Emily Manetta, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, received her B.A.
from Swarthmore College in Philadelphia and her Ph.D. from the University of California,
Santa Cruz in Linguistics. Her current work focuses on the syntax of South Asian languages. Her
dissertation, based on linguistic fieldwork with a Kashmiri refugee community, featured a
comparative analysis of the syntax of questions in Kashmiri and Hindi-Urdu. Dr. Manetta has
a strong secondary research interest in the sociolinguistics and syntax of non-standard
varieties of English, in particular in her native Appalachia.
Dr. Manetta will be involved in the continuing development of Linguistics courses at UVM, teaching "Language and Mind," "Language and Meaning," and "Language in Religious Communities" in AY 2007-2008, and a course in syntax in AY 2008-2009.
Scott Van Keuren, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, received his
B.A. in Art History and B.S. in Anthropology from Southern Methodist University, and M.A.
and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. He comes to UVM from the Natural History Museum
of Los Angeles County where he served as Curator of North American Archaeology and Head of
Archaeology. He has taught undergraduate courses at the University of Southern California
and the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).
Dr. Van Keuren is a North American archaeologist who studies prehistoric cultures of the Southwest and specializes in the analysis of ancient pottery. His current project examines the economic and political organization of Ancestral Pueblo (or "Anasazi") societies near the close of prehistory. He recently received a major National Science Foundation grant to excavate fourteenth century villages in the mountains of eastern Arizona. His other interests include community archaeology, the preservation and stewardship of archaeological sites, and museum studies. He is teaching Prehistoric Archaeology this fall.
Steve Budington, Assistant Professor of Art (Painting), received
his M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2004 and his B.F.A.
in Painting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2000.
Mr. Budington's work has recently been featured nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Dorsky Gallery in New York, the Hotel Pupik in St. Lorenzen bei Schiefling, Austria, and the Fondazione Ambrosetti Arte Contemporanea in Brescia, Italy. He is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and residencies, including a New Frontiers Exploration Traveling Fellowship, and full fellowship residencies to Schrattenberg in Austria, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Mr. Budington has taught as an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis.
Mr. Budington's paintings employ different visual languages – the televisual, the anatomic, the "painterly," the prosthetic – to conduct investigations into a particular painting's potential. The result is a narrative – or series of visions and revisions – happened upon by the painting process itself. The human and/or "post-human" forms of the paintings, drawings, and collages draw on anatomic studies, sometimes invented, sometimes gleaned from past art and anatomical textbooks, recombined through a synthesis of robotic nervous systems and sympathetic weathers. Set down in contexts with only tenuous links to the "real" world, these objects and organisms surrender their autonomy in order to become part of a construction or interface.
Robert Flynn, Assistant Professor of Art, received his B.F.A. from
Florida State University and his M.F.A. from Rutgers University. He comes to the UVM Art
Department from Miami Beach, FL where he was an artist-in-residence at ArtCenter South
Florida. He has held academic appointments at Barry University, Florida International
University, and New World School of the Arts.
Robert Flynn's drawings, paintings, and sculpture explore life in the suburban backyard. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts award and a Florida Individual Artist award twice.
Flynn exhibits nationally and internationally with venues including Antwerp, Belgium; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and London, England. This year he had one-person shows at Kenise Barnes Fine Art (Larchmont, NY), Koelsch Gallery (Houston), and Trinity Gallery (Atlanta). He is included in Contemporary Miami Artists, due out this fall.
Stephen Waters, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received his
Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Professor Marisa
C. Kozlowski. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
in New York under the mentorship of Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky. Dr. Waters joined the
faculty at the University of Vermont in 2007.
The mission of his laboratory is to address new challenges in organic chemistry through contributions to the areas of synthetic strategy and methods development; attention is given to the synthesis of natural products with potential therapeutic value.
Walter M. Roberts III, Assistant Professor of Classics, holds
degrees from Columbia University (B.A. in Philosophy and Classical Greek, 1983), the
University of Chicago (M.A. in Philosophy, 1990), and the University of California, Berkeley
(M.A. in Latin, 1997; Ph.D. in Classical Philology, 2006). He comes to UVM from the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught courses in Latin language and literature.
