Religious communities across the United States are finding common ground through food. In a Wednesday, October 14, lecture at Kalamazoo College, Adrienne Krone will discuss how people from diverse religious and secular backgrounds are working to reshape the food system and address questions of sustainability, ethics and community.
Krone, associate professor of environmental science and sustainability and religious studies at Allegheny College, will draw on research from her recent book, Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States. The book examines four faith-connected food initiatives, including a religious dietary community, a pasture-raised cattle farm, a Jewish farm and a Jewish retreat center that observed the biblical agricultural sabbatical year.
Through these case studies, Krone explores how food practices intersect with religious identity, environmental stewardship and social justice. Her research focuses on religious food-justice movements across North America and the ways communities use food to express their values and build connections across differences.
A reception and meet-and-greet with the speaker will follow the 4:15 p.m. lecture in the Hicks Banquet Room at the Hicks Student Center. The event is free and open to the public. Please note that unauthorized signs or posters will not be permitted.
Sponsored by the Department of Religion, the lecture is part of the Paul Lamont Thompson Memorial Lecture Series, established in honor of Kalamazoo College President Paul Lamont Thompson, who led the College from 1938 to 1949. Endowed through gifts from alumni, family members and friends, the series continues Thompson’s legacy by bringing distinguished speakers to campus to deepen understanding of ethical issues and society’s broader challenges.
Kalamazoo College has named Dominique Somda and Taylor Petrey to endowed professorships, recognizing their outstanding scholarship, teaching and service to the institution. These distinguished positions are supported by earnings from endowments established through gifts to the College.
“Endowed professorships are vital to Kalamazoo College because they provide lasting support for the faculty members whose teaching and mentorship are at the heart of a liberal arts education,” Provost Danette Ifert Johnson said. “Dominique and Taylor bring extraordinary scholarship and a deep commitment to everything they do as professionals.”
Dominique Somda, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Professor of African Studies
Somda’s research explores questions of power, social hierarchy, and ethics through anthropology. Her work examines the enduring legacies of slavery, Christianity and Lutheran missions, gender and the religious ethics of healthcare technologies within Madagascar ‘s postcolonial context and in conversation with feminist studies. Under her leadership, K re-established the African studies concentration in 2024. She also co-convenes Africa Month, an annual public celebration that brings world-renowned scholars, artists, filmmakers and performers to K.
Somda joined K in 2024 from the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she was a research fellow. Her academic career also has included visiting professorships in the Department of Anthropology at Reed College and in the Department of Anthropology and Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics and at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.
Beyond K, Somda contributes to the field of African studies through her professional service. She is an associate editor of the Canadian Journal of African Studies and serves on the board of the Canadian Association of African Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative at the University of Paris Nanterre and holds two master’s degrees from the University of Paris Nanterre and the University Clermont Auvergne.
Dominique Somda
Taylor Petrey, Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Distinguished Professor of Religion
Petrey teaches courses on the Bible and biblical interpretation, early Christianity, ancient Judaism, and theory and method in the study of religion. His research focuses on gender and sexuality in religion, especially in ancient Christianity and Mormonism. He is often interviewed by publications such as the Salt Lake Tribune, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Detroit News.
Petrey is the author of Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos (2024), Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism (2020) and Resurrecting Parts: Early Christians on Desire, Reproduction and Sexual Difference (2015). His work has been published in academic journals such as Religion and American Culture, Harvard Theological Review and the Journal of Early Christian Studies.
Since joining K in 2010, he has served as chair of the religion department; director of women, gender and sexuality; and chair of the faculty executive committee. Petrey also was a research associate and visiting associate professor at Harvard Divinity School in the 2016–17 academic year. He earned his bachelor’s at Pace University and his Th.D. and MTS from Harvard Divinity School.
Kalamazoo College will host two visiting scholars this month for annual lectures in religion and mathematics, scheduled for May 6 and May 12.
First, an associate professor from Oberlin College will provide the 2026 Thompson Lecture in Religion at 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 6, in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall, with a talk titled Leisure and Religion in South Asian Women’s Workplaces in Spain.
Emilia Bachrach will draw from her ongoing ethnographic research in Barcelona, Spain, to consider how South Asian Hindu and Muslim women build social and economic networks while navigating their minoritized religious status. Her monograph on the subject, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism, was published in 2022 as part of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion in Translation Series with Oxford University Press.
