FACULTY BIOS

Fall 2007

 

Paul Arcerio

Paul J. Arciero is a professor in the Exercise Science Department at Skidmore College in his 13th year. Professor Arciero received his undergraduate degree from Central Connecticut State University, two Masters of Science degrees, one from Purdue University in Exercise Physiology and one from the University of Vermont in Nutritional Sciences. He received his Doctorate in exercise physiology from Springfield College and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Applied Physiology from Washington University School of Medicine. Professor Arciero has published over 20 peer-reviewed science research studies focusing on nutritional/food intake, physical activity, type II diabetes, aging, caffeine and cardiometabolic health and has received over $650,000 of grant funding to support his nutritional research. Professor Arciero serves as a research article and book reviewer for over 20 science journals and textbook publishers on a regular basis and his published research has been cited by popular news and media publications such as, The Wall Street Journal, Self Magazine, Prevention Magazine, Elle, and Women’s World. Professor Arciero’s teaching interests include the influence of specific nutritional and physical activity interventions that enhance overall health for individuals of all ages. When he’s not teaching or conducting experiments in the laboratory, Professor Arciero is spending time with his wife and three sons. Although he has been known to enjoy playing hockey, tennis, or basketball and even bicycling.

 

Erica Bastress-Dukehart

Professor Bastress-Dukehart received a B.S. in European History, University of Oregon; M.A. and Ph.D. in Early Modern European History, U.C. Berkeley.  Her research interests include inheritance practices in Medieval and Early Modern Southwest Germany; family history and writing memory; women and the emotions of inheritance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

 

Susan Belden

In fall 2000 Susan joined Skidmore College as an associate professor of management and business. Susan’s business experience includes two years as a research economist for Citicorp Mortgage Bank and four-plus years as Editor of the No-Load Fund Analyst, a nationally recognized investment newsletter published by Litman/Gregory. Susan was a partner and member of the investment policy committee at Litman/Gregory, also a registered investment advisor.  Susan’s economic policy research has been published in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Her applied, investment research has been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Money, Smart Money, Kiplingers, Forbes, Fortune, and other financial publications. Susan’s teaching experience includes teaching economics and finance at the University of Richmond, St. Louis University, and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, plus visiting assignments at the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Auckland. Susan is also a potter, painter, skier, and sometimes triathlete.

 

Catherine Berheide

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/sociology/faculty.html

 

Robert Boyers

Robert Boyers is Professor of English at Skidmore, where he is also Editor in Chief of the quarterly magazine SALMAGUNDI and Director of The New York State Summer Writers Institute. He is the author of nine books, including a book of short stories entitled "Excitable Women, Damaged Men." Another recent book is entitled "The Dictator's

Dictation: The Politics of Novels and Novelists." He contributes articles and reviews to many publications, including HARPERS and THE NEW REPUBLIC.

 

Una Bray

Professor Bray teaches mathematics courses in the department.She received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute of New York. When she came to Skidmore in the early 1980s Prof. Bray oversaw the design and implementation of the then new Quantitative Reasoning Program. More recently Prof. Bray has been involved in incorporating writing into the mathematics curriculum, and she has taught sections of calculus that satisfy the college writing requirement. Prof. Bray teaches two popular liberal studies courses, one on epidemics and another on the history of food. While her research area is abstract algebra, Prof. Bray is also interested in mathematical modeling of diseases. Because of a shared interest in mathematics teaching in elementary school, Prof. Hurwitz and she organized a special session of talks on "Mathematicians in the K-8 Classroom," at the AMS-MAA MathFest in Seattle, WA. Additionally, Prof. Bray serves as a mathematics consultant to a local school district.

 

Beau Breslin

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/gov/faculty/breslin/index.htm

 

Grace Burton

Grace Burton, Associate Professor of Spanish, received her BA from Bucknell University and her Ph.D. from Duke.  Her research interests include Early Modern Spanish literature, intellectual history and the history of science and mathematics.

 

Janet Casey

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/american_studies/jcasey.html

 

Dan Curley

Dan Curley, Associate Professor and Chair of Classics, has taught courses in Latin and Greek, as well as in literature in translation, at Skidmore since 1998.  His research and scholarly interests include myth, Latin poetry, Greek tragedy, ancient biography, and ancient urban life.  Of especial interest these days are the many connections between antiquity and modernity, hence this course.

 

Monica Das

Professor Das received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, her M. Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India and her M.A. in Economics at the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi, India.

Terence Diggory
BA, Yale U; DPhil, Oxford U. Author of William Carlos Williams and the Ethics of Painting (Princeton UP, 1991); Yeats & American Poetry: The Tradition of the Self (Princeton UP, 1983). Co-editor, with Stephen Paul Miller, of The Scene of My Selves: New Work on New York School Poets (National Poetry Foundation, 2001). Numerous essays and reviews on modern poetry and visual art. Special interests: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Painting; Poetry by Women; Darwinism in Literature; Literary Theory.

