Faculty Focus-October 7, 2025
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published articles in high-impact journals, were quoted in prestigious publications, presented at world-renowned academic conferences, and appeared on popular podcasts.
Howard Eissenstat
Laurentian Associate Professor and Chair of History Howard Eissenstat was recently featured in various international publications recently—including AL-Monitor, Trouw, Turkey ReCap, L'Orient–Le Jour, Die Press, and Der Tagesspiegel—for his commentary on the recent Erdogan-Trump meeting.
Eissenstat also recently spoke to Der Tagesspiegel and Die Press about increasing talk in Turkey regarding succession within the government coalition should Erdogan leave power. Eissenstat argues that "while we don't know much for certain, the fact that we are having these discussions with so little to go on highlights the extent to which we are looking at an authoritarian, rather than democratic political system at this point."
Stephanie Wang
Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Stephanie Wang recently published an article in the Journal of Organization.
The article, titled "Precarious labor, affect, and intersectional inequalities: Working as feminist and LGBT NGO activist-workers in China," takes up a difficult challenge to examine how precarity is distributed differentially within feminist and queer organizations in China, and specifically how emotional labor, affective dis(orientation), and hierarchical relations become entangled in the very aspirational and precarious project of doing NGO activist work on the ground.
Wang earned her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington, and her research interests include transnational feminism, LGBTQ+ studies, feminist political economy, labor, social movement and NGO politics, and China studies. This is her first time publishing outside the field of gender and sexuality studies.
Damon Berry
Associate Professor and Chair of Religious Studies Damon Berry was recently featured on Season 5 of the ReligionWise podcast titled, “From Theory to Practice: Academic Expertise and Counter-Extremism.”
ReligionWise features educators, researchers, and other professionals discussing their work and the place of religion in the public conversation.
Berry regularly consults with federal law enforcement agencies including the FBI and FBI’s BAU-1 (Behavioral Analysis Unit One) on cases involving religious extremism and alt-right movements. In this conversation, he explores the challenges of translating academic research into practical guidance for investigators, including the difficult work of understanding belief systems and worldviews that are dangerous and toxic to pluralistic society. Berry discusses what law enforcement agencies understand well about these movements and how empathetic scholarship can inform counter-extremism efforts.
Eloise Brezault
Professor and Chair of World Languages, Cultures, and Media and Coordinator of African Studies Eloïse Brezault has published a new article in the Journal of the African Literature Association titled “‘Suturing the City’: Poetics of Extractivism in the Congolese Novels of Sinzo Aanza and Fiston Mwanza Mujila.”
The article offers a new ecocritical reading of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 and The Villain’s Dance and Sinzo Aanza’s Généalogie d’une banalité, foregrounding souffle—breath, pulse, and animating force—as a reparative principle within urban ecologies shaped by extractivism and “slow violence.” Moving beyond readings of postcolonial dereliction, Brezault reinterprets holes, ruins, and absences as porous, generative spaces where memory, sound, and improvisation circulate.
Her research interests include Francophone African literature, cultural theory, postcolonial literature and migrant identities in a globalized world.
Habib Battah
Adjunct Professor of Global Studies Habib Battah recently published a long-form investigative article titled, "What the Media Won’t Tell You When It Embeds With the Military," in The Public Source.
He was also interviewed on The MERIP Podcast about his award-winning article, "Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy," which was published in the Middle East Research and Information Project, and won a National Headliner Award in 2025.
Habib Battah is an investigative journalist, political analyst and founder of beirutreport.com. He has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 20 years, contributing to The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera English, CNN, Fortune, Jacobin and others.
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