Bios

New Faculty Bios

2012-2013

Isaura Arce Fernandez, Associate, Spanish and Latin American Cultures
Isaura Arce Fernandez has been a member of Barnard's Department of Spanish since 2008 and was recently promoted to a full-time Associate. Her research and practical background is in language, video, and web design. She received a M.S. in Web Design from the CEDECO Institute in Madrid, Spain and her B.B. in Information Sciences from the Information Sciences University of Madrid.

Linda A. Bell, Provest & Dean of the Faculty and Professor, Economics
Linda Bell was appointed Barnard's Provost and Dean of the Faculty and a professor of Economics in October 2012. Prior to Barnard and since 2007, Professor Bell was provost and the John B. Hurford Professor of Economics at Haverford College, as well as a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. Before her tenure at Haverford, she was a senior economist in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has held visiting appointments at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and at Stanford University. Provost Bell is an empirical economist specializing in labor markets and public policy. She has written and lectured extensively on the topic of compensation, union concessions, and hours of work in the US and Europe. Her recent research focuses on the determination of gender compensation differences in executive pay in US large corporations generally, and on female mentorship at the executive level specifically. Her work has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Labour, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Economic Journal, Economic Letters, Proceedings of the ILLR, and the Federal Reserve Bank Quarterly Review. Provost Bell received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her bachelor degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a University Scholar. 

Beth A. Berkowitz, Ingeborg Rennert Chair, Director of Jewish Studies
and Visiting Associate Professor, Religion
Prior to joining Barnard, Beth Berkowitz was associate professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Berkowitz specializes in rabbinic literature, Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity, and theories and methods in the study of religion. Berkowitz received her Ph.D., MPhil, and B.A. in Religious Studies from Columbia University. In addition, she has a M.A. from the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Berkowitz was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Program of Judaic Studies in the Religious Studies Department at Yale University from 2001 to 2003; a fellow of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007–2008; and a fellow of the Tikvah Center for Jewish Law and Civilization at New York University Law School in 2009–2010. Berkowitz has taught at Columbia University and Yale University, serves on the board of the journal Prooftexts, and sits on the steering committee for the History of Judaism section of the American Academy of Religion. Her recent books are titled, "Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures," (Oxford University Press) and "Defining Jewish Difference from Antiquity to the Present," (Cambridge University Press).

Andrew Currie Crowther, Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Prior to joining Barnard's Chemistry Department, Andrew Crowther was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, where he used spectroscopy to study the molecular doping of graphene. Before Columbia University, Crowther was with the National Academies, where he worked on renewable energy and sustainability projects. Crowther’s completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received a B.A. in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. His graduate work used lasers to follow the time evolution of reactants and products in condensed phase CN radical reactions; forming a comprehensive picture of how these reactions work and progress. A National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship supported Andrew for part of his doctoral work.

Rachel Eisendrath, Assistant Professor, English
Rachel Eisendrath specializes in sixteenth-century poetry. She comes to Barnard from the University of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. in English literature. Her work on Renaissance poetry explores problems of aesthetics, the history of poetic forms, and the intersection of literary and visual arts. Her dissertation, “Renaissance Ekphrasis and the Objects of History,” is a study of elaborate literary descriptions, or ekphrases, against the background of the early modern rise of objectivity. The project explores the fraught relation between aesthetic form and an increasingly empiricist understanding of the historical world. She has a forthcoming article on Spenser’s treatment of art and objectivity in Spenser Studies. Eisendrath received a B.A. from Harvard and M.A. degrees from St. John’s College and the University of Chicago; in addition, she studied painting and sculpture at the New York Studio School.

Sumati Gupta, Term Assistant Professor, Psychology
Prior to Barnard, Sumati Gupta served as an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her research interests include the ways in which people regulate their emotions while experiencing eating disorder symptoms or after experiencing traumatic events. Her clinical work is focused on the treatment of anxiety disorders and eating disorders via cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). In an effort to disseminate research on eating disorders to the general public, she created and maintains the blog, "Binge Eating and Bulimia: The latest psychological research." Gupta completed her Ph.D. and M.S in Clinical Psychology at Columbia University and B.A. in Psychology and Women’s Studies at Duke University.

