early Childhood Education
Assembly General Meeting.
“Dr. Vasquez’s advocacy for
teacher research conveys her
perspective of teachers as
professionals uniquely positioned to investigate and
change classroom practices.”
Since the 1980s, Vasquez
has been involved with the
NCTE and has held various
positions there, both appointed
and elected. She represented
the organization at the White
House Summit on Early
Childhood Education.
Vasquez always knew
she wanted to teach young
children. “My desire to work
with young children began when
I was in elementary school, as
I watched my mother working
as a kindergarten teacher.”
Vasquez was teaching
kindergarten while pursuing
her master’s degree. During
a summer session class, she
discovered critical literacy.
“I met Dr. Barbara Comber
and Dr. Alan Luke, renowned
scholars in critical literacy. I
realized what critical literacies
could mean for my young students in terms of helping them
to critically read the word and
the world,” she says. “They
are able to make more informed
decisions as participants both
in the classroom and beyond.”
Ever since then, she has
approached her teaching from
a critical literacy perspective.
She never planned on
becoming an academic. But
her career took a turn in that
direction when the elementary
school where she was teaching
offered her an adjunct position
to work with preservice teachers. Then Indiana University
offered her a scholarship and
fellowship, and she decided
to take the plunge and complete her doctoral studies.
“As a public school and preschool teacher, I engaged in
research as a way of teaching,”
she says. “My transition into
academia was therefore a
fairly smooth one.” After she
received her PhD, she took a
teaching position at AU. And
she’s been here ever since.
Even with 30 years of teaching
experience in public schools
and at AU, Vasquez remains
humble. “Mother Teresa once
said, ‘Not all of us can do great
things. But we can do small
things with great love.’ In my
life, I have been enriched by so
many people who have shown
me great love and support,”
she says. “These people have
helped me to do the small things
that I hope have made at least a
small difference out there.” 
7
sciences
Literature professor
by
Abbey
Becker
“I’m constantly drilling through
information to try to make sure
that I’m staying current.”
— James Girard
While teaching a new honors
course in forensics several
years ago, chemistry professor
James Girard realized that the
text material he’d chosen for the
class—Criminalistics, Crime,
and Society—wasn’t working.
“A lot of it was written by
ex-crime lab people, detectives, and prosecutors, not
professors,” he says. And as
a professor, he had learned
from experience that what
students find compelling is
connecting the science to real
cases they may have heard
about. There was a need
for a textbook that provided
a scientific look at forensics,
and Girard decided to write
it. That book, Criminalistics:
Forensic Science and Crime,
was published in 2008.
In 2011 he published a second edition with an extended
title: Criminalistics: Forensic
Science, Crime, and Terrorism.
A third edition came out in
November 2013. In it Girard
discusses the Supreme Court’s
decision on the taking of DNA
samples, and he includes a section on designer drugs known
as bath salts. Three chapters
are devoted to issues related
8
to terrorism: cybercrime, explosives, and weapons of mass
destruction. When he asked the
FBI to review the latter chapter,
he says, they told him that he
should include agroterrorism.
Girard understands the need
to keep his material fresh. “After
a few years, everything’s considered old and stale,” he says.
“If you don’t update every three
years or so, faculty tend to go
looking for a different book.
I’m constantly drilling through
information to try to make sure
that I’m staying current.”
In 2013, Girard’s forensics
class—and his textbook—is as
popular as ever. Most students
who sign up have an interest
in criminal justice, and many
want to become prosecutors.
The class is useful because
it focuses on the scientific
aspects of criminal investigations and the judicial process.
“Students can use the information from this course as a
way to strengthen their skills
so they’ll be better lawyers,”
he says. “Understanding the
scientific side of forensics
will be important [to them].”
Students have told Girard
that they’ve been trying for
three semesters to get into
his class. “I joke that if I
called the course Guns,
Drugs, and Sex, I’d get every
student at the university.”
Girard is quite familiar
with the analysis of forensics
in criminal cases. He’s served
as an expert witness on many
murder and drug trials. “I’m
usually hired by the state in
very high-profile trials to represent the person charged so
they get a fair trial,” he says.
“It’s a tough thing to do—to
break through and get the jury
to look at the science and evidence and not the person.”