Roberts's academic and intellectual interests center on the ethical and political philosophies of Greece and Rome, but extend as well into the areas of ancient historiography and Latin prose. His dissertation on Cicero, "Cicero's Political Imperative: A Reading of Ones' Duties," is a comprehensive re-evaluation of Cicero's De Officiis and presents arguments for its abiding relevance to twenty-first century readers.
In 2007-2008, Roberts will be teaching a TAP course on Realism and Idealism in the Western Tradition, in addition to courses in Latin language and Roman civilization.
Nathalie Mathieu-Bolh, Assistant Professor of Economics, received her
B.A. and an M.S. in Finance from French "Grandes Ecoles," her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
Economics from University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne with highest honors for doctoral dissertation.
She comes to UVM from a teaching position at the University of California, San Diego.
Her research relates to macroeconomics and public finance. Her approach is an "applied theory" approach. It consists in building theoretical models based on empirical observations. She uses these models to understand the macroeconomic effects of government policies as well as their redistribution potential.
Dr. Mathieu-Bolh's recent research papers have focused on optimal taxation. Her current research includes understanding the differences between tax treatments in different countries as well as studying the consequences on welfare of different government philosophies or constraints. In 2007-2008, she will be teaching macroeconomics and a seminar in public finance.
Donna Ramirez-Harrington, Assistant Professor of Economics, received
her B.S. in Economics (1996) from the University of the Philippines and Ph.D. (2004) in
Environmental, Natural Resource and Production Economics from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. She comes to the UVM Economics Department from the University of Guelph
where she was an Assistant Professor from September 2004 until August 2007.
Dr. Harrington's Ph.D. research was on how private firms strategically compete with each other in the context of environmental regulations and green consumers. She analyzed the factors that determine how and why firms would choose to adopt environmental-friendly technologies and environmental management systems to lower their costs relative to their rivals, enhance efficiency, improve product quality, and gain market share while lowering environmental liability. Her current research interests are in the area of strategic use of information for environmental and natural resource protection: one for climate change mitigation, and the other for stakeholder involvement in environmental policy and governance.
She is teaching Environmental Economics this fall and Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis in the spring.
Deborah Ellis, Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the English
Department, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator. She has a B.A. in History
from Laurence University, and an M.F.A. from Northwestern University. Ellis is active in the
independent film community in Vermont, currently serving as President of the Vermont
International Film Festival.
Ellis's documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train," was short-listed with twelve films from which the 2005 Academy Award nominees were chosen. The film was released theatrically, and is now widely available on DVD. Earlier work includes "Skin Deep," an examination of the development and promotion of the sub-dermal contraceptive, Norplant; "The FBI's War on Black America," an examination of targets of COINTELPRO, an FBI program instituted in the 1960's with a mandate to "prevent the rise of a Black Messiah"; "Unbidden Voices," about the immigrant experience of an Indian woman working in Chicago, and "Doris Eddy," an intimate portrait of a Vermont woman who lived alone on her farm with 50 horses. Ellis is currently developing new projects.
Ellis maintains a strong interest in emerging technologies and is particularly interested in how media are used to create community. In the last couple of years, Ellis has also created video projections as part of theatrical productions.
Ellis will be working with the members of Film Studies to develop the production component of the program. This fall she'll teach a TAP course in video production and a film studies course that will look at a group of films through the perspective of the editor's role. She looks forward to "coming home" to Burlington.
Elizabeth Fenton, Assistant Professor of English, received her
B.A. in English and Women's Studies from the University of Vermont and her M.A.
and Ph.D. in English from Rice University. She comes to UVM from Loyola
University, Chicago.
Dr. Fenton's research focuses on literary and political texts of the early nineteenth-century United States. Her current book project, Religious Liberties, examines anti-Catholicism's formative importance to the notions of individual freedom and pluralism that underpin the U.S.'s liberal democratic tradition. She teaches courses in nineteenth-century fiction and poetry, as well as in colonial American literature.
Hyon Joo Yoo Murphree, Assistant Professor of English (Film
Studies), received a B.A. in English from Ewha Womans University (Seoul, South Korea),
her M.A. in Radio, TV and Film from the University of North Texas, and her Ph. D. in
English from Syracuse University.