Leslie Hewitt, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Art History
Leslie Hewitt is a New York-based artist working in photography, sculpture, site-specific installation and film. Prior to joining Barnard, Hewitt was the recipient of the 2012 Guna S. Mundheim Berlin Prize and a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Influenced and inspired by a variety of sources and practices, including Dutch still life, twentieth-century protest literature, and the history and study of optics as it relates to the camera and Third Cinema, Hewitt’s work addresses notions of time, space, memory and how perception is altered through technology. She uses the camera as a tool not only to capture a specific moment, but also to reposition one’s point of view, subtly challenging the potentials, limitations and expectations of a photographic document. Hewitt received her B.F.A. from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and studied at New York University and Yale University Art School, where she received her M.F.A. She was the recipient of the Visual Arts and 2008 Art Matters research grant to the Netherlands and was also an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in 2007-08. She had a solo exhibition at The Kitchen in New York (2010), was included in the Whitney Biennial (2008), and was part of New Photography 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her work has been exhibited in a number of group shows, both nationally and internationally, and is represented in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Daniela Kempf, Associate, Education
Daniela Kempf teaches Public Speaking, co-teaches Rhetorical Choices, and manages Barnard’s Speaking Program. Kempf co-authored “Argument and Audience” which features topics such as the historical, functional, logical, and ethical dimensions of public debates. Before joining the Speaking Program, she taught speech, debate and professional communication courses at Emerson College in Boston, and Marymount Manhattan College and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Kempf also worked as a trainer for the Open Society Institute, in which she conducted leadership, speech, and debate workshops in the U.S. and across Europe and Asia; training teachers and students from over a dozen countries. She also served as a communication consultant for Croatian National Television. She received a M.A. in Communication from Emerson College, where she was a teaching scholar, and a B.A. in Phonetics and English from the University of Zagreb, where she was a speaking fellow.

Gale Kenny, Term Assistant Professor, Religion
Gale Kenny joined Barnard in 2010 as the American Council of Learned Societies' New Faculty Fellow in Religion. As a Fellow, she worked on a project about humanitarianism in British and American antislavery in the 1840s and 1850s. At the end of her fellowship, Kenny was promoted to Term Assistant Professor. Kenny earned her Ph.D. in History from Rice University. Her dissertation was titled: "Contentious Liberties: Gendered Power and Religious Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century American Mission to Jamaica". She received her B.A. in Religion from Northwestern University.

Karen S. Lewis, Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Prior to joining Barnard, Karen Lewis was previously an assistant professor at the University of Southern California. Lewis works primarily in the philosophy of language with interests ranging from empirically-oriented natural language semantics to foundational issues in the nature of semantics and pragmatics. Lewis received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University. Her dissertation, “Understanding Dynamic Discourse,” explored the roles of semantics and pragmatics in updating the conversational context. She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Queen’s University.

Kenneth R. Light, Lecturer, Psychology
Prior to joining Barnard, Kenneth Light was a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University teaching courses on Quantitative Methods in Psychology and Conditioning and Learning.  Light’s research focuses on the neurological basis of learning and memory and the neurological basis of and possible manipulation/interventions for intelligence. Light received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology from Rutgers University and a B.A. in Psychology from Ramapo College.

Meredith B. Linn, Term Assistant Professor, Urban Studies
Meredith Linn joined Barnard's Urban Studies faculty in 2010 and was recently promoted to Term Assistant Professor. Linn’s work focuses health and healing in New York City, particularly among immigrant groups. Prior to joining Barnard, Linn taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Anthropology departments at Columbia University and Fordham University. In her research, Linn has used historical and folklore records, ethnography, and archaeological resources to better understand the health-related experiences of 19th-century Irish immigrants and the creative ways they combined Irish healing traditions with new materials in the city. Linn also is involved in the Seneca Village Project, an archaeological and archival project researching the 19th-century community of African American and Irish immigrants that once existed in what is now New York City’s Central Park. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University, M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and B.A. in Art History from Swarthmore College. Linn received several fellowships and grants for her graduate studies and was the 2010 recipient of the Society for Historical Archaeology Dissertation Prize for her dissertation, “From Typhus to Tuberculosis and Fractures in between: A Visceral Historical Archaeology of Irish Immigrant Life in New York City 1845-1870,” which she is revising for publication as a book. Linn is also the author of two articles published in the journal Historical Archaeology, “Elixir of Emigration: Soda Water and the Making of Irish Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City” (2010) and “Irish Immigrant Medicine and Magic in Nineteenth-Century New York City” (forthcoming).

