CLAS Welcomes New Faculty
CLAS welcomes more than 60 new faculty members this year. Over the next few months, CLASnotes will be introducing these new faces.
Sharon Austin
Sharon Austin is an associate
professor in the Department of Political Science. Before coming
to UF, she taught at the University of Louisville, the University
of Missouri, Columbia University and the University of Michigan.
She earned her PhD in political science from the University of Tennessee
in 1993.
Her current research examines African-American politics and poverty in the Mississippi Delta, and she has a book in press with the State University of New York at Albany Press, due out in late 2005, titled The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta. At UF, Austin plans to teach courses in African-American, minority and urban politics, as well as American government.
Hélène Blondeau
Hélène Blondeau is an assistant
professor of French linguistics in the Department of Romance Languages
and Literatures. She completed her PhD in anthropology in 2000 at
the University of Montreal with a specialization in linguistic anthropology.
After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of
Pennsylvania in 2001, Blondeau served as an assistant professor
of linguistics at the University of Ottawa.
Her research examines spoken data from the sociolinguistic corpus of French in order to describe linguistic variations and change in varieties of Canadian French. She is teaching a French undergraduate course, Composition and Stylistics, and a graduate course, Special Studies in French Linguistics.
Regina Bures
Regina Bures is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. She received her PhD in sociology in 1998 from Brown University, specializing in aging and demography. Bures completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago and served as a senior research scientist at the University of Albany before coming to UF.
Her research focuses on life course changes, uses of the health and retirement survey, and historical patterns of social change in Charleston, South Carolina. She is teaching Urban Sociology and Social Inequality.
Charles Bwenge
Charles Bwenge is an assistant professor, jointly
appointed between the Center for African Studies and the Department
of African and Asian Languages and Literatures, specializing in
Swahili. He earned his PhD in linguistic anthropology from the University
of Virginia in 2002 and served as a lecturer and the coordinator
of the Swahili program at Princeton University.
Bwenge’s current research project explores the sociocultural and linguistic aspects underlying the patterns of language use in the Tanzanian political setting, with particular focus on the national parliamentary proceedings and election campaign meetings. He is teaching The World of Swahili.
William Conwill
William L. Conwill is an assistant professor, jointly appointed between the African American Studies Program and the Department of Counselor Education in the College of Education. He received his PhD in counseling psychology from Stanford University in 1980. Before coming to UF this fall, Conwill taught at the University of Tennessee in its mental health counselor and counselor education training programs.
His current research investigates how aware mental health professionals are when they interact along intersections of gender, race and class with their patients. This semester, he is teaching two courses—The Black Experience: Psychological Perspectives and Counseling Theories and Applications.
Takako Egi
Takako Egi is an assistant professor in the
Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures. She earned
her PhD in July 2004 from Georgetown University, where she served
as a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.
Egi’s primary research areas are second language acquisition and teaching Japanese as a foreign language, specifically the effects of communicative interaction and feedback on learning Japanese and the roles of attention and awareness in second language learning. She is teaching Beginning Japanese.
Gail Fanucci
Gail Fanucci is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. She is a UF alumna, completing her PhD in chemistry in 1999. She returns to UF from the University of Virginia, and her research utilizes site-directed spin labeling and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to study biopolymers such as membrane proteins.
Fanucci is teaching Physical Chemistry to undergraduates this fall and will be teaching a biochemistry and molecular biology lab during the spring.
Faye Harrison
Faye Harrison is a professor, jointly appointed
between the African American Studies Program and the Department
of Anthropology. She earned her PhD in anthropology from Stanford
University in 1982, and she comes to UF from the University of Tennessee,
where she served as the Lindsay Young Professor of Anthropology.
As a political anthropologist, her current research concerns the politics and political economy of social inequality and human rights. Harrison presented her work at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in 2001. She is editing a book based on some of the issues discussed at the event titled Resisting Racism and Xenophobia: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Human Rights, which is in press with AltaMira Press. She is teaching a graduate course on diasporas this semester.
So Hirata
So Hirata is an assistant professor in the Department
of Chemistry. He received his PhD in theoretical chemistry from
the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in 1998. He has held
positions with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the
University of California, Berkeley, the Quantum Theory Project at
UF, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Hiroshima University.
