School of Arts & Sciences welcomes 16 new tenured or tenure-track faculty and three directors

The University of Richmond School of Arts & Sciences is pleased to announce the arrival of 16 new tenured and tenure track faculty and three new directors for the 2009-2010 academic year. The faculty’s combined academic and professional experiences and equal emphasis on research, teaching and advising benefit all undergraduates at Richmond, regardless of discipline.

Laine Briddell earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and has accepted the position of assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Richmond. Her research interests in criminology and rural sociology are reflected in her dissertation, Rurality and Crime: Identifying and Explaining Rural/Urban Differences, which is a statistical analysis of county crime rates in the United States. Other current research focuses on juvenile delinquency and adolescents as they transition to adulthood.

Monti Narayan Datta earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Davis and is an assistant professor of political science at Richmond.  He is interested in world public opinion and its impact on interstate relations. His dissertation, The Macro Politics of Anti-Americanism: Consequences for the U.S. National interest, statistically examined the extent to which global anti-American sentiment is predictive of voting alignment with the U.S. in the United Nations, tourist spending and arrivals to the U.S., and support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. 

Patricia Herrera received her Ph.D. in theatre from The City University of New York Graduate Center. For the past two years she has been a research assistant professor at Dartmouth College. Her areas of specialization are 20th century performance of the Americas with an emphasis on social justice, identity politics, and transnationalism. She is currently working on her book manuscript tentatively entitled Nuyoriqueñas In the House: Staging Identity, Performing Community, which examines Nuyorican feminist performance activism in New York City over the past half-century. In addition to her academic work, she is the co-founder and co-director of the Rubí Theater Company in New York City, an intergenerational ensemble that produces original plays throughout the metropolitan area and conducts performance workshops in schools and theater festivals. For the past five years the group has appeared on Dan Zanes's Nueva York (2008), Catch That Train (2006, Grammy Award Winning CD for Best Children’s Musical Album), House Party (2003), and Night Time (2002), in which she was a lyricist and rapper.

Diane Kellogg earned her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry at the University of Arizona and was a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University. Prior to accepting the position of director of instrument facilities in the University of Richmond’s Department of Chemistry, she was a new product research scientist for Philip Morris USA, now Altria, which is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.

David Landy earned a dual Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science from Indiana University and was a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of psychology at Richmond. Landy studies high-level cognition and the psychological and cultural foundations of abstract mathematical reasoning.  His dissertation emphasizes the role that algebraic notation plays in coordinating processes that govern bodily movement in natural environments with the abstract formal rules of mathematics.

Angela Leeper earned her M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island, and was an educational consultant at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction prior to accepting the position of Director of Curriculum Materials Center in the Department of Education. She has a strong interest in children’s and young adult literature, and is currently serving on the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Some of her most recent books include Poetry in Literature for Youth, published by Scarecrow Press, and the children’s book, Juneteenth: A Day to Celebrate Freedom from Slavery, which was published by Enslow Publishers and named an American Association of University Women Award for Juvenile Literature nominee.

David Lefkowitz earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Maryland. Prior to accepting the position of associate professor of philosophy and coordinator of the newly founded program in philosophy, politics, economics and law at the University of Richmond, Lefkowitz was an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  His research interests include the morality of obedience and disobedience to law, philosophical issues in international law, and the ethical conduct of war. Lefkowitz has been awarded several grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities and spent the 2008-2009 academic year as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values.

Stephen Long earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research, published in several academic journals, has examined the causes of intervention in civil wars, alliance violations, cease-fire violations, war initiation, and other behaviors related to international conflict and security. He has also been active in a number of policy debates, co-authoring research which has been referenced in Congressional testimony and presented at the National Security Council. Prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of political science at the University of Richmond, he was an assistant professor at Kansas State University.

Todd Lookingbill earned his Ph.D. from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and was a research assistant professor with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of geography and the environment at Richmond. His primary research interests are in landscape ecology, and he has worked extensively with the National Park Service on their landscape monitoring and assessment methodologies. He conducted his dissertation research on potential plant community response to climate change in old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, and is currently focused on the movement of water and organisms through battlefield landscapes of the Mid-Atlantic.

