New Faculty 2020-2021: Weinberg College

New Faculty 2020-2021

Benjamin Antieau

Professor

PhD institution: University of Illinois at Chicago
Previous title and institution: Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Home department: Mathematics
Profile

I work in pure mathematics, specifically in the areas of algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. Algebraic geometry is about the shape of solutions to algebraic equations and has its roots going back to problems posed by the ancients. Algebraic topology is about the nature of shapes up to deformation, so we are allowed to stretch but not tear the objects in question. My research focuses on the application of the more flexible perspective of topology to the construction of interesting new examples in the rigid setting of algebraic geometry.

Robin Bates

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD Institution: University of Chicago

Home department: History

Profile

Dr. Bates (Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 2015) is a historian of modern France and the francophone world whose work focuses on political culture in the decades following the Revolution of 1789.

Rosemary Braun

Associate Professor

PhD institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Previous title and institution: Assistant Professor of Biostatistics. Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
Home department: Molecular Biosciences
Profile

My interests lie at the interface of computation, statistics, physics, and the life sciences. Work in my lab is focused on developing novel algorithms to analyze and model complex biological systems, with the ultimate goal of predicting and modulating emergent phenomena at multiple scales, from the molecular level to the population level. We apply our computational methods in close collaboration with experimental labs to understand processes ranging from circadian rhythms to carcinogenesis.

Nicolette Bruner

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: University of Michigan
Previous title and institution: Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago
Home department: Center for Legal Studies
Joint department: Program of American Studies

My work traverses theories of personhood, environmental law and justice, animal studies, and literary studies. I hold a JD from the University of Michigan Law School and a PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, and have published articles on Edith Wharton, nineteenth-century children’s literature, and corporate theory. In my current book project, “Thing People,” I argue that the legal doctrine of corporate personhood offers a framework for articulating the rights and responsibilities of other nonhuman entities—animals, plants, rivers, and artificial systems among them.

Miguel Caballero

College Fellow

PhD institution: Princeton University
Previous title and institution: Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago
Home department: Spanish and Portuguese
Profile

I have two very different--or maybe not so--research interests:
My current book project is about conservationism, iconoclasm and monumentality in the context of the Spanish Civil War, rising fascism, international communism, and the construction of a mass society.
My next book project is about the HIV epidemics and the construction of cultural identities based on effective antiretroviral medication: "indetectable", "PrEP user".

Alicia Caticha

College Fellow

PhD institution: University of Virginia
Previous title and institution: Chester Dale Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Galley of Art
Home department: Art History

Caticha specializes in eighteenth-century sculpture and decorative arts, with a particular focus on the intersection between Enlightenment aesthetic theory and artisanal production outside of the academic sphere. Her book project, tentatively titled “Sculpting Whiteness: Marble, Porcelain, and Sugar in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” takes up the career of the eighteenth-century French sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet and the replications and reverberations of his work in marble, porcelain, and sugar. The replication of whiteness throughout these ostensibly opposing media provides a case study through which to understand the rise of the classical marble ideal and its long-term aesthetic and racial implications.

Ryan Chornock

Associate Professor

PhD institution: UC Berkeley
Previous title and institution: Assistant Professor at Ohio University
Home department: Physics and Astronomy
Joint department: CIERA

I study the various astronomical events whose existence is transient in nature. These rare events are found by large surveys of the sky at visible wavelengths and mostly represent supernovae, the final explosions in the lives of stars, but occasionally have even more exotic origins. I use spectroscopy obtained at some of the largest telescopes in the world as a tool to identify these objects and decode their properties. My current interests include the most luminous and energetic supernova explosions, stars being shredded and eaten by supermassive black holes, and the counterparts to gravitational wave events found by LIGO.

Michael Cloud

Associate Professor

MFA Institution: Yale University
Home department: Art, Theory, and Practice

MIKE CLOUD (b. Chicago, Illinois) is a painter and writer. His work and research in the field of painting is anchored in the contemporary life of reproduction, symbolism and description. Cloud’s paintings “aestheticize their subjects and function on social and political terms that go beyond the stakes of authentic expression.”

Cloud earned his M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art and his B.F.A. from the University of Illinois-Chicago with a concentration in art education. Cloud has lectured extensively on his work and contemporary theoretical art issues at the Jewish Museum, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Yale University, the Cooper Union, Bard College, New York Studio School, Kansas City Art Institute and the University of New Orleans.

Massimiliano Delfino

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: Columbia University
Home department: French and Italian
Profile

I am a passionate language instructor and my interests in language pedagogy include intermediality in language classes, intercultural competence, and diversity and inclusion. My research in the field of Italian studies focuses on post-World War II Italian political cinema and literature. I use film theory, literary theory and critical theory to shed light on the nexus between the aesthetic and the political. I am currently working on a book manuscript that analyzes representations of terrorism in Italian films and novels of the 1970s and their relationship to the concept of “civility.”

Xiumin Du

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Previous title and institution: Serguei Novikov Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Maryland
Home department: Mathematics
Profile

My research interest lies in Harmonic analysis, and its interactions with PDE, geometric measure theory, number theory, etc.

