�ֲ���ý has announced eight faculty promotions, including tenure awards and full professorships, effective Aug. 1 for the 2018–19 academic year.

The promotions were recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees.

Malcolm Hill is vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at �ֲ���ý College.

“One of the joys of working at �ֲ���ý is to be surrounded by exceptionally talented and creative people. This year’s tenured and promoted faculty provide outstanding examples of the consequential scholarship and creative work going on at �ֲ���ý,” said Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

“As leaders in their respective fields and through their continuing hard work, these faculty offer our students unparalleled opportunities in the classroom, and give us all an opportunity to engage with the important ideas of our time.”

Meet the eight newly promoted professors, learn their research fields, and discover why they teach.

Promotions to associate professor with tenure

+Associate Professor of Religious Studies Ali Humayun Akhtar

Ali Humayun Akhtar has been promoted to associate professor of religious studies. (Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Jonathan Cavallero

Jonathan Cavallero has been promoted to associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi

Raluca Cernahoschi has been promoted to associate professor of German. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki

Jakub Kazecki has been promoted to associate professor of German. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott

Katharine Ott has been promoted to associate professor of mathematics. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

+Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams

Larissa Williams has been promoted to associate professor of biology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Promotions to full professor

+Professor of Politics Stephen Engel

Stephen Engel has been promoted to professor of politics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies Lisa Maurizio

Lisa Maurizio has been promoted to professor of classical and medieval studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ali Humayun Akhtar describes the Middle Ages as a highly interconnected period. In the centuries leading up to the Renaissance, Christians, Jews, and Muslims traveled widely, exchanging both goods and ideas from southern Europe to the Middle East and East Asia.

“There was a kind of globalization in the premodern world, even before the rise of modern transportation and industrialization,” says Akhtar, an assistant professor of religious studies, of classical and medieval studies, and of Asian studies.

Ali Humayun Akhtar, associate professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval studies.

Akhtar wanted to know more about the communities that lined the trade routes that flourished between the eighth and 13th centuries, and how groups from southern Spain to Iraq moved across boundaries of geography, politics, and culture.

His first book, , explores the interplay between local authorities and higher rulers, and the influence of Hellenistic learning on politics and culture.

The book, published by Cambridge University Press, challenges common assumptions about the kingdoms, sultanates, and caliphates of the medieval world. “Europe and the Middle East were not ruled as theocracies in those days, and power was not simply exercised top-down,” Akhtar says.

As in the modern world, structures of local authority in cities, neighborhoods, and families had significant influence on local affairs. The Umayyad caliphs of Cordoba, the Fatimids of Cairo, and the Abbasids of Baghdad, who ruled between the eighth and 13th centuries, were not all-powerful. As was the case in much of Europe, ruling circles had to work with layers of local institutions and leadership structures to govern.

In medieval Baghdad, for example, a sultan’s administration might have ultimate legal authority over public spaces such as marketplaces, but in a neighborhood, mediators among Muslims, Christians, and Jews handled conflicts.

“Often it was the case that if administrators wanted to push some piece of legislation or policy, they had to be in dialogue with not only the Eastern Christian clergy, the Jewish rabbis, and the scholars of Islam, but also with urban patricians and businesspeople,” Akhtar says.

These local figures, who sometimes included women, wore multiple hats — they were teachers, judges, scientists, and in a period of polymathic knowledge, they also studied theology, ethics, medicine, and other subjects with equal vigor. The Muslim judge Averroes and the Jewish rabbi Maimonides, who both lived in 12th-century Cordoba, were also medical doctors and philosopher-scientists.   

Much of their knowledge, and the tools for gaining more knowledge, drew on ancient sources. Greek philosophy and other late antique writings of the Near East were translated from Greek and Aramaic to Arabic.

Socrates (Suqrat) and his pupils as portrayed in a 13th-century Arabic manuscript preserved in Istanbul (Wikimedia Commons)

As it spread, Hellenistic learning was central to conceptions of ethics and interpretations of scripture in the medieval Islamic world. It also had practical applications, informing medicine, astronomy, psychology, commercial navigation, and civil engineering.

The impact of ancient Greece, Iraq, and the late antique Hellenistic world under the Umayyad, Fatimid, and Abbasid caliphates, Akhtar says, shows an overlooked continuity between the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds — and between Renaissance Europe and the Middle East.

