Class of 2015

Associate Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning
College of Architecture

Galen Newman, assistant professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, College of Architecture conducts research into human settlement, urban decline/regeneration, urban design, and advanced digital representation. Much of his work focuses on theories, formation, measurements, and regeneration of vacant land and abandoned structures. His Arts & Humanities Fellowship project, “Smart Shrinkage: Design for the Un-developing Landscape,” will address a problem facing hundreds of urban areas: how to manage declines in urban populations. The project will explore the unique urban design and landscape characteristics of heavily depopulated urban neighborhoods; use the Land Transformation Model, a GIS-based land-use prediction tool, to predict future vacancy; and develop an urban design strategy in response to those conditions. 

Professor
Department of History
College of Architecture

Olga Dror associate professor, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts, is the author of the 2007 book Cult, Culture, and Authority: Princess Lieu Hanh in Vietnamese History and the editor and translator of two volumes on Vietnamese and Chinese religions. Her most recent work focused on the experience of Vietnamese civilians caught in the Battle of Huế during the 1968 Tet Offensive. For her Arts & Humanities Fellowship project, Dr. Dror plans to complete a book titled Raising Vietnamese: Youth Identities in North and South Vietnam During the War (1965-1975). Using texts produced for and by young people in North and South Vietnam, she will compare and analyze how Vietnamese on both sides of the conflict shaped the identities of their youth.

Professor
Department of Performance Studies
College of Liberal Arts

Peter Lieuwen, professor and composer-in-residence, Department of Performance Studies, College of Liberal Arts, creates symphonic and chamber music the New York Times has hailed as “an attractive array of shimmering, shuddering sonorities”. His work has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by orchestras, small ensembles, and artists throughout North America and Europe. For his Arts & Humanities Fellowship project, Dr. Lieuwen will compose, perform, and record two new orchestral works: Concerto for Chamber Ensemble and Orchestra and Chamber Concerto. The project will involve interaction and collaboration with professional musicians from Austria, Brazil, Germany, Slovakia, and the United States. 

Executive Associate Head
Department of Communication
College of Liberal Arts

Kristan Poirot, assistant professor, Department of Communication and the Women’s Gender Studies Program, College of Liberal Arts, studies the rhetoric from and about social movements rooted in race and gender. Her 2014 book, A Question of Sex, stands at the intersection of feminist rhetorical history and contemporary feminist theory and demonstrates that contemporary theories about sex, gender, identity, and difference compel a rethinking of how we understand feminist movements and their public discourse and protests. Her Arts & Humanities Fellowship project, Gendered Landscapes of Memory: Rhetoric, Place, and Black Freedom, will build on work in tourism studies, cultural geography, rhetoric, history, and gender studies with the goal of better understanding the concepts that inform the public’s collective memory as “gendered landscapes.” 

Associate Professor
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts

Brian Rouleau, assistant professor, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts, specializes in the nineteenth century history of the United States. His 2014 book, With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire, examines encounters between US sailors and people overseas during the nineteenth century. For his Arts & Humanities Fellowship, Dr. Rouleau will conduct research for a book tentatively titled Empire’s Children: Youth Culture and the Long Nineteenth Century’s Expansionist Impulse, which will investigate the ways in which children became central to imperialism in North America, Africa, and Australia. The Oxford University Press has expressed interest in the project. He is also a 2022 fellow.

Associate Professor
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts

Daniel Schwartz, assistant professor, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts, specializes in late Roman history, with a focus on culture, religion, and education. His forthcoming projects include an edited volume on conversion to Christianity and Islam during Late Antiquity and an article on religious violence in fifth and sixth century Roman Syria. Of particular interest to Dr. Schwartz is Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that flourished among Middle Eastern Christians, but which is generally neglected by today’s ancient and medieval scholars. For his Arts & Humanities Fellowship, Dr. Schwartz will develop a digital publication called SPEAR: Syriac Persons, Events, and Relations, to advance methods for the study of Syriac. He is also a 2022 fellow.