Caroline Egan

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: Stanford University
Previous title and institution: University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge
Home department: Spanish and Portuguese

I specialize in the literatures and cultures of colonial Latin America, particularly 16th-and early 17th-century works in and about Amerindian languages and their circulation in a transatlantic context. I am currently completing a book-length study on the idea of orality in this era. This study examines how a range of different "oralities"—from singing and speaking to eating, drinking, and whistling—shape ideas of linguistic difference in the early colonial period. I have published studies on authors and topics including Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and Jesuits in early colonial Brazil.

Katherine Gesmundo

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Previous title and institution: General Chemistry Lab Supervisor at The Ohio State University
Home department: Chemistry

As a member of the teaching-line faculty, I focus on the development of new resources and strategies to enhance the teaching of general chemistry. My role as the Co-Director of General Chemistry Labs allows me to write compelling lab experiments that challenge our undergraduates to ask questions and engage in the process of science. By implementing scaffolded assessments and utilizing metacognition strategies, I aim to improve student perception of their belonging and value in the scientific community. I also am passionate about training the next generation of chemists, our graduate teaching assistants, to be excellent instructors and strive to provide them with a strong foundation in research-based pedagogy.

Benjamin Golub

Associate Professor

Home department: Economics
PhD institution: Stanford University
Joint department: McCormick School of Engineering Department of Computer Science
Previous title and institution: Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Harvard University
Profile

"Benjamin Golub’s research in economic theory focuses on social and economic networks and related topics. From 2015 to 2019, Ben has been on the faculty at the Harvard Department of Economics where he is now Associate Professor. Prior to that, he spent two years as a Junior Fellow (2013-15) at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He has received the Calvó-Armengol International Prize, an NSF CAREER grant (2019), and the Aliprantis Prize (2012) with Matt Elliott. He was educated at Stanford (Ph.D. in economics) and Caltech (B.S., mathematics). Ben's work has examined:

Learning and gossip: what are the dynamics of information in networks? Who is particularly influential? When do agents learn correctly? When are their beliefs polarized?
Financial contagion: which financial networks are particularly sensitive to sudden breakdowns?
The robustness of supply networks: when can networks of productive relationships collapse suddenly in response to small shocks?
Public goods and externalities: how networks shed light on complex favor-trading problems and negotiations."

Caroline Kent

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: University of Minnesota
Previous title and institution: Adjunct Professor of Art, The University of Illinois at Chicago
Home department: Art Theory and Practice
Profile

My research is an on-going study of how an abstract painting language can function as an open form of correspondence. Correspondence here being the relationship between artist and the world. I investigate and rehearse these ideas in the format of the exhibition. More recently my research examines how this language can function as an epistolary correspondence between individuals through intimate artistic gestures. These gestures take the form of architectural space, hand-made objects, and paintings and drawings. Each form carrying the language and expanding its form beyond the canvas.

Michaela Kleber

College Fellow

PhD institution: The College of William & Mary
Previous title and institution: PhD Candidate at the College of William & Mary
Home department: History

Dr. Kleber is a historian of early America, with a particular focus on Native America, French empire, and gender and sexuality. Her current work centers on the Illinois in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the French who colonized among them. Her project recovers the gender and sexuality structures of indigenous Illinois society in order to explain how these structures guided French colonization.

Kinga Kosmala

Associate Professor of Instruction

PhD Institution: University of Chicago

Home Department: Slavic Languages and Literatures

Profile

Dr. Kosmala is new to the teaching-track faculty, but not to Northwestern. She holds a Ph.D. in Polish Studies from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago and teaches courses in Polish language, film, and culture. She is a Mellon Collaborative Partner in the Less Commonly Taught Languages Partnership Project, based at the University of Chicago and aimed at advancing proficiency through collaboration.

Annie Liang

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: Harvard
Previous institution and title: Assistant Professor at University of Pennsylvania
Home department: Economics
Joint department: Computer Science
Profile

My research is in economic theory (in particular, learning and information), and the application of machine learning methods for model building and evaluation.

Kalyan Nadiminti

Assistant Professor

PhD Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Home department: English

Kalyan Nadiminti (Ph.D. English, University of Pennsylvania) writes and teaches on postcolonial and Global Anglophone literatures, with a particular focus on twentieth and twenty-first century South Asian writing in English. They are especially interested in South Asia’s engagement with U.S. empire and the Global War on Terror, comparative paradigms of detention and human rights, as well as global literary markets and the contemporary creative economy.

Kalyan is currently working on a book project, “Provincializing 9/11,” which contends that Global South writers construct literary genealogies of terror to interrogate the mythic status of 9/11 as a foundational event in global histories of political violence. In genres ranging from novels and poetry to memoirs, paintings, and graphic novels, the project places South Asian Anglophone literature in dialogue with diasporic and detainee art and writing in the wake of U.S. empire.

Their scholarly essays and reviews are forthcoming or have previously appeared in Post45/Contemporaries, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Journal of Asian American Studies, South Asian Review, and LARB, among other venues. Their article, “The Global Program Era: Contemporary International Fiction in the American Creative Economy,” is the kernel for a second project on contemporary South Asian realisms. Before Northwestern, Kalyan taught at Gettysburg College, where their work was supported by a Mellon fellowship, and Haverford College.

