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Faculty Recognition 2008

In 2002, Burritt Library initiated a program to honor those faculty members who had been promoted or granted tenure. Each faculty member was offered the opportunity to choose a book with special meaning to him or her and have the Library place a bookplate inside in recognition of the achievement of promotion or tenure. The books on display are the ones that the faculty selected. Each volume is accompanied by a statement explaining the special significance of the book to the person who chose it. We are pleased to place these books in the Library in recognition of the faculty who were promoted or received tenure in 2008.

	Abigail Adams, Department of Anthropology. Promoted to Professor. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas Friedman. I chose Thomas Friedman’s book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, because I find him a clear, synthetic and globally-aware thinker, whose positions often differ from mine and so he widens my considerations.
	Jan Bishop, Department of Physical Education and Human Performance. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. Heartbeat, by Sharon Creech. Written in prose and narrated through the voice of a child, this delightful and profound book captures three of the things I hold most dear: the miracle of life, the joy of movement, and the bonds of family love. Through the sounds and rhythm of the heartbeat, we live (with the child narrator) the discovery and wonder of new life growing inside Mother, feel the exhilaration of moving fast, shoulder to shoulder with a Best Friend, four bare feet running hard (thump thump) through the dewy grass down a favorite path to a bench waiting for their collective collapse…hearts racing - one running for joy, the other to escape, and finally we share the precious moments with Grandfather as his memory comes and goes and the tenuousness of his heart is felt. In some of the most difficult moments in my life, I have found myself suddenly running…running hard until finally collapsing exhausted…and then with my lungs burning…knowing somehow…that things will work out. I have celebrated emotions through dance and found friendship through heart pounding sport. Even better, I have had the joy of holding our three children bare-chested against me and feeling their hearts beat – bonding us together for life. And felt the presence of my Grandparents reminding me with the echo of their heartbeats that love is eternal.
	Matthew Ciscel, Department of English. Granted Tenure. Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, 2nd Edition by Monica Heller. The first edition of this book appeared when I was a graduate student and had a significant impact on my developing interests and specialization in sociolinguistics. Its emphasis on language use and the social practices that contextualize language structure continue to inform my understanding of human language and my teaching.
	Michael Davis, Department of Biomolecular Sciences. Promoted to Professor. Outbreak: Cases in Real-World Microbiology, by Rodney Anderson. I’ve taught “my” Microbiology course almost 30 times, and I fight a constant battle with myself to keep the course fresh and evolving in good ways. I hope that this book will provide my students and me with a different way to investigate topics in microbiology. This book, therefore, has not been influential in my career yet, but I’m hoping it will be. It does not have special meaning yet, but I’m hoping it will have, at least for the next 30 semesters.
	Jose Carlos del Ama Gonzalo, Department of Communication. Granted Tenure. Sin Noticias de Gurb, by Eduardo Mendoza. Sin Noticias de Gurb is an example of how literature can become the most effective instrument to measure the moral health of society. Eduardo Mendoza plays in this novel with real characters of Spanish contemporary society who will, no doubt, vanish very soon from the country’s collective memory. However, as it happened with Don Quijote, the literary work might transcend the contingency of its characters. Mendoza follows – again – the rich tradition of absurd and grotesque in Spanish literature. What strikes me in this novel is the deep humanity that can be sensed beyond the parodic features of Mendoza’s creatures.
	Tiffany Doan, Department of Biology. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin. This is the most important biological book ever written. Evolution is the most fascinating topic to me and it pervades all aspects of biology and life. I love to research it, discuss it, and teach it and this seminal book explains how it works.
	M. L. “Bob” Emiliani, Department of Manufacturing and Construction Management. Granted Tenure. Planet Earth: Cosmology, Geology, and the Evolution of Life and Environment, by Cesare Emiliani. My father wrote this book. He passed away in 1995. I chose this book as a tribute to him and his support of my pursuits.
	Mark Evans, Department of Physics and Earth Science. Granted Tenure. Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture in the Making of French Wines, by James Wilson. This book beautifully illustrates the relationship between all spheres of the earth: Lithosphere, Hydrosphere, Atmosphere, and Biosphere. In the taste of wine we taste the effect of the soil and the rock from which it was derived, the climate of the vineyard, and the expertise of the winemaker.
	Carolyn Fallahi, Department of Psychology. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. Overcoming Our Racism: The Journey to Liberation, by Derald Wing Sue. Derald Wing Sue has long advocated for therapists to be culturally aware and in touch with their own biases about minority clients. In this current book, Overcoming our racism: the journey to liberation, Sue writes for a broader audience. He connects to the current literature in psychology and shows how everyone harbors stereotypes that influence their emotions, actions, and thoughts. Many of us are unaware of those stereotypes and therefore are “unintentional racists”. This book is meaningful to me because it carefully shows the reader how stereotypes are alive and well, but it also gives hope to the individual person who is always working to eradicate prejudice and discrimination in his/her life through insight and personal growth.
	Larry Grasso, Department of Accounting. Granted Tenure. Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut has been a favorite author of mine since I was a teenager. I love his imagination, his black humor, and the love of humanity in general and respect for people as individuals that I see at the heart of it all. Player Piano is his first novel and one of my favorites. It deals with the dysfunctional consequences of technological change and the love hate relationship humanity has with technology. I think the dysfunctional and often unintended consequences of change, particularly technological change, is a good theme to revisit as we look for the change promised from a new administration and hope for technology to save us from ecological disaster.
