Spring 2001
New faculty for changing times
Photo by Jamason Chen
They come from as far away as Calcutta, and as near as Riverside Avenue. Some are fresh from graduate school, with Ph.D. dissertations still coursing through their brains. Others are seasoned teacher-scholars still generating fresh ideas and finding new ways to contribute to their professions and communities.
All of these people are revolutionizing thought in their fields and changing the way scholars work: They are reaching across traditional academic borders. They are reaching into communities. They are helping to create a new global University for a new world and a new century.
Departments are opening their arms to new colleagues like global studies scholar Pradeep Jeganathan, whose work on violence and power is transforming the way we look at international and transnational politics; socio-economist Robin Stryker, whose work is shaping policymakers' thinking about income and wealth inequality; and Bernard Levinson, whose preeminence as a biblical scholar brought to the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) a student who this year was named a Rhodes Scholar.
These new scholars aren't just filling the shoes of their retiring colleagues. They are creating new knowledge, expanding the breadth and depth of their disciplines, and breaking out of their disciplines, many in collaboration with and under the mentorship of their senior colleagues.
We've selected just eight of these new teacher-scholars to profile, opening a small window on the extraordinary knowledge, understanding, and intellectual energy they and their new colleagues have brought to the college.
Bernard Levinson, Berman Family Chair in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible, finds joy in the classics
Robin Stryker, Sociology, is a leading authority on law, politics, and social and economic inequality
Pradeep Jeganathan, Anthropology, cannot be restrained by disciplinary boundaries
Karen Till, Geography, wants her students to see geography everywhere
Joseph Allen, scholar of Chinese literature, pushes the boundaries
Gwendolyn Pough, Women's studies, is a national expert on hip-hop soul divas
Patricia Albers, American Indian studies, strives to establish the Sovereignty Center
Timothy Brennan, English/cultural studies and comparative literature, shuns elitism