Faculty Accomplishments

The festival journey of Media Arts and Culture Professor Broderick Fox's latest documentary MANSCAPING continued with a hometown West Coast Premiere as part of Outfest, one of the world's oldest, largest, and most acclaimed LGBTQIA+ festivals. The screening occurred on Monday July 18, 7:15 PM in the Directors Guild of America's renowned Theater One, and was followed by Q&A with Fox and some of the film's central participants.

Associate Professor of History Alexander (Sasha) Day has a new book chapter out! Professor Day’s chapter “Organizing Rural Society: Disintegrating Rural Governance, Peasant Associations, and the Hailufreng Soviet” analyzes the emergence of the peasantry as a political category. His chapter in Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour shows that the particular socioeconomic context of the early twentieth century created a situation in which Chinese Communist activists saw peasant activism and unrest as forming a historically significant “peasant movement.”

Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs Laura Hebert has a new book! Gender and Human Rights in a Global, Mobile Era (Routledge 2022) delves into feminist debates surrounding human rights through the multifaceted issue of human trafficking. The book explores how a gender analysis illuminates the structures and norms enabling trafficking and simultaneously exposes divisions in feminist politics that have impeded building solidarities across differences and ultimately limited the realization of the human rights of all.

Professor of History Lisa Sousa contributed an article titled "Reexamining Malinche's Betrayal" to the catalog of Denver Art Museum's exhibition Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche. Based on her analysis of sixteenth-century indigenous Nahuatl texts and pictorials, she shows how Nahua historians remembered Malinche as a translator, co-leader of the conquest, and evangelizer, but not a traitor.

In a new research article published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Raul Navarro and Occidental undergraduate co-authors Tim McClure ('22), Connor Saludares ('21), Cheyenne Orozco ('20), and Gisela Martinez ('23) developed a new chemical tool to access phthalides. This family of biologically active organic compounds possess a range of therapeutic properties.

Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy Mijin Cha’s new report, “Winning on Climate: Case Studies of Cities Centering Economic Inclusion” discusses principles that can guide the development of equitable climate policy. Co-authored with Occidental students Aria Devlin (‘21) and Jack Conroy (‘22), the report includes case studies of cities integrating equity into climate action. Examples from Boston, Portland, Denver, D.C., Minneapolis, and Oakland demonstrate how cities can make equity a fundamental part of any climate policy.

In a new article in the Journal of Housing Economics, Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Politics Seva Rodnyansky and coauthors find that affordable housing projects increase local property values. This outcome contradicts arguments frequently made by so-called NIMBYers--those who oppose development as “not in their backyard.”  Using the case of Cook County, Illinois, they show that these effects hold within a distance of 0.5 miles and regardless of the income or racial makeup of the neighborhood.

Unconventional oil and gas extraction has been linked to health and environmental harm for humans and for wildlife. In a new commentary in Bioscience, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Politics Bhavna Shamasunder and coauthors analyze the shared evidence but often conflicting policy responses for protecting human health and wildlife. The article takes a One Health approach, arguing for transparency on trade-offs and a prioritization of shared well-being.

Molly Greenberg--Project Coordinator of the Moving Forward Network at the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute--and co-authors have a new article in the journal Environmental Justice. They find that across the environmental justice movement, climate justice is ranked among the highest priority issues. Data from over 200 interviews and surveys suggest that environmental justice organizations link local issues to intersectional understandings of the climate crisis, which in turn require disrupting status quo approaches to climate change.

Media Arts and Culture Professor Broderick Fox's latest feature documentary Manscaping continues to tour the festival circuit and win critical acclaim! The film appeared twice in April, first at the Arizona International Film Festival in Tucson and the at the OUTShine LGBTQ+ Fest in Miami, where it was a critic's pick. At Outshine, Manscaping won the Jury Honorable Mention - Best Documentary Film.