In 2014 AU’s honors program will see big changes,
including a downsizing to 45
freshmen from 200. And that
small group of invitees will take
four core courses together.
Girard was asked to create
a new forensics-based course
to serve as the honors science
component. He will co-teach
the class, titled Burden of
Proof, with statistics professor Betty Malloy and justice,
law and society professor
Richard Bennett. “I’ll be talking
about how physical evidence is
analyzed, Professor Malloy will
address what statistics are significant, and Professor Bennett
will discuss whether the evidence would be admitted
in court,” he says.
Will this new course expose
the need for a new textbook
—and inspire a new project
for Girard? Check your local
bookstore to find out. 
Erik Dussere has long
been a fan of film noir,
but it wasn’t until he
taught a course on detective fiction in the mid1990s that he became
interested in noir as
a scholarly subject.
“I had never read any
American detective fiction at that time,” he
says, “and reading the
hard-boiled books of
Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler got
me thinking about the
relationship between
those books and the noir
films they influenced.”
Dussere’s new book,
America Is Elsewhere:
The Noir Tradition in the
Age of Consumer Culture
(Oxford, 2013), explores
these connections and
the postwar concept of
authenticity. He starts
with detective fiction
from the 1940s, around
the time of World War II,
and goes on to look at
texts and films influenced
by noir, including conspiracy stories from the
60s and 70s and media
from the 80s and after.
Noir is always engaged
as a response to consumer culture, Dussere
explains. After the war,
consumer culture exploded in the United States.
It was everywhere.
“That sense of its
omnipresence,” he says,
“leads Americans to feel
that something about life
in America has become
inauthentic, tainted, or
spoiled by commerce.”
Noir responds by trying
to create an alternative
version of America—an
America that has not
humanities
Courtesy of Photofest
by
Abbey
Becker
been affected by commerce, that is “somehow darker and weirder
and less open to being
bought and sold.”
Dussere examines
how noir portrays different kinds of commercial
spaces, like gas stations and supermarkets.
“The supermarket is
a very useful stand-in
for an idea of America
itself,” he says, “because
it’s big, and it’s all about
the illusion of freedom
of choice.” It seems to
represent the American
ethos of freedom and
democracy—and the freedom to choose whatever
we want from all of the
options available to us.
“There’s this idea that
America in the postwar
era seems to live in these
places of commerce more
than anywhere else,” he
says. But it’s not just commercial spaces: abstract
spaces, like corporations,
also represent American
consumer capitalism,
Dussere argues.
He makes the case
that film noir is the opposite of what the supermarket represents.
“If the supermarket is
this brightly lit, apparently cheerful place, then
film noir involves plots
that are all about being
fated and doomed.”
Take Billy Wilder’s
1944 film, Double
Indemnity, about an insurance agent who helps a
woman kill her husband
to collect on the insurance policy. Dussere
describes a scene in the
“The supermarket is a very useful
stand-in for an idea of America itself
because it’s big, and it’s all about the
illusion of freedom of choice.”
—Erik Dussere
film, after the murder.
The two must find a place
to meet, discreetly: they
choose a supermarket.
“They walk around
pretending to shop,
and there’s this sense
that they have crossed
a line, and they can no
longer be a part of this
world,” he says. “They’re
much more exciting
and dangerous than the
[other] people in the
supermarket, but they’re
also doomed to unhappiness.” It’s a nice sense
of contrast, he says, an
“authentic” noir scene
and the possibly tainted
commercial context.
Dussere says he can’t
pin down the American
feeling toward consumerism. “It’s the thing we
love to hate—or claim to
hate—while we’re also
busy madly buying
stuff,” he says.
“This is exactly what
my book is about: the
way that American life is
defined by the conflict or
tension between our consumerist appetites and
our desire for an undefined ‘something else’
out there, an elsewhere,”
he says, “an authenticity
that we imagine could
serve as an antidote
to consumerism.” 
9
arts
by
Jamie
McCrary
AU arts patron Sylvia
Greenberg always
wanted to be on stage.
“When I was getting ready for college,
I wanted to go to New
York and be an actress,”
says Greenberg. “My
father said no, so I
never pursued it, but
I think being on stage
was my big dream.”
10
When theatre professor Carl Menninger
learned that 91-yearold Greenberg had
never had an opportunity to be an actress, he
decided it was time to
do something about it.