Patricia Nguyen

College Fellow

PhD Institution: Northwestern University
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Asian American Studies, Northwestern University
Home department: Asian American Studies
Profile

Patricia Nguyen's research and performance work focuses on critical refugee studies, Black feminist and women of color theory, political economy, forced migration, oral histories, nation building and carceral states in the United States and Vietnam. Dr. Nguyen has published work in Women Studies Quarterly, Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, Women and Performance, The Funambulist, and The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays edited by Siyuan Liu and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. She is also executive director of Axis Lab, a community arts organization based in Uptown, Chicago. In recent news, Dr. Nguyen is an award-winning memorial designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, the first monument in the United States to honor survivors of police violence.

Katrina Quisumbing King

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: University of Wisconsin - Madison
Previous title and institution: Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar at University of Southern California
Home department: Sociology
Profile

I study racial classification and exclusion from a historical perspective that foregrounds the state’s authority to manage populations. I am particularly interested in the ways state actors conceive of and make decisions around race and citizenship. My research recenters empire as a key political formation. In the U.S. context, I focus especially on how the state defines colonized populations and how these people fit into the U.S. racial order.

Melissa Rosenzweig

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD Institution: University of Chicago

Home department: Anthropology

Joint department: Environmental Policy and Culture

Profile

Dr. Rosenzweig (Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 2014) is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in environmental archaeology of the ancient Near East. Her research incorporates regional specialization in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant, methodological expertise in archaeobotany, and theoretical specialization in human-environment interactions.

Charif Shanahan

Associate Professor of Instruction

MFA institution: New York University
Previous title and institution: Jones Lecturer in Poetry, Stanford University
Home department: English
Profile

Charif Shanahan is a poet, essayist, and translator. His debut collection of poetry won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award. He joins Northwestern from Stanford University, where he held the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry and later taught as the Jones Lecturer in Poetry. He is currently at work on two collections of poetry, as well as a creative non-fiction project that explores questions of mixed-race identity in the contemporary US; Blackness in the Maghreb; and the transnational dimensions of racial experience.

Antonio Terrone

Associate Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: Rijksuniversiteit Leiden/Leiden University (Netherlands)
Previous title and institution: Asia Analyst at Atla in Chicago and Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan
Home department: Asian Languages and Cultures
Joint Department: Religious Studies
Profile

My research interests lie predominantly in the analysis of policies on religion and religion-cultural revival among ethnic minorities in contemporary China since the reform movements in the 1980’s, mostly Tibetans and more recently Uyghurs. These include understanding the lives of leading Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghurs Muslim figures from Xinjiang, the intersection between religion and politics in China, religious discourse condoning the use of violence, terrorism, and suicide for political purposes, and looking at language, literature, and education as tools of modernization in the face of new socio-political challenges. My current projects include a monographic study on the ideological influence of mass Buddhist encampments (chögar) in Eastern Tibetan areas of Qinghai and Sichuan, and a biography of Chökyi Gyaltsen (1938-1989), the Tenth Panchen Lama of Tibet, whose life was devoted to modernizing Tibetan Buddhism and restoring the dignity of his fellow Tibetans in China.

Oya Topçuoğlu

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: University of Chicago

Home department: Middle East and North African Languages Program

Profile

Dr. Topçuoğlu (Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 2016) has been a fixture in the College’s Middle East and North African Languages Program for many years and is currently serving as chair of the Council on Language Instruction. She teaches on a range of subjects, including modern Turkish language and culture, and the history and archaeology of the Middle East.

Hilary Truchan

Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD institution: Virginia Commonwealth University
Previous title and institution: Visiting Assistant Professor at Dickinson College & Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
Home program: Molecular Biosciences

My graduate and postdoctoral research was in host-pathogen interactions. Specifically, I studied the life cycle of two intracellular pathogens - Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Legionella pneumophila and the mechanisms they employ to survive and replicate within cells of our immune system. More recently, I have begun to explore pedagogical research and am interested in designing assessment methods that can also be used to enhance learning. I am also exploring research on bridging the "accessibility gap" between students and their professors to create meaningful and beneficial relationships.

Rob Voigt

Assistant Professor

PhD institution: Stanford University
Previous title and institution: Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University
Home department: Linguistics
Profile

As a computational linguist I develop and apply natural language processing and machine learning methods to study social meaning and social problems. Working with data from both the laboratory and real-world sources such as police body camera footage and court recordings, my research aims to examine the relationships between interpersonal and institutional treatment; the role of gesture and body movements in communication; bias and disparity along the lines of race, gender, and other social factors; and the linguistic mechanisms of misunderstanding and conflict.

Robert Ward

College Adviser and Assistant Professor of Instruction

PhD Institution: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Home department: African American Studies

Joint department: The Writing Program

Robert Ward is a Weinberg College Adviser and Assistant Professor of Instruction in both the Cook Family Writing Program and the African American Studies Department. Dr. Ward earned both his M.A. and PhD in Educational Policy Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the relationship between race and the free market and their intersectionality with educational policy and reform.