Associate Professor of History Jane Hong's new article in the Journal of Asian American Studies examines the role of religious organizations in the Asian American Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Applying a religious lens to what is often seen as a wholly secular movement, “The Asian American Movement and the Church” illuminates how people of faith contributed to Asian American activism, community development, and the formation of Asian American Studies as a field.

In her "Critical Acts" article for the journal TDR (The Drama Review), Associate Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, Sarah Kozinn, considers the essential nature of liveness in a performance that bills itself as "theater," using her own experience as a performer to unpack what happens to theater's essence when it goes online. Professor Kozinn focuses on the Cornerstorne Theater Company's production of Highland Park is Here--which featured artists from Occidental and the local community--and examined how the production worked to build vital connections and overcome the restrictions of Zoom boxes and build vital connections. 

In a new article in Cognitive Science, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Irina Rabkina and coauthor present a computational cognitive model of how children reason during pretend play. The model shows how children apply pretend scenarios to the real world and why they might make errors. “An Analogical Model of Pretense” also makes predictions which may lead to an improved understanding of early childhood development.

Assistant Professor of Economics Jorgen Harris has a new article in Labour Economics! In “Do Wages Fall when Women Enter an Occupation?”, Professor Harris finds that increases in women's work and education in the second half of the 20th century led to big changes in women’s representation in many high-education occupations. The increased representation of women led to declines in wages for both men and women, even after accounting for changes in labor supply. For instance, Professor Harris calculates that a 10-percentage point increase in the proportion of women in a given occupation leads to a 9 percent decrease in men’s average wages over ten years. 

In "Living with Absurdity: A Nobleman's Guide," forthcoming  in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Associate Professor of Philosophy Ryan Preston-Roedder explores the meaning and absurdity of life. Professor Preston-Roedder uses Leo Tolstoy's memoir A Confession to characterize a form of faith in one’s values, and to argue that such faith offers an appealing response to life’s absurdity.

Solar lanterns serve as substitutes for kerosene as a source of lighting in parts of the developing world, but the uptake of these lanterns has been slow. Using a randomized control trial in India, Assistant Professor of Economics Jason Wong and co-authors find that vouchers of equal value increase household willingness to pay for solar lanterns more than cash transfers and microfinance schemes. “Increasing microsolar technology adoption: Efficacy of vouchers, cash transfers, and microfinance,” published in Energy Economics, demonstrates that affordability is a prime obstacle and supports the use of voucher-like incentive programs to encourage transitional technologies.

MANSCAPING, the latest feature documentary by Professor of Media Arts and Culture Broderick (Brody) Fox has hit the film festival circuit. MANSCAPING made its U.S. Premiere at the Santa Fe Film Festival and its Australian Premiere at the Queerscreen Mardi Gras Film Festival in Sydney, where it was a festival director's pick and the screening was cosponsored by ACON, Australia's national queer community health organization. MANSCAPING was also selected for the British Film Institute's esteemed BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. Michael Blyth, Senior Programmer BFI Festivals, noted "our programmers loved the radical queer reimagining of the barbershop experience that’s depicted in MANSCAPING." Fox attended the March 19, 2022 London Premiere.

Professor of Art and Art History Mary Beth Heffernan premiered an octet of photograms from her Ashes Series in the four person show, Cosmic Trace. The gelatin silver prints document performances with surrealist art historian Professor of Art and Art History Amy Lyford and her mother's cremated remains. Cosmic Trace was selected as one of Artforum’s “Focus Los Angeles” selections, meaning it was a “must see” exhibit of the week for Feb 14-20, 2022. Listen to a recording of the panel discussion with Professor Heffernan, the curators and the artists here (passcode:  yF?k0*ug).

Professor Sasha Day (History) has two new articles out! First, Day published a new article in Positions: Asia Critique. “Breaking with the Family Form: Historical Categories, Social Reproduction, and Everyday Life in Late 1950s Rural China” investigates the emergence of a divide between production and the social reproduction of labor in 1950s China, one which  transformed and structured rural everyday life. The article argues that the way some Chinese historians have used analytical categories related to everyday life is itself fully implicated in the Maoist political-economic structuring of society. Second, Day's new article in Global Food History looks at the reconstruction of a country tea industry in contemporary China. In the early 2000s, the tea industry reemerged from a period of decline into a new form of capitalist agrarian production, wherein independent tea processors focus on quality, take greater control over their farmers’ labor, and market to the changing tastes of Chinese consumers.

Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Politics Mijin Cha and co-authors recently published a “Green New Deal for All: The Centrality of a Worker and community-Led Just Transition in the US.” Appearing in Political Geography, the paper argues that labor and community-led advocacy efforts towards a just energy transition are fundamental to delivering the promises of a Green New Deal and a just post-carbon world. This paper presents some of the findings of the Just Transition Listening Project, a first of its kind research effort that interviewed over 100 transition stakeholders. 

Professor Movindri Reddy (Diplomacy and World Affairs) has a new article analyzing the repercussions of state capture in South Africa. Published in Indenture Papers: Studies on Girmitiyas, “India’s Political Influence in South Africa” examines how the Gupta Scandal -- a corruption scheme involving an Indian-origin family and the South African government -- exposed class divisions among Indian South Africans, the burgeoning ranks of the poor amongst them, and the measures they have taken to survive in their homeland. The scandal also reveals the weaknesses of the South African post-Apartheid state and its inability to claim sovereign control over the entire country.

In a new article in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Irina Rabkina and co-authors present a new algorithm for goal recognition, the task of recognizing what another agent is doing based on its actions. They compared this algorithm to two popular goal recognition algorithms, and found important trade-offs between them. Their article helps scientists assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. 

Professor Peter Dreier (Politics and Urban and Environmental Studies) coauthored a report (with Dan Flaming of the Economic Roundtable), “Hungry At the Table," based on a survey of 10,000 Kroger Co. grocery workers in Southern California, Washington, and Colorado. The survey found that 78% of the workers are food insecure and 14% have been homeless. Meanwhile, Kroger makes over $4 billion in operating profits and pays its CEO over $22 million a year. The report received extensive news coverage, appearing in over 20 stories, including outlets like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post, Newsweek, The Guardian, Fortune, Forbes, and Buzz Feed. 

Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs Phillip Ayoub has two new articles out! “Not that Niche: Making Room for the Study of LGBTIQ People in Political Science'' argues that the neglect of LGBTIQ scholars has consequences for knowledge production. The article, appearing in The European Journal of Politics and Gender, charts a brief history of the status of LGBTIQ scholarship in political science and argues that LGBTIQ scholars and their scholarship still face disproportionately high levels of discrimination in political science. In “Reassessing the Relationship between Homophobia and Political Participation,” Professor Ayoub and coauthors find that, in many corners of the world, homophobic individuals out mobilize their opponents (in terms of voting). The article, published in The European Journal of Political Research, indicates that in places where governments persecute LGBT people, advocates of LGBT inclusion must anticipate energized ballot-box participation by opponents.

Sharla Fett, the Robert Glass Cleland Professor of American History, has contributed an epilogue to the edited volume Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery. Professor Fett’s epilogue, entitled “Black Atlantic Healing in the Wake,” provides a meditation on the historical significance of Black healers in the African diaspora. It uses scholar Christina Sharpe's work on "the wake" as a lens through which to reflect on the scholarship contained in the volume and to connect to more recent struggles for health justice among Black healers and activists today.

Assistant Professor of Economics Jesse Mora’s new article in Empirical Economics takes a new approach to defining how country-level exports grow. “Export Growth Drivers and Economic Development” shows that country-level export growth will depend on five growth drivers (comparative advantage changes, product demand growth, country-level growth, global growth, and growth in destinations reached). More importantly, Professor Mora and coauthor demonstrate that the effect of these drivers will depend on the level of economic development.