	Jason Jones, Department of English. Granted Tenure. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist is in some measure responsible for my majoring in English: I first read it as a sophomore, in a seminar on Dickens, and it goaded me into writing my first paper for college that was at all decent. For good or for ill, Dickens probably made me a professor. Blame him.
	Mark Jones, Department of History. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period, by Carol Gluck. This book is written by my graduate advisor at Columbia University. She is the reason that I became a Japanese historian and I am forever indebted to her. The pages of this book burst with the energy, enthusiasm, and brilliance of Carol. I can’t thank her enough for everything she has done for me, but I am pleased to choose her book as my selection in recognition of receiving promotion and tenure this year.
	Elizabeth Kaminski, Department of Sociology. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey I read this book in graduate school, and it changed the way I think about culture, history, and social change. Up to that point, most of what I learned in history classes neglected any discussion of gay men, lesbians, or anybody else who transgressed gender and sexuality norms. This book, by contrast, documents a diverse and vibrant subculture created by working-class, gay men in New York at the turn of the twentieth century. It opened my eyes to the ways in which marginalized people fight for visibility and survival by forging a sense of community, building their own unique subcultures, and laying claim to public space. Reading this book caused me to feel more connected to the past and more hopeful about the future.
	Khoon Koh, Department of Marketing. Promoted to Professor and Granted Tenure. Annals of Tourism Research. I really got excited about academic research when I was a master’s student at Temple University (1989-1991). I was working on a term paper about a particular type of consumers – tourists – and found out the fascinating world of research findings published in the Annals of Tourism Research. Although the journal has evolved significantly since (is now less exciting and more difficult to read), it is still the premier journal in tourism research recognized by tourism scholars all over the world!
	Carlos Liard-Muriente, Department of Economics. Promoted to Associate Professor. Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 3rd Edition, by Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt. All students must have a basic understanding of Economics, in particular about the economic system they confront. Following the Political Economy tradition, this book will give students the tools to understand how Capitalism works, why sometimes it will not work, and how it changes the world around us (for good or for bad!).
	Adele Miller, Department of Mathematical Sciences. Granted Tenure. Math Potatoes: More Mind-Stretching Brain Food, by Greg Tang. I especially like this book because its title is a play on a food word, and many of its puzzles include food, something that everyone can relate to and something that I use in my own examples in class. I like the book’s bright colors and creative art. It helps math students see math in a bright, non-traditional way different from math texts. Tang’s approach to math is particularly helpful in a course for pre-service elementary teachers where I assign puzzles from his book.
	Damon Mitchell, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin. I have read this book several times and will probably read it several more times. It’s been important to me from multiple angles. First, it has educated me about the history of our nation. Second, the story of Franklin’s life has been a compelling page turner when I have wanted a good story. Third, the book has served as a kind of inspiration for me as I have often said to myself, “Come on, if Benjamin Franklin could (insert brilliant achievement here), surely you can (insert mundane challenge here).” That’s not an uplifting kind of inspiration, but it has worked for me.
	Christopher Pudlinski, Department of Communication. Promoted to Professor. Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines, edited by Carolyn D. Baker, Michael Emmison, and Alan Firth. This edited volume stems from the first international colloquium I presented at – in Aalborg, Denmark in 2000. This was also my first ever trip to Europe. The two-day conference was enriching and full of camaraderie and inspired me to continue my research into support talk and helplines. It was a very memorable experience and I’m very proud of my own contribution to this volume.
	Connie Tait, Department of Counseling & Family Therapy. Promoted to Professor and Granted Tenure.Women’s Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, by Mary Field Belenky, et al. The authors/researchers interviewed 135 women who were either recent alumnae or current students. I came across this book when I had returned to graduate school and found many similarities in their stories and my own life. Many were in the midst of personal and intellectual challenges and transitions. Their voices helped me re-affirm the direction I had chosen. Their strength added to my strength as did their determination. I needed this book at this time in my life to “find my own voice.” I am grateful to the authors and the women who bravely told their stories.
	Ravi Shankar, Department of English. Granted Tenure. Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar. It’s not from hubris or drinking from the stream of my own reflection, that I choose a book that I helped co-edit, but because it’s testament to my time at Central, roughly coinciding with the seven years it took to put together this unprecedented anthology. Collecting voices from over 450 poets from 61 countries writing in over 40 different languages, the anthology attempts to show an alternate vision of the East through the voices of those who inhabit its tincture and live in its splendor and squalor, qualities that, like shared humanity, the very disparate countries (from the Middle East, East, South & Central Asia and the Diaspora) and nationalities without a nation state (including Palestine, Tibet, Kashmir, Kurdistan and Central Asia) have in common with us, thousands of miles away. We are one body of being and the support I received at Central in terms of time, faculty assistance, funding and moral support helped me complete this monumental project, about which Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer has called “a beautiful achievement for world literature.”
	Donna Sims, Department of Finance. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure. In Defense of Animals: the Second Wave, edited by Peter Singer. This book helped to inspire me to become successful in academic research and writing. I began to write about what I loved and what interested me intellectually and found it possible to reach many of my creative goals.
	Nidal Al-Masoud, Department of Engineering. Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure.Control Systems Engineering, 4th Edition, by Norman Nise.
	Nelson Castaneda, Department of Mathematical Sciences. Promoted to Professor. Introduction to Algebraic Geometry, by Brendan Hassett.