College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomes new faculty members

LAWRENCE – The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas will host a reception to welcome 31 new faculty members Friday, Sept. 14. All faculty and staff at KU are welcome to attend.

The reception will take place at 3:30 p.m. at the Malott Room in the Kansas Union. For more information, contact Jessica Beeson by email or at 864-1767.

The College is the broadest and most diverse academic unit at KU. The faculty of the College make up about 60 percent of the total faculty at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. The departments, programs and centers cover dozens of subjects in the arts, humanities, international and interdisciplinary studies, natural sciences and mathematics, and social and behavioral sciences.

The reception will recognize the following new College faculty members:

Marie Grace Brown, Department of History, assistant professor – Brown is a cultural historian of the modern Middle East, specializing in nationalism, gender and body culture, advocating nontextual sources as sites of historical inquiry.

Jonathan Brumberg, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing, assistant professor – Brumberg specializes in the neurological underpinnings of speech motor control, focusing on developing brain-computer interfaces.

Gail Buttorff, Department of Political Science, assistant professor – Buttorff's research focuses on comparative politics, with special interest in institutions, elections and political parties in the Middle East and North Africa.

Wai-Lun Chan, Department of Physics & Astronomy, assistant professor ¬ Chan's research interests include studying the ultrafast electronic processes in organic semiconductors, metals and oxide materials, and the applications of these fundamental understandings.

Alexander Diener, Department of Geography, assistant professor – Diener's research interests include geopolitics, migration, transnationalism, mobilities, borders and borderlands, and urban landscape change.

Jessica Gerschultz, Department of African & African-American Studies, assistant professor – Gerschultz's research interests include modern tapestry, textile histories, the intersection of gender and state patronage of the arts and the sociopolitical dynamics of artists' networks.

Sara Gregg, Department of History, assistant professor – Gregg specializes in the environmental history of North America, focusing on the intersection between agricultural production and environmental change.

Jennifer Hamer, Department of American Studies, professor – Hamer's primary research focuses on the sociological and qualitative aspects of families, particularly African-American fathers, mothers and families, especially those that are urban, low-income working class.

Anne Hedeman, Department of Art History, distinguished professor – Hedeman studies the relationships between text and image in vernacular late medieval French manuscripts.

Marike Janzen, Humanities & Western Civilization Program, assistant professor – Janzen investigates the intersections of solidarity, human rights and ideas of "world literature."

David Jarmolowicz, Department of Applied Behavioral Science, assistant professor – Jarmolowicz's research focuses on exploring the behavioral and neurobehavioral process of addiction, using the findings to develop and refine addiction treatment.

Kij Johnson, Department of English, assistant professor – Johnson's research includes animal narratives, scientific writing and natural history before 1800, and foundational fantasy and science fiction.

Cathy Joritz, Department of Film & Media Studies, assistant professor – Joritz's research includes animation and its history, new media and digital imaging.

Jason Kandybowicz, Department of Linguistics, assistant professor – Kandybowicz's research focuses on syntax-phonology interface and its implications for understanding the language faculty and its architecture.

Clarence Lang, Department of African and African-American Studies, associate professor – Lang's research investigates African-American working-class history, social movements and the 20th century urban Midwest.

Andrew McKenzie, Department of Linguistics, assistant professor – McKenzie's research explores how linguistic meaning and structure interact throughout the discourse.

James Moreno, Department of Dance, assistant professor – Moreno's current research explores how José Limon's story-ballets of the 1950s cut across gendered and raced categories to re-shape the nexus of whiteness and heteronormativity.

Rebecca Nesbit, School of Public Affairs and Administration, assistant professor – Nesbit's interests include nonprofit studies, philanthropy, voluntarism and public policy in these areas, particularly volunteer management and measuring volunteer program effectiveness.

Rosemary O'Leary, School of Public Affairs and Administration, distinguished professor – O'Leary's research focuses on public management, collaboration, conflict resolution, environmental and natural resources management and public law.

David Rahn, Department of Geography, assistant professor – Rahn's research interests include the marine atmospheric boundary layer and the modification of the low-level wind by the topography along the western coast of the Americas.

Emily Rauscher, Department of Sociology, assistant professor – Rauscher studies education, children and youth, stratification and occupationism, particularly how inequality is transmitted across generations and what policy levers or mechanisms moderate that process.

Benjamin Rosenthal, Department of Visual Art, assistant professor – Rosenthal's research focuses on the strategies of how people perform including the systems of control set in place and the ways psychological, tangible and virtual positions are negotiated.

Jarron Saint Onge, Department of Sociology and Department of Health Policy Management at KU Medical Center, assistant professor – Saint Onge's research focuses on the social determinants of population health and health disparities by race, ethnic and socioeconomic status.

Erik Scott, Department of History, assistant professor – Scott's research explores a new interpretation of migration, diaspora and empire in the multiethnic Soviet Union.

Hamsa Stainton, Department of Religious Studies, assistant professor – Stainton's research about religious traditions of South Asia focuses on Sanskrit devotional poetry and types of Hindu prayer, particularly from Kashmir.

Paul Stock, Department of Sociology and Environmental Studies Program, assistant professor – Stock is an environmental and rural sociologist focusing on family farmers and alternative agriculture.

John Symons, Department of Philosophy, chairperson and professor – Symons' recent research has concentrated on the role of computational modeling in contemporary science.

Annie Tremblay, Department of Linguistics, assistant professor – Tremblay's research explores how adults learn a second or foreign language, including how they perceive and process speech sounds and how they interpret sentences in real time.

Amber Watts, Department of Psychology, assistant professor – Watts' research investigates health behaviors and prevention strategies associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease.

Peter Welsh, Museum Studies Program, director and professor – Welsh's research has explored the historical and legal background by which museums have come to control culturally sensitive objects and the public representation and interpretation of culture.

Yong Zeng, Department of Chemistry, assistant professor – Zeng's research interests in analytical chemistry and bioengineering include developing new micro and nonfluidic technologies and molecular assays to facilitate the understanding of complex biological systems.