Fellowships, Grants & Other Achievements

Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Alec Arellano gave a lecture entitled "Continuity and Change: John Dewey on Navigating Democratic Identity" at Southern Oregon University. Professor Arellano’s May 2023 lecture contributed to SOU's annual campus theme speaker series. His talk highlighted how the vision of post-Christian spirituality elaborated in Dewey's book "A Common Faith" contains a valuable yet under-explored component of Dewey's account of the dispositions of character that are requisite for democratic citizenship.

Assistant Professor of Physics Sabrina Stierwalt gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the main professional society for astronomers in the United States. She highlighted the student research being done in the Oxy Galaxy Group and received a standing ovation from the ~3,000 people in the audience.

 

Assistant Professor of Politics Isaac Hale and his co-investigator have been awarded a Centennial Center Research Grant from the American Political Science Association. The grant funds their upcoming research on the 2022 US midterm elections, in which they will field nationally-representative surveys that examine whether candidates' choices to emphasize certain issues over others affects how voters behave.

 

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.

 

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.