Faculty Focus-November 14, 2022
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published research articles and poems, presented at conferences, and were named to leadership positions in international organizations.
Atal Ahmadzai
Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Atal Ahmadzai published a peer-reviewed article in the Perspectives on Terrorism journal that explores the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (IS-K), a cross-regional subsidiary of ISIS. In the article, he argues that IS-K has the potential to transform into a regional destabilizing entity.
Ahmadzai’s research focuses on the thematic intersection of environment-conflict-development. His scholarly publications are in the areas of human development, global governance, and terrorism. His regional expertise is in South, Central, and Western Asia. Ahmadzai holds a Ph.D. in Global Affairs from Rutgers University.
Rafael Castillo Bejarano
Visiting Assistant Professor of World Languages and Co-coordinator of Caribbean, Latin America, and Latino Studies Rafael Castillo Bejarano, presented his paper, "Tres poetas latinoamericanos ante la octava maravilla: Girondo, Baquero y Mutis (re)visitan El Escorial," during the international virtual colloquium, "Prevalence of the Golden Age in Hispanic Literature and Culture,” which was organized by the University of Navarre and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
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.
Cynthia Bansak
Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics Cynthia Bansak published a co-authored paper, titled “Sibling Spillovers in Rural China: A story of Sisters,” with Xuan Gabi Jiang of Jinan University and Guanyi Yang of Colorado College in the China Economic Review. The paper identifies educational spillovers between sibling pairs in rural China. Their findings suggest policies promoting girls’ education, pre-elementary school-age education programs, and after-school public resources can have multiplier effects through sibling spillovers.
Bansak's work has been published in various academic journals and she has co-authored a textbook on the Economics of Immigration. Among the courses she regularly teaches at St. Lawrence are Econometrics, Labor Economics, The Fed Challenge, and Money and Banking. Bansak received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at San Diego and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University.
Paul Doty
Special Collections and Archives Librarian Paul Doty published his poem, "Baseball in the Adirondack Sky," in Twin Bill, an online literary magazine about baseball.
Doty’s research interests include poetry, special collections librarianship, and the American author Jim Harrison. He has been a librarian at St. Lawrence for 20 years and taught a variety of courses in St. Lawrence’s First-Year Program. Doty has published poems or essays in the Mississippi Review, the Great Lakes Review, Poetry Pacific, the Reference Librarian, and the Cortland Review. Paul has a B.A. in English from Keene State College, an M.A. in English from the University of Maine, and an M.L.S. from SUNY Albany.
Howard Eissenstat
Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat co-edited a series of papers on Turkey's prospects as it faces elections in 2023 with Gonul Tol, founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey Program and a senior fellow for the Frontier Europe Initiative.
Eissenstat’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.
Neil Forkey
Associate Professor and Chair of Canadian Studies Neil Forkey presented a paper at the Middle Atlantic and New England Council for Canadian Studies (MANECCS) biennial meeting in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where he was also elected president of the organization. His presentation examined the expansion of the St. Lawrence Islands National Park, now the Thousand Islands National Park, during the 1970s and local resistance.
Forkey’s research focuses on Canadian-American history, North America social and environmental history, and North American borderlands. Among the courses he regularly teaches at St. Lawrence are Intro to Canada, Canadian-American Relations, Modern Canada, and courses in the First-Year Program.
Sandhya Ganapathy
Assistant Professor of Global Studies Sandhya Ganapathy presented research with Alexis Jablonski ’23, Emma Frances Doherty ’24, Gabriella Reynolds ’24, and Sophia Ruland ’24 during the annual American Anthropological Association meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Their panel, “Art as Praxis: Disrupting Settler/Colonial Modernity and Ecologies Through Artistic Interventions,” was based on an interactive teaching and learning endeavor from Ganapathy’s Spring 2022 Global/Local Environmentalism course in which students engaged with decolonial and critical Indigenous frameworks to examine contemporary environmental issues. They drew upon the artistic methodologies of Apsáalooke visual artist Wendy Red Star in art-making endeavors to convey insights to the public.
Ganapathy holds a Ph. D. in Cultural Anthropology from Temple University. At St. Lawrence, she teaches Race, Culture, Identity, Global/Local Environmentalism, Global Health and Justice, Research Methods, and a First-Year Seminar titled Refashioning Fashion.
Irma Hidayana
ASIANetwork-Luce Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship in Asian Studies Irma Hidayana published a research study investigating the use of the Health Belief Model in assessing COVID-19 vaccine intention in Indonesia. The study found a high COVID-19 vaccine intention and highlighted the reasons for vaccine refusal, including needle fears, susceptibility to vaccine efficacy, halal issues, and concern about vaccine side effects.
Hidayana holds a Ph.D. in Health and Behavior from Columbia University’s Teachers College and an M.P.H. from Montclair State University. Her research focuses on the impact of the baby food industry on maternal and child health in Indonesia and some countries in Southeast Asia regions. She is currently working on collaborative research with sociologists, epidemiologists, and social activists in Indonesia and Singapore to examine COVID-19 and health equity in Indonesia.
Adam Hill
Associate Professor of Chemistry Adam Hill published a co-authored paper, "Enhanced Crystallinity of Covalent Organic Frameworks Formed Under Physical Confinement by Exfoliated Graphene," with Ryan Brown and Jingyun Ye of Clarkson University. Research for the paper was based on the use of St. Lawrence's liquid-nitrogen-cooled infrared microscope to monitor the formation of covalent organic frameworks (COF) and measure the amount of water present.
Hill holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in chemistry from Trinity College. Using spectroscopy, Hill works with St. Lawrence undergraduate students to research how light produces electron transfer, modeling how sunlight powers inorganic materials used in renewable energy.
Melissane Schrems
Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of Native American Studies Melissane Schrems presented “Catholic” Mohawk of African Descent, and American Patriot: Atiatonharónkwen Louis Cook and the War for Mohawk Liberty in the American Revolution.
Schrems' research interests include Native American, European and African diasporic, and settler-colonial American history. She has taught courses on Native American history, colonial British America, African American, and Adirondack history. Schrems is currently working on a piece for Humanities NY for its Land, Liberty and Loss Project and holds a doctorate in history from Boston University.
Penny Vlagopoulos
Associate Professor of English Penny Vlagopoulos published a peer-reviewed article, "A World Full of Doors: Postapocalyptic Hospitality in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West," in the Fall 2022 issue of Modern Fiction Studies (MFS), published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Vlagopoulos contends that though hospitality is always threatened by hostility, the current displacement crisis requires that people theorize new forms of solidarity across geopolitical borders.
Vlagopoulos' research focuses on contemporary U.S. and global literature, with an emphasis on migration and globalization. At St. Lawrence, she teaches courses such as American Literature from 1865 to the Present, Multiethnic American Literature, Literature and Film at the Borderlands, and Literature and Globalization. Vlagopoulos holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Submit News
St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a regular roundup of noteworthy faculty news.