“The works of the Persian physician Avicenna were used as standard medical textbooks in Europe for centuries,” Akhtar says.

Renaissance European thinkers read ancient Greek philosophy and science together with volumes of commentaries and new works in Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin.

“This entire history goes against the assumption that only Europe had a Judeo-Christian and Hellenistic heritage,” Akhtar says. “In the Middle East, this Hellenistic heritage and its Jewish and Christian social context thrived during the medieval Islamic era.”

The connections between Europe and the Middle East persisted in the early modern era. For his next two books, Akhtar is researching the commercial connections between Venice and Ottoman Istanbul in the 17th century, and the trade relationships linking European maritime companies with the Middle East, China, and Southeast Asia.

Interest in Hellenistic learning in the Islamic world extended to architecture, exemplified in the Dome of the Rock Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to its left in Jerusalem. (Wikimedia Commons)

Studying the history of the Mediterranean world in a global context highlights the common heritage of Europe and the Middle East, Akhtar says — and undermines some of today’s political narratives, which portray Europe and the Middle East as part of distinct, even clashing, civilizations.

“There are timeless connections between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia which call into question how we think about modern issues like immigration, the refugee crisis, and the boundaries of global trade,” he says. “We have assumptions about different worlds that have overlapped for more than a millennium.”

Ali Humayun Akhtar, assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval studies.

The lecture series Byzantium and Islam: Art, Poetry and Sound at the Crossroads of the Mediterranean Sea  resumes with an exploration of Sicily’s evolution through Byzantine to Islamic to Christian cultures by Russell J. Hopley of Bowdoin College at noon Thursday, Nov. 14, in Room 201, Commons, 136 Central Ave.

Presented by the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in Classical and Medieval Studies, lectures in the series are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8204.

The series concludes with a talk by �ֲ���ý’ own Ali Humayun Akhtar, who discusses “rembetiko,” a musical genre developed by Greeks living in Turkey, at noon Wednesday, Nov. 20, in Room 221-222, Commons.

Hopley teaches Arabic language and literature at Bowdoin. His talk, Sicily: A Mediterranean Island at the Crossroads of Byzantium and Islam, will explore the dynamics of politics, religion and literature on the island of Sicily as it transitioned from its role in the Greek-speaking Byzantine world to the Arabic-speaking world before finally being absorbed into Latin Christendom.

Akhtar is an assistant professor in the religious studies department and the classical and medieval studies program. His talk, Byzantium in Ottoman Clothing: Greeks of Istanbul and the Music of Rembetiko, will look at questions of cultural blending in early modern Istanbul, where a significant Greek Orthodox population straddled the worlds of Greek-language and Turkish-language music and taste — aesthetically bridging the legacies of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires through musical traditions like the “Greek blues,” rembetiko.

Ali Akhtar, assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval Studies.

Appointed assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval studies at �ֲ���ý in 2012, Ali Humayun Akhtar studies the complex interactions among political, religious and intellectual establishments in Europe and the Islamic world in medieval and early modern times.

Akhtar is particularly interested in the Mediterranean as a cultural crossroads. “The medieval Mediterranean, especially from the 11th to the 16th centuries, was a fascinating patchwork of Islamic and Christian kingdoms where multilingual Muslims, Christians and Jews often studied and traded in the same cities, from Toledo and Palermo to Thessaloniki and Istanbul,” he says.

He notes that these Mediterranean communities were very cosmopolitan, with theologians and merchants working in a spectrum of languages such as Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Latin, Greek and Turkish. That’s a quality shared by Akhtar, whose command of foreign languages — fluent or advanced in seven — gives him entrée to such intellectual treasure houses as Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Library and the Spanish National Research Council of Madrid.

To him, there are contemporary lessons to be mined from these old writings. “Scholars can paint a picture of the medieval political and intellectual landscape throughout the Mediterranean region in a way that can help modern societies better understand their current affairs and trajectories,” Akhtar says.

“Figures like Maimonides, Averroes and Aquinas teach us to re-examine certain modern assumptions, like the notion of a necessary clash of civilizations.” In fact, he continues, it’s possible that the Arab Spring will open up opportunities for students from the West and the Middle East to learn more about each other.

