Adriana Katzew, Assistant Professor in the Art Department and Director of the Art Education
Program, teaches on current issues in art education and on Latino/as in the media. She holds
a B.A. from Harvard University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a
M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Katzew's teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of art education (within and beyond school walls) and marginalized communities. She is particularly interested in the role that the arts play in the Latino communities, with a particular focus on the Chicana/o community. Her doctoral dissertation is titled "No Chicanos on TV": Learning from Chicana/o Artists-Activists Countering Invisibility and Stereotypes in the Media through the Visual and Performing Arts.
As a recipient of the Echoing Green Fellowship, Dr. Katzew created City Clickers, a Philadelphia-based photography and creative writing program for immigrant middle and high school children from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Her own art work focuses on black-and-white photography and mixed media.
Eugene Delay, Associate Professor of Biology, is currently working on research that
is focused on taste transduction (receptor mechanisms), afferent signaling (CNS neuronal
coding), and perception (behavioral) of sweet, umami and amino acid substances.
In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in identifying membrane
receptors responsible for detecting the taste of foods and other ingestible
substances. Knowledge about these receptors may be very important for
dietary regulation of people in general and may be especially important for
people with health issues that lead to dietary challenges, e.g., diabetics,
cardiovascular disease, elderly, mentally challenged. He has NIH and NSF support for
several ongoing behavioral and molecular studies addressing
questions about L-amino acid and umami tastes. Some of these studies are examining
the similarities and differences in taste qualities of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and
other L-amino acids. These studies will provide new insights into whether one,
two, or maybe more receptors are activated by umami stimuli and which
receptors are responsible for umami taste perception.
Matthias Brewer, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received his
Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed his postdoctoral work at
the University of California-Irvine. He obtained his B.A. here at UVM in 1996 and is
thrilled to be back. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the design and synthesis of
peptide mimetic inhibitors of Botulinum neurotoxin metalloproteases, and his
postdoctoral work focused on natural product synthesis. His current research
involves the development of novel organic reactions, which he plans to apply to
the synthesis of medicinally relevant organic molecules and natural products. His
teaching interests include organic chemistry, physical organic principles, organic
reaction mechanisms, and synthesis.
Michael Cannizzaro, Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences,
earned his B.S. from Nazareth College of Rochester in Speech Pathology, an M.S. from the
University of New Hampshire in Communication Disorders, and a Ph.D. from the University of
Connecticut in Communication Sciences and Disorders. He conducts research investigating
the interrelationships between language structure, executive functions, and the co-occurrence
of age-related changes of these skills in healthy older individuals.
Michael has recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship utilizing acoustic, linguistic, and neuropsychological measures to study speech, language, and cognitive function in persons with neurodegenerative and affective disorders. He teaches courses in Cognitive Neuroscience, Aphasia, Traumatic Brain Injury and the Neuropathology of Speech Motor Control. He will also be taking part in the proposed cross-college Neuroscience Ph.D. program.
Richard Parent, Assistant Professor of English, received his B.A.
from the University of North Texas, his M.A. from Mills College, and his Ph.D. from the
University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Parent's teaching and research interests focus on digital
literacy; hermeneutics; rhetoric; media theory; composition; dystopian narrative; popular
culture and countercultural studies; children's and young adult literature; and postmodernism.
He is currently revising a book on the affective power of digital media and its influence on the composition and interpretation of digital works. At the present time, the courses he is teaching this semester are Digital Composing, and Hyper Hermeneutics: Understanding Narrative in the Digital Age. The course he will be teaching in the spring semester will be Writing Bodies: Rhetorics of the Flesh.
Shelly Rayback, Assistant Professor of Geography, is a
biogeographer who is interested in global climate change, dendrochronology and the
Arctic.
Dr. Rayback joins us after having completed her post-doctoral studies as part of the ArcticNet project in Canada. ArcticNet, a multidisciplinary research project funded by the Canadian federal government, was initiated to address the issues of current and future impacts of climate change on the Canadian Arctic. The objective of the program is to contribute to the development and dissemination of knowledge needed to formulate adaptation strategies and national policies to help Canadians face the impacts and opportunities of climate change and globalization in the Arctic. Scientific research has already provided evidence of physical and biological change in the Arctic due to the increase in average annual temperature. In Arctic Canada, climate warming will have tremendous environmental, socio-economic, and strategic consequences. ArcticNet brings together scientists and managers in the natural, human health, and social sciences with their partners in Inuit organizations, northern communities, federal and provincial agencies, and the private sector to study the impacts of climate change in the coastal and inland Canadian Arctic. There are over 90 researchers from 23 Canadian universities and 5 Canadian federal departments collaborating with other international research teams (adapted from the ArcticNet official website, www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca).
