Celebrating Scholarship

Payton Small, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science, received a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation for his study entitled “Investigating the Impact of the 2023 Supreme Court Decision on College Admissions Decisions and Student Identity Disclosure.” His research project will explore the impact of recent Supreme Court rulings on the admissions landscape.

Professor of History and International Relations on the Shirley Ecker Boskey Chair Bob Brigham is the author of a new book being published by the University of Chicago Press. Brigham’s memoir, This is a True War Story, captures the improbable intertwining of his professional and personal history and the Vietnam War.

Mark Andrews, Emeritus Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, wrote the introduction, and with Professor Lizabeth Paravisini, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, co-translated the poems in their anthology, Looting Hummingbirds: Selected Poems of Daniel Thaly, Poet of Dominica. The edited volume, in French and English, is published by Papillote Press, which specializes in publishing monographs on the Caribbean.

The Huntington has awarded Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair and Chair of Hispanic Studies, with the year-long Avery Distinguished Fellowship in the Humanities for her book project entitled, The Mighty Ceiba: Sacred Tree of the American Tropics.

Associate Professor of English Tracy O'Neill was honored with a 2025 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Writing. The Fellows are chosen through a competitive nomination and jury process for each discipline: visual arts, writing, and composing.

Abigail Schwartz, Class of 2027, was awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant by Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology, in support of her mentored research project on disordered eating behaviors among college students.

Jenny Magnes, Professor of Physics, and Juan Merlo-Ramírez, Associate Professor of Physics, recently published a new book, Optical Interference and Dynamic Diffraction: Research methods for undergraduates. Their book introduces Dynamic Optical Diffraction (DOD), developed by Professor Magnes, and draws on both authors’ pedagogical experience to “fill in the elementary material often omitted from the literature on diffraction and Fourier transforms,” mathematical tools that help analyze signal frequencies.

Amitava Kumar, Professor of English, is author of the recently published The Social Life of Indian Trains (Aleph Book Company, 2025), part of Aleph’s “Essential India” series.

Paul Kane, Professor Emeritus of English, recently released “Intimations” (Modern Sounds, 2025), a music and poetry recording with the avant-garde jazz ensemble The String Trio of New York, led by guitarist James Emery.