“I thought, how could
we not make this happen?” says Menninger.
“She has done so much
for AU’s Theatre Program.
For me, helping turn her
dream into reality was a
way to thank Sylvia for her
tremendous generosity.”
A longtime supporter
of the arts at AU, Greenberg and her husband,
Harold, provided the
funding to establish
AU’s Harold and Sylvia
Greenberg Theatre.
Before it opened in March
2003, students rehearsed
and performed in the
Experimental Theatre, a
small black box space on
campus that was missing
a backstage. “I really
wanted AU students
to have a place where
they could feel like they
were on stage,” says
Greenberg. “I think a lot
of these young people
have great talent, and I
wanted to give them a
place to cultivate that.”
Menninger believes
the Greenberg Theatre
has helped to expand
AU’s Theatre and Musical
Theatre Programs. “The
[theatre] program would
not be what it is today
without her. Since I
Photos by Murugi Thande
arts
“I enjoyed every minute of
performing in 4,000 Miles.
I loved the whole experience.
I’m ready for the stage now.”
—Sylvia Greenberg
arrived at AU 10 years
ago, the program has
doubled, and in no small
part because we have
a beautiful facility for
students to use,” says
Menninger. “So, she’s
always wanted to act, and
there’s a theatre named
after her—why is she not
standing on the stage that
has her name on it?”
After reading several
scripts, Menninger discovered the perfect fit for
Greenberg: Amy Herzog’s
4,000 Miles. A finalist for
the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in
drama, the play explores
the relationship between
21-year-old Leo and his
feisty, 91-year-old grandmother, Vera, examining their differences,
disagreements, and
ultimately, their connection. Greenberg played
Vera, which proved to
be an ideal role for her.
“I think this show was
written for me, because
I could really identify with
Vera,” says Greenberg.
“I use the same expressions she uses. I even
say the same things
[in real life that] she
said in the script.”
Presented at the
Greenberg Theatre on
November 24, 2013,
Menninger organized the
show as a staged reading
with AU theatre students.
“No one had to memorize anything because
we read the script from
music stands. We could
rehearse as much or as
little as Sylvia had time
for,” says Menninger.
“She was terrific—she
got a standing ovation.
The cast took a bow,
and instantly the audience was on their feet.”
Aside from fulfilling
her dream of being on
stage, the performance
fueled another passion
in Greenberg: working
with students. “I’ve never
had more fun, working
with Carl and all the
young people,” says
Greenberg. “I’ve been
connected with the students because I’ve always
attended performances,
but I never really got that
close to them. I enjoyed
getting to know them.”
For Menninger, the
intergenerational component of the play made the
experience all the richer.
“Because 4,000 Miles is
about a grandmother and
a grandson, it sparked
so many interesting
conversations between
Sylvia and the students,”
says Menninger. “One
day, we sat there with
the young man who
played Leo and he talked
about his grandparents,
and Greenberg talked
about her grandson and
the challenges of that
relationship. There was
so much to be learned
without ever feeling you
were learning anything.”
Greenberg hopes that
she can continue working with AU students and
that her support for the
arts will help them succeed. “I think there’s a
great deal of talent at AU,
and I’d love to see these
students be successful,” says Greenberg.
“It would make me feel
really good knowing I
was a part of that.”
More than anything,
Greenberg hopes that
she can continue acting. “I enjoyed every
minute of performing
in 4,000 Miles,” she
says. “I loved the whole
experience. I’m ready
for the stage now.” 
11
sciences
Courtesy of Stephen MacAvoy
Hate That Dirty Water
“Our findings suggest that human
beings have created so much of an
artificial conglomerate rock and put
it in such a small area that we’ve
changed the chemistry of the water.”
—Stephen MacAvoy
Stephen MacAvoy can tell
you a lot about the D.C. sewer
system, but perhaps not for
the reasons you might think.
“We have an interesting feature
here in Washington—combined sewage outflow,” he
says. “When there’s a heavy
storm, the system gets overloaded, and runoff and sewage
water bypass the overloaded
water treatment system and
get dumped into our rivers.”