Dr. Rayback's research focuses on the reconstruction of past climate in the Arctic through the use of paleoclimatic techniques. She uses both dendrochronological and isotopic analysis on the evergreen, dwarf-shrub Cassiope tetragona (arctic white heather) to reconstruct past temperature and large-scale atmospheric circulation in the high arctic. In conjunction with ArcticNet, she is reconstructing past climate along a north-south gradient in the eastern Canadian Arctic.
Ernesto Capello joined the UVM faculty in 2005 as an
assistant professor in Latin American History. Born in California, Professor Capello
was raised in Quito, the Andean capital of Ecuador, returning to the United States for
college, and graduating from Vassar College in 1996 with a B.A. in History. After a
hiatus at the Whitney Museum in New York, he entered the University of Texas to pursue
doctoral studies in Latin American history, receiving his M.A. in 2001. After
travels in Russia, a Fulbright in Ecuador in 2002 and Adjunct Professorships at Pace
University and St. John's University, both in New York, he completed his Ph.D. in May
2005. Besides surveys of colonial and modern Latin America, Professor Capello's
teaching interests include the relationship between the arts, society, and politics
in modern Latin America, the Latin American city, global urban history, and cultural
and geographical theory.
Professor Capello's research is grounded in urban history but also seeks to bridge a number of scholarly interests. His dissertation, "City Fragments: Space and Nostalgia in Modernnizing Quito, 1885-1942," focuses on constellations of representations of Quito in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on the production of space and the role of nostalgia in formulating the modern city. He has also published articles in both English and Spanish concerning migration, diasporas, and the impact of global processes on local identities. These include "City, Chronicle, Chronotope: Re-Constructing and Writing Old Quito" in the Journal of Latin American Urban Studies, "Hispanismo-casero: la invención del Quito hispano" in Procesos, and, "Carta del Ecuador – la nueva migración" in ISTOR. Future publications and projects include a study of Arabic in the Middle Eastern diaspora in South America, a revision of his dissertation for publication, a related article on Latin American urbanism for the European journal, City, and more work on the comparative study of cities.
Erik Esselstrom, Assistant Professor of History, earned his
Ph.D. from the University of California
at Santa Barbara in 2004. He teaches survey courses on all periods of Chinese and
Japanese history and seminars on modern Chinese and Japanese foreign relations.
He is at work on a book entitled Breaking the Boundaries of Empire: Japanese
Consular Police in Northeast Asia, which explores the transnational dimensions
of political crime and its surveillance and suppression within the Japanese
archipelago and the Japanese colonial empire during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.
Louis deRosset, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, received his
B.A. in philosophy at the University of Virginia, and his Ph.D. in philosophy at UCLA. He
specializes in metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophical logic. He
is particularly interested in the nature of what philosophers call modal facts: facts
about what might have been the case, as opposed to what merely happens to be the case. He
is excited to join the community of scholars here at UVM. He and his spouse have enjoyed
their first few months here mightily, but they are still a little scared of what winter
might have in store.
Tyler Doggett is an assistant professor in the Philosophy
Department, specializing in ethics and metaphysics. He comes to UVM from the
Australian National University where he held a postdoctoral position. Before
that, he received his Ph.D. from MIT. And prior to that, he lived in London where
he taught philosophy, among other things, to primary-school students.
Philosophically, he is interested in ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and early modern philosophy. His recent ethical thinking has focused on numbers skepticism (not what it sounds like) and moral realism. Recent metaphysical thinking has focused on the nature of the imagination and its uses in philosophy. Recent thinking in philosophy of mind has focused on imaginability arguments and also on parallels between questions in the philosophy of mind and metaethics. He has not thought much about early modern philosophy recently, but he is interested in early modern views on the mind-body problem plus rationalist metaphysics.
He teaches or will teach courses in all the areas he is interested in. He is currently teaching the introductory ethics course in the Honors College and an intermediate-level class on the morality of killing things.
Non-philosophically, he is interested, above all, in baseball.
Matthew Carlson, Assistant Professor of Political Science,
received his B.A. from the University of Puget Sound, his M.A. from the University
of Washington, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.
Professor Carlson specializes in comparative politics and Asian politics with an emphasis on political participation, political parties, electoral systems, public opinion, and international political economy. His Master's, from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, is in International Studies. For his dissertation research, he was awarded a two-year scholarship from the Japanese government to study the political consequences of Japan's new electoral system at the University of Tokyo. He has been a lecturer at the University of California, Davis and a research associate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. In addition to Japanese, he speaks Mandarin Chinese and lived in Taiwan for two years.
