Union welcomed 21 new faculty members this week. For a list of employees in all departments who have joined the Union College community since last fall, click here.
New faculty members, by department, are:
ANTHROPOLOGY: Alicia DeNicola, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She is currently researching logging and fishing communities in the Pacific Northwest and has written several articles for the Society for the Anthropology of Work Review. She has taught at Syracuse, Willamette University, Skidmore College and Brandeis University. Jeffrey Witsoe, visiting assistant professor, received his Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University of Cambridge with the thesis, “Democracy Against Development: The Politics of Caste Empowerment and the Postcolonial State.” Previously, he taught at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.
CLASSICS: Alex Gottesman, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Chicago. He has given presentations to colleges and universities throughout the country and is completing a manuscript titled “Supplication in Ancient Athens: Spectacle, Politics, Economics.” He is skilled in numerous languages, including ancient and modern Greek, Latin, German, Italian and French. Rebecca Kennedy, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. in Greek and Latin from The Ohio State University. She has held teaching positions at George Washington University and Howard University. She is the author of “Justice, Geography and Empire in Aeschylus’ Eumenides Classical Antiquity.”
ENGLISH: Bunkong Tuon, assistant professor, holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from University of Massachusetts with a dissertation titled, “Specters of War: Reclamation, Recovery and Return in Southeast Asian-American Literature and History.” He has published numerous articles, four of which are included in the Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Literature. His research interests include 20th century U.S. ethnic literature, Asian-American studies, diasporic studies and trauma studies. Jillmarie Murphy, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. from the University at Albany. Her “Hawthorne in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life: Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by His Family, Friends, and Associates” (University of Iowa Press) was published in 2007. Murphy received the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Jeannette Sargent, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College with a dissertation titled “Ovid’s Heroides: Libretti for Pantomime.” She has taught classes in classics, Latin, Greek and English at Union. Her areas of teaching interest include the Latin language, translation in ancient epic, classical mythology and ancient drama.
ECONOMICS: Muhammad Asali, visiting assistant professor, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. His teaching and research fields include applied microeconomics, labor economics, econometrics and international economics. He has taught at Columbia and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
HISTORY: Shailaja Paik, visiting assistant professor, received a Ph.D. from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. She has presented and published various articles about Dalit women and is currently working on a paper titled, “Dalit Patriarchy Disinterred.” She is a representative of the Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace in Pennsylvania and is a founding member of the Institute of Social Engineering in Pune, India, which organized an education center for children in the village of Ujire, Karnataka.
MODERN LANGUAGES: Stacey Triplette, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, received her Ph.D. in philosophy with a focus on Romance languages and literatures from the University of California Berkeley, where she has taught various levels of Spanish and courses in comparative literature. She is also skilled in French, Italian and Latin. She recently presented her paper, “How to be a Good Moor: The Representation of Islam in Guerras Civiles de Granada.”
PHILOSOPHY: Mark Wunderlich, visiting assistant professor, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. His published papers include “Noncomparabilism in Epistemology” and “Vector Reliability and the Generality Problem.” Previously, he taught at the University at Albany, Iowa State University and the University of Arkansas.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: Bradley Hays, assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Formerly a professor at the University of Nevada, Hays earned the CSUN Student Government Outstanding Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts Award and has presented at conferences around the country. Darius Watson, visiting instructor, holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the University at Albany. He has taught a wide range of courses, including in international organizations, U.S. defense policy, American imperialism and global politics, at Union and Rockefeller College.
PSYCHOLOGY: Teresa Robbins, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph. D. from Claremont Graduate University. Her paper, “Changing Minds But Not Politics: The Influence of Intergroup Interactions on Racial Policy Attitudes and Attributions about African Americans” was published in 2006. She has presented throughout the country on an extensive list of topics.
SCHAFFER LIBRARY: Elizabeth Hoppe, assistant librarian I/shared resource librarian, received her M.S. degree from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston. Hoppe has held various library positions including reference and information literacy librarian and access services coordinator at Whitman College and library assistant at Harvard University Chemistry and Chemical Biology Library. Kristin Pitt, visiting assistant librarian, earned her M.S. degree from the University at Albany. She began interning with Shaffer Library in early 2008, having previously provided reference assistance at the University Library at the University at Albany.
SOCIOLOGY: Laura Moffitt, visiting assistant professor, earned her M.S.W. from the University at Buffalo. She has lectured at various colleges and universities. In 2006-2007, she taught a course at Union on Social Work and Human Services.
THEATRE & DANCE: Steven Michalek, visiting assistant professor and technical director/lighting designer, holds an M.F.A. from University of Connecticut, where he also lectured on stagecraft. He has held acting, master electrician, technical director, lighting designer, sound designer, scenic designer and director positions in numerous productions.
In addition to these faculty members, Mason Stokes (English), Matthew Hockenos (History) and Shirley Smith (Modern Languages) are Skidmore faculty who are here for one term on a Mellon Faculty Exchange.
Stokes, associate professor and associate chair of the English Department at Skidmore, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His teaching interests include African-American literature and culture, theories of race and ethnicity, lesbian and gay literature and queer theory, and American literature from the Civil War to the present.
Hockenos, associate professor of history, holds a Ph.D. from New York University and has a wide range of teaching, publishing and service experience. His many fields of interest include modern European history, 19th and 20th century German history and Jewish-Christian relations.
Smith, associate professor of Italian languages and literatures, holds a Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation titled, “D’Annunzio: The Mauve Decade.” She is the author of numerous scholarly book and journal articles and has developed courses that examine Sicily today; Italy, Fascism and Jews; contemporary Italian women; and Italian Renaissance women.