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�����ջ� Welcomes New Faculty

An impressive group of professors join �����ջ�'s roster of dynamic profs.

New faculty are part of what brings vibrance and cutting edge expertise to �����ջ�'s academic program. This year, the college welcomes 18 professors to campus to teach classes on topics ranging from political decision making to computer networking.

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Prof. Glenn Baker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology

Filling a two-year position in the department of psychology, Prof. Glenn Baker specializes in social and personality psychology. He holds a PhD from the University of Missouri, and his recent research has focused on how people think about their own judgmental biases, especially in the context of political partisanship. During the 2020-21 year, Glenn will be teaching social psychology, political judgment and decision-making, and social vognition. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, drumming, crafting, and video gaming.

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Crystal Carr, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology

Crystal Carr fills a one-year visiting assistant professorship in psychology. She comes to �����ջ� with a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her areas of focus include behavioral neuroscience, drugs of abuse, and translational methods. At �����ջ�, she will teach courses in addictions, neuropharmacology, and behavioral neuroscience.

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Felipe Carrera, Assistant Professor of Economics

Felipe Carrera joins �����ջ� as an assistant professor of economics, teaching industrial organization, economic history, and econometrics. He holds a PhD from UCLA and his research examines questions in industrial organization and applied microeconomics using historical settings. His current work explores the long-term effects on education, crime, and mortality of large-scale displacements of slums during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and the interaction between entry and productivity during the Chilean nitrate cartels before World War I. His research has been supported by grants from the California Center of Population Research and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate Research.

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Sabrina Datoo, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Humanities

A historian of early modern and modern South Asia, Sabrina Datoo will fill a one-year position in the departments of history and humanities. Her research draws on scholarship in the medical humanities and contextual histories of science to develop new ways of thinking about the cultural history of the north Indian service gentry. She completed her doctoral work at the University of Chicago. At �����ջ�, she will teach Hum 110 and two courses on Islamic empires: Science and Islam: Global Histories and The Mughals and Their Worlds.

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Kevin Holmes, Associate Professor of Psychology

A cognitive scientist who studies the structure of human knowledge, Kevin Holmes joins the psychology department as an associate professor from Colorado College. He researches how language reflects and shapes the mental categories people rely on to perceive, think about, and act upon the world. He also investigates how we think and reason about abstract concepts. He engages undergraduate students as close collaborators in work that has resulted in many student-coauthored publications and presentations, as well as coverage in The Economist and other media outlets. His teaching focuses on core topics in cognitive psychology and fundamentals of research design and data analysis. He holds an MA in psychology from Stanford University, a PhD in cognitive psychology at Emory University in 2012, and received a National Science Foundation-funded postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive science at UC Berkeley in 2013–14.

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Alice Hu, Assistant Professor of Classics and Humanities

Alice Hu studies Latin literature of the early imperial period, with particular interests in Latin epic poetry and intertextuality. Past research projects have focused on Vergil’s use of tragic allusion in the Aeneid. Alice is particularly interested in trauma and PTSD in ancient literature; her current research project focuses on Statius’ Thebaid, examining the epic’s preoccupation with survivors and survival in the context of larger discourses about the traumas of civil war that characterize literature produced in the aftermath of the Roman civil war of 69 CE. Alice has taught courses in Latin and Greek at all levels, on Roman topography and history, and on the mythological figure of Hercules through the ages. At �����ջ�, she will teach both languages and in the Humanities 110 program. Prior to coming to �����ջ�, she taught at Gustavus Adolphus College. Before that, she was resident instructor at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Alice earned her BA in classics and history from Stanford University and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Zhe (Jasmine) Jiang, Assistant Professor of Economics

Zhe Jiang holds a PhD in economics from the University of Washington and fills an assistant professor position in economics. She researches international macroeconomics, international trade, and labor economics, with implications pertaining to wage inequality, labor market polarization, and policy-related issues. Currently she is examining how policy shocks interact with labor market frictions in affecting firms’ decisions and workers’ choices, and thus shaping aggregate outcomes. When she’s not teaching or researching, she reads, listens to music, and practices Chinese calligraphy.

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Shohei Kobayashi, Assistant Professor of Music

The music department welcomed Shohei Kobayashi from the University of Michigan UMS (University Musical Society) Choral Union. As assistant professor of music, he will direct the �����ջ� Chorus and Collegium Musicum and teach courses in music theory and musicianship. In this work, he synthesizes his experiences as a conductor, ensemble vocalist, and art song interpreter with his insights as a self-taught guitarist, singer/songwriter, and bandmate to connect and collaborate with musicians and music lovers of all backgrounds. As a music educator, he led choirs at University of Michigan, Oakland University, and Lewis & Clark College, and also assisted the Choral Conducting Institute and the Adult Choir Camp programs at Interlochen College of Creative Arts. Shohei holds degrees from University of Michigan and Lewis & Clark College.

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Yun Lee, Visiting Professor of Chinese and Humanities

Yun Lee fills a one-year position as a visiting professor of Chinese and Humanities. She studies Chinese fiction, print culture, and translation studies, with a focus on late imperial and early Republican Chinese short stories. Her latest work concerns the transformation of the Chinese short story that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, when large-scale narrative, linguistic, and formal experimentations of the genre took place and permanently changed the narrative and stylistic features of Chinese fiction. She has taught courses on modern Chinese and Sinophone literature and film, illustrated prints in 19th and 20th century China, and Chinese language courses at all levels. She received her MA from Columbia University and PhD from Ohio State University.

