Following are new tenure-track appointments:
Jean Burr, assistant professor of psychology, taught most recently at Colby College. She earned a bachelor's degree from Middlebury College and a master's and Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Her research interests are peer relationships during pre-school, antisocial behavior and evaluation and best practices for early childhood education programs. She is the author or co-author of several professional articles in Early Education and Development, New Ideas in Psychology and Applied Developmental Psychology.
Wei-jen Chang, assistant professor of biology, earned a bachelor's degree from National Taiwan University and his master's and Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo. During his postdoctoral work at Princeton University he studied gene evolution and genome organization in unicellular organisms. He has written or co-written several professional articles in Gene, Protist, Molecular Biology and Evolution and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Haeng-ja Chung, assistant professor of anthropology, earned her Ph.D. from, UCLA. A native of Kyoto, Japan, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies. Before coming to Hamilton she was a fellow at Harvard University and Colorado College. Her research sheds light on the postcolonial context of Japan through a case study of Korean nightclub hostesses. She has published an article on her research in The Journal of Human Rights.
Chaise LaDousa, assistant professor of anthropology, attended the college of the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He has spent two years in North India studying languages and the role they play in education and India's rapidly changing political economy. LaDousa taught most recently at Southern Connecticut State University. He has published professional articles in American Ethnologist, Journal of Pragmatics and Language in Society.
Victoria Rivera-Cordero, assistant professor of Hispanic studies, holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Princeton University and a master's in comparative literature from Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III University. She taught last year at Swarthmore College and is the author of several publications.
Christopher Vasantkumar, instructor in anthropology, earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton and master's from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a candidate for a Ph.D. He is an anthropologist of China, specializing in the study of ethnic diversity in the People's Republic.
Nigel Westmaas, assistant professor Africana studies, earned his master's and Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton and bachelor's degree from the University of Guyana. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines, including Against the Current, Small Axe, Emancipation Magazine and An Introductory Reader for Women's Studies in Guyana.
Edward S. Walker, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador and current president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank on Middle East Policy, has been appointed to the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professorship in Global Political Theory. Ambassador Walker, Class of 1962, served as the Linowitz Professor of Middle East Studies in 2003 and 2005.
Visiting faculty members for the 2006-2007 academic year include Robert Almeder, philosophy; Armando Bayolo, music; Erella Brown, religious studies; Laura Brueck, comparative literature; Hye Seung Chung, comparative literature; Selcuk Eren, economics; Ulla Grapard, women's studies; Sandra Guerrero, sociology; Christopher Hill, history; Michael Klosson, government; Andrew Lewis, history; Pei-jing Li, comparative literature; Eugene Liu, economics; Martha Mockus, women's studies; Andrew Nutting, economics; Emily Rohrbach, English; Minae Savas, East Asian languages; Kamila Shamsie, English; Rob Vanderlan, history; Joseph Wagner, government; Elizabeth Wheatley, sociology; Jacob Whittaker, history, and Peter Zani, biology.
New lecturers are Cristina Bozzi, critical languages and Thomas Savas, education studies. Returning lecturers are Victoria Allen, education studies; George Bahlke, English; Nesecan Balkan, economics; Russell Blackwood, religious studies; Milton Bloch, art history; Austin Briggs, English; Barbara Britt-Hysell, English as a second language; Bill Burd, theatre; Robert Del Buono, communication; Anat Glick, critical languages; Roset Khosropour, physics; Richard Lloyd, dance; Stephen Lockwood, government; Jeff McArn, religious studies; Susan Morgan, NY program/education studies; Jean Morris, psychology; Stephen Owen, economics; Jim Ring, physics; David Rivera, government; Giles Wayland-Smith, government; Kim Wieczorek, education studies and Chris Willemsen, government.
Five new teaching fellows have joined the foreign language departments: Sayako Akamine, Japanese; Laurence Lemaire, French; Lucy Lu, Chinese, Julia Strauss, German; and Miaochun Wei, Chinese.
