Spring 2021 Faculty Highlights

Read our Spring 2021 BPATS newsletter
In April 2021, Ujju Aggarwal, Assistant Professor, served as invited Panel Discussant, American Education Research Association, “How Grassroots Activism Can Challenge Marketization of Schools” and provided an invited lecture, Feminist Ethnographic Methods (Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of Qualitative Research, at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Aggarwal served as an invited mentor, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Mentor, Postdoctoral and Dissertation Fellows Retreat. She co-organized an event, Beyond Hate Crimes: Abolition and Anti-Asian Violence (co-organized with Professor Laura Liu as part of joint initiative, Praxis Tank and AANAPISI Bridge Initiative BMCC/CUNY). In March 2021, Aggarwal was a speaker at Organizing and the Politics of Care Panel, Initiative for the Study of Power, Politics, and Organizing in the U.S., The New School, and co-organized an event, Secure Futures or Futures of Scarcity? The University’s Role in Environmental and Agrarian Justice. Lastly, Aggarwal served as Faculty Co-Convener for Revolutionary Feminisms to Re/Make the World, “As for Protocols Series” Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School (co-organized with Professor Laura Liu as part of joint initiative, Praxis Tank).
Jonathan Bach, Professor of Global Studies, received the Distinguished University Teaching Award for 2021. Bach also guest edited a special issue of the journal German Politics and Society together with New School alumnus Benjamin Nienass on “Myths of Innocence in German Public Memory.” In the issue, Bach published the article “Brand of Brothers? The Humboldt Forum and the Myths of Innocence” and co-authored the introduction “Innocence and the Politics of Memory.”
Erin Cho, Dean of SUS, has published four articles in the space of human-computer interactions and entrepreneurship in the current academic year. They include “Effectuation (EF) and causation (CS) on venture performance and entrepreneurs’ dispositions affecting the reliance on EF and CS,” published in Entrepreneurship Research Journal (with Yoon); “Motivation and Evaluation Criteria Influencing Consumer Experience of One-Person Media,” in International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (with Ju); “Digital atmosphere of fashion retail stores,” in Fashion and Textile (with Kim, Lee, & Jung); and “Can an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) be your friend? Para-friendship development mechanism between IPAs and their users,” in Computers in Human Behavior (with Ki). She is confirmed to be an organizer for the 12th international conference on Artificial Intelligence, entitled “Boundless: Aesthetics, Human Experience, and Intelligence for the New Normal” in collaboration with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Alexandra Délano Alonso, Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Global Studies, published “Brotes” a book of poetry and photographs created during the first wave of COVID-19. Published by Elefanta Editorial and Interstitial Press. The latter was recently founded by NSSR PhD candidate, Macushla Robinson. “Brotes” was featured in an interview in the Brooklyn Rail with Sandra Rozental.
Julia Foulkes, Professor of History and Coordinator of Prior Learning, wrote an essay addressing The New School’s entrenched structural inequities in Public Seminar, “Reckoning with The New School’s Legacies.” She has also been selected as a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library for 2021-22, where she will work on her book on the rise of New York as a capital of culture in the 20th century. Learn more in this press release.
Terri Gordon, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, organized a bilingual panel in April 2021 with Las Tesis, the Chilean performance collective whose flash mob dance, “A Rapist in Your Path” (“Un violador en tu camino”) has been performed in over 50 countries in the world. The conversation was part of the Inaugural Symposium of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute, “Gender Matters.” Gordon has also organized a panel on the politics of protest in contemporary Chile for the Memory Studies Association Conference in Warsaw, Poland in July 2021. She will give a talk entitled, “‘Memory is Not for Sale:’ The ‘Venda Sexy’ and the Politics of Memory in Chile.”
Margarita Gutman, Professor of Urban Studies and International Affairs, was a panelist in an event on May 19, 2021 in which The Observatory on Latin America OLA and Café de las Ciudades presented Gutman’s edited book “Inclusion and tensions in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin. Dilemmas of socio-spatial integration in Buenos Aires”. Gutman also presented in the event of the launching of the Program 2084 Imagined Futures from the South on April 28, 2021.