Peter VonDoepp, Assistant Professor of Political Science, received his B.A.
from the University of New Hampshire, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of
Florida. Professor VonDoepp focuses on African politics with specific attention to
democratization-related issues. His most recent work examines the politics of judicial
development in new southern African democracies. He is co-editor of The Fate of Africa's
Democratic Experiments: Elites and Institutions (Indiana, 2005). His work appears in
Studies in Comparative International Development, Political Science Quarterly, Journal
of Modern African Studies, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, and several edited
volumes. His courses include Religion and Politics, Comparative Democratization, and
African Politics.
Alex Zakaras, Assistant Professor of Political Science, specializes in
political philosophy and the history of political thought. His interests include
the philosophy of democracy and democratic citizenship, the ideal of autonomy and
its place in the liberal tradition, and the political thought of the nineteenth
century. He is working on a book that explores the idea of individuality in the
writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Stuart Mill. Until moving to Burlington
in August, Alex was living in New York City and finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton
University.
Kelly Rohan, Assistant Professor of Psychology – Clinical Program,
comes to UVM with a B.A. from Saint Bonaventure University, 1993; a Ph.D. from
the University of Maine, 1998; a Clinical residency at the University of
Mississippi Medical Center/Jackson Veterans Affairs Medical Center Consortium,
1997-1998; and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Mississippi Medical
Center/Jackson Veterans Affairs Medical Center Consortium, 1998-2000.
Her primary research interests are the psychopathology and treatment of adult
mood disorders, including:
Her lab has just completed a multi-year randomized clinical trial, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, comparing our novel SAD-tailored cognitive-behavioral therapy, light therapy, with their combination relative to a minimal contact/delayed treatment control. She has secondary research interests in the area of eating disorders prevention and treatment.
Betsy Hoza, Professor of Psychology, received her undergraduate degree from
Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maine.
She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Clinical Research at Western Psychiatric
Institute and Clinic (WPIC) of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She
remained at WPIC from 1991-1995 as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, before moving
to Purdue University. Between 1995 and 2005 she served as Assistant, Associate, and
then Full Professor at Purdue. In 2001, she was named a Purdue University Faculty
Scholar in recognition of her research accomplishments. She joins us at UVM as a full
Professor. Dr. Hoza is currently co-investigator at the Pittsburgh site of the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) collaborative Multimodal Treatment Study of Children
with ADHD (MTA) and also Principal Investigator on another NIMH-funded project that now
resides at UVM. Dr. Hoza has served as Associate Editor of both the Journal of Abnormal
Child Psychology and ADHD Report and as Program Chair and Cluster Representative for
Division 53 of the American Psychological Association. Her research is geared toward
better understanding the social, academic, and self-system functioning of children with
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from a developmental psychopathology
perspective. Her current research program involves studies in several areas: 1)
mechanisms of self-concept in children with ADHD; 2) evidence-based treatment of
childhood ADHD; 3) peer relationship problems of children with ADHD; and 4) parental
beliefs and characteristics as predictors of treatment response in children with ADHD.
Of note, most of her research is designed with the end goal of applying what is learned
toward developing better evidence-based treatments for children with ADHD.
Ignacio López-Vicuña, Assistant Professor of
Spanish, received his B.A. in English literature from the Universidad Católica in Chile.
He obtained an M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
and received his Ph.D. in Hispanic literature and culture from the University of Pittsburgh
in 2005. His dissertation focused on the city in contemporary Latin American fiction. His
research interests include modern Latin American literature, urban studies, and gender and
sexuality studies.
Paolo Pucci is an assistant professor of Italian, whose work
concentrates on the Italian Renaissance, with a focus on depictions of Italy in the short story.
Paolo received his B.A. in German literature from the University of Florence and came to UVM
from Princeton University, where he taught Italian language for four
years. He earned his Ph.D. at Rutgers University with a dissertation on the figures
of the sodomite and the courtesan in Renaissance Italy as depicted by various writers
of novellas. Paolo, whose other main area of research is Italian fiction of the
twentieth-century (he has published on Elsa Morante's L'isola di Arturo), is currently
working on two articles, one analyzing the relationship between Muslims and Christians
in Masuccio Salernitano's fifteenth-century short story collection, and the
"feminization" of Renaissance letter-writing by Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta, and
Veronica Franco.
Laurie Essig, Assistant Professor of Sociology, received her Ph.D.
from Columbia University. She is interested in the relationship between power and pleasure. She teaches
courses in the sociology of freakishness, the sociology of heterosexuality, the sociology
of pleasure, and sociological theory. She is the author of Queer in Russia: A Story of
Sex, Self, and the Other (Duke University Press, 1999), "The Mermaid and the Heterosexual
Imagination," in Chrys Ingraham, ed., Thinking Straight, and a variety of personal essays
in places as varied as Salon, NPR's "All Things Considered," and Legal Affairs. Her
current work is on plastic: plastic identities, plastic credit cards, and plastic surgeries.
