Faculty Focus-April 18, 2022
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published scholarly journal articles, presented their research at conferences around the globe, and used their expertise to give Congressional testimonies.
Rafael Castillo Bejarano
Visiting Assistant Professor of World Languages, Cultures, and Media Rafael Castillo Bejarano received the Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of América’s Luis Andrés Murillo Best Article Award for his article “Con mayúsculas letras de oro': los nobles ante la poesía en el Viaje del Parnaso. The award was presented during the 68th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Dublin, Ireland where he presented his paper, "The Day Madrid Become Rome: A Spectacle of State in the Old Plaza Mayor (1609),” which related a non-edited 1610 news-flyer that described a royal festival, with its critical historical and political context in the Habsburg's heyday.
During the 15th Biennial Conference of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry at the University of Cambridge, Castillo Bejarano organized a panel to commemorate the fourth centenary of the death of the Spanish major poet Juan de Tassis y Peralta, Count of Villamediana, and presented his paper, "Creación y autocreación: la imagen de Villamediana entre poesía y ceremonia cortesana," which explores the connections between Villamediana's self-fashioning both through his poetry and his variated performances in courtly festivals, ceremonies, and spectacles.
Castillo Bejarano’s research focuses on medieval and early modern Iberia, early modern subjectivity and transatlantic connections, 16th and 17th Hispanic poetry, theory of the lyric, relations between poetry and music, and courtly culture.
Sarah Brehm
Visiting Assistant Professor of Geology Sarah Brehm’s presented her research, which focuses on the origin of peridotite-bearing, low-MgO hawaiites from the Cima Volcanic Field, California, and explores a new hypothesis of rapid magma mixing during ascent along fractures, during the Northeast Central Meeting of the Geological Society of America.
At St. Lawrence, Brehm teaches structural geology, petrology, and several introductory courses. Brehm is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan where she earned a Ph.D. in geology with a focus on igneous petrology. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Union College.
Howard Eissenstat
Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat used his expertise on Turkey to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee during the “Opportunities and Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean: Examining U.S. Interests and Regional Cooperation” virtual hearing held by the Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and Global Counterterrorism and the Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment, and Cyber.
Eissenstats's recent work has focused increasingly on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, especially on issues of rule-of-law, minority rights, and the reshaping of political culture under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). At St. Lawrence, he teaches courses on Middle Eastern history and politics and in the First-Year Seminar (FYS). In addition to traditional academic work, Eissenstat served for over a decade as a Turkey Country Specialist for Amnesty International-USA. He has lectured at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. military, and the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, as well as given testimony to the Canadian Senate and offered briefings to Congressional Committees.
Jeff Frank
Associate Professor of Education Jeff Frank published his article, “Failures of imagination: Racial Justice in Philosophy and Education,” which takes a retrospective look at antiracist education, in the peer-reviewed journal Theory and Research in Education.
Frank has taught a First-Year Seminar (FYS) titled What Does it Mean to be Educated and courses such as Contemporary Educational Policy, Teaching and Teachers, and American Philosophies of Education. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and education from Columbia University and a B.A. in philosophy from Middlebury College.
Alanna Gillis
Assistant Professor of Sociology Alanna Gillis presented her research as part of the “High-Impact Practices in the Sociology Classroom” panel during the Southern Sociological Society's annual meeting. Her presentation shared what sociology classroom role-playing activities are, why they are more inclusive ways of teaching about privilege and inequality than many other common methods, and recommended pitfalls to avoid.
Gillis is the author of several scholarly articles which examine race, class, and gender inequality in higher education and inclusive pedagogy. At St. Lawrence, she teaches Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Sociology: Inequality, Sociology of Education, and a community-based learning course of Sociology of Family–all of which supported her research on hyflex courses. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as a B.A. in Sociology from Furman University.