MacAvoy, an environmental science professor, studies nutrient movement in
aquatic systems, specifically
in urban waters. His most
recent research involves studying the water chemistry of the
Anacostia River. It’s not a happy
river, he says. “After looking at
it, my team and I discovered
that the calcium, magnesium,
and sodium concentrations are
very high, which is a little odd.”
At first, they thought the
high concentration of these
12
elements was due to road
salting. But because the levels didn’t fluctuate seasonally, they ruled that out.
Then the team came up
with another idea: perhaps
the high ion concentrations
in the Anacostia were caused
by acidic rain and its interaction with concrete hardscape
near the river. The concrete is
loaded with limestone. When
acidic rainwater hits it, the concrete neutralizes the rainwater,
which causes the concrete to
dissolve and wash into the river.
“Our findings suggest that
human beings have created so
much of an artificial conglomerate rock and put it in such a
small area that we’ve changed
the chemistry of the water,”
he says. “We see the elevated
calcium, magnesium, and
sodium that won’t go away
and just gets washed downstream. It’s a permanent feature
of this changed landscape.”
by
Abbey
Becker
The new chemistry of the
water may not seem particularly
detrimental, but aquatic animals
face potentially insurmountable
challenges. “Any creature needs
to regulate its ion balance,”
says MacAvoy. “If you’d been
drinking freshwater all your life
and the water suddenly started
getting saltier, you’d have a
major problem. These poor animals in the Anacostia have no
choice but to drink the water.”
This problem doesn’t
just affect aquatic life, says
MacAvoy. “D.C. wants to make
the Anacostia fishable and swimmable in the next 18 years,”
he says. “Cleaning the river is
becoming a serious priority.”
MacAvoy isn’t just concerned about the Anacostia;
the state of other D.C. water
systems requires a call to
action. While they’re not looking at the Potomac River in
this study, he notes that other
studies have indicated that
there are high levels of estrogen in the Potomac, which
is causing male fish to develop eggs. “Washington gets
its drinking water from the
Potomac,” he says. “That’s
definitely a concern.”
Despite the problems that
local waterways are facing,
MacAvoy is heartened by the
city’s interest in becoming a
greener, more environmentally
sound place. “People want to
live in nice, clean cities—and
on top of that, it’s good PR,”
he says. “There’s a tax reason
to do it too. Property is more
valuable when it’s greener.
There’s a growing realization that we are making significant changes to the landscape
and that something needs
to be done about it.” 
When she was a
freshman, Hanaleah
Hoberman, BA psychology ’13, would read
about stellar students
who were accomplishing seemingly insurmountable feats. “I’d
compare myself to the
kids in the articles and
feel like I wasn’t doing
enough,” she says. “It
always seems like someone is doing more.”
In 2013, however,
Hoberman joined that
pool of stellar students
when she was named
a Rhodes Scholarship
finalist. “I actually didn’t
consider doing the
Rhodes initially,” she
says. “I was interested
in doing a Fulbright in
Mexico on the power
of oral traditions to heal
cultural trauma among
indigenous peoples in
Oaxaca. But I had only
been studying abroad in
Chile a month, and my
Spanish wasn’t good
enough yet to pass the
language requirement.”
When her merit
awards adviser suggested that she might be
a good candidate for a
U.K. scholarship, such as
a Marshall or a Rhodes,
she began to rethink her
options. “I knew 100 percent that graduate school
was in my future,” says
Hoberman. “I decided to
look into the awards as
a vehicle to get there.”
The more she learned
about Rhodes through
research and conversations with former scholars,
the more confident she
became that the award
might be a good fit. “They
put a big emphasis on
service and community,
and I’d really emphasized
those things in my time at
AU,” she says, referring to
her efforts to help found
a labor rights student
organization and organize
workers at AU to improve
the labor situation.
The oldest of international fellowships
and among the most
respected, the Rhodes
provides full tuition to
a degree program at
Oxford University. Past
winners include former
president Bill Clinton,
political correspondent
George Stephanopoulos,
New Jersey senator Cory
Booker, and astronomer
Edwin Hubble.
Each year, 32 Americans are selected through
a process whereby the
50 states and Washington, D.C., are grouped
into 16 districts. Members
of each district committee conduct interviews
and select the strongest candidates, no
more than two, who will
represent the state or
states within that district
as Rhodes Scholars at
Oxford. The winners are
announced at the close
of the interviews; no
alternates are selected.
