Weinberg College
of Arts & Sciences

John Bushnell

History

Since joining the Department of History in 1980, John Bushnell has had a long and active career at Northwestern. He has been an important member of his department and discipline, and he has maintained a high bar as a teacher, working constantly to keep both his teaching and curriculum timely and relevant. He has fostered lively discussions in his classrooms and served as a kind and valued mentor to faculty as well as students. Bushnell continues to be an active and engaged scholar, recently publishing a major and deeply researched work, Russian Peasant Women Who Refused to Marry: Spasovite Old Believers in the 18th-19th Centuries. 

Hollis Clayson

Art History

Holly Clayson joined the Department of Art History in 1982, and has long been recognized as one of the College’s most outstanding teachers. She is an acclaimed historian of modern art who specializes in 19th-century Europe, in particular France, and on transatlantic exchanges between France and the United States. From 2006 to 2016, Clayson served as the founding director of the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, and has played a key role in fostering a broad and innovative humanities culture at Northwestern. She also served as associate dean of The Graduate School from 1995 to 1998, chair of the Department of Art History from 2000 to2003, and vice chair of the Block Museum of Art’s Board of Advisers from 2002 to 2006. Clayson has also served as an adviser to more than two dozen graduate students, many of whom are now teaching at major universities or who are curators at prominent museums. Her reputation as a scholar has earned her national and international appreciation, honors, admiration and standing, including the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by the National Education Ministry of France in 2015, as well as numerous fellowships and professorships at venues such as the Getty Research Institute, the Clark Art Institute, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art and The Huntington Library. Her most recent work, Illuminated Paris, was published by The University of Chicago Press in 2019.

Peter Erickson

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Peter Erickson has been a valued member of the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities since 2012. A founder of feminist Shakespeare criticism in the early 1980s, Erickson is now among a group of scholars working to establish the study of race, including racial whiteness, in the field of Renaissance culture. His wider interests are cross-disciplinary and include dual commitments to literature and visual art, as well as cross-historical, with strong investments in contemporary culture in addition to the Renaissance.

Christopher Herbert

English

For more than half a century, Christopher Herbert has served Northwestern as an exemplary scholar, teacher and university citizen. Since joining the Department of English in 1969, Herbert has inspired generations of students, and his scholarship has earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. The winner of two Weinberg College Outstanding Teaching Awards, Herbert introduced legions of undergraduates and graduate students to the richness of Victorian literature; his course on Dickens became a signature. He has served as chair of the Department of English and as associate dean of the humanities in the Office of the Dean. Herbert’s prolific writing and research includes five books in his field, most recently Evangelical Gothic: The English Novel and the Religious War on Virtue from Wesley to Dracula in 2019.

Judy Ledgerwood

Art, Theory, and Practice

Since joining the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice in 1996, Judy Ledgerwood’s distinguished work has been recognized with numerous awards, including The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award, an Artadia Award, a Tiffany Award in the Visual Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and an Illinois Arts Council Award. Ledgerwood’s work, which confronts the history of abstract painting while considering domestically created decorative work made by women across cultures, is included in prominent public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland, among others. Her work also graces numerous buildings on the Northwestern campus, including the Main Library and the President's office in Evanston, as well as the Northwestern University campus in Qatar.

 

Susan Mineka

Psychology

Sue Mineka joined the Northwestern faculty in 1987 and served as the director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology from 1998 to 2006. Her publications include many articles in the most selective and impactful peer-reviewed journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mineka’s contributions to the field of psychology are numerous: she has been among the world’s leading theorists on the etiology of anxiety disorders, and she is noted for an elegant series of experiments exploring the acquisition of fear. Her seminal contributions have been acknowledged by many honors, including the Distinguished Scientist Award in 2007 from the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology. She is a past president of the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (1995) and of the Midwestern Psychological Association (1996), and she has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, the premier journal in the field of psychopathology research.  She also co-authored one of the leading psychopathology textbooks in the field. 

Hsiu-Ling Robertson

Asian Languages & Culture

Hsiu-Ling Robertson joined the Northwestern faculty in 2004 to serve in what was then the Program in Asian and African Languages. Over the past 16 years, Robertson has developed and taught a full range of elementary through advanced Chinese language courses, and served as the administrative co-coordinator of the Chinese Language Program from 2011 to 2013 and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures from 2013 to 2014.

Ken Seeskin

Philosophy

Ken Seeskin has been an integral part of the Northwestern community since 1964, when he first enrolled as an undergraduate student. As a member of the faculty, he has been an immensely popular teacher to generations of Northwestern students. Seeskin is widely respected for his productive body of research, including 10 books, and for his hand in shaping the Department of Philosophy’s pioneering and innovative pluralistic model of scholarship. He accomplished this while also providing exemplary service, including 16 years as chair of his home department and six years as director of the Jewish Studies Program, as well as serving as chair of the Department of Religious Studies. His book Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2005) won the Choice Award for Outstanding Book in the Humanities in 2006, and his most recent work, Jewish Messianic Thoughts in an Age of Despair (Cambridge University Press, 2012) has also received high praise in multiple reviews in top philosophy journals. He has been an inspiring role model for generations of students and faculty at Northwestern.

Kamal Seth

Physics and Astronomy

Kamal Seth has been a noteworthy member of Northwestern’s faculty since 1961. A particle physicist, he is famous for his careful measurement and studies of charmed and exotic hadrons, an area that continues to be interesting and surprising today. As evidence of his standing in the field, a panel for a division-wide review of Department of Energy-sponsored programs in nuclear physics described Seth’s research program as “outstanding,” “remarkable” and “very visible internationally.” His contributions to his department and field have been many, and notably include his stewarding of the Heilborn Lectures series, which brings prominent physicists and astronomers to campus.

Michael Sherry

History

Mike Sherry joined the College’s Department of History in 1976. Twenty-four years later, he became the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History. As befits his title, he has been the primary figure responsible for the planning and coordination of the College’s renowned Leopold Lecture series for much of its history. Sherry is a distinguished teacher and adviser, having advised 31 PhD dissertations, an astonishing number. His many innovations as a scholar and educator include his pioneering Gay and Lesbian History course, which was among the first such courses in the nation and has been among the Department of History’s most popular courses. He is the deserved recipient of many honors, including the Bancroft Prize for Distinguished Books in American History and Diplomacy for The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon. Mike’s most recent book, Go Directly to Jail: The Punitive Turn in American Life, is currently in press.

Larry Trzupek

Chemistry

Larry Trzupek has been an inspirational, steady and approachable instructor in the Department of Chemistry for 15 years. He set high expectations in his organic chemistry courses for non-majors, and his students embraced those standards because he was both clear in his expectations and encouraging in his feedback. Trzupek has received outstanding teaching reviews, was frequently selected for the Faculty Honor Roll by the Associated Student Government, and has instructed nearly 10,000 students during his tenure.

Burton Weisbrod

Economics

Since his arrival at Northwestern in 1990, Burt Weisbrod has been a valued member of our faculty and of the broader Northwestern community. His scholarly output is notable and extensive. They include 16 books and more than 200 published articles, all toward the purpose of using economics and public policy to better the human condition. From his early work in the 1960s, which advanced the idea of education as an investment, to his more recent work on the nonprofit sector, Weisbrod has asked important questions and sought answers to implement in the real world.