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Paul Manson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science

Paul Manson ’01 will serve as a visiting assistant professor of political science in 2020–2021. He conducts policy research on local election administration and community responses to disaster, drawing on sociology, economics, and political science to research these two areas. He is also the research director for the Early Voting Information Center here at �����ջ�. His elections research focuses on understanding how and why local election administrators chose to serve the public as election officials, and his disaster research focuses on community responses to predicted or potential risks. A �����ջ� grad in anthropology, he pursued a Master of Public Administration before joining the private sector as a consulting environmental planner. He joined the PhD program at Portland State University in the Public Affairs and Policy program as a part of an NSF IGERT program on environmental planning and governance. Outside of academic life Paul has also served on commissions participating in local land use decisions and local government oversight committees.

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Julia Michaels, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology

Julia Michaels will join the biology department this spring for a three-semester appointment as a visiting assistant professor of biology. Julia is excited to share her expertise in ecological restoration, plant community ecology, and multiscale biodiversity monitoring. This spring she will teach a field course focused on applying ecological principles to the management of the �����ջ� Canyon. 

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Yalçin Özkan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology

Yalçin Özkan is a qualitative sociologist who will teach introduction to sociology, as well as courses in law and society, and power, hegemony, and resistance during the 2020-2021 academic year. He specializes in the fields of culture, law and society, economic and political sociology with an empirical focus on contemporary Turkey. His book project concerns the extraordinary frequency of work-related deaths in Turkey by calling attention to the law's part in this hazardous regime. Yalçin completed a PhD in sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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David Ramirez, Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science

David Ramirez joins the department of computer science in a two-year position. He studies wireless communication networks by evaluating and promoting the adoption of new communication methods (e.g., wireless full-duplex or use of millimeter-wave frequencies) to deliver new services with greater requirements (e.g., higher reliability, lower delay, or computation-intensive algorithms in computationally limited devices) that will have a positive societal impact. Beyond research, David is actively engaged in efforts to increase the participation and success of underrepresented groups in STEM fields. David earned a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Tec de Monterrey and an MS and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University. He held postdoctoral positions at New York University and Princeton University.

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Marcus Robinson ’13, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Mathematics Department

The math department welcomes Marcus Robinson ’13 as a visiting assistant professor for the 2020-21 academic year. He researches commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, and his recent work has focused on computing a certain algebraic invariant called a uniform bound on symbolic powers. In addition to his research, he has contributed to the development of the computer algebra software Macaulay2. Marcus recently completed work on his PhD at the University of Utah.

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Katherine Rush, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Chemistry Department

A bioorganic chemist, Katherine Rush will join �����ջ� as a visiting assistant professor of chemistry for the fall semester. Her research interests lie at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and physics, and she uses a variety of spectroscopic techniques to observe metal-binding proteins as they transport biological metal ions and catalyze poorly-understood chemical reactions. Outside of the lab, she can be found enjoying walks with her dogs and sewing clothes. She will teach Chem 101 (Molecular Structure and Properties) and is excited to think about fundamental forces of the universe with her students.

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Alice Shen, Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Filling a two-year position as a visiting assistant professor of linguistics, Alice Shen will teach phonology, phonetics, and bilingualism; co-teaching the introductory formal linguistics course, as well as directing the Lab of Linguistics. She holds a PhD in linguistics from University of California, Berkeley in 2020, and works primarily on spoken language comprehension and production, particularly of code-switching. She recently published an article in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition about how Mandarin-English bilinguals recruit phonetic cues to anticipate upcoming code-switches during listening. This past summer, she worked on developing data infrastructure for natural language processing systems at Facebook.

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Monica VanBladel, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish and Humanities

A scholar of 20th- and 21st-century Latin American literature and culture, Monica VanBladel will serve as visiting assistant professor of Spanish and humanities in a one-year appointment. Regionally, her work focuses on Mexico, and her theoretical interests center on the political valences of religious thought in the region. (What is gained or lost in referring to indigenous tradition as "religion"? Can some Catholic ideas possibly be decolonial?) Originally from Illinois, Monica studied Spanish and philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (2012) and received her PhD in Iberian and Latin American cultures at Stanford University (2019). She is a committed teacher of language through culture, and looks forward to supporting students’ intermediate- and advanced-level language development through the study of social movements, film, and literary texts, and a spring seminar on religion and modernity in Latin American literature.

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Simone Waller, Assistant Professor of English and Humanities English Department

Simone Waller is an early modernist specializing in English drama and prose and joins the English department in a tenure-track position as assistant professor of English and humanities. At �����ջ�, she teaches courses on Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists, as well as Humanities 110. Her research centers on the intersection of literature and politics during the Reformation and is particularly attuned to historical questions of access to and involvement in public speech. A current book project explores the proliferation of voices in 16th-century printed dialogues and performed drama, and argues that creative interactions between old and new means of communication in the press and theater established a mandate for political representation across the social spectrum. Simone holds a PhD from Northwestern University and her other interests include historiography and temporality in history plays and life writing, stagecraft in early interludes, and media studies.

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