There is no limit as
to how many students
a university may nominate, but AU typically
keeps its list small.
Hoberman was one of
only a handful of nominees. “The merit awards
office puts so much
energy into the people
they choose,” she says,
“and they want to give
[the students] as much
support as possible.”
Photo by Murugi Thande
social sciences
by
Abbey
Becker
Rhodes applicants
must submit a personal
essay. Hoberman, whose
minor was creative writing, focused on her gap
year between high school
and college, when she
taught English at a school
in a Bedouin desert community in Israel. “I wrote
about how that experience
shaped the way I think
and about psychology
and intervention, particularly regarding empowerment-based community
intervention and activism
as a means for preventing mental illness.”
After learning that she
had been selected as a
finalist, Hoberman flew to
Texas, her home state, for
her district interview—
and a luncheon. When
“The merit awards office puts so much
energy into the people they choose,
and they want to give [the students] as
much support as possible.”
—Hanaleah Hoberman
the interviews were
finished, the names
of two winners were
announced. Hoberman’s
was not among them.
She was disappointed
but not discouraged.
“At the end of the day,
I gained so much from
the experience,” she
says. “The merit awards
office set up mock interviews, so I got to know
a lot of amazing professors outside of my field.”
She even found the
application process to
be valuable. It gave her
an excuse to do a lot of
reading, she says, and
exposed her to issues
normally off her radar,
such as the special relationship between the U.K.
and the United States.
And it got her thinking
about her plans for graduate school. “Before I
applied for the Rhodes,
I was thinking I wanted to
go for my doctorate
in clinical community
psychology,” she says.
“Now, I’m also considering a master’s in public health with a mental
health focus. I’m seeing
that there are more opportunities than I thought.” 
13
Courtesy of Jeff Gan
arts
by
Abbey
Becker
“Every live performance is
unique. You’ll never have the
same confluence of audience
and actors or have the cues
called in the exact same way.”
—Jeff Gan
When Jeff Gan arrived at
AU, he declared a major
in international relations in
the School of International
Studies. Like many of
his fellow students, he
wanted to work at the
State Department and
join the Foreign Service.
But then he caught a bug
that altered his path.
On a whim, Gan joined
the University College,
a small-group learning
and living community
for first-year students.
Participants share an
14
on-campus “residential neighborhood” and
attend an intensive
seminar together, which
for Gan’s cohort was
Theatre: Principles,
Plays, and Performance.
Gan had done some
theatre in high school,
and he had made some
new theatre friends
through the program,
so he decided to take
a few theatre courses
on the side. “I thought
I’d be a theatre minor
at most,” he says.
But the more classes he took, the more
he discovered professors he really liked,
and he developed a
passion for the art.
Gan noticed that he
had begun to look at
international relations
through a cultural lens—
and at theatre through
an international perspective. A cultural context,
he discovered, enriched
his understanding of
history—and vice
versa. And so Gan
decided to declare a
second major: theatre.
“The more I got into
the liberal arts curriculum, the more I realized
there were more options
that could give me a
broader reach,” he says.
“I could touch economics, politics, the arts,
literature, and sociology
through this art form.”
It didn’t take long for
Gan to become a part of
AU’s small and intimate
performing arts community, where everyone is on
a first-name basis. “We
have regular meetings
as an entire department,
initiated by Professor
Sybil Williams,” he says,
“and we hold informal
freshman-senior gettogethers every month
to address concerns,
offer advice, even play
Apples to Apples.”
Gan knew he loved
theatre, but he wasn’t
sure where his second major might lead.
His revelation, he says,
came in Cara Gabriel’s
theatre history class.
Gan approached his
teacher after class one
day and told her, “I really
enjoyed this—how can
I do more of this kind
of thing?” She told him
that he could be a director or an academic—or
look into dramaturgy. It
turns out he didn’t have
to look long or far.
Gan went to see
theatre professor Carl
Menninger, who was
directing the show Bare:
A Pop Opera, and he
asked how he could get
involved in the production.
Menninger suggested
that he be the dramaturge. And that is how
Gan discovered his path.
“You get to form this
very passionate relationship with the text,” he
says. “Some directors
say that their experience
feels like giving birth—you
pour so much of yourself
into it. With dramaturgy,
you’re really involved with
the process, but it’s less
emotionally draining.”