Hyon Joo's research focuses on East Asian cinema and postcolonial studies as well as globalization and media.
Her publications include: "The Stranger's Passage in Cyberspace" in Postcolonial Studies Vol. 8, No. II (2005), 181-197; "Transnational Cultural Production and the Politics of Moribund Masculinity" (forthcoming in positions: east asia cultures critique); "Class and Ethnicity in the Global Market for Organs: The Case of Korean Cinema" (with Rebecca Garden) (forthcoming in Journal of Medical Humanities Winter 2007). She is currently collaborating on an anthology project on the Trans-Pacific configuration of gender and nation and developing an essay on Korean noir film.
Her courses for 2007-2008 include Film Theory, East Asian Cinema in a Postcolonial World, and Global Cinema.
Pablo Bose will be joining the College of Arts and Sciences in fall '09.Bose's Ph.D. research looked at the involvement of diasporic or immigrant communities in processes of economic development, population displacement, and environmental degradation in their ancestral homelands and countries of origin. In particular, his work examined the case of the Indian metropolis of Kolkata and the construction of so-called "international-style" luxury condominium complexes on the eastern fringes of the city. Recent publications based on this research include articles on the cultural and economic practices of diasporas, urban development in postcolonial cities, and the processes of identity formation in transnational groups. Other research interests include the politics, economy and culture of South Asia; relationships between media, power and representation; and social and ecological justice movements in North America.
He will be teaching a course on Development, Displacement and Environment in the spring.
Reecia Orzeck, Assistant Professor of Geography, received her B.A.
in Geography and Religious Studies from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and her M.A.
in Geography from York University in Toronto. Her doctoral studies were undertaken in the
Department of Geography at Syracuse University, where she specialized in political-economic
geography and the geography of the Middle East.
Her research has been primarily concerned with assessing international law's promises and limitations. In addition to advancing a political-economic critique of international law in her dissertation, Reecia has done work on the involvement of international law in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More recently, her interests have turned to the role of law in regulating and curtailing bodily autonomy. Her most recent project explores the evolution of domestic laws relating to prisoners' rights to engage in hunger strikes.
Reecia also has a long-standing interest in pedagogy. She will be teaching "Geography of the Modern Middle East" and "Geography of the Global Economy" in the 2007-2008 academic year.
Flora Cassen, Assistant Professor of History, grew up in Antwerp,
Belgium. She received her B.A. in Law and History from the Free University of Brussels (1999),
her M.A. in Comparative History from Brandeis University (2000), and is currently finishing her
Ph.D. in History and Judaic Studies at New York University. At UVM, she will teach classes on
Early Modern European history as well as Jewish history.
Her doctoral research, which attempts to understand the roots and consequences of anti-Judaism, studies the discriminatory marks, typically a yellow hat or a yellow badge, that the Jews were compelled to wear in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy. Future projects include a history of the Jews in the Dutch colony of Curacao and a study of the transmission of religious knowledge and tradition in communities of crypto-Jews who had converted to Christianity but continued to practice some form of Judaism in secret.
Nicole Phelps, Assistant Professor of History, received her B.A.
in International Affairs from The George Washington University. She received her M.A. and Ph.D.
in History from the University of Minnesota, where she specialized in both American and modern
European history.
At Minnesota, she served as an instructor for courses on U.S. diplomatic history, and she also worked for several years as the assistant editor of the Austrian History Yearbook. Her research is on relations between the United States and the Habsburg Empire in the nineteenth century and through World War I and the impact of those relations on the broader international political system. U.S.-Habsburg relations focused primarily on issues related to migration and citizenship, and Phelps's work therefore demonstrates how the problems of individual private citizens affected high-level international politics.
At the University of Vermont, Phelps will teach classes on the history of U.S. foreign relations, as well as introductory classes on U.S. history.
Terrence Cuneo will be joining the College of Arts and Sciences in fall '09.Prior to coming to UVM, he taught at Seattle Pacific University and Calvin College, as well as held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Free University, Amsterdam.
Cuneo's research focuses primarily in the areas of moral philosophy and early modern philosophy. In moral philosophy, Cuneo has defended a version of moral realism or the claim that there are robustly objective moral truths. In early modern philosophy, his work has focused on the thought of the eighteenth century Scots philosopher Thomas Reid.
