New Faculty

Rachel Black

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Education
B.A. (Hon), University of British Columbia
M.A., University of British Columbia
Ph.D., Università degli Studi di Torino

Rachel Black has conducted ethnographic research in Italy, France, the United States and Canada, focusing on the production, distribution and consumption of food. Since joining the Connecticut College Anthropology Department, Black has conducted research in New London with community partners such as Brigaid, the New London County Food Policy Council, and FRESH New London. Black is particularly interested in what food can tell us about social organization, inequality, and cultural change in Europe and North America.

Black wrote an ethnography of the Porta Palazzo market in Turin, Italy and has done fieldwork on urban agriculture in Vancouver, Canada. Her current research focuses on female culinary professionals in Lyon, France. As part of this project, she attended culinary school at Ducasse Education and spent 10 months in Lyon as a fellow at the Collegium de Lyon. Black is currently working on her forthcoming book, On the Line: Women, Cuisine and Work in France.

More about Rachel Black

Stephen Douglass

Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics

Education
B.S., Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

Stephen Douglass specializes in bioinformatics, computational biology, machine learning, algorithm design, molecular biology, genetics and genomics. He is particularly interested in the intersection of computer science and biology and his research focuses on developing and applying computational methods to address biological questions.

Douglass’s current primary research emphasizes analysis of cutting-edge genomic technologies to simultaneously study the genome and population dynamics of local species.

More about Stephen Douglass

Eric Fleury

Assistant Professor of Government and International Relations

Education
B.A., College of the Holy Cross
M.A., Ph.D., Baylor University

Eric Fleury's research aims to refine the theoretical analysis of U.S. national security. He specializes in international relations, U.S. foreign policy, terrorism and diplomacy, and his major projects include developing a conceptual model of terrorism as a distinct form of warfare, showing the ways in which it affirms and subverts the traditional logic of combat. This project served as the basis of his first book, On Absolute War: Terrorism and the Logic of Armed Conflict, which lays out the model and applies it to a variety of historical cases. His next project will show how this model can inform counterterrorism policy, particularly with regard to domestic and ‘lone wolf’ terrorists.

Fleury is also interested in the formulation of U.S. grand strategy, and is currently working on an article describing how the dynamics of polarization have corrupted the longstanding debate between a 'liberals' and 'realists', and showing how to reincorporate the moral and philosophical wisdom of both traditions to debates over foreign policy.

Karen Buenavista Hanna

Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Intersectionality Studies

Education
B.A., Brown University
M.S., Mercy College
M.A., Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara

As a feminist scholar and oral historian of transnational social movements, Karen Buenavista Hanna has informed her research using interdisciplinary methodologies to explore the gender and sexual politics of anti-imperialist Filipina/o organizations. Her work illuminates the intersections of disability, hetero-patriarchy, racism, capitalism, migration, spirituality, and the family.

Hanna has been published in Hyphen Magazine, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, CUNY Forum, and American Quarterly and has been awarded fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Sciences, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a New York City public school teacher, pre-GED instructor with the Brooklyn Public Library, and community organizer working alongside Filipina/o immigrant youth and domestic workers.

Rashelle Litchmore

Assistant Professor of Human Development

Education
B.Sc., University of Toronto
M.A., Ph.D., University of Guelph

Rashelle Litchmore is a critical cultural psychologist who draws on interdisciplinary research and techniques. She utilizes a variety of qualitative methods, including phenomenology, ethnography, and discursive psychology to study race, culture, identity and social policy. Her research examines the social, political and economic contexts of education policy development, and how these broader contexts shape the educational experiences of ethnic and racial minority young people.

Prior to her appointment at Connecticut College, Rashelle served as a senior policy adviser for the Anti-Racism Directorate in the Government of Ontario, Canada. In this role, she co-developed the province’s first Anti-Black Racism Strategy (ABRS), and provided policy advice for addressing systemic barriers faced by racialized and Indigenous peoples in the education, child welfare, justice and health sectors. Rashelle has also worked in community and post-secondary settings to create opportunities for access to post-secondary education and to support the learning of First Generation, Black, racialized and Indigenous students in Ontario.

Di Luo

Chu-Niblack Assistant Professor of Art History and Architectural Studies

Education
B.Arch., Tsinghua University
M.Arch., Ph.D., University of Southern California

Di Luo specializes in Chinese art, Chinese architecture, architectural history, architecture, Asian art, world art and digital humanities. Her research focuses on how particular building forms and practices in China and Buddhist Asia evolved over time, and how, more importantly, certain “prototypes” and “archetypes” persisted through these changes and became highly distinctive motifs that prevailed in China and across its borders. Luo’s first book, Miniature Architecture in China: A Cross-cultural History, is the first comprehensive survey of miniature architecture in China from the Neolithic age to the twentieth century.