Research is at the
center of dramaturgy,
which satisfies Gan’s
insatiable curiosity.
“You get to reach into
subjects that aren’t necessarily about drama,”
he says. “I get to do a
lot of historical research.
For one of the shows
I did, I devoted three
hours to researching
the postage system
in Weimar Germany,
and I loved it.”
Gan has long been a
fan of the performing arts,
but now he understands
them on a deeper level.
social sciences
“Every live performance
is unique. You’ll never
have the same confluence of audience and
actors or have the cues
called in the exact same
way,” he says. “It’s a
really beautiful and
very brief relationship
between the audience
and the performance that
can’t be replicated.”
Gan’s enthusiasm for
theatre and his passion
for research have not
gone unnoticed by his
professors or the directors he’s worked with.
“Jeff is perfectly suited to life in the theatre
because he is something
of a Renaissance man,”
says professor Meghan
Raham. “He has a truly
curious mind and is
eager and able to synthesize ideas and information from seemingly
disparate disciplines into
a central idea. Jeff’s
interest in everything
makes him particularly
valuable as a collaborator, and he also manages
somehow to be quite
likeable while knowing
a lot about everything—
an even more unique
trait. I can’t wait to see
what the world looks like
once he takes over.”
While world domination doesn’t seem to be
part of his agenda, Gan
hopes eventually to follow
in the footsteps of those
who have inspired him
most: his theatre professors. “I want to expose
as many people as possible to theatre,” he says.
“I believe in its power,
and I want to help build
a sustainable consumer
base for the arts.” 
Love
Economics
“The PhD isn’t easy . . .
but the professors always
have their offices open for
questions, and they really care
about students doing well.”
—Mario Gonzalez
Before Mario Gonzalez
enrolled at AU as a doctoral student in economics, he
worked in international development—first, at the Food and
Agriculture Organization for a
year, and then as a research
assistant at the Inter-American
Development Bank for two
and half years. Everyone, it
seemed, had a PhD in economics, he says. Everyone,
that is, except Gonzalez.
When he decided it was
time to pursue his doctorate,
American University was where
he wanted to go—all because
of Paul Winters, a professor in
the Department of Economics.
“I took a class with him when I
was in the international development master’s program
[at AU], and he was the one
who recommended me for the
position at the Inter-American
Development Bank,” he says.
It was Winters, too, who
convinced him to go back to
school to get formal academic
training in economics. When
Gonzalez returned to AU as a
PhD student in 2010, he knew
he wanted Winters involved
in his studies. “I wanted him
to be the chair of my dissertation committee,” he says.
Leanne Roncolato graduated with a PhD in economics in
2013. She had chosen AU for a
similar reason: a professor.
“I came to work with the gender
program, particularly with Maria
Floro,” she says. “Professor
Floro is passionate about the
human element of economics.
She really cares about people.”
Students in AU’s economics
doctorate program are all over
the map when it comes to their
particular areas of interest, but
one thing they share is this: the
belief that it’s the faculty who
make the program what it is.
“The PhD isn’t easy, it’s a
lot of work,” Gonzalez says.
“But the professors always
have their offices open for
questions, and they really care
about students doing well.”
Roncolato found her dissertation committee to be
invaluable. “I was really lucky
that all of my committee
members had such unique
strengths and could support me in different ways.”
by
Abbey
Becker
For her research on economic development, gender,
and employment, for example, she traveled to South
Africa to study the informal
economy and how small businesses function in the community. “In economics, we
often focus on formal labor
markets,” she says. “I became
really interested in work that
isn’t necessarily counted in
labor force surveys. That’s
something that Professor
Floro is really an expert in:
shining a focus on other
spheres of the economy.”
Roncolato is now looking
for an academic teaching position in economics, international
development, and women’s
studies. She’s continuing her
collaboration with a colleague
at the International Labor
Organization, where she has
done policy work in the past.
“I always want to have one
foot in the policy world,” she
says. “And I definitely want
to keep doing research on
economic development.”
Meanwhile, Gonzalez is
pursuing the research lead
of his mentor—and committee chair—Paul Winters.
“All of my work is related
to impact evaluations, particularly of social and agricultural programs,” he says.