Rachel Heiman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, was a Spring 2021 Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Timon McPhearson, Urban Systems Lab Director and GLUE Associate Professor, is co-editor and author of a new book, “Resilient Urban Futures” (image below). This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change, and addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. McPhearson is also co-author of a new Op-Ed in The Hill, “Invest in America’s nature-based infrastructure” (image below). In the piece they highlight the urgent need to invest in nature-based infrastructure, parks, trails and biocultural conservation through the America Jobs Plan, and co-author of the following new journal articles: McPhearson, T., Grabowski, Z., Herreros-Cantis, P., Mustafa, A., Ortiz, L., Kennedy, C., Tomateo, C., Lopez, B., Olivotto, V., & Vantu, A. (2021). Pandemic Injustice: Spatial and Social Distributions of COVID-19 in the US Epicenter. Journal of Extreme Events, 2150007. McPhearson was a co-presenter of 2 sessions at the 2021 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting: Hazards, Risks, and Disasters: VGI & Risk Perception, and Applying a Source-to-Impact flood risk assessment to identify priority areas for green infrastructure interventions in a sewershed in Syracuse, NY. Additionally, he was a Keynote speaker at the The Nature of Cities Festival 2021. His presentation was titled: “Global insights and challenges on Nature-based solutions for urban climate resilience.” Additionally, McPhearson was named a member of the World Economic Forum’s Commission on BiodiverCities. Lastly, The NYC Mayors office released the first ever citywide Stormwater Resiliency Plan, which includes an analysis of flooding caused by extreme rainfall events. The Urban Systems Lab and McPhearson co-led the development of a hydrologic model of flooding, and simulation of citywide flood exposure for twenty current and future storm scenarios as part of the Town + Gown Taskforce.
Raúl Rubio, BPATS Affiliated Faculty, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies & Chair of Languages, has been appointed to the Executive Committee of the (MLA) Modern Languages Association’s (ADFL) the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. The committee contributes to the MLA’s and ADFL’s various projects, including its Summer Seminars for leaders in languages and other humanities disciplines, the ADFL-MLA Consultancy Service, the ADFL’s discussion list for chairs (ADFLCH-L@lists.mla.org), and the association’s refereed journal ADFL Bulletin. The committee advises the director, sets priorities for the association and steers the association projects. The committee’s mission is twofold: It seeks to build a committee that reflects the linguistic, geographic, and institutional diversity of language, literature, and cultural studies programs at postsecondary institutions in North America, and to include colleagues whose backgrounds and professional experiences can offer diverse examples of departmental leadership. Fifty years after the first elected ADFL Executive Committee took office in January 1971, the MLA is delighted to report the committee’s expansion from nine to twelve members and to present the most linguistically and institutionally diverse committee in the association’s history. The new committee members are Stacey Katz Bourns (French linguistics), Northeastern University; Luciana Fellin (Italian), Duke University; Américo Mendoza-Mori (Quechua), University of Pennsylvania; Leonard Muaka (Swahili), Howard University; Raúl Rubio (Spanish), The New School; and Jiwei Xiao (Chinese), Fairfield University.
Joseph Salvatore,Associate Professor of Writing, has authored a short story titled “Forsaken,” which appears in the recently released fiction anthology Minor Characters, edited by Jaime Clarke (the founding editor of Post Road literary journal), with a Foreword by Jonathan Lethem, and an Introduction by Laura van den Berg. This Warholian enterprise has produced a unique and stirring collection that both stands on its own and enriches the standalone novels in Clarke’s trilogy. Featuring original stories by Mona Awad, Christopher Boucher, Kenneth Calhoun, Nina de Gramont, Ben Greenman, Annie Hartnett, Owen King, Neil LaBute, J. Robert Lennon, Lauren Mechling, Shelly Oria, Stacey Richter, Joseph Salvatore, Andrea Seigel, and Daniel Torday. “Clarke has done more, even, than Vonnegut in setting his characters free: he’s flipped foreground and background, and at the same time invited others in to browse, and revise, and interfere with, and extend, his fictional who’s who.”—Jonathan Lethem, from his foreword. The anthology was mentioned in The New York Times Book Review “New and Noteworthy”, and is available at Bookshop.
Val Vinokur,Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Director of Jewish Culture, published the 12th installment (“ZOOM/MUSE”) of his serial poem “The Big Cats” on Public Seminar.
Gina Luria Walker, Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of The New Historia, an initiative of Feminist Historical Recovery, moderated the event “Women’s/Feminist Legacy at The New School: Founding Mother Ruth S. Baldwin and the Struggle for Racial Justice” on April 29, 2021 with SPE Media Studies faculty Savanna Washington. In celebration of International Women’s Day, Walker gave an online lecture on March 13, 2021 to the faculty about The New Historia at the School of Theology, the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of the Monotheistic Religions (CISMOR) at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. Professor Walker also gave the concluding keynote, “Where Are the Women in Eternity?” on March 5-6, 2021 at the online Classics conference, “‘Modern’ Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity” based at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Mia White, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, received the Outstanding Achievements in Social Justice Teaching Award. On May 24th, White was a guest speaker in the event presenting Melissa Checker’s — author of Polluted Promises and co-editor of Sustainability in the Global City — vital new book, The Sustainability Myth.
The Urban Systems Lab welcomes Emma Jane Geisler, Wes Thomason, and Jennifer Simonton as their Summer Student and Research Assistants.