14 Faculty Promoted, 2 Conferred Tenure

The following faculty were conferred tenure, effective July 1, 2021, by the Board of Trustees at its most recent meeting:

• Ioana Emy Matesan, Associate Professor of Government
• Michael Meere, Associate Professor of French

Ioana Emy Matesan, Associate Professor of Government
Professor Matesan’s scholarship focuses on the study of political violence with an emphasis on the Middle East. Her recent book, The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2020), addresses what determines the appeal and spread of violent and nonviolent resistance. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and a book chapter and helped create and administer the Muslim Studies Certificate. She has received the Carol A. Baker ’81 Memorial Prize through the Public Affairs Center and served as a tenure-track representative to Academic Council. She offers courses on Democracy and Dictatorship, Comparative Politics of the Middle East, and Terrorism and Film.

Michael Meere, Associate Professor of French
Professor Meere is an expert in 16th- and 17th-century French drama. He is the author of the forthcoming monograph Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy: Performance, Ethics, and Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2021), editor of French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory (University of Delaware Press, 2015), and co-editor with Valérie M. Dionne of Staging Justice in Early Modern France, a special issue of Early Modern French Studies (2020). He has served on the Fulbright committee, the Watson Fellowship committee, and the Advisory Board of the Fries Center for Global Studies. His courses include French and Francophone Theater in Performance, Elementary French, and Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe.

They join three other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring.

In addition, 14 faculty members are being promoted.

• Jane Alden, Professor of Music
• Sarah Carney, Associate Professor of the Practice in Psychology
• Sonali Chakravarti, Professor of Government
• Lisa Dombrowski, Professor of Film Studies
• Christiaan Hogendorn, Professor of Economics
• Abigail Hornstein, Professor of Economics
• Dalit Katz, Adjunct Professor of Religion
• Douglas Martin, Associate Professor of the Practice in Creative Writing
• Paula Matthusen, Professor of Music
• Michelle Murolo, Professor of the Practice in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
• Brian Northrop, Professor of Chemistry
• Seth Redfield, Professor of Astronomy
• Andrea Roberts, Professor of the Practice in Chemistry
• Steven Stemler, Professor of Psychology

Jane Alden, Professor of Music
Professor Alden is a leading scholar of 15th-century European music and culture who has expanded her research into the field of 20th-century experimental notation. She received a Professorial Fellowship from Trinity College Dublin, where she served as full professor and chair of the music department. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and one full-length compact disc recording with her choir, the Vocal Constructivists. She has several more articles, in both her primary and new fields of research, and a book manuscript on the Scratch Orchestra in progress. She offers courses on Tonal Harmony, Music History, Musicology, and music’s relationship to the cosmos.

Sarah Carney, Associate Professor of the Practice in Psychology
Professor Carney is a social psychologist with an expertise in forensics. She has worked as a psychological consultant and mitigation specialist with the Connecticut Capital Defender’s Office on several capital/death penalty cases. Her current research examines cultural representations of crime and criminals in children’s television, analyzing cartoon criminals from the 1940s to today, and comparing these cartoon criminals with the representations of crime in adult police dramas. Professor Carney offers courses on Foundations of Contemporary Psychology, Psychology and the Law, and Research Methods in Social Psychology.

Sonali Chakravarti, Professor of Government
Professor Chakravarti’s research draws on the history of political thought to examine modern questions of justice. She examines the effects of extraordinary political moments, the value of democratic institutional design, and the participation of laypeople in the legal process. She has recently published a book, Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and several peer-reviewed articles in such journals as Chicago-Kent Journal of Law, Political Theory, and Journal of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. She recently published analyses of the jury in the Chauvin trial in the Boston Review, the Nation, and the Atlantic. Her courses include Modern Political Thought, What is the Good Life?, Citizens, Judges, Juries: Who Decides in Democracy?, and Transitional Justice.

Lisa Dombrowski, Professor of Film Studies
Professor Dombrowski’s scholarship focuses on film art, industry, and culture. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming ReFocus: The Later Works and Legacy of Robert Altman (Edinburgh University Press, 2021); the author of The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! (Wesleyan University Press, 2008); the editor of Kazan Revisited (Wesleyan University Press, 2011); and has published in Film History, Film Quarterly, Film Comment, The New York Times, and the Criterion Collection. She is an editorial board member of The Velvet Light Trap and a recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She offers courses in American independent cinema, East Asian cinema, Hong Kong cinema, and global art cinema.

Christiaan Hogendorn, Professor of Economics
Professor Hogendorn is an economist who studies infrastructure industries—particularly telecommunications and internet platforms—and their effects on related industries such as news, software, and internet content. He has published peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals including Economic Analysis and Policy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, International Economics and Economic Policy, and Journal of Industrial Economics. He has served as co-editor in chief of Information Economics and Policy since 2017 and was program chair of the 2020 TPRC: The Research Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy. He teaches courses on microeconomic theory, media economics, and industrial organization.

Abigail Hornstein, Professor of Economics
Professor Hornstein’s scholarship focuses on corporate finance, multinationals, business strategy and governance, and legal institutions, with particular expertise in the Chinese financial markets. Her work has been published in many prestigious journals, including Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Journal of Corporate Finance, and China Economic Review. She has twice been a Mellon Foundation Summer Fellow, as well as a Ford Foundation/Aspen Institute Fellow. Her teaching includes Corporate Finance, Econometrics, The Multinational Enterprise, Financial Analysis, and Investment Finance.