He also has a new and more
senior position at the InterAmerican Development Bank
in strategic planning and
development effectiveness.
“It’s crazy to be getting paid
to do what I do,” he says,
“because I love what I do.” 
15
15
sciences
Chance of
Photo by Murugi Thande
Forecasting Space Weather
“It’s the perfect scenario when a
student brings knowledge learned
at AU to an internship—and then
the expertise gained from the
internship back to AU.”
—U. J. Sofia
When he was young,
Dhanesh Krishnarao,
BS physics and mathematics ’14, took a family
vacation to Disney World
and to nearby Kennedy
Space Center. That’s
when he fell in love with
16
space and astronomy.
Now Krishnarao’s
dream job is to be an
astronaut, but he’s taking
it one step at a time to
get there. Last summer
he began an internship
with NASA in the area of
space weather forecasting. “These forecasts can
predict the sun’s effects
on Earth and its magnetic field, among other
things,” he says, all of
which is helpful information for NASA robotic
missions, the military,
and the government.
Last fall, he teleworked
on his internship project
from AU. This semester,
he is traveling to NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland, one day a
week to work on a new
project: observing solar
flares. “I always had an
interest in astronomy,”
he says. “Space weather wasn’t a focus until
I started at NASA.”
It was U. J. Sofia,
physics professor
and associate dean of
research, who recommended Krishnarao for
the internship. “What’s
particularly exciting about
Dhanesh’s experience is
that he was able to bring
back [to AU] skills that
he learned at NASA. He
is applying them to an
astrophysics research
project in my field that
he is working on for his
honors capstone,” says
Sofia. “It’s the perfect
scenario when a student brings knowledge
learned at AU to an
internship—and then the
expertise gained from the
internship back to AU.”
by
Abbey
Becker
The internship has
broadened Krishnarao’s
network of contacts,
which will likely be helpful to him in the future
for things like “advice
on graduate schools
and internships.”
But he also has nothing
but praise for the physics department at AU.
“It’s a small department,
but we have really great
faculty,” he says. “I feel
like we’re all friends.”
Krishnarao entered
AU as a physics major,
but he picked up math as
a second major because,
he says, there’s a lot of
overlap between the two
subjects. “It’s particularly relevant because
I’m interested in going
to graduate school
for something related
to astrophysics.”
And the deeper
Krishnarao delves into
astrophysics, the more he
finds there is to discover.
“It’s nice to look up at the
sky and realize that I have
some idea of what’s going
on up there—but also
that I have no idea about
what’s going on,” he
says. “There’s so much
that we don’t know.” 
achievements
Grants
& Research
Appointments
& Honors
Publications
& Productions
The William Penn Foundation awarded
a three-year, $356,500 grant to the Arts Management Program for the “Advancing Arts and
Cultural Organizations–Research” initiative.
Andrew Taylor (performing arts) is the
principal investigator.
Kim Blankenship (sociology) joined the
Behavioral and Social Science Approaches
to Preventing HIV/AIDS study section at the
Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes
of Health.
Over the past year, Zelenka: The Capriccios,
a CD released in 2012 by Dan Abraham
(performing arts) and the Bach Sinfonia, has
received a lot of air time on NPR’s nationally
syndicated program Sunday Baroque.
Michael Brenner (Israel studies) was
elected international president of the Leo Baeck
Institute, the foremost research institute on the
history and culture of German-speaking Jewry.
The institute has centers in New York, London,
and Jerusalem and an office in Berlin.
William Brent (performing arts) won high
praise in the Washington Post for his computer
transformation of virtuoso percussionist Ross
Karre’s performance of Habitat, a contemporary
work by composer Steve Antosca. The world
premiere took place at the National Gallery of Art.
Max Paul Friedman (history) was awarded
a Fulbright Specialist grant to fund a month-long
research trip to Argentina this summer.
Anton Fedyashin (history) published
“Sergei Witte and the Press: A Study in Careerism
and Statecraft” in Kritika: Explorations in Russian
and Eurasian History.
Stephen Casey (mathematics and statistics)
received $145,537 from the Air Force Office
of Scientific Research for a three-year study,
“New Techniques in Time Frequency Analysis:
Adaptive Band, Ultra Band, and Multi-Rate
Signal Processing.”