In addition to having published numerous articles, Cuneo has published four books, including The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid (Cambridge, 2004) and Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2007). His most recent work, The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2007.
Matt Weiner, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, received his
B.A. in Philosophy and Math from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy
from the University of Pittsburgh.
Before coming to Vermont, he taught at Texas Tech University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Utah.
His specialties are epistemology and philosophy of language; current research areas include the epistemology and norms of testimony, and the concept of knowledge and its relationship to the norms governing belief. His articles have been published in or will appear in the Philosophical Review, Analysis, ThePhilosophical Quarterly, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, and Philosophers' Imprint.
Keith Burt, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received his B.A.
(1998) from Pomona College in Psychology, and an M.Phil. (1999) in Social and Developmental
Psychology from the University of Cambridge, England. He received his M.A. (2006) from the
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, where he will receive his Ph.D. in
Child and Clinical Psychology (fall 2007) following completion of clinical internship at
Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.
Burt's research interests focus on risk and resilience in youth, particularly in the transition years of adolescence and young adulthood. He is also interested in the implications of a developmental perspective on psychopathology, especially concerning methodological issues in clinical research such as classification of mental illness. His research has examined the interrelations of broad competence domains (e.g., academics, social relationships) and psychopathology symptoms over time, as well as the utility of continuous dimensional models of mental illness as alternatives to the current categorical DSM system. His teaching interests include child clinical psychology, statistics, risk and resilience, and psychometrics.
Jill Holm-Denoma, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received her
B.A. (2001) from Illinois Wesleyan University in Psychology with a minor emphasis on Hispanic
Studies. She received her M.A. (2004) and Ph.D. (2007) in Clinical Psychology from the
Florida State University. She comes to the UVM Psychology Department from the Minneapolis
VA Medical Center where she recently completed her clinical internship in adult psychopathology.
Dr. Holm-Denoma conducts research on the classification of eating disorders, risk factors for the development of eating pathology (especially among traditionally understudied populations), and the overlap of eating disorders and self-injurious behaviors. Her Ph.D. research focused on conducting an empirical examination of the latent structure of anorexia nervosa using taxometric and genetic analyses. She is teaching a graduate course on Adult Psychological Assessment this fall and an undergraduate course called Introduction to Clinical and Counseling Psychology next spring. She will also be supervising graduate students in the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center during the 2007-2008 academic year.
Annie Murray-Close, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received
her B.A. from Carleton College in Psychology, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of
Child Development, University of Minnesota. Dr. Murray-Close comes to the UVM Psychology
Department from St. Olaf College, where she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology.
Dr. Murray-Close's research focuses on the development of aggressive behavior patterns in children and adolescents. Her work explores the development of forms of aggression more common among girls (i.e., relational aggression) in addition to forms more typical in boys (i.e., physical aggression). Relational aggression is defined as behaviors that harm others through the manipulation of interpersonal relationships, and includes behaviors such as maliciously ignoring others, rumor spreading, or threatening to end a friendship. Dr. Murray-Close's research has examined the social, cognitive, and physiological contributors to children's involvement in relational aggression as well as the maladaptive consequences associated with such conduct. Other research interests include gender development and the development of Borderline Personality Disorder. Dr. Murray-Close will be teaching Developmental Psychology at UVM this fall.
Dr. Elizabeth Pinel, Associate Professor of Psychology, received
her B.A. in Psychology from Hamilton College and her Ph.D. in social psychology from the
University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Pinel comes to us from the Pennsylvania State University,
where she served on the psychology department faculty since receiving her Ph.D. in 1998.
Dr. Pinel's research concerns the interface between individual experience and the socially constructed nature of reality. This focus emerges in her three main lines of inquiry: stigmatization, self and relationships, and coping. Her work on stigmatization concentrates largely on what role self-consciousness with regard to one's stigmatized status plays in rendering targets of stigma vulnerable to the widely held (and often quite negative) beliefs about members of their group. Her work on self and relationships concentrates on the magnetism that results from encounters that validate one's subjective experience. Her work on coping asks how implicit and explicit messages that one's plight "could have been worse" interrupt the coping process, even when they are offered in the spirit of helping.
