Holy Cross Announces New Tenure-Track Faculty Hires

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Office of the Dean at the College of the Holy Cross announces the hiring of seventeen new faculty members in tenure-track positions this academic year. They are: Andrea Borghini (assistant professor, philosophy), earned his Ph.D., M.PHIL, and M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University and his LAUREA in philosophy from Universitá degli Studi di Firenze in Florence, Italy.  Formerly, he taught philosophy and core curriculum at Columbia University.  Among his honors, he was the recipient of the Bowdery Fellowship, the GSAS Fellowship, and the Lina Kahn Essay prize, awarded yearly by the department of philosophy at Columbia. He is the author of the forthcoming works “A Dispositional Theory of Possibility” in Dialectica, (Blackwell Publishing) and “Counting Individuals with Leibniz” in Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa.

Rebecca W. Braeu (assistant professor, economics) earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in economics and her B.A. in mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Specializing in macroeconomics and international finance, she has taught at California State University, Northeastern University, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was the recipient of the 2003 Leslie Whittington Fellowship and the 2002 Eric Bouvet Foundation Fellowship in Real Business Cycle Theory.

Barbara L. Craig (assistant professor, theatre) received her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in design and technical theatre and her B.A. from Barnard College in English. From 2004 – 2005, she served as a visiting professor in the theatre department at Holy Cross as a designer and technical director.  Last year, she was a visiting professor of scene design in the theatre and dance department at SUNY in Fredonia, NY.

Gregory J. DiGirolamo (associate professor, psychology) comes to Holy Cross from the University of Cambridge (UK), where he was a tenured lecturer in the department of experimental psychology. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in psychology from the University of Oregon, specializing in cognitive neuroscience, and earned his B.S. in psychology from Lesley College and Harvard University. Recently, he was awarded a grant by the University of Cambridge-Science Research Investment Fund, titled Development of Facilities for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Mary M. Doyle Roche ’90 (assistant professor, religious studies) has been a visiting professor in religious studies at Holy Cross since the fall of 2005. She earned her Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College, her M.A. in theological studies at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, and her B.A. in religious studies from Holy Cross.  Previously she, she taught Perspectives in Western Culture and Christian Theology at Boston College.

Antonis A. Ellinas (assistant professor, political science) received his Ph.D. and M.A. in politics from Princeton University, and his B.A. in world politics from Hamilton College.  Previously, he taught courses in European politics and society, and causes of war, at Princeton.  Recent publications include “Phased Out: The far right in Western Europe,” in Comparative Politics (April 2007), and the forthcoming “The electoral dynamics of far right ascendance: The case of Greece,” in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Among his accomplishments, Ellinas, a Greek native, founded and managed, StockWatch Ltd, the first and most popular online financial newspaper in Cyprus.

Jumi Hayaki (assistant professor, psychology) earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Rutgers University and her B.A. from Yale University. A former postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University, she previously taught at St. Olaf College and Macalester College, both in Minnesota, and at Rutgers University.  Her research program examines deficits in emotion regulation seen among individuals with eating disorders and substance abuse.

Baozhang He (assistant professor, modern language and literature) has been a visiting professor at Holy Cross since 2003.  He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Chinese linguistics from The Ohio State University, and his B.A. in English language and literature form the Beijing Language Institute. He previously taught at the University of Florida, Harvard University, Indiana University, and the University of Michigan. He is co-author (with Claudia Ross, professor of Chinese at Holy Cross) of Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar Workbook, (Routledge, 2006), co-chief-compiler with Mingyang Hu on Elementary Modern Chinese (People’s University Press, China, 2007), and a member of the Chinese SAT committee, where he developed and finalized examination entries.

Timothy A. Joseph ‘98 (assistant professor, Classics) received his B.A. in Classics from Holy Cross and then went on to earn his Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has been an instructor at Holy Cross since 2005 and at Harvard University since 2003. His research interests include Latin historiography and Augustan poetr

David E. Karmon (assistant professor, visual arts) joins the Holy Cross community from Pennsylvania, where he taught art history at the University of Pittsburgh and then at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture at Harvard University, his M.Arch. at the Yale School of Architecture, and his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. Karmon previously served as a lecturer at the American University of Rome, and taught on-site in Rome, Florence, and Siena. Among his honors, he was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Newberry Library. Jude A. Kelley (assistant professor, chemistry) earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale University and his A.B. in chemistry and anthropology from Bowdoin College.  He was previously a postdoctoral appointee at Sandia National Laboratory, a senior applications scientist at RAPT Industries, and a teaching assistant at Yale. Among his professional achievements, he received the Brown Fellowship from Yale and is a member of the American Chemical Society.

Viraj Kumar (instructor, mathematics and computer science) earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in applied statistics and informatics at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and a B.S. in mathematics at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He previously taught in the computer science department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was rated “outstanding” on the Incomplete List of teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students.

Eugenia Lao (instructor, Classics) is pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University.  She received her M.St. in Greek and Latin languages and literatures from the University of Oxford and her A.B. in Classics (Latin) from Harvard-Radcliffe College.  She has taught previously at Colgate University and Princeton. Jennie Germann Molz (assistant professor, sociology and anthropology) earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Lancaster University (UK), her M.A. in popular culture studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. Formerly, she taught at Bowling Green State University and at Lancaster University where she recently completed a research fellowship in the Centre for Mobilities Research. She is co-editor of Mobilizing Hospitality: The Ethics of Social Relations in a Mobile World (Ashgate) which is due out at the end of September.

Stephanie J. Reents (assistant professor, English) received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Arizona, her B.A. at Amherst College, and a second B.A. from Oxford University in England where she was a Rhodes Scholar.  A former Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University, she has published short stories in several publications including, Story Quarterly, Epoch, and The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2006.  She previously taught at Franklin & Marshall College, worked on public education reform in New York City, and wrote for a daily newspaper reporter in rural Idaho.  She is currently at work on a novel.

Thibaut A. Schilt (assistant professor, modern language and literatures) earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in French from The Ohio State University, and his Maitrise in English at the Universite de Nancy 2, in Nancy, France. He previously taught at Bucknell University, Ohio State, The Military Academy of the Transportation Corps in Tours, France, and Ball State University in Muncie, India.

Caroline Yezer (assistant professor, sociology and anthropology) received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Duke University, her M.A. in anthropology from The George Washington University and her B.A. in speech from Northwestern University. Her fieldwork on post-war village life in the Andes was awarded funding by the United States Institute of Peace, the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation and the School for Advanced Research. Yezer’s research on trans-nationalism, indigenous peasants, structural violence, war, and peacekeeping inform her courses on the dirty wars and drug wars in Latin America, indigenous rights and cultural politics, and current issues of transnational aid, human rights, and reparations.  She is also currently developing classes on the growth of Pentecostalism and born-again Christianity in the third world.