The Wildlife Management Institute Appalachian
Landscape Conservation Cooperative awarded
David Culver (environmental science)
$110,862 in support of his project “Classification and Georeferencing Cave/Karst Resources
across the Appalachian LCC.”
Kathleen Franz (history) received $19,327
from the Smithsonian Institution for her project
“American Enterprise: Stories of Business.”
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller awarded
$500,731 to Amos Golan (economics) in
support of the Info-Metrics Institute and Network.
The National Conference of Bankruptcy
Judges gave Mary Hansen (economics)
$27,107 toward funding her project “Opening
New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets
Using Court Records.”
David Keplinger (literature) received an
Artist Fellowship Program grant of $10,000 from
the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities
to support work on a new manuscript.
Kiho Kim (environmental science) received
a $93,490 award from the National Science
Foundation for a study titled “RAPID: Documenting Bleaching Susceptibility and Resilience in
Guam Micronesia.”
The National Security Agency gave Joshua
Lansky (mathematics and statistics) a
$69,779 grant for “Liftings and Symmetric
Spaces over p-adic Fields.”
Cynthia Miller-Idriss (SETH) was
awarded $29,375 by the Spencer Foundation
for her project “The Extreme Goes Mainstream?:
School Bans and New Right-Wing Extremist
Forms in Germany.”
Members of the International Society for Reef
Studies elected Kiho Kim (environmental
science) as recording secretary.
Allan Lichtman and Richard
Breitman (history) received a Tikkun Olam
Award for “raising enormously important issues
and opening up a dialogue leading to a new sense
of understanding” through their book, FDR and the
Jews (Belknap, 2013). They also won the Jewish
Book Council’s prestigious National Jewish Book
Award in the American Jewish Studies category.
Chemi Montes (art) won gold and silver
awards in the 2014 international Graphis poster
competition for pieces he designed for the Department of Performing Arts.
Andrea Pearson (art history) was elected
to a three-year term, beginning in January, on
the council of the Sixteenth Century Society and
Conference (SCSC). An international organization, the SCSC promotes scholarship and intellectual exchange related to the early modern era.
A book by Theresa Runstedtler (history),
Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the
Shadow of the Global Color Line (University of
California, 2013), won the 2013 Northeast Black
Studies Association’s Phillis Wheatley Award.
Richard Sha (literature) delivered five
lectures in Italy about his forthcoming book,
Imagining the Imagination: Science and British
Romanticism, 1750–1830. Venues included the
University of Bologna, Gabriele d’Annunzio University, and the Keats–Shelley House in Rome.
He has been invited to review fellowship applications for this year’s American Council of Learned
Societies competition.
Barry’s Blog named Andrew Taylor
(performing arts) one of the “50 Most Powerful
and Influential People in the Nonprofit Arts.”
James Girard (chemistry) published Criminalistics: Forensic Science, Crime, and Terrorism,
3rd ed. (Jones and Bartlett, 2013), an essential
resource for undergraduates entering the evolving
field of forensic science.
Research by Mary Hansen (economics)
helped inform the content of a United States
Senate bill: Removing Barriers to Adoption and
Supporting Families Act, S.1511.
Eric Lohr (history) created the Social Science
Resource Guide: World War I for the 2013 United
States National Academic Decathlon.
An article by Pam Nadell (history), “Sisters
in Arms: Jewish Women in the Civil War,” coauthored with Dale Rosengarten, appeared in
Heritage: The Magazine of the American Jewish
Historical Society (Winter 2014). She contributed
a chapter, “‘The Synagog shall hear the Call of
the Sister’: Carrie Simon and the Founding of the
National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods,” to
Sisterhood: A Centennial History of Women of
Reform Judaism (Hebrew Union College, 2013).
In December, Nadell was elected to a two-year
term as program vice president of the Association
for Jewish Studies.
Michael Robinson (mathematics and statistics) published Topological Signal Processing
(Springer, 2014).
Vivian Vasquez (SETH) published a 10th
anniversary edition of Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children (Routledge, 2014).
Online literary journal Fiction Writers Review appointed Melissa Scholes Young (College
Writing Program) as a contributing editor. She
published an essay “Where We Write” in Poets
and Writers magazine.
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