The memorial event is named for Paul Lamont Thompson, who was K’s president from 1938–49. It brings in speakers who enrich the ethical understanding of the College’s position in society. The lecture was established by a gift from Thompson’s sons and daughters-in-law to recognize the crucial role he played in guiding the College through the Depression and World War II.
A meet-and-greet reception will follow the lecture. Contact Office Coordinator Sarah.Bryans@kzoo.edu for more information.
Then, in the 2026 George Kitchen Lecture, a teaching professor from the University of Michigan will explore mathematical models that are used to predict real-world behavior.
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, P. Gavin LaRose will discuss Discrete Population Models, Cobwebs and Chaos in Dewing Hall, Room 103. The talk will investigate a population of creatures such as bacteria or insects and model what it would do. Attendees can expect to find some mathematical cobwebs, surprises and chaos.
Kitchen loved mathematics and believed that its applications could be cultivated in every student. The memorial lectureship named for him was established in 1999 to honor the mathematician who inspired students and fellow math teachers at Portage North High School and K.
Oberlin College Associate Professor Emilia Bachrach
P. Gavin LaRose, University of Michigan
For more information, contact Office Coordinator Kristen Eldred at 269.337.7100 or keldred@kzoo.edu.
A popular YouTube personality, biblical scholar, best-selling author and podcast co-host will visit Kalamazoo College for a special event hosted by the Department of Religion on Wednesday, October 8.
Dan McClellan will explore how appeals to scripture are often used to authorize beliefs that might stem more from human assumptions than divine text in a lecture at 4:15 p.m. in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall. The event, titled Bible Says So? How We Leverage the Bible to Authorize Our Own Dogmas, is free and open to the public. He will discuss insights from cognitive linguistics, the cognitive science of religion, and critical biblical studies to show that “the Bible says so” often really means “I say so, but I need the Bible’s authority.” A meet-and-greet will follow his presentation.
McClellan is an honorary fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion and the author of the April 2025 book The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues. In his research and public scholarship, he examines the ways people invoke biblical authority to defend cultural norms, political positions and personal convictions.
In 2023, McClellan received the Society of Biblical Literature’s Richards Award for Public Scholarship. He has more than 180,000 followers on his YouTube channel and is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also co-hosts the “Data Over Dogma” podcast with atheist Daniel Beecher.
For more information on the lecture, contact Academic Office Coordinator Sarah Bryans in the Department of Religion at Sarah.Bryans@kzoo.edu.
Biblical scholar and YouTube personality Dan McClellan will visit Kalamazoo College for a special lecture hosted by the Department of Religion on Wednesday, October 8.
An author and scholar of Islam in South Asia will deliver the 2025 Thompson Lecture, sponsored by Kalamazoo College’s religion department, at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in the Olmsted Room.
Ayesha Irani is an associate professor of Asian studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She specializes in Islam in South Asia, the literature and history of Bengal and Bangladesh, Sufism, Islamic art, translation studies and Middle Bangla codicology.
Irani’s lecture, titled “The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam,” will draw from her book of the same name and examine the Nabivamsa of Saiyad Sultan, the first Bangla language biography of the Prophet Muhammad, revealing the power of vernacular transition in the Islamization of Bengal.
The Paul Lamont Thompson Lecture, named for the K president who served from 1938–49, brings in speakers who enrich the ethical understanding of the College’s position in society. The lecture was established by a gift from Thompson’s sons and daughters-in-law to recognize the crucial role he played in guiding the College through the Depression and World War II.
Author and scholar of Islam Ayesha Irani will deliver the 2025 Thompson Lecture at Kalamazoo College.
The early history of the Bible and those central to assisting Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul in writing the New Testament will take center stage in the Kalamazoo College Department of Religion annual Armstrong Lecture on Wednesday.
Candida Moss will present “God’s Ghostwriters: The Lost Histories of the New Testament’s Enslaved Coauthors” at 4:30 p.m. in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall. Moss is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, U.K., and a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. She specializes in ancient history and early Christianity, especially the New Testament, with focuses on martyrdom, persecution, disability, enslavement and questions related to marginalized groups. She is the author of God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible.
