�ֲ���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)

A copy of the poem “Monologue of a Tree Line” by Franz Hodjak, written in the poet’s own handwriting, hangs in the Roger Williams Hall office of Assistant Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi.

It was a gift from her dissertation adviser, Peter Stenberg, who had persuaded her to “take a closer look” at Hodjak’s poetry.

“Writing a book about the post-war generation of Romanian-German poets — of which Hodjak is a part — was as close a look as I had imagined at the time,” Cernahoschi says. “But Peter’s gift is a reminder that closeness is subject to the chosen way of seeing.”

The poem:

i always run
in two
opposite directions
at once

while i follow
the path
i remain
immobile

i’ve completely mastered
the art of the dialectic

Cernahoschi had seen the poem in its printed version, in the volume Open Letters, where it “conversed” with the poems around it, she says. “I knew that the selection of poems in the volume reflected not only the artistic intentions of the poet but also the effects of censorship” of the era.

Cernahoschi says that the word “dialectic” in the last line is ironic. “In socialist Romania, the Marxist dialectic of historical progress, with the victory of the working class as its end, was a prized trope.”

In the poem, she says, “the dialectic of the tree-lined path points both forward and backward, however. While it nods to progress (‘while I follow the path’), it actually acknowledges standing still (‘i remain immobile’).”

Cernahoschi says she marvels at the poet’s audacious way of seeing, his ability to sneak “uncomfortable truths” past the censor onto the printed page.

Now, she says, she views the poem, isolated by itself in the frame on her wall, differently.

“Seeing clearly the jagged lines of m’s, l’s, f’s, and g’s has helped me discover a new friction in the poem, as if the writing itself were an opposition.”

In the poet’s signature, however, “the round stroke of the H and the finality of the y,” she says, offer a contrast: “Liberation. I can relate — writing is an activity that winds us tighter and tighter until that last stroke or push of the button that signals ‘done.'”

But, she concludes, “I also see past the framed poem to the trees lining the path outside my window, running in two directions at once, moving and immobile at once. Their dialectic is true no matter the prevailing ideology. Some days, it’s a precious reminder, on others, a warning.”

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.

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

Raluca Cernahoschi and Jakub Kazecki were hired in a joint appointment as assistant professors of German. 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 what is now 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 whose brightest names include Herta Müller, Richard Wagner, Rolf Bossert and Franz Hodjak.

“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.

The Romanian German poetry she studied “was a literature of resistance, and double resistance.” Coming of age in communist Romania after World War II, these writers at first rebelled against their minority-German heritage. “They didn’t want to represent that minority, which for them was regressive, very traditional, politically compromised — the older generation has a murky association with the Nazis.”

Instead, they identified as authors with the larger German literature and as political beings with the relatively liberal Romanian socialism of the late 1960s and early ’70s. This identification was short-lived, however. As Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu’s policies became increasingly repressive, their poetry became critical of the country’s social and political conditions.

Meanwhile, these writers became more accepting of their German minority origins. “They realized they were writing against something that was doomed anyway,” says Cernahoschi. “They started to sympathize and understand more where their parents and grandparents were coming from.”

Today, many of these writers have moved to Germany and joined the literary mainstream. “It’s a very dynamic literature still,” says Cernahoschi. “In interesting ways, they are still trying to position themselves” — a situation of particular fascination for Cernahoschi, whose research incorporates the problems and rewards of cross-cultural encounters.

Cernahoschi 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.