Antun Husinec
James H. Chapin Professor of Geology Antun Husinec gave a talk and presented a poster with co-author Stephen A. Leslie, professor of Geology at James Madison University, Virginia, during the 2022 Joint North-Central and Southeastern Geological Society of America Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The pair presented research on the Upper Ordovician-lower Silurian sequence stratigraphy, carbon-isotope chemostratigraphy, and conodont biostratigraphy of the Williston Basin, North Dakota. In addition to rich petroleum and potash deposits, their research shows that the Williston Basin’s subsurface has potential for carbon dioxide sequestration.
Husinec’s research focuses on the sedimentary record of climatic, sea level, and oceanic changes. Courses he regularly teaches at St. Lawrence include Oceanography, Sedimentology, and Carbonate Sedimentology. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, finished his post-doc at Virginia Tech, and is a Geosciences Research Affiliate at Colorado State University.
Jayantha Jayman
Associate Professor of Global Studies Jayantha Jayman presented his paper titled “Global Public Health Catastrophe and Global Public Goods in the Interregnum: The End of Western Hegemony or its Revival?," at the 2022 International Studies Association (ISA) annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. During the “Constructivist Explanations of Global Public Goods” panel discussion, he presented his paper titled “The End of Western Hegemony or its Revival?” and he served as a chair of the “The Political Economy of Responses to COVID-19” panel session.
Jayman's research focuses on international political economy and international relations. He is interested in North-South relations, especially the roles of hegemonic powers such as Japan and the United States. He holds a doctorate in international relations from the London School of Economics, a master’s degree in political economy and international development from the University of Toronto, and a bachelor’s degree in physics and political science from Denison University.
Dan Look
Associate Professor of Mathematics Dan Look published a research article that examines a family of functions first studied by Benoit Mandelbrot in the second half of the 20th century with the goal of proving the existence of a previously unknown structure in these maps in the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos.
Look also organized the Mathematics Competition and Conference of Northern New York (MCCNNY). A collaborative effort with the Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley, the conference celebrates the success of mathematics students and provides career, research, and graduate school information.
Look’s research focuses on complex dynamics, which explore topological/geometric properties of mathematical functions under iteration. Of particular interest is the Julia set, which is the set of points where the function exhibits mathematical chaos. He holds a Ph.D. from Boston University.
Pedro Ponce
Professor of English Pedro Ponce’s short story collection, “The Devil and the Dairy Princess,” has been named a finalist for the 2021 Big Other Book Award for Fiction, which recognizes excellence in literature while promoting and supporting the work of innovative writers and adventurous presses. The winner will be announced during a virtual ceremony on June 24, 2022.
At St. Lawrence, Ponce regularly teaches Techniques of Fiction, Methods of Critical Analysis, and Advanced Fiction Writing. His research interests include narrative theory, conspiracy theory, and dystopian literature, and he is the author of several works including Stories After Goya, Alien Autopsy, and Superstitions of Apartment Life. He is a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver, an M.F.A. in Fiction from Western Michigan University, and an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University.
Madeleine Wong
Associate Professor of Global Studies and William L. Fox Professor in Public Health Madeleine Wong presented her paper during the “Politics of Space and Place” panel session at the 2022 International Studies Association (ISA) annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Her paper, “Uncertain Futures: implications for a critical geography perspective of Covid response–the case of Ghana,” drew on theoretical insights from critical geography and critical health geopolitics to address how the conditions of Ghana, its place in the international political space, and its Covid 19 responses are embedded in socio-political structures operating across diverse transnational and local spatial, scalar and context-dependent ways.
Wong holds a Ph.D. in Geography from York University, an M.A. in Geography from Florida Atlantic University, and a B.A., in Geography and Biology from Mount Holyoke College.
Susan Willson
Associate Professor of Biology Susan Willson published a co-authored paper with Maggie Jensen that explores how effective the Birdsbesafe cat collar is at reducing bird kills by domestic cats in the Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management.
Willson is a tropical avian ecologist and conservation biologist. Her local research projects include the role of Amish hayfields in the nesting success of local grassland birds, American Kestrel breeding ecology and the role of landscape variability at nest sites, and the use of the Birds-be-safe cat collar to decrease domestic cat predation on songbirds.