Clusters of unnamed, enslaved coauthors and collaborators have been hidden by history behind the sainted individuals credited with writing the New Testament. The essential workers were responsible for producing the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament by making the parchment on which the texts were written, taking dictation, and refining the words of the apostles. As Christian messages grew in influence, enslaved missionaries who undertook the arduous journey across the Mediterranean and along dusty roads to move Christianity to Rome, Spain and North Africa, and into the pages of history. The impact of these enslaved contributors on the spread of Christianity, the development of foundational Christian concepts, and the making of the Bible was enormous, yet their role has been almost entirely overlooked.
The Armstrong Lecture is made possible by the Homer J. Armstrong Endowment in Religion, established in 1969 in honor of the Rev. Homer J. Armstrong, a longtime trustee of the College. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit religion.kzoo.edu and click on Department Events.
Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, U.K., and a research associate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, will present “God’s Ghostwriters: The Lost Histories of the New Testament’s Enslaved Coauthors” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 23, in the Olmsted Room.
Kalamazoo College is pleased to welcome the following faculty members to campus this fall:
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kelsey Aldrich
Aldrich arrives at K from Duquesne University, where she earned a Ph.D. and served as a graduate teaching assistant in biochemistry. Her educational background also includes a Bachelor of Science in chemistry with American Chemical Society (ACS) certification from Grove City College, where she was an undergraduate teaching assistant in organic, analytical and general chemistry.
Aldrich will teach a Shared Passages Seminar course this fall titled Cultured: The History and Science of Fermented Foods. In winter spring terms, she will teach classes in general chemistry and biochemistry. Her professional affiliations include membership in the ACS and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kelsey Aldrich
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Erika Carbonara
Carbonara recently earned her Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University. She additionally holds a master’s degree from Oakland University and a bachelor’s degree with university honors from Wayne State.
She specializes in early modern literature with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and kink studies. In her previous teaching positions, she has taught a wide range of courses from introductory composition to literature classes focused on Renaissance literature, children’s literature, and women’s literature. This term she will lead a course on social justice from a literary perspective with a focus on issues, events, movements and historical moments while emphasizing areas of power difference such as race and ethnicity, disabilities, class, gender and sexuality.
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Erika Carbonara
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachel Chaiser
Chaiser’s educational background includes a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a bachelor’s degree with honors in mathematics from the University of Puget Sound.
In Boulder, she served as a part-time graduate instructor in linear algebra for non-math majors and calculus courses, a graduate teaching assistant in precalculus and an advanced undergraduate research mentor. At K this fall, she will teach calculus with lessons in algebra, precalculus and analytic geometry.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachel Chaiser
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Sharon Colvin
Colvin has teaching experience with the University of Pittsburgh School of Education as an instructor, leading students with research methods and applied research; and the University of Maryland First-Year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) as an assistant clinical professor. Before getting her PhD., she was a youth services librarian for 10 years. At K, Colvin will teach educational psychology in fall, which applies the principles of psychology to the practice of teaching.
Colvin holds a Ph.D. in learning sciences and policy from the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Health and Human Development; a master’s degree in library science from the Simmons University Graduate School of Library and Information Science; a master’s degree in mind, brain and education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wellesley College.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Sharon Colvin
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Caitlin Coplan
Coplan arrives at K from Northwestern University, where they recently earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. They also hold a bachelor’s degree with honors in physical and educational chemistry from the University of Utah.
Coplan has prior professional and teaching experience as an instructor as a part of the Arch program for incoming first-year students, and a teaching assistant for general chemistry and nanomaterials courses at Northwestern. They have also served as an interim undergraduate chemistry advisor, College of Science student ambassador, and teaching assistant in general chemistry at the University of Utah. At K, they will teach analytical chemistry this fall.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Caitlin Coplan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Mahar Fatima
For the past seven years, Fatima has served the University of Michigan, first as a postdoctoral researcher and then as a research laboratory specialist. Her research interests include studies of the sensory neural circuits under physiological or pathological conditions, the molecular mechanisms required to interpret sensory information, and how relations between neural and non-neuronal systems contribute to chronic pain, chronic itch, and pulmonary disorders. This fall, Fatima will teach neurobiology at K, addressing the structure and function of the nervous system with topics including the cell biology of neurons, electrophysiology, sensory and motor systems, brain development, and nervous system dysfunction.
