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New faculty

Connecticut College welcomes eight new tenure-track professors this fall who bring a breadth of expertise in their respective fields, which include gender and women's studies, computer science, architectural studies and theater. They are joined by five visiting faculty members.

"We welcome Conn's newest faculty members to our academic community, as they join us in the important work of enhancing student learning both inside and outside the classroom," said Dean of the Faculty and Dayton Professor of Art History Abigail Van Slyck.

Collectively, the eight new faculty members represent a varied range of specializations, including technical theater, queer theory, environmental sociology and affective computing.

Meet the new faculty:

Alison Andersen

Assistant Professor of Theater

Education
B.A., Theater Arts, Goucher College; M.F.A., Columbia School of the Arts

Specializations
Stage management, production management, technical theater, scenic and lighting design

Research
Professor Andersen's research interests are in international theater and stage management.

Broadway
She has studied and learned from some of Broadway's best stage managers and in iconic institutions such as The American Ballet Theater and The Metropolitan Opera House.

Danielle Egan

Fuller-Maathai Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Chair of the Gender and Women's Studies Department

Education
B.A., Goucher College; M.A., PsyaD, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; Ph.D., Boston College

Specializations
Affect, sexual studies, gender and feminist theory, queer theory, history of ideas, childhood and youth, psychoanalysis

Cultural institutions
Professor Egan is fascinated by the ways in which cultural institutions (medical, religious, political, psychological, scholarly disciplines) create and defend norms of social and sexual acceptability.

Media
Her research has been discussed on BBC Radio 4 and NPR’s Good Parenting Radio.

Julia Flagg

Lenore Tingle Howard '42 Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies

Education
B.A., The College of New Jersey; M.A., Ph.D, Rutgers University

Specializations
Environmental sociology, climate change, Costa Rica, disasters, human ecology

Studying carbon neutrality
Professor Flagg is interested in the conditions under which some nations made commitments to become carbon neutral and the process by which one nation, Costa Rica, made its pledge. She is also interested in environmental inequities in disaster-affected communities, specifically those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

Costa Rica
She is currently developing publications about Costa Rica's process of adopting a carbon neutral pledge, as well as interdisciplinary research on water.

Rae Gaubinger

Assistant Professor of English

Education
B.A., Columbia University; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University

Specializations
Victorian literature, modern literature, narrative theory, affect studies, queer theory, psychoanalysis, gender and women's studies

British lit
Rae Gaubinger (pronounced "gowbinjer") specializes in British literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Conferences
Professor Gaubinger's research has been presented at conferences of the Modernist Studies Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, the International Virginia Woolf Society, and the British Women Writers Association.

Jeff Moher

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Education
B.S., University of Michigan; M.A., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

Specializations
Cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, visual attention, cognition in action

Distractions
Professor Moher uses behavioral and neurophysiological methods to understand why distractions occur, when they are likely to arise, and what mechanisms humans can harness to avoid them. His discoveries have provided new insight into how humans avoid distractions in order to accomplish a wide range of behavioral goals.

Family guy
In his free time, Professor Moher spends time with his wife, Mariko, and their three-year old daughter, Emiko, and they are expecting a daughter in October 2017.

Marie Ostby

Assistant Professor of English

Education
B.A., Yale University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia

Specializations
World literature, postcolonial literature, Middle Eastern studies, women’s literature, genre studies, social media

Book project
Professor Ostby's current book project, "Genres Without Borders: Reading Globally between Modern Iran and the West," uses the interwoven modern histories of Persian and Euro-American literature, art, and film to explore how transnational literary exchange under politically fraught circumstances is often mirrored and embodied in the crossing of genre boundaries.

Research focus
Her research focuses on the global circulation of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern literatures, with a specialization in Iran and its diaspora.

William Tarimo

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Education
B.A., Connecticut College; M.A., Ph.D., Brandeis University

Specializations
Educational technology (EdTech), computer-supported pedagogy, agile teaching, affective computing

Technology and teaching
Professor Tarimo's research explores how technology and agile methodologies can be used to improve academic outcomes through applications in the learning and teaching processes, which involves the design and development of educational technologies, such as Discover Teaching.

Outcomes
He would like to see teaching and learning to be aware and responsive to the suitability of methods, individual learners' capabilities, the instructor's capabilities and the nature of the competencies to be mastered.

Anna Vallye

Assistant Professor of Art History and Architectural Studies

Education
B.A., Vassar College; M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University

Specializations
History of 20th century architecture, history of urban planning, interwar avant garde art and architecture

Art and architecture
Professor Vallye's research explores the histories of modernism in art and architecture as it intersected with changing social and political institutions, as well as with cultural transformations in urban life.

Book in the works
She is working on a book about the American careers of German-speaking architects, planners, and designers Walter Gropius, Martin Wagner, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Gyorgy Kepes in the interwar and immediate postwar period.

August 30, 2017

New faculty

New faculty

Meet the new faculty:

Alison Andersen

Danielle Egan

Julia Flagg

Rae Gaubinger

Jeff Moher

Marie Ostby

William Tarimo

Anna Vallye

-- Learn more

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