 

Gove Effinger
Professor Effinger teaches mathematics and computer science courses in the department. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, specializing in number theory. Prof. Effinger shares his position in the department with his wife, Alice Dean, with whom he co-authored a text that was used for several years in CS 103 Structured Programming in BASIC. His research interests include prime numbers and computational number theory. He was co-author, with Dr. David Hayes of the University of Massachusetts, of the book Additive Number Theory of Polynomials over a Finite Field, published by Oxford University Press. Since the fall of 2000, he has served as the Director of Quantitative Reasoning.

 

Debra Fernandez

Associate Professor of Dance - joined the Skidmore faculty in 1991. She received her B.A. from the University of South Florida. A dancer-choreographer and composer, she moved to Saratoga after living for twelve years in New York City. She teaches Ballet III, Performance Elements, Jazz, and Choreography. She also teaches Ballet Workshop and Jazz Workshop in which new and original choreography is developed on students. Debra's choreography, which spans dance, theater, and opera, has been seen in numerous New York venues, including the 2000 Obie award winning space, Five Myles. She has worked with the Williamstown Theater Festival for seven years as a movement instructor, coach, and choreographer. Upcoming collaborations include projects with composer Richard Danielpour and painter Paul Henry Ramirez. She is an avid student of Yoga.

 

Kristie Ford

Kristie A. Ford is an assistant professor of sociology at Skidmore College.  She received her B.A. in sociology from Amherst College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  Professor Ford's research and teaching interests include:  race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and sociology of the body.  Her doctoral dissertation was on Masculinity, Femininity, Appearance Ideals, and the Black Body: Developing a Positive Raced and Gendered Bodily Sense of Self.

 

Beth Gershuny

Beth Gershuny, an alumna of Skidmore College, is an assistant professor of psychology and a licensed clinical psychologist.  After receiving her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, she completed her internship and postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital where she remained as a faculty member prior to her appointment at Skidmore.  Her primary research interests lie in the broadly defined domains of anxiety disorders and trauma-related psychopathology, with particular focus on the etiology, pathogenesis, and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.   

 

Roy Ginsberg

Roy H. Ginsberg is Professor of Government at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. He was founding Director of Skidmore’s International Affairs Program, Glaverbel Chair in European Politics at Catholic University of Louvain, Visiting Professor at the Center for European Studies at New York University and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Fulbright Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, and Research Fellow in European Integration at the European Commission. 

 

 Sarah Goodwin

Sarah Webster Goodwin, Professor of English, teaches courses in British Romanticism, literature and the environment, women and literature, poetry, and expository writing. The author of Kitsch and Culture: The Dance of Death in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Graphic Arts, and co-editor of the volumes Death and Representation; Feminism, Utopia and Narrative; and The Scope of Words, Goodwin holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Brown University. Goodwin is also the mother of three nearly-grown children. She enjoys teaching students from a wide variety of backgrounds, and also learning from them.

 

Linda Hall

BA in Political Science, Sarah Lawrence College; MFA in Nonfiction Writing, Columbia University. Formerly staff writer for New York Magazine.  Essays and reviews published in The American Prospect, Salmagundi, Southwest Review, Under the Sun, The Hudson Review.

Contributor to anthology of critical essays on Cynthia Ozick forthcoming from U of Wisconsin Press. 

Winner of the 2006 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction.  Special Interests: Nonfiction Writing, esp. the Personal Essay; Civil Rights; Willa Cather; Alice Munro; Thomas Hardy.

 

Mark Huibregtse

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/mcs/mcs-home/MCS/people/faculty_and_staff/faculty_and_administrative_assistant.htm

 

Masako Inamoto
Professor  Inamoto received her B.A. from Kwansei Gaukuin University, her M.S. from the University at Albany, her M.a. from Ohio State University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate from the Ohio State University.


Regina Janes
AB, U of California, Berkeley; MA, PhD, Harvard U. Author of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez: Revolutions in Wonderland (Missouri, 1981); One Hundred Years of Solitude:
Modes of Reading (G.K. Hall, 1991); Edmund Burke on Irish Affairs(Maunsel/Academica, 2002): Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture (NYU Press, 2005). Philosophy Editor, Scriblerian. Articles on J.M. Coetzee, Cabrera Infante, Fuentes, Wollstonecraft, Swift, Gay have appeared in Salmagundi, JHI, ELH, Hispanófila, World Literature Today, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Representations. Special interests: Eighteenth-Century English Literature; Modern Latin American Literature; Colonialism and Imperialism; Literature and Social Change; Religion and Literature.