Fatima earned a Ph.D. from the National Brain Research Centre in India along with master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and life sciences respectively from the University of Allahabad.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Mahar Fatima
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Shelby King
King holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) along with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas State University, San Marcos.
Her teaching areas include the history of religion in America, religion and popular culture, religion and American politics, theories and methods in religion, and theories of genders and sexualities. Her professional memberships include the American Academy of Religion, and the UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Shelby King
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Cemile Kurkoglu
Kurkoglu comes to K from Denison University, where she had been a visiting assistant professor, teaching undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses since 2021.
Kurkoglu holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University Bloomington, where she served as an associate instructor for algebra, calculus and finite mathematics courses and she assisted for graduate mathematics courses. She also has a master’s degree from Bilkent University and a bachelor’s degree from Hacettepe University. Her graduate-level coursework included abstract and commutative algebra, number and representation theory, and ordinary and partial differential equations, real and complex analysis, and topology.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Cemile Kurkoglu
Visiting Assistant Professor of History Josh Morris
Morris is arriving at K from Wayne State University, where he has been a visiting assistant professor at Grand Valley State University since 2021. Elsewhere, he has served St. Clair County Community College, the University of Toledo and Wayne State University as an adjunct faculty member; a graduate teaching assistant at Wayne State and Cal State University Pomona; and a lecturer for the Los Angeles Workers’ Center and the University of California, Irvine.
Morris holds a Ph.D. from Wayne State, a master’s degree from CSU Pomona, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, all in history. His professional memberships include the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Historical Materialism Society for Critical Research in Marxism, the Labor and Working-Class Historical Association and the Historians of American Communism.
Visiting Assistant Professor of History Joshua Morris
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Koffi Nomedji
Nomedji holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Duke University, a master’s degree in economics from Oklahoma State University, and bachelor’s degrees in sociology and economics from the University of Lomé, Togo, West Africa. At Duke, Nomedji taught courses in introductory cultural anthropology, the digital revolution, the anthropology of money, and development and Africa.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Koffi Nomedji
Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Nick Polanco
While recently earning a Ph.D. in computer science at Michigan State University, Polanco conducted research in automotive cybersecurity specific to autonomous vehicles. He also was a teaching assistant in artificial intelligence, computer organization and architecture, software engineering, computer systems, discrete structures, mobile applications and development, and database systems.
At K, Polanco will teach courses in introductory computing and programming basics for JavaScript and web development this fall.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Nick Polanco
Director of African Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dominique Somda
Somda has arrived at K from the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she was a research fellow. She also has past appointments as traveling faculty with the International Honors Program (IHP) at study abroad and world learning sites in the U.S., Spain, Jordan, India, Nepal, Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Chile; as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Reed College and the Department of Anthropology and Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; as a visiting scholar in anthropology at the London School of Economics; as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Paris Nanterre in France; and as a teaching and research fellow at the University of Paris Nanterre.
Somda has a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees in ethnology and comparative sociology from the University of Paris Nanterre, and a master’s and bachelor’s in philosophy from the University Clermont Auvergne.
Somda will lead a course this fall at K titled On Being Human in Africa. The course will examine the experiences of Africans through racialized and gendered existences, their affective relations, their ways of relating to and caring for each other and the land; and explore what it means to think and write about Africa with representations and discourses including fiction, academic writing and social media.
Director of African Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dominique Somda
Assistant Professor of Biology Clara Stuligross
Stuligross was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Riverside prior to K. She holds Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Earlham College.
Stuligross studies the impacts of environmental stressors on native bee ecology and recently received a federal grant to study the effects of climate change on bees. She also has professional experience as a museum educator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where she taught science outreach programs and developed hands-on climate change education lessons. At K this fall, she will teach Biology Explorations.
Assistant Professor of Biology Clara Stuligross
Visiting Instructor of Chinese Ruyuan Yang
Yang has a master’s degree in teaching Chinese to non-native speakers from the Beijing Language and Culture University, and a bachelor’s degree in teaching Chinese as a second language from Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, China.
Yang previously has taught college-level courses in beginning, intermediate and advanced Chinese at K; basic and intermediate Chinese, and Chinese dance and culture at Western Michigan University; and integrated Chinese and Chinese listening and speaking courses at Beijing Language and Culture University. Yang’s courses this fall include beginning and intermediate Chinese.