“Liberal arts students around the world have the potential to become a new generation of paradigm-shifting modern polymaths,” he says, “in the way that Averroes, Maimonides and Aquinas shifted the historical trajectory of philosophy and science.”

Akhtar is a native of New Jersey. Prior to �ֲ���ý, he taught at Bard College and at New York University, where he received his doctorate in both history and Middle Eastern studies. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Cornell in 2004.

Ali Akhtar, assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval Studies. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Six new tenure-track members of the faculty began teaching at �ֲ���ý College in autumn 2012, representing the fields of dance, economics, German, neuroscience and psychology, religious studies, and classical and medieval studies.

All beginning their �ֲ���ý careers as assistant professors, they are:

Ali Humayun Akhtar, religious studies and and classical and medieval studies;

Rachel Boggia, dance;

Jason Castro, psychology and neuroscience;

Raluca Cernahoschi and Jakub Kazecki, who were hired in a joint appointment to the German faculty;

and Paul Shea, economics.

(�ֲ���ý has also engaged biologist Larissa Williams, who starts at �ֲ���ý during winter 2013, and historian Lydia Barnett, who begins teaching at �ֲ���ý in autumn 2013.)

Ali Humayun Akhtar

Read a profile of Akhtar.

Assistant Professor of Dance Rachel Boggia. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Appointed assistant professor of religious studies and of classical and medieval studies at �ֲ���ý, Akhtar studies the complex interactions among political, religious and intellectual establishments in Europe and the Islamic world in medieval and early modern times.

Akhtar is a native of New Jersey. Prior to �ֲ���ý, he taught at Bard College and at New York University, where he received his doctorate in both history and Middle Eastern studies. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Cornell in 2004.

Rachel Boggia

Read a profile of Boggia.

Appointed assistant professor of dance at �ֲ���ý in 2012 after two years at the college as a visiting faculty member, Boggia employs sophisticated technology in her art and teaching.

Boggia served as acting director of the �ֲ���ý dance program in 2010-11 after teaching at Wesleyan University and at Connecticut and Dickinson colleges. She earned her MFA in dance from The Ohio State University in 2003 and a bachelor of science degree in neurobiology at Cornell in 2000.

Jason Castro, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Jason Castro

Read a profile of Castro.

Analyzing neural electrical patterns and chemical imaging that reveals cellular activity, Castro, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, investigates the relationships between the properties of neurons and sensory capabilities, such as the ability to distinguish between odors.

Castro came to �ֲ���ý from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he had been a postdoctoral fellow since 2008, the year he received his doctorate in neuroscience at Pittsburgh. In addition to a 2002 liberal arts diploma from the European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin, Germany, Castro earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and English literature at the University of Rochester.

Raluca Cernahoschi

Read a profile of Cernahoschi.

Assistant Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Cernahoschi, who has been a visiting professor at �ֲ���ý the past two years, is a native of Romania. But her Romanian education never introduced her to one of her primary academic interests: the literature produced by that nation’s German minority.

Instead, it wasn’t until her graduate studies at the University of British Columbia that she discovered this literature. “I happened to be taught by one of the only North American experts on this literature,” Cernahoschi explains — Peter Stenberg, now professor emeritus of German at UBC.

She taught previously at Central Connecticut State University, McMaster University and UBC. She earned a bachelor’s degree in German studies and English at Mount Holyoke College.

Jakub Kazecki

Read a profile of Kazecki.

Kazecki has done considerable research on the connection between war and humor, as evidenced by his book Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives, released in July 2012 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Assistant Professor of German Jakub Kazecki. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

A native of Poland, Kazecki taught at Central Connecticut State University for four years prior to �ֲ���ý, and previously taught at McMaster University in Ontario and the University of British Columbia, where he received a doctorate in Germanic studies.

He earned master’s degrees at Adam-Mickiewicz-University in Poznan, Poland, and at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.

Paul Shea

Read a profile of Shea.

People’s expectations influence the economy, which makes the accurate prediction of expectations important to economists. That’s an aspect of the field that interests Shea, a macroeconomist and econometrician who develops mathematical models for such predictions.

Working with algorithms that simulate various factors affecting economic behavior, he aims to model expectations such that the agents — the theoretical people in his models — “are just about as smart as the people who actually make decisions in the economy.”

Paul Shea, assistant professor of economics. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.