Dalit Katz, Adjunct Professor of Religion
Professor Katz is an expert in the Hebrew language and modern Israeli culture. In her work, she created a new teaching model combining language skills with cultural events. She collaborates with authors, filmmakers, and actors as she organizes the annual Contemporary Israeli Voices series and the Ring Family Wesleyan University Israeli Film Festival. She serves as the chair of the Film Committee for the Association for Jewish Studies. She is the founding director of the Center for Jewish Studies. She successfully proposed to the Education Policy Committee that the certificate in Jewish and Israel studies be changed to a minor. She offers courses on Hebrew language, Hebrew literature, and Israeli cinema.

Douglas Martin, Associate Professor of the Practice in Creative Writing
Professor Martin is an author of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as poetry and prose, whose works have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. Their recent novel, Wolf (Nightboat Books, 2020), is described as “an anti-true crime novel about abuse, patricide and Southern working class life.” Their novels have been nominated for the Lambda Award and Ferro-Grumley Award, and their first novel, Outline of My Lover (Soft Skull Press, 2000), was a Times Literary Supplement International Book of the Year. Professor Martin teaches Intermediate and Advanced Fiction Workshops, Techniques in Nonfiction, and Seminars in Creative Writing.

Paula Matthusen, Professor of Music
Professor Matthusen is a composer who creates electroacoustic and acoustic music and sound installations. Her work has been performed throughout America and Europe. Recent performances include the Caramoor Festival, the Bang on a Can Marathon, and 9 Evenings +50 at the Fridman Gallery. Recent recorded compositions have been released through New Amsterdam Records, New Focus Recordings, Carrier Records, Cantaloupe Records, Innova, A Circle Records, and AntiCausal Systems. Matthusen’s recent collaborations with ensembles and performers include TIGUE, Brooklyn Rider, Experiments in Opera, Splinter Reeds, Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition’s Grossman Ensemble, Dither, Metropolis Ensemble, Loadbang Ensemble, SpacePants, Michi Wiancko, Al Cerulo, and Terri Hron. Recent awards include residencies from the Copland House, ACRE, The Hambidge Center, a Composers Now Residency at Pocantico, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Artists at Albatross Reach, and Konstepidemin.

Michelle Murolo, Professor of the Practice in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Professor Murolo is a molecular microbiologist who serves as the faculty advisor for the MB&B student group The Major Groove. For the past three years, she has served as coordinator for Wesleyan’s American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which spans four departments, and she works with students to apply for national ASBMB awards and honors. She works extensively with 15 teaching assistants each semester and is the only faculty member to interact with all students who progress through the life science majors. She has been involved with WesMaSS and the NSM Coalition for several years. She teaches Principles of Biology I Lecture and all of the Principles of Biology I and II Laboratory sections.

Brian Northrop, Professor of Chemistry
Professor Northrop’s research uses synthetic, physical organic, and computational chemistry to investigate reaction mechanisms and to design and synthesize new organic materials. Potential uses of these new materials include organic semiconductors and luminescent compounds, functional polymers, and self-assembling systems. He has received numerous awards, including the 2015 Thieme Chemistry Journals Award and a prestigious five-year $537,561 Career grant from the National Science Foundation in 2014-2019. He teaches Principles of Organic Chemistry, Nanomaterials Laboratory, Structure & Mechanism, and Seminar in Organic & Inorganic Chemistry.

Seth Redfield, Professor of Astronomy
Professor Redfield studies the local interstellar medium (gas and dust floating around the nearest stars) and the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. Using high-resolution spectroscopy, he is able to measure physical properties such as composition, density, temperature, and motion to gain a clearer understanding of these areas of space and the prospects of life elsewhere in the galaxy. He has published over 125 articles in refereed journals and has received nearly $900,000 in research funding from many organizations including NASA, NSF, and Space Telescope Science Institute. He offers courses on Exploring the Cosmos, Introduction to Astrophysics, Planetary Science, and Exoplanets.

Andrea Roberts, Professor of the Practice in Chemistry
Professor Roberts focuses her teaching on connecting students’ educational experience to real-world solutions. She developed a service-learning course that provides hands-on science activities for Middletown students in an after-school program. She has received the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Roberts and Professor Kate Birney have been collaborating on a research project for chemistry majors, supported by the National Science Foundation, in archaeological chemistry. She serves as the faculty advisor for the chemistry majors’ group the Free Radicals, and will serve as the advisor for the incoming POSSE class. She offers the Integrated Chemistry Laboratory, Introductory Chemistry, and Informal Science Education for Elementary School Students.

Steven Stemler, Professor of Psychology
Professor Stemler’s scholarship examines the purposes of schooling and the ways those purposes are measured. He uses scientific methods to assess abilities, competencies, and expertise, and to develop innovative assessments of outcomes associated with the broad purposes of schooling (e.g., creativity, cultural competence, ethical reasoning). He has published peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals including Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation; Thinking Skills and Creativity; Journal of Educational Psychology; and Perspectives on Psychological Science, and his work has been cited over 8,900 times. Professor Stemler teaches courses on the Foundations of Contemporary Psychology, Psychological Measurement, Educational Psychology, and the Psychology of Conflict Resolution. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the College of Education Studies at Wesleyan.