Kalamazoo College has appointed six faculty members as endowed chairs, recognizing their achievements as professors. Endowed chairs are positions funded through the annual earnings from an endowed gift or gifts to the College. The honor reflects the value donors attribute to the excellent teaching and mentorship that occurs at K and how much donors want to see that excellence continue.
The honorees are:
Espelencia Baptiste, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Senior Faculty Chair
Anne Marie Butler, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Junior Faculty Chair
E. Binney Girdler, the Dow Distinguished Professor in Natural Sciences
Sohini Pillai, the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities
Dwight Williams, the Kurt D. Kaufman Endowed Chair
Daniela Arias-Rotondo, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science
Espelencia Baptiste, Anthropology-Sociology
Baptiste is currently on sabbatical in Benin where she is working on a book project focused on different ways Africans and Haitians claim each other across time and space. Her research focus centers on the relationship between Africa and its diasporas. She has been active and engaged within the College since her arrival; most recently, she received the College’s Outstanding Advisor Award in 2023 and served as Posse mentor from 2019-2022.
Her courses include Lest We Forget: Memory and Identity in the African Diaspora, You Are What You Eat: Food and Identity In a Global Perspective, Communities and Schools, and Missionaries to Pilgrims: Diasporic Returns to Africa. Within her teaching, she is invested in challenging students to imagine the production of power, particularly as it relates to belonging, as a continuous phenomenon.
Baptiste has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Espelencia Baptiste, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership senior chair, received the College’s Outstanding Advisor Award in 2023 as presented by President Jorge G. Gonzalez
Anne Marie Butler, Art and Art History; Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS)
Butler has a joint appointment in Art History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her research focuses on contemporary Tunisian art within frameworks of global contemporary art, contemporary global surrealism studies, Southwest Asia North Africa studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory. At K, she teaches at the intersection of visual culture and gender studies, instructing courses such as Art, Power and Society; Queer Aesthetics; Performance Art; and core WGS classes, and this is her fourth season as volunteer assistant coach for the swimming and diving team at K.
Butler is co-editor for the volume Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia and North Africa, which will be available in October (Intellect Press). She has been published in ASAP/Journal, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and The London Review of Education. She is also an editor for the volume Surrealism and Ecology, expected in 2026.
Butler has a bachelor’s degree from Scripps College, a master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Anne Marie Butler is the the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership junior chair.
E. Binney Girdler, Biology
Girdler is the director of K’s environmental studies program and a biology department faculty member. She focuses on plant ecology and conservation biology with her research involving studies of the structure and dynamics of terrestrial plant communities.
Girdler previously had an endowed chair as the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science. She develops relationships with area natural-resource agencies and non-profit conservation groups to match her expertise with their research needs and the access needs of students. In 2022, she and K Associate Professor of Biology Santiago Salinas contributed to a global research project that proves humans are affecting evolution through urbanization and climate change. The study served as a cover story for the journal Science.
Girdler commonly teaches courses titled Environmental Science, Ecology and Conservation, and Population and Community Ecology along with an environmental studies senior seminar. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Dow Distinguished Professor in Natural Sciences E. Binney Girdler at Batts Pavilion.
Sohini Pillai, Religion
Pillai is the director of film and media studies at K and a faculty member in the religion department. She is a comparatist of South Asian religious literature, and her area of specialization is the Mahabharata and Ramayana epic traditions.
Pillai is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2024), a comprehensive study of premodern retellings of the Mahabharata epic in regional South Asian languages. She is also the co-editor of Many Mahabharatas (State University of New York Press, 2021) with Nell Shapiro Hawley and the co-author of Women in Hindu Traditions (New York University Press, under contract) with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer Ortegren. Her courses have included Religion in South Asia; Hindu Traditions; Islam in South Asia; Dance, Drama, and Devotion in South Asia; Religion, Bollywood, and Beyond; Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians: Religion and Star Wars; and Princesses, Demonesses, and Warriors: The Women of the South Asian Epics.
Pillai has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s degree from Columbia University; and a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College.
Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities Sohini Pillai displays some of her personal Star Wars memorabilia including a painting of Grogu gifted to her by a student.
Dwight Williams, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Williams previously was an endowed chair at K, having served as the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry from 2018–2020. He teaches courses including Organic Chemistry I and II, Advanced Organic Chemistry and Introductory Chemistry. His research interests include synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and pharmacology.