Hedi Jaouad

Hédi A. Jaouad, a native of Tunisia, is a professor of French in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, specializing in francophone literature. He teaches all levels of French language, culture and literature. He is the author of two books and numerous articles. Professor Jaouad is also the editor of Revue CELAAN, a journal devoted to the study of the literatures and arts of North Africa.

 

Penny H. Jolly

Penny Howell Jolly, Professor of Art History, annually contributes to the team-taught Survey of Western Art History, and additionally teaches courses on medieval and Renaissance European art.  These cover diverse artworks from those made in the Early Christian catacombs, to Byzantine mosaics, to early Irish manuscripts, and Gothic cathedrals, as well as Renaissance paintings and sculpture by Jan van Eyck, Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, Bruegel, and Michelangelo.  Most recently, she added a new course to Skidmore’s curriculum on the history of dress and hair, from the Renaissance to the present, called Ad/dressing the Body.  Her current research on 14th- and 15th-century art from both Italy and Northern Europe focuses on Mary Magdalene, as well as issues surrounding gender, pregnancy, dress and hair, and fashioning the body.  She received her B.A. from Oberlin College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

 

 

Charles M. Joseph

Charles M. Joseph is a member of the Department of Music where he teaches courses in music history and music theory. He also remains active as a pianist. His main research interests are in the life and music of Igor Stravinsky, as well as 20th century American popular music. He has published several books for Yale University Press and is currently working on a biography of George M. Cohan as part of Yale's "Broadway Masters" series. Professor Joseph has held various administrative positions at Skidmore, including chairing the Department of Music and serving as Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs.

 

James Kennelly

Dr. James J. Kennelly is Associate Professor of International Business at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Dr. Kennelly was awarded a B.S. in Accounting from Montclair State University, and an MBA in International Business and Economics and a Ph.D. in International Business and Management from the Stern School of Business at NYU.   He has been a member of the faculty at Skidmore since 1996, served as Chair of the Management and Business Department from 2002-2005, and has been a Visiting Professor of International Business at NYU's Stern School of Business, and at the Helsinki School of Economics (Summer 2006).

 

His abiding interest in Ireland reflects both a strong North Kerry heritage and a professional curiosity about the failures and, more recently, the successes of Irish economic development policies.  His book The Kerry Way is a history of the Kerry Group, an indigenous Irish firm that began as a traditional dairy cooperative, and then transformed itself into a highly successful, publicly owned multinational food ingredients company.  Kennelly's more recent work focuses upon Ireland's efforts at developing in a manner that is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.  He has recently completed a paper on Sir Horace Plunkett, founder of the cooperative movement in Ireland, and is currently at work on a book entitled Global Ireland:  A Twenty-first Century Experiment in ‘Enterprise Culture’. 

 

 He lead a Travel Seminar to Ireland with 22 Skidmore students; the seminar was entitled “Changing Utterly: Ireland Past and Present.”

 

Chris Kopec

Chris Kopec is a lawyer who has been teaching in the Management and Business Department at Skidmore for nine years. Prior to that she had a varied legal career, from working for Legal Aid and in private practice to working for the Attorney General's Office and other various agencies in New York State government, as well as for a Big Eight accounting firm. Thus, she is able to bring both academic knowledge and a wealth of practical experience to the classroom. She teaches two business law classes and a course titled "Business, Ethics and Society," as well as a first-year seminar on minority rights. Her professional interests include legal issues relating to business and public policy and a deep concern for civil liberties. Extracurricular interests revolve around reading (mysteries are a favorite), cooking, dogs (especially her two labs) and her children (a college-age son and a daughter in middle school).

 

Susan Layden

Sue Layden is Associate Dean of Student Affairs, presiding over Skidmore's opportunity programs including the Higher Education Opportunity Program/Academic Opportunity Program (HEOP/AOP). Sue's doctorate is in education, with a focus on reading/literacy. She has taught in Skidmore's Education department and its Liberal Studies program. Before coming to Skidmore, she taught in the Schenectady City School District, where she was also responsible for writing grant applications to support programs for juvenile delinquents and to create an educational program for at-risk students in the public schools. Her research interests include the questions of diversity in higher education, the social and academic lives of college students, and the roles of race, class, and educational experiences in the creation of student identity. She looks forward professionally to a time when students of all different backgrounds genuinely have access to the crucial benefits of higher education. Sue is excited about teaching the Human Dilemmas seminar, as she believes it provides first-year students broad intellectual and social exploration.

