Eight Holy Cross Faculty Members are Promoted to Full Professor Status

WORCESTER, Mass. – The following members of the College of the Holy Cross faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor, effective at the beginning of the 2008 – 2009 academic year:

Donald R. Brand, of the political science department, received his B.A. from Williams College, and was an instructor at Holy Cross from 1981 – 1983, before earning his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Brand came back to Holy Cross in 1995 and was chair of the political science department from 2001-06. He specializes in American politics, government, and the presidency and has provided expert commentary to numerous media outlets. Brand is the author of Corporatism and the Rule of Law: A Study of the National Recovery Administration (Cornell University Press, 1988), and numerous articles in journals such as Political Science Quarterly and Political Science Reviewer.  He serves as the faculty advisor to the Holy Cross College Republicans and is currently working on a book titled Constitutionalizing the American Administrative State. He resides in Shrewsbury, Mass.

M. Estrella Cibreiro-Couce, of the modern languages and literatures department, received her early university education in Spain and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1991, she specializes in contemporary women's writing; 20th-century Spanish theater, film and cultural studies; and feminism and literature. She developed two new courses for Holy Cross’  First-Year Program and the College Honors Program. She was recently appointed the global society cluster director for Montserrat, the College’s new universal program for first-year students designed to integrate more effectively academic, co-curricular and residential experiences. She is the author of Palabra de mujer: Hacia la reivindicación y actualización del discurso feminista español (A Women’s World: Towards the Vindication and Contextualization of Spanish Feminist Discourse) (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2007) and has been published in numerous scholarly journals both in the U.S. and abroad. She resides in Tolland, Conn. Francisco Gago-Jover, of the department of modern languages and literatures, received his B.A. from the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain, and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A member of the Holy Cross community since 1996, Gago-Jover has been chair of the department of modern languages and literatures since 2004. He has received two Hewlett-Mellon grants to develop course materials at Holy Cross. He is author of Arte de bien morir y Breve confesionario (1999) and Vocabulario militar castellano, siglos XIII-XV (2002), co-author of Lexical Studies of Medieval Spanish Texts (2004) and Diccionario militar de Raimundo Sanz (2007); since 2002 he has been one of the editors of the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language. Gago-Jover resides in Worcester, Mass. Edward Isser, of the theatre department, has worked on Broadway, off Broadway and in regional theatre as an actor, stage manager and production manager prior to earning a joint doctorate in drama and humanities from Stanford University.  After teaching two years in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania as a lecturer in theatre arts, Isser joined the Holy Cross faculty in 1995 and has served as chair of the theatre department since 2004. He is the author of Stages of Annihilation: Theatrical Representations of the Holocaust (Fairleigh Dickinson, UP, 1997) and has published articles and reviews in numerous journals including Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Essays in Theater, The Shakespeare Bulletin, and The Bernard Shaw Annual.  Last year, he directed Shakespeare’s Richard III, presented by the Redfeather Theatre Company featuring professional actors, members of the Worcester community and Holy Cross students and alumni. This summer, he will direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Redfeather as part of the 2008 Worcester Shakespeare Festival. Isser is a resident of West Greenwich, R.I. Sarah Stanbury, of the English department, earned her B.A. from Bennington College and her Ph.D. from Duke University. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1992, she served as chair of the English department from 1997-99.  A recipient of the Arthur J. O’Leary Faculty Recognition Award, Stanbury has lectured throughout the U.S. and abroad. She is the author of The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and is co-editor with Virginia Raguin, professor of visual arts at Holy Cross, of Women’s Space: Patronage, Place and Gender in the Medieval Church (SUNY Press, 2005). Her publications also include four other monographs, editions, and essay collections. She developed a Web site with Raguin titled Mapping Margery Kempe: A Guide to Late Medieval and Spiritual Life, which was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Stanbury lives in Providence, R.I. Karsten R. Stueber, of the philosophy department, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Tübingen in Germany. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1990, he has served as chair of the philosophy department since 2007. Stueber, whose research interests include the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of social science, and the philosophy of language, is a well-known scholar exploring the philosophical and psychological foundations of interpersonal understanding and empathy. He is the author of two books: Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk-Psychology and the Human Sciences (MIT Press, 2006), Donald Davidsons Theorie Sprachlichen Verstehens (Anton Hain, 1993) and co-editor of two anthologies: Philosophie der Skepsis (utb 1996) and Empathy and Agency: the Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences (Westview, 2000). He has also been published in numerous journals including Erkenntnis, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, History and Theory, and Philosophical Studies. Stueber lives with his family in Sturbridge, Mass. Helen M. Whall, of the English department, received her B.A. from Emmanuel College and her M. Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University. A member of the College faculty since 1976, she was the director of Holy Cross’ First-Year Program from 1997-9, director of the College Honors Program from 1987-89, and was speaker of the faculty from 2000-02. A recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997, she is the author of To Instruct and Delight: Didactic Method in Five Tudor Dramas (Garland, 1988), editor of Shakespeare Envisioned: Interfaces Vol. 25, 2006-07, and has been published in numerous scholarly journals. An expert in Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, modern drama and comic theory, Whall lectures extensively throughout the New England Library System. She resides in Worcester, Mass, where she previously served on the Citizen's Advisory Counsel and is currently serving on the district Hearing Committee for the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.

De-Ping Yang, of the physics department, earned his B.S. from Nanjing University in China and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. A member of Holy Cross faculty since 1994, he served as chair of the physics department from 2004-07. He is currently an adjunct associate professor for the Graduate School at the University of Connecticut and for the Center for Drug Discovery, Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. He is co-author of Mössbauer Effect in Lattice Dynamics (Wiley-VCH 2007), has written several book chapters, and has been published in numerous scholarly journals including the Journal of Physics, Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. Yang lives in Auburn, Mass.