Williams spent a year as a lecturer at Longwood University before becoming an assistant professor at Lynchburg College. At Lynchburg, he found a passion for the synthesis and structural characterization of natural products as potential neuroprotectants.
Williams learned more about those subjects after accepting a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral research fellowship at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. During that fellowship, he worked in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology, where his work was published in six peer-reviewed journals.
Kurt D. Kaufman Endowed Chair Dwight Williams holding a molecular model in his office.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Arias-Rotondo earned a grant valued at $250,000 last year from the National Science Foundation through its Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS). The LEAPS-MPS grant emphasizes helping pre-tenure faculty at institutions that do not traditionally receive significant amounts of NSF-MPS funding, including predominantly undergraduate institutions, as well as achieving excellence through diversity. She uses the funding primarily to pay her student researchers, typically eight to 10 per term, and bring more research experiences into the classroom.
This year, Arias-Rotondo earned an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant, which will provide $50,000 to her work while backing her lab’s upcoming research regarding petroleum byproducts. Her lab traditionally develops molecules that absorb energy from light while transforming that energy into electricity. The grant will allow her and her students to take molecules they have designed to act as catalysts and unlock chemical transformations through a process called photoredox catalysis. In this case, those transformations involve petroleum byproducts and how they might be used.
Arias-Rotondo teaches Introductory Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Structure and Reactivity, and commonly takes students to ACS conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo has been named the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science.
Sydney Salgado ’24 shakes hands with Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez at Commencement. She is just the second K graduate to receive a Jerry Sherbin Fellowship, designed to send one graduating senior overseas to explore a topic of personal interest for one year.
Salgado performed ethnographic research regarding death culture in Mexico for her Senior Integrated Project (SIP) by interviewing people in the cemetery near Mexico City where her grandfather and uncle were buried.
Salgado’s SIP included a chapter on material culture and relics that create connections between the living and the deceased.
When her uncle and grandfather died unexpectedly, Sydney Salgado ’24 traveled to Mexico to attend their funerals, and what she noticed was thought provoking.
Funerals in Mexico were more celebrations of life than mourners grieving over the deceased. They were about deceased individuals living on as eternal spirits. And even long after their loved ones had died, friends and families celebrated birthdays and anniversaries of the deceased and family at gravesites.
Such observations pushed Salgado to pursue ethnographic research around Latin American cultures and how they view death in unique ways. At first, that research involved a 74-page Senior Integrated Project (SIP), enthusiastically supported by Associate Professor of Religion Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, and developed when Salgado interviewed people in the cemetery near Mexico City where her grandfather and uncle were buried.
“I showed up to the cemetery every day, and no matter what time it was, I could converse with families, a flower salesperson, people cleaning tombstones, or people serenading tombs, and I learned so much from their stories and experiences while seeing them through my own eyes,” Salgado said of her honors-earning work.
And now, a special Kalamazoo College fellowship will take her abroad again to extend that research through more Latin American cultures. Salgado—a triple major in religion, Spanish and international area studies in Latin America from Highland Park, Illinois—is just the second K graduate to receive a Jerry Sherbin Fellowship, designed to send one graduating senior overseas to explore a topic of personal interest for one year.
The fellowship was established by alumnus Robert Sherbin ’79 and named after his father. Sherbin participated in study abroad at K by traveling to the University of Nairobi, where he was one of just six undergrads from the U.S. and the only K student. Later, as a senior, he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, an external grant through the Watson Foundation, that allowed him to create and follow through with a one-year project overseas.
Salgado’s SIP on death culture in Mexico included three chapters: the first exploring the sources of Mexican practices surrounding the dead in Aztec and indigenous beliefs such as the nine layers of death, the Day of the Dead and the eternal nature of the soul; the second on material culture and relics that create connections between the living and the deceased; and the third on the economy of death as the living can buy flowers, food, toys, snacks, tombstones and more, all for the sake of the dead, in the immediate vicinity of Mexican cemeteries. She expects to see similar themes and practices, but some surprises and unique characteristics as well, with her Sherbin Fellowship itinerary taking her to places such as Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Argentina.
Part of Salgado’s SIP research investigated the economy of death as the living can buy flowers, food, toys, snacks, tombstones and more, all for the sake of the dead, in the immediate vicinity of Mexican cemeteries.
