Georges Van Den Abbeele, founding dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, recently announced nine new faculty hires. The College welcomes the addition of these accomplished scholars.
Neal Lerner
Associate Professor, English & Director of the Writing Center
Professor Lerner comes to us most recently from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught Writing Across the Curriculum and, since 2007, was the Director of Training in Communication Instruction. From 1997-2002, he taught at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Professor Lerner received his Ed.D. in Literacy, Language, and Cultural Studies from Boston University in 1996. Professor Lerner has recently published two books: Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT, with Mya Poe and Jennifer Craig (MIT Press, 2010), and The Idea of a Writing Laboratory (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), as well as many articles on composition history and pedagogy. His current project pairs a history of Preston W. Search, a reform-minded nineteenth-century superintendent of the Holyoke, MA, school system, with a study of current English classes at Holyoke High School.
Ramiro Martinez
Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice & Sociology and Anthropology
Professor Martinez received his PhD from The Ohio State University in 1993. He was formerly an Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, an affiliated Professor in Black American Studies, and on the faculty in the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies at the University of Delaware. Professor Martinez has held appointed and elected positions in the American Society of Criminology, the American Sociological Association, and is on the editorial board of the journal Criminology. He is a member of the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR) located at the Heinz School of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a member of the Sloan Youth Violence Working Group at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Dr. Martinez has also held fellowships from the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Minority Fellowship Program, the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program and The Ohio State University. He has received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Science Foundation, NCOVR and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He has published extensively in the area of ethnicity, homicide and violence research.
Valentine Moghadam
Director, International Affairs & Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Born in Iran, Professor Moghadam has devoted much research to development, social change, and gender in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan, but she also studies and publishes on the social and gender dynamics of globalization. Her first book, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (1993, 2003) was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 1993-94. Her third book, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (2005) received the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on Women and Politics in 2005 (August, 2006). She worked as Section Chief for UNESCO’s program on Gender Equality and Development, and also directed the Research Program on Women and Development at the United Nations University in Helsinki, Finland. Moghadam has been a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., and is a founding member and past president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, and a founding contributor to the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.
Serena Parekh
Assistant Professor, Philosophy and Religion
Professor Parekh has taught at the University of Connecticut where she was jointly appointed in the Department of Philosophy and the Human Rights Institute. Her primary philosophical interests are in social and political philosophy, feminist theory, continental philosophy, and the philosophy of human rights. Her book, Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights, was published by Routledge in 2008. Though much of her research continues to focus on the philosopher Hannah Arendt, she has recently become interested in, and published articles on, questions of global responsibility, especially for women’s human rights violations; the impact of biotechnology on our autonomy and identity; and refugees and the problem of exclusion.
Uta Poiger
Chair, Department of History
Professor Poiger has held the Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professorship in History at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she also held an Adjunct Professorship in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. With a PhD from Brown University, she is a specialist on modern Germany and European gender history and on the relationship between American and European culture. Professor Poiger has held visiting appointments in the Department of History and in the Program in History and Literature at Harvard University and was a Visiting Fellow at the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies. Her publications include Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany in the series, “Studies on the History of Society and Culture” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); The Modern Girl Around the World: Modernity, Consumption, and Globalization (Durham: Duke, 2008) (co-editor and contributor); and with Heide Fehrenbach, Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (New York: Berghahn, 2000), as well as some twenty-six book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. She is currently completing Beauty and Business in Germany: an International History.
Beryl Schlossman
Professor, English
Professor Schlossman served as Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie-Mellon University from 1993-2010. Previously, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of French at Emory University. Professor Schlossman received her PhD in French and Comparative Literature from the Johns Hopkins University in 1987. She also holds several advanced degrees in Semiotics and in Comparative Literature, from the Universite de Paris VII. Professor Schlossman is the author of three scholarly monographs- Objects of Desire: The Madonnas of Modernism (Cornell University Press, 1999), The Orient of Style: Modernist Allegories of Conversion (Duke University Press, 1991), and Joyce’s Catholic Comedy of Language (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)- as well as many articles and book chapters on topics in European and British Modernism.Among many awards and fellowships, Professor Schlossman has been a fellow of the Camargo Foundation (2007) and the American Council of Learned Societies (2001).
Amy Sliva
Assistant Professor, Political Science & Computer Science
Professor Sliva completed her graduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park with a PhD and M.S.in Computer Science as well as a Master of Public Policy (M.P.P) from the Maryland School of Public Policy. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and involve developing new artificial intelligence models of agent behavior to address problems in security policy, international conflict, and international development. She is currently collaborating with the National Defense University on a project to analyze the nature of cyber warfare and previously worked for the World Bank creating technologies for education development in Nigeria.
Jacob Stowell
Associate Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Professor Stowell received his PhD in sociology from the University at Albany-SUNY. Stowell is originally from California, where he received his BA in sociology from California State University, San Marcos. His research interests are guided by two general themes; communities and crime. More specifically, he is interested in the variation in patterns of violence across immigrant and non-immigrant neighborhoods. Most recently, his research has involved the use of tract-level data collected for a number of U.S. cities to test the question of whether immigration is associated with high levels of lethal and non-lethal violence, as theories of crime expect. Stowell is currently involved in additional research projects with Ramiro Martinez which examine both the spatial and temporal aspects of the immigrant/crime link. Professor Stowell’s methodological interests include mapping, spatial analysis and structural equation modeling. His teaching interests include statistics, research methods, and communities and crime.
Heather Streets-Salter
Associate Professor, History & Director, World History Programs
Professor Salter comes to Northeastern from Washington State University, where she previously served as Associate Professor of History and founding Director of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in World History. She received her PhD from Duke University and is a specialist in British imperial history and world history. Her publications include, Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004, reissued in paperback in Fall, 2010); with Trevor Getz, Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global Perspective (Pearson-Longman, 2010). Streets has served as co-editor of the electronic journal, World History Connected. She is currently working on a new book, Webs of Empire: Connections Across Imperial Boundaries in Southeast Asia.
– Courtesy of the CSSH Dean’s Office