 

Reg Lilly

Reginald Lilly received his BA from the University of Vermont, and MA and Ph.D. degrees from Duquesne University. A specialist in contemporary European philosophy, he has translated works into English from German and French and published on the works of Heidegger, Derrida, Nietzsche, Hegel and others. He regularly teaches courses in the philosophy of art and literature. Presently, Prof. Lilly is writing a book, The Traumatic Subject: An Essay in the Analytic of Ultimates, that deals with the convergent conceptions of the subject in contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis.

 

Peter McCarthy

Peter is a lecturer in Social Work and the Coordinator of Skidmore's Social Work Field Program. After graduating from Skidmore with a BA in psychology, Peter did his graduate work at the University of South Carolina and is field work at the Medical University of South Carolina, Institute of Psychiatry. After graduating, he spent five years as a clinician at a walk-in mental health clinic, 3 years as director of an adolescent youth shelter. His private practice has centered around working with adolescents and young adults on the issues of anger, decision making, and goal setting. He also does consulting work in the private secot in the areas of strategic marketing, problem solving, and goal setting. Peter has been at Skidmore full-time since January 2005.

 

Margo Mensing

www.skidmore.edu/academics/art/faculty/mmensing.html

 

Joshua Ness

 

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/biology/jness.htm

 

Kyle Nichols

Kyle Nichols is an Assistant Professor in the Geosciences Department.  His research and teaching interests are focused on landscape evolution and water.  The  interests require him to do fieldwork in dreadful places such as the Grand Canyon, Panama, the Namib Desert, and the Mojave Desert, but someone has to do it.  Currently, he is searching for students to work on research along the Colorado River in Canyonlands and Grand Canyon.  When not teaching or doing science, you can find him in the woods (looking for a little white ball).

 

Lary Opitz

http://www.skidmore.edu/~lopitz/

 

Flip Phillips

Flip Phillips is an Associate Professor who joined this department in 1998. He possesses a somewhat heterogeneous background, including stints as a professional musician and as an animator & technical director at Pixar. Having received his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology from The Ohio State University, he covers such courses as quantitative and experimental psychology, perception, and computational neuroscience. Currently, his research centers on the perception of solid shape, perception of texture, and the psychology of aesthetics.

 

 

Mark Rifkin

BA, Rutgers University; MA, PhD, University of Pennsylvania. Works-in-progress, Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of National Space, 1776-1861 and When Did Indians Become Straight?: A Queer Reading of Imperial Normality and American Indian Representation. Articles on pre-removal Cherokee nationalism andZitkala-Sa have appeared in boundary 2 and GLQ. Special interests: Writing in the U.S. before 1900; American Indian Studies; Queer Studies; African American Literature in the Nineteenth Century; Imperialism and Decolonization; Critical Race Theory; and Law.

 

Patricia Rubio

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/fll/faculty/rubio.html

 

 

Rik Scarce

I’m a sociologist who joined the Skidmore faculty in 2003.  My specialty courses include Environmental Sociology, Collective Behavior and Social Movements, Classical and Contemporary Social Theory, and others.  My current research is reflected in my Scribner Seminar course: a social and ecological history of the Hudson region’s landscape.  I’m planning on writing a book and am working on a documentary film that will parallel, and add an important visual dimension to, the book’s contents.

 

My prior books include Contempt of Court: A Scholar’s Battle for Free Speech from Behind Bars (Alta Mira Press, 2005); Fishy Business: Salmon, Biology, and the Social Construction of Nature (Temple University Press, 2000); and, most recently, an updated edition of my 1990 book Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (Left Coast Press, 2006).  My scholarly articles have in Symbolic Interaction, Society and Natural Resources, Law and Social Inquiry, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, The American Sociologist, and elsewhere.

 

My Ph.D. is from Washington State University (1995), my M.A. is from the University of Hawaii (1984), and my B.A. is from Stetson University in Florida (1981).  For fun, I enjoy hiking, photography, and serious recreational bicycle riding.

 

Shirley Smith

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/fll/faculty/smith.html

 

Sheldon Solomon

Sheldon Solomon is a Professor of Psychology who earned his B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College and his doctoral degree from the University of Kansas, where his training focused on experimental social psychology. His current research is primarily concerned with the psychological functions of self-esteem and the effects of specific political and economic institutions on mental health. He taught in Skidmore's Liberal Studies Program and is currently involved in the Scribner Seminars (Human Dilemmas). His departmental teaching includes the introductory course, as well as courses in personality, advanced personality and evolutionary psychology.

 

Janet Sorensen

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/art/faculty/jsorensen.html

 

Bill Standish

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/physics/standish.htm

 

Shannon Stitzel

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/chemistry/faculty-staff/shannon-stitzel/shannon-stitzel.htm

 

Bob Turner

http://www.skidmore.edu/~bturner/turner.html

 

Aldo Vacs

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/gov/faculty/vacs/index.htm

 

Joshua C. Woodfork

http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/american_studies/jcw.html