Salgado’s Sherbin Fellowship itinerary will take her to places such as Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Argentina.
Locations such as Puerto Rico and Peru—with their large populations of indigenous people—could reveal practices even more rooted in indigenous traditions than in Mexico, Salgado said.
In Colombia, for example, Salgado hopes to find evidence of “no nombre” or “sin nombre,” which means “nameless.”
“Crime rates are high in a lot of Latin American countries, and I’d argue that’s the case for Colombia,” Salgado said. “With those crime rates in smaller towns, Colombians will adopt unclaimed bodies and bury them. They’re treated like saints, so in addition to going to church, Colombians go to the cemetery to ask for protection, love, forgiveness or whatever it is they need.”
Locations such as Puerto Rico and Peru—with their large populations of indigenous people—could reveal practices even more rooted in indigenous traditions than in Mexico, Salgado said. And with Argentina, she will have opportunities to visit cemeteries such as La Recoleta, which contains the graves of notable people such as Argentinian military leaders, presidents and political figure Eva Perón.
“I want to go there because I didn’t have time with my SIP to explore things like the art design of tombstones,” Salgado said. “In Latin America, different objects symbolize different things. If you have a tree with birds on your tombstone, for example, it signifies a mother separating from her kids. There’s so much that goes into the design and architecture of these mausoleums and tombs, especially with them being historic. I would love to know more about the personalization of each.”
Salgado will send quarterly updates to Sherbin, the College and the Center for International Programs (CIP) on her progress abroad. Plus, upon returning to the U.S., she will promote her experience during the 2025 fall term, inspiring students to apply for the fellowship themselves. But in the meantime, she would like to thank the people who supported her candidacy for the Sherbin fellowship.
“I would have never dreamed of this opportunity in a million years until now,” Salgado said. “Having this fellowship is amazing, especially for a first-generation, lower-income student who would never think this could happen. When I told my parents I was applying for this, they said, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so exciting.’ And now I get to tell them that I’m traveling the world.”
Three upcoming events will spread the word of a new book by Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor of Religion and Director of Film and Media Studies Sohini Pillai titled Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative (the American Academy of Religion’s Religion in Translation Series at Oxford University Press, March 22, 2024).
The ancient Sanskrit Mahabharata is recognized as the longest poem ever composed and tells the tale of the five Pandava princes and the cataclysmic battle they wage with their 100 cousins, the Kauravas. The story is among the most widely-told narratives in South Asia, and many Mahabharatas were created in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu, as well as other regional South Asian languages.
Pillai’s book is a comprehensive study of premodern regional Mahabharata retellings, which argues that devotees of the Hindu god Vishnu and his various forms throughout South Asia turned the epic about an apocalyptic, bloody war into works of devotion focused on the Hindu deity Krishna. Krishna’s Mahabharatas examines more than 40 retellings in 11 regional South Asian languages composed over a period of 900 years while focusing on two of them: Villiputturar’s 15th-century Tamil Paratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s 17th-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahabharat.
Hear from Pillai on her book through:
An in-person book celebration organized by K’s Department of Religion at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, in the College’s Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall.
An online event through the Beneath the Canopy lecture and discussion series with Barkha Patel and Shachi Phene at 7 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, April 11. Aangan: South Asian Center for Art and Thought is organizing the event. Tickets are $15 and will soon be available at this link.
A virtual book launch at 6 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, April 18, organized by University of Florida Distinguished Professor Vasudha Narayanan with Trinity University Assistant Professor of Religion Gregory Clines, University of Toronto Religion Professor Srilata Raman, and University of Chicago Associate Professor Tyler Williams. The event will be hosted by the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions at the University of Florida. Participate in this free event through Zoom.
Kalamazoo College Assistant Professor of Religion and Director of Film and Media Studies Sohini Pillai holds her dog, Leia the Ewok Princess, and her new book, “Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative.”
“I’m very excited about the publication of Krishna’s Mahabharatas,” Pillai said. “I started the research for this book as a first-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley in 2015, so I have been working on this project for nine years! The final avatara or ‘incarnation’ of this book came into being when I started teaching at Kalamazoo College. I am thankful for my supportive colleagues at K and for the many curious and enthusiastic K students I have had in my courses, and I hope that I have written a book that they will enjoy reading.”