Manuella Meyer earned her Ph.D. in History and African-American Studies from Yale University and was a visiting assistant professor of History and International Studies at Trinity College prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of Latin American history at Richmond.  Her dissertation, Enlightened Reason in the Tropics: Madness, Society and the State in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1808-1930, examined the socio-political and cultural terrain in which mental illness became a public health construct and its subsequent management.  The project dialogues with historians and social scientists across geographical boundaries about public health, the history of welfare, gender, race discourse, state building, modernity and the socio-economic organization of post-emancipation societies.

Kristine Nolin earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Her research has focused on the development of catalysts, catalytic reactions, and methods for organic synthesis. In addition to catalyst development, she has also worked toward the synthesis of complex compounds that exhibit anti-fungal and anticancer activity.

Kun Qian earned her Ph.D in East Asian Literature from Cornell University prior to coming to Richmond as an assistant professor of Chinese literature and Asian Studies. Her teaching and research interests range from modern and classical Chinese literature, visual studies, to critical theories and cultural studies. Her dissertation examines historical representations of the Chinese Empire in the modern period, which suggests the historical continuity between the traditional empire and the modern nation state and also addresses the tension between them.

Bedelia Richards earned her Ph.D. in sociology from The Johns Hopkins University. Prior to accepting the position of assistant professor in sociology, she worked as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Education at Wellesley College and served as a senior project manager at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit organization in Boston, MA. Her interest in immigration, education and race/ethnic inequality resulted in a dissertation focused on how school context shapes the relationship between ethnic identity and academic engagement among second generation West Indians. Richards is currently working on a book titled West Indian Roots and American Branches.

Patricia A. Soler received her Ph.D., M.S., and B.A. in Spanish from Georgetown University. In graduate school, she formed the Graduate Spanish and Portuguese Students Organization (GSPSO), making the Department of Spanish and Portuguese an official university association. She co-chaired the second annual Graduate Portuguese and Hispanic Symposium and co-curated the exhibit Extraordinary Journeys: Portuguese Rare Books at Georgetown University, (1580-1726). Her research interests include contemporary Latin American literature, visual culture, and the role of electronic texts and images in the humanities. Soler has joined the faculty as an assistant professor of Latin American & Iberian studies.

Su-Lin Tai earned her Ph.D. in Multilingual & Multicultural Education from Florida State University, specializing in second language acquisition and second language pedagogy. She was the director of the Chinese program at Minnesota State University Moorhead for more than three years prior to accepting the position of the director of the Chinese program at Richmond.  Her research interest has focused on peer interaction, computer-mediated communication, and vocabulary acquisition. She has published a book chapter Perspectives on Learning/Teaching ESL: A Sociocultural View with her colleagues at FSU and is currently at work on another book chapter Using Technology for Language Development.

Mari Boor Tonn earned her Ph.D. in rhetoric and communication at the University of Kansas. Prior to accepting the position as associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Richmond, she was on faculty at the University of Maine, the University of New Hampshire, and most recently at the University of Maryland, where she served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication. Her research focuses primarily on political rhetoric and media and the rhetoric of social movements, especially first- and second-wave feminism and women in the industrial labor movement. Tonn is currently working on a book, Mining Motherhood: Industrial Labor's Mary Harris "Mother" Jones.

Maja E. White has worked professionally in the entertainment industry since 1990, both nationally and internationally, as a freelance lighting designer for opera, theatre, dance, concerts and events, prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of theatre at the University of Richmond. Most recently, she has been the lighting director/designer for the international dance tour of Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company. Maja is a member of IATSE/United Scenic Artists Local 829. She holds an MFA in lighting and sound design from Wayne State University.

Carrie Wu earned her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of California Irvine and was a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of biology at the University of Richmond.  Her research investigates the mechanisms of adaptive differentiation and speciation, with a focus on alpine plant systems. She is particularly interested in how plants respond to their local environments, and the role those adaptations play in diversification at the genomic, population, and species levels.

Eugene Wu earned his Ph.D. in biological sciences from The Scripps Research Institute and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute and Duke University Medical Center prior to accepting the position of assistant professor of biology and biochemistry at University of Richmond.  He studies how viruses enter cells and replicate their genomes using genetics, biochemistry, and structural biology.

Posted August 11, 2009