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo published an article in Representation that analyzes U.S. state legislators’ experiences working remotely during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In “Policymaking, Constituency Service, and the Pandemic: How Working Remotely Transformed U.S. State Legislators’ Representative Roles,” Professor Piscopo and coauthor find that U.S. state legislators reported more stress and more constituency service, and less policymaking, executive oversight, and deliberation. Their findings suggest that “zoom politics” has negative consequences for the quality of legislative representation. 

Professor of Practice in Theater and Performance Studies, Jamie Angell, continues working on the writing staff of Netflix’s animated hit show Disenchantment. In addition to his role on the writing staff, Professor Angell scripted two episodes of the currently streaming 4th season: Episode 32, “The Good, the Bad, and the Bum-Bum” and Episode 38, “Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy.”

Associate Professor of Philosophy Robert Sanchez has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. Professor Sanchez will travel to Mexico City this summer to work on his book about 20th Century Mexican philosophy.

Non-tenure track Professor Christopher Blakley has been awarded a Research Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. They will be looking at how ideas about race and physiology shaped diagnoses of "ship fever" by British physicians after the Seven Years' War, and why doctors believed this disease to pose a risk to White sailors and soldiers, but not to Black captives.

Professor of Economics Lesley Chiou was awarded the 2022 Antitrust Writing Awards by Concurrences Review for her article with co-author Avigail Kifer, "Free Can Make Cents: How to Think About 'Free' in Competitive Markets."  The article examines when firms may offer products priced for free and how do firms compete in markets where prices are set to zero?

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Occidental College a $1.5 million grant to fund a 3-year “Humanities for Just Communities” curriculum. Led by Principal Investigators Kristi Upson-Saia, the David B. and Mary H. Gable Professor in Religion, and Alexandra Puerto, Associate Professor of History, the Humanities for Just Communities curriculum will introduce first-year students to the problem-solving power of the humanities to address each year's social justice themes: health equity, migrant justice, and freedom struggles.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Benjamin Weiss has been awarded a Haynes Foundation Faculty Fellowship in support of his ongoing project, "Unhappy Compromises: Feminist Activism in a Fractured Welfare State." With this generous support, Professor Weiss will continue writing about how volunteers and nonprofit professionals work with the state to address gender-based violence.

Assistant Professor of Spanish and French Studies Viviana MacManus has been awarded a research grant on behalf of the Graves Awards Committee from Pomona College. The grant is awarded to younger faculty members who have "outstanding accomplishment in actual teaching in the humanities." Professor MacManus will use the grant to conduct research for her second book on insurgent motherhood in Latin America.

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo was awarded the Carrie Chapman Catt Research Prize from the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University for her project, "She’s Too Ambitious: Does Running for Office Penalize Women in Politics?" Professor Piscopo and her coauthor will analyze whether women politicians seeking the presidency experience an ambition penalty, and whether this penalty varies by women candidates' race or ethnicity.

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo spoke to several Spanish-language media outlets about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade, including Mexico’s Canal Catorce (Channel 14) and CNN Chile.

Associate Professor of Economics Andrew Jalil was interviewed by Marketplace (a producer of economic and business news for NPR) about the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate hikes and the likelihood of recession. Professor Jalil explained how high inflation will lead to higher borrowing costs, which in turn depresses investment and consumer spending. 

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Raul Navarro was named one of Chemical & Engineering News Magazine's LGBTQ+ Trailblazers of the Year. In his interview with the magazine, Professor Navarro discusses developing his identity as a queer scientist.

Chile has written a new constitution--but one that has embolden an anti-democratic right wing, explains Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo in her latest in Foreign Policy. The essay (co-authored with Peter Siavelis at Wake Forest University) discusses how the new constitution advances towards justice while deepening political polarization.

Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Politics Bhavna Shamasunder appears in the new HBO Max documentary Not So Pretty. The series highlights Professor Shamasunder’s expertise by focusing on the hair, skin, nails and personal care products industries. The show aims to raise awareness about chemicals and inspire consumers to make choices that better safeguard their and the planet’s health. 