Masha C. Mimran, Lecturer, French
Barnard alum, Masha Mimran, studied Comparative Literature and graduated Summa Cum Laude. She continued her studies in Comparative Literature, receiving her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her focus area is nineteenth and twentieth-century French prose and poetry, specifically the relationship between medical discourses and the French novel. During her graduate career, she also gained expertise in film studies, nineteenth and twentieth century English and American literature, the nineteenth-century Russian novel, and Russian theory. She published two articles: “Se Projeter/Se Punir: Voyeurisme et Exhibitionnisme dans La Philosophie dans le Boudoir et La Vénus à la fourrure” in Lire Sade (L’Harmattan, 2004) and “Through the Looking-Glass: Joyce’s ‘Circe’ and the Poetics of Voyeurism,” in Literary Compass (2011). Mimran is currently working on a third article, “Scalpels, Pens, and the Diagnosis of the Heroines of Hysteria: Charcot, Richet, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary” for Literature and Art Studies in addition to turning her dissertation, “The Poetics of Pathology: Hysteria from Neurology to Psychology,” into a book. While at Barnard, Mimran majored in Comparative Literature.

Ellen F. Morris, Assistant Professor, Classics
Barnard alum, Ellen Morris was recently clinical assistant professor of Egyptology and the academic director of the semester abroad program Archaeology and History in Egypt at New York University. Morris received her Ph.D. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and majored in Ancient Studies at Barnard College. Morris has taught on Egypt and on archaic states at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Wales Swansea, New York University, and Columbia University. She has conducted fieldwork in the Nile Valley at Abydos and Mendes, as well as at Amheida in Dakhleh Oasis. Morris is currently finishing her second book. Contracted to Blackwell Press, the book is entitled Egyptian Imperialism and explores various episodes of imperialism throughout Egypt’s history from an anthropological perspective. She has published on topics as diverse as the relations between sexuality, performance, and power in ancient Egypt; divine kingship; the dynamics of political fragmentation; state formation; human sacrifice; and various aspects of the relations between ancient Egypt and its neighbors.

Kara Pham, Lecturer, Psychology
Kara Pham joined Barnard's Department of Psychology in 2008 and was recently promoted to Lecturer. She has taught classes on topics ranging from the science, ethics, and politics of stem cells; hormones and behavior; and the psychology of learning. Pham's general area of research is in behavioral neuroscience, with an emphasis on stress, fear learning, and hippocampal neurogenesis.  She has also conducted studies on developmental neurobiology and addiction. Prior to Barnard College, Pham was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Pham received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Rockefeller University and her B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Riverside.

Jonathan W. Snow, Assistant Professor, Biology
Prior to joining Barnard College, Jonathan Snow was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Williams College. He received his Ph.D. from the Biomedical Sciences Program at the University of California, San Francisco and did his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Both his graduate and post-doctoral studies focused on transcriptional regulation in immune system development and function in mammalian models. Snow's current research explores transcriptional regulation of mucosal immunity in honey bees. He received a B.A. from Williams College.  

Dominique Townsend, Term Assistant Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
Barnard alum, Dominique Townsend received her B.A. in Religion from Barnard, a M.TS from Harvard Divinity School, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. Townsend has taught a course on Buddhism at New York University and assisted with courses at Columbia and Princeton Universities. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies she lived and worked in Tibetan Buddhist communities in Nepal, India and Tibet. Townsend's main area of study is Tibetan Buddhism with a focus on aesthetics and high culture in traditional Tibet. Her research is on the Mindrolling monastic lineage, founded in the late 17th Century. Mindrolling is famous for its literary, musical and visual arts traditions as well as ties to Tibetan government and aristocracy. Townsend's proposed dissertation title is 'A Field of Elegance: Mindrolling as Arbiter of Tibetan Buddhist High Culture and Aesthetics'.

Loren K. Wolfe, Associate, French
Loren Wolfe is currently completing her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. Her dissertation is entitled: "Declining (the) Subject: Immunity and the Crisis of Masculine Selfhood in Contemporary France,” an interdisciplinary project investigating connections between the science of immunology and the literary imagination in France from the Third Republic to the present day. During her studies at Harvard, Wolfe was the recipient of 16 awards, including the Whiting Dissertation Fellowship and the Derek Bok Teaching Award in recognition for her performance teaching language and literature courses at Harvard. She earned a B.A. in French Literature from Amherst College, A.M. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, and a Diploma from the International Program at L'Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris, France.

Homa S. Zarghamee, Assistant Professor, Economics
Prior to joining Barnard, Homa Zarghamee was assistant professor of Economics at Santa Clara University where she taught classes in the areas of microeconomics and econometrics. Her recent research focuses on (i) the impact of mood on economic behavior, (ii) determinants of social preferences, (iii) gender and competition, and (iv) determinants of subjective well-being. Other areas of research include the economics of child labor, youth in developing countries, and transition from education to the labor force in Iran. Zarghamee has served as a consultant with the World Bank and her work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and in the World Bank's 2007 World Development Report. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics and B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Cornell University.

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