Dr. Pinel has published her work in several of her field's top journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. She received a competitive grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to pursue her work on the self and relationships. She will be teaching the survey course in social psychology at the University of Vermont and will broaden the scope of her research by concentrating on its implications for the greater Burlington community.
Alessandra Rellini, Assistant Professor of Psychology,
received her M.A. (2001) in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology
and her Ph.D. (2007) in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at
Austin, after completing her internship (2007) at Yale University in the School
of Medicine. Rellini is an active member of a number of international scientific
associations, including the International Society for the Study of Women's
Sexual Health, the International Academy of Sex Research, and the International
Society of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Rellini's research focuses on the mechanisms of sexual dysfunction experienced by women with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). To this end, Rellini conducts studies with CSA survivors to investigate their physiological, cognitive, and affective processes in response to sexual stimuli. Other research interests include the sexuality of menopausal women, intercultural factors of sexual function, and methodology of psychophysiological assessments. Rellini will be teaching a course on Dialectic Behavioral Therapy in fall 2007 and hopes to increase services and support for survivors of child sexual abuse in the UVM and Burlington community.
Vicki L. Brennan, Assistant Professor of Religion, received her B.A. in
Music from Syracuse University and her M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the
University of Washington. She will receive her Ph.D. in Anthropology from
the University of Chicago in August 2007. She comes to UVM from the
University of Virginia where she was a Predoctoral Fellow in the Carter G.
Woodson Institute from 2004-2006, and taught in the Programs of Studies in
Women and Gender and African and African American Studies from 2006-2007.
Brennan's research interests center on the relationships between religion and politics; music, ritual and performance; and mass media and popular religious movements. Her dissertation project, entitled "Singing the Same Song: Music, Morality and Movement in Yoruba Churches," explores religion and music as key sites through which members of the Yoruba middle class (re)negotiate their positions in a contemporary Nigerian society that is characterized by democratic transition and economic liberalization. Next year she will teach courses on African religions and religion and music.
Guillermo Rodríguez, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages,
received his B.A. in English Language and Literature from the Universidad
Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina. He continued his education at the
University of Pittsburgh (PA) where he obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied
Linguistics with concentrations in Spanish and Psycholinguistics.
In his research, Dr. Rodríguez studies the way in which language learners extract meaning and construct sentences from the individual words they find in text or conversation, and how instruction can improve this process in the language classroom. Another aim of his research is to determine what role individual cognitive differences play in the acquisition of the vocabulary and grammar of a second language.
Dr. Rodríguez is also interested in developing a better understanding of how non-literate populations acquire a foreign language.
Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology, received her B.A.
(1997) from Emory University, her M.A. (2000) from the University of Georgia, and her Ph.D (2007)
from Emory University.
Her research interests draw from the areas of race and ethnic relations and social psychology, and her current research examines ethnic and racial identity among biracial and multiracial people.
Her doctoral work examined identity construction and negotiation among black-white biracial adults in the U.S., and previous publications examined identity construction among multiracial Asian-white adults. Other research interests include racial identity among trans-racially adopted children, ethnic/racial socialization, and ethnic/racial prejudice. In the fall, Dr. Khanna will be teaching a course on Race Relations in the U.S. and a course on Multiracial People in America.
Edward Walker, Assistant Professor of Sociology, received his B.S.
from Drexel University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Walker's research interests are primarily in sociological theory, with a particular focus
on the relation of civil society to political and economic institutions.
In his doctoral research, supported by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Walker explored how declining civic engagement, steady growth in the population of political interest groups, and rising business engagement in politics have combined to support the growth of grassroots political marketing firms in the U.S. since the early 1970s. He is also engaged in a long-term project concerning the organizational structures, advocacy, funding, and coalition-building strategies of poor people's social movement organizations. Most recently, Dr. Walker's research has taken up the question of whether "memberless" organizations active in public affairs—funds, centers, institutes, think tanks, and the like—have displaced traditional membership organizations. His work has appeared in Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, in the edited volume Membership Based Organizations of the Poor (Routledge, 2007), and a recent manuscript is forthcoming in Sociological Forum.