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo’s analysis in The Washington Post examines the rise of Francia Marquez, an Afro-descendant feminist, lawyer, and environmentalist vying for the vice-presidency in Colombia’s May 2022 elections. Piscopo and coauthor argue that Marquez’s ascendancy marks a shifts in Colombian politics, as voters look to members of traditionally marginalized groups to chart a new, more progerssive path for the country. 

In a blog for Public Religion Research Initiative, Associate Professor of History Jane Hong remembers the March 2021 Atlanta spa shootings and discusses how differing racial perceptions of Asian Americans may affect Georgia officials' approach to prosecuting the shooter.

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo’s latest op-ed in the Washington Post marked International Women’s Day by discussing governments’ startling lack of progress in addressing the gendered inequities in the COVID-19 pandemic. Piscopo explained that longstanding norms associating care work with women's work explains governments' reluctance to provide care services in the form of public goods. 

Professor of Politics Thalia González was interviewed by the Denver Gazette for her extensive research on the use of restorative justice in public systems and its codification into state law. “Restorative justice has emerged as a new legal norm, but it’s not meant to be a panacea," González told reporters, highlighting restorative justice’s role in building thriving communities. 

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo discussed the election of Xiomara Castro in Honduras in her analysis for Australian Outlook, published by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Castro is Honduras’s first woman president, and voters have high hopes she can steer the country away from violence and corruption. 

Professor of Politics and Urban and Environmental Studies Peter Dreier reassesses Norman Mailer's controversial 1957 essay, "The White Negro" in commentary for Common Dreams. Dreier reflects on the essay as both an historical artifact and a measure of the changing ways American society, and the American Left, has dealt with racism.

Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Politics, Seva Rodnyansky, appeared on ABC7. The show highlighted Professor Rodnyansky’s research on how Bay Area out-migration has increased super-commuting in the Central Valley. Destinations for lower-income migrants show higher rates of having long commutes.

Associate Professor of Politics Jennifer Piscopo appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, in an episode discussing the large numbers of women holding elected office in Mexico. Professor Piscopo spoke with Carrie Kahn about how women from Mexico’s left and right parties won the adoption of a gender parity rule, where half of all elected and appointed offices across government must be filled by women.

In collaboration with ArtCenter College of Design and Readings Partners, Professor of Biology Shana Goffredi received a $27,000 grant from Sappi North America, to print 2000 illustrated short story books created about ocean life and to distribute them to local school children and reading centers. The set of 9 books, titled Life Below Water, spans a range of reading levels to act as a living library, something children can come back to year after year, with fresh interest as their literacy skills progress. There are books that teach colors and numbers, and some that teach about alien life forms, symbiotic relationships, and the importance of scavengers at the bottom of the ocean. The books, printed in both English and Spanish, will introduce children to a wide range of new vocabulary words and concepts related to the ocean, and will hopefully motivate children to develop a deep interest in reading, science, and art.

Professor Kristi Upson-Saia, who holds the David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professorship in Religion, has been chosen to serve on the editorial board of a new Routledge book series on Religion, Medicine, and Health in Late Antiquity.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Robert Sanchez has launched the Journal of Mexican Philosophy. The new peer-reviewed journal aims to make Mexican philosophy widely available to an international community of students and scholars, and features the philosophical contributions of historically marginalized voices. Each issue will include one article by a colleague in Mexico, as well as one translation from Spanish to English. The journal creates a new model for linguistic and cultural inclusivity in mainstream philosophy.

In 2021, Professor of Biology Shana Goffredi participated in a multidisciplinary research expedition to explore underwater volcanoes in the Gulf of California. She and her colleagues were supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which advances the frontiers of global marine research by providing state of the art operational and informational support to pioneering ocean science. During the expedition, they discovered several new animal species, as well as an entirely new deep-sea ecosystem, one of the deepest known in the Pacific Ocean. Multimedia personnel onboard produced this video on how the team of geophysicists and biologists from Mexico and the U.S. teamed up to explore the fascinating Pescadero Basin.