Academic role models: Spotlight on MCLA faculty
MCLA's primary focus for faculty is on teaching. But the 83 full-time faculty members who teach there are also publishing books and articles, conducting research, and heading unique, groundbreaking projects that combine academic disciplines.
In true liberal arts tradition, this academic work helps MCLA faculty members contribute to larger bodies of research, collaborate with other institutions, explore new ideas, and deepen their expertise. It also makes its way into the classroom, giving students opportunities to serve internships, co-author publications, and conduct experiments.
Just over a third of MCLA's faculty members joined the campus community in the past six years, bringing new perspective, connections, and academic opportunities to MCLA students.
For instance, the work of two MCLA English professors was recently highlighted in a special themed issue of the prestigious national magazine Art in America. Victoria Papa and Caren Beilin, both assistant professors of English and communications, overlap in areas of expertise—Papa studies the intersections between care, creative expression, and the survival of structural forms of trauma, while Beilin's recent book "Blackfishing the IUD" explores reproductive health and the IUD, gendered illness, medical gaslighting, and activism in the chronic illness community.
Papa co-directs CARE SYLLABUS, a program in partnership with MASS MoCA, which presents modules guest-curated by interdisciplinary artists and scholars who highlight artistic expression, activism, and thinking around the history of care and the way our societal attitudes around care are shifting. Beilin sits on its advisory collective, along with several other MCLA professors and museum professionals. CARE SYLLABUS has developed themed modules and in-person and virtual events since fall 2020, covering everything from the displacement of indigenous objects from their peoples to disability justice.
Professor of Philosophy Paul Nnodim's
newest book, "Beyond Justice as Fairness: Rethinking Rawls from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," was recently named the American Library Association's CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2021. The book, which continues Dr. Nnodim's studies of the works of the contemporary American philosopher John Rawls, was called "a brilliant achievement on several levels" by Dr. Nir Eisikovits of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and "a tour de force" by Williams College Professor Brahim El Guabli. Nnodim, a longtime MCLA faculty member who has published extensively, shared his completed work with his students during a spring 2021 seminar on Rawls, with the book as supplemental reading. His students are also mentioned in the book's acknowledgments.
In the MCLA Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, you might run into Professor of Physics
Emily Maher, whose research in experimental particle physics has allowed her to collaborate with R1 institutions and conduct experiments at FermiLab, America's particle physics and accelerator laboratory. Maher's colleague,
Associate Professor of Physics Kebra Ward, is currently in South Africa on a Fulbright Scholarship, conducting physics education
research at Nelson Mandela University. MCLA's physics professors tend to really get to know their students, and their guidance and work empowering MCLA's Society of Physics Students led to
national recognition for the chapter and its students in 2021.
During the 2020 and 2021 school years, MCLA professors of anthropology, art, arts management, and English collaborated with MCLA Arts & Culture to delve into
Hostile Terrain 94, a multisite, interactive installation that illustrates, in stark terms, the violence of United States border policies by memorializing the thousands of people who have perished seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Leading up to a full exhibition, students interacted with visiting
artists, helped create some of the work that was displayed, and created pieces that respond to questions posed within the context of Hostile Terrain's subject matter.
"It's been really fun to have these conversations across different disciplines, from English to Anthropology to Art and Arts Management, and see where the common threads are as educators, as scholars, and as people," said MCLA Assistant Professor of Anthropology Anna Jaysane-Darr said. "I feel like this kind of interdisciplinary work is at the foundation of what a liberal arts college does. For me, Hostile Terrain epitomizes what we're trying to accomplish here, but also what I hope to do with my teaching and all of my work."
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