Luo was formerly trained as an architect and worked for several architecture firms in Los Angeles and Beijing. She previously taught at Wake Forest University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Southern California.

Daniel Maser

Assistant Professor of Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics

Education
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
M.S., Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder

Daniel Maser specializes in nonlinear optics, fiber lasers, laser spectroscopy and precision measurement. His postdoctoral research focused on performing precision measurements on heavy atoms, such as indium and lead, as tests of fundamental physics by comparing experimental results to wavefunction calculations.

Maser’s doctoral dissertation involved modeling and developing broadband mid-infrared laser sources based on fiber lasers used for telecommunications, and using them to measure trace gas concentrations in the atmosphere. He is a member of the Optical Society of America and American Physical Society.

E. Carla Parker-Athill

Assistant Professor of Biology

Education
B.S., Florida State University
Ph.D., Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida

E. Carla Parker-Athill is interested in understanding the developmental impact of early life environment on behavioral, neurological and immunological outcomes. Her current work on the neurobiology of stress focuses on how early life experiences of stress and/or trauma impact learning and behavior. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of stress, and how hormones produced during stress, such as cortisol, regulate lineage specification in neural stem cells; synapse formation and; behavior and learning.

Parker-Athill’s other work includes understanding the role of the immune system in neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD). She has directed laboratories and mentored student researchers in projects aimed at understanding how environment influences behavior on a molecular level. She is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and an active member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science.

Maria Rosa

George & Carol Milne Assistant Professor of Biology

Education
B.S., The City College of New York
M.S., Ph.D., University of Connecticut

Maria Rosa's research focuses on the application of new techniques to enrich our understanding of how organismal physiology and morphology impacts marine invertebrate life history, performance, and ecology, and, in turn, affects the ecosystems these organisms inhabit. Suspension-feeding bivalve molluscs in near-shore marine waters have proven to be excellent study systems for addressing these questions.

All of Rosa's work has the advantage of being accessible and inclusive for younger aspiring scientists, with methods that are easy for students to learn. Students in her lab are currently working on a project monitoring environmental conditions and doing passive sampling along the Connecticut College shoreline. This includes field sampling, and monitoring of plants and animals being re-introduced to the area. Besides ongoing research on local organisms and habitats, Professor Rosa has also started participating in marine ecology and conservation projects in Colombia.

Manali Sheth

John D. MacArthur Assistant Professor of Education

Education
B.A., M.S.Ed., Northwestern University
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Manali Sheth’s research interests focus on disrupting educational injustices experienced by students of color in their capacities as knowers and learners. Specifically, she examines how teaching and learning environments exacerbate educational inequities as well as how pedagogical practices can cultivate justice-oriented educational experiences for students of color.

Currently, Sheth is engaged in research projects that examine how intersectional oppressions constrain learning opportunities for Women Non-Binary People of Color (WNBPoC), how feminist critical race pedagogy can create anti-oppressive learning opportunities, and how pre-service science teachers engage with power-conscious counterstories to develop justice-oriented stances towards science education.

Ayako Takamori

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Education
B.A., Smith College
M.A., Ph.D., New York University

Ayako Takamori’s research is driven by an enduring interest in how belonging and identities are negotiated and mediated across borders and in post-conflict contexts. She is completing a book, Traversing Borders: Japanese American Positionings in Japan, about Japanese American transpacific migration as shaped through the shifting history of US-Japan relations.

Takamori brings a unique background to the department that includes gender and sexuality studies and anthropology, as well as postdoctoral experience at the University of Tokyo through the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, during which she began research in Okinawa on military occupation and mixed-race politics. She is currently writing on transnational debates about cultural appropriation and the semiotics of racial representations in global popular media. Her most recent project thinks comparatively through the racialization of wilderness spaces, particularly at the intersection of embodiment and outdoor sports in ecological imaginings.

New Faculty

New Faculty

Meet the new faculty:

Rachel Black

Stephen Douglass

Eric Fleury

Karen Buenavista Hanna

Rashelle Litchmore

Di Luo

Daniel Maser

E. Carla Parker-Athill

Maria Rosa

Manali Sheth

Ayako Takamori

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