Hirata’s research focuses on the development of new many-body theories describing concerted motions of electrons in atoms and molecules in the gas and condensed phases and in crystalline solids. In 2003, he published the fifth edition of the Encyclopedia for Experimental Chemistry through The Chemical Society of Japan. He teaches Physical Chemistry II.
Michael Jubien
Michael Jubien is a professor in the Department
of Philosophy. He earned his PhD in philosophy and logic at the
Rockefeller University in 1972, specializing in analytical metaphysics.
He comes to UF from the University of California, Davis, where he
served as a professor since 1988.
Jubien also held appointments at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research analyzes the concepts of necessity and possibility, and he is teaching Metaphysics and a graduate seminar on modality.
Ingrid Kleepsies
Ingrid Anne Kleespies is an assistant professor
in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. She completed
her PhD work at the University of California, Berkeley in summer
2004, specializing in late 18th to mid-19th century Russian literature
with special emphasis on Romanticism.
Her current research addresses the way in which images of nomads and wanderers become key cultural symbols in Russian and Polish literature of the Romantic period. She is teaching Russian language and literature courses.
Patrick De Leenheer
Patrick De Leenheer is an assistant professor in
the Department of Mathematics. He received his PhD in applied sciences
from Ghent University in Belgium in 2000. Since then, he has held
positions at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands,
Arizona State University and Rutgers University. His research area
is mathematical biology, specifically chemostat and HIV models, and
he is teaching Mathematical Methods for Engineers.
Virginia LoCastro
Virginia LoCastro is an associate professor
in the Program in Linguistics. She comes to UF from Universidad
de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico, where she was a professor for
the past six years. She received her PhD in linguistics and modern
English language in 1990 from Lancaster University in the UK, specializing
in discourse analysis and pragmatics.
Her current research involves a study on academic writing by Mexican Spanish students, but she is preparing for other studies at UF, one involving linguistic politeness in Mexican Spanish and another on academic spoken discourse with the Academic Spoken English program in CLAS. Locastro teaches Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) Methods and Materials.
Katia Matcheva
Katia Matcheva is an assistant professor in
the Department of Physics who joins UF in January 2005. She completed
her PhD in 2000 from Johns Hopkins University and has held appointments
at the Laboratory of Space Research and Instrumentation in Astrophysics
at the Paris Observatory in France, as well as the Center for Radiophysics
and Space Research at Cornell University.
Matcheva’s research focuses on problems related to the physics and chemistry of planetary atmospheres in the solar system, involving numerical modeling and simulations for the relevant atmospheric processes.
Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo
Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo is an assistant professor
in the Department of Anthropology. He received his PhD from the
University of Pittsburgh and completed a postdoctoral fellowship
at the University of Calgary. For the past three years he has served
as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Kentucky.
Oyuela-Caycedo has also been an associate professor at the Universidad
Nacional de Colombia.
His current research is on the historical ecology of the Amazon, with a focus on the frontier regions of Colombia, Peru and Brazil. He is teaching Historical Ecology, Ecology of Religion, and Shamanism.
Alioune Sow
Alioune Sow is an assistant professor jointly
appointed between the Center for African Studies and the Department
of Romance Languages and Literatures. He completed his PhD in 2003
at The University of Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV. His dissertation studied
the writings on childhood in African literature, both Anglophone
and Francophone. Before coming to UF Sow taught at Cambridge University
in the UK.
His research focuses on the protocols of childhood in African literature, but also includes the notion of democracy and literature in Mali, African tragedies, memory and literature. He is teaching two courses—Francophone Cultures and African Humanities.
Trysh Travis
Trysh Travis is
an assistant professor in the Center for Women’s Studies
and Gender Research. She received her PhD in American studies from
Yale University and specializes in 20th century American reading
and publishing history. Before coming to UF, she held positions
at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and Trinity
College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Travis’ research looks at the expansion of 12-step self help groups during the 20th century and their influence on the publishing industry and literary genres. She is teaching Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Women and US Women Writers.
Andrew Zimmerman
Andrew Zimmerman is an assistant professor in
the Department of Geological Sciences who came to UF in January
2004. He received his PhD from the College of William and Mary and
served as a research associate at Pennsylvania State University
before coming to UF.
His research involves studies of coastal eutrophication, organic matter preservation in sediments and nanogeology. Zimmerman teaches Introduction to Oceanography and Organic Geochemistry.
Photos:
Courtesy William L. Conwill (Conwill)
Buffy Lockette (Matcheva)
all others by Jane Dominguez