Affiliated Faculty
 John Adams, Communication
John Adams has a Ph.D. in speech communication from the University of Washington with a specialization in rhetoric and public address. His teaching interests include a newly developed course, "Rhetoric and the Environment." Adams received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written extensively on the intersections of rhetoric, religion and education. His writing has appeared in, among others, Rhetorica, Early American Literature and Renaissance Quarterly. His book, Delightful Conviction: Jonathan Edwards and the Rhetoric of Conversion, co-authored with Stephen Yarbrough, received the Eastern Communication Association's Everett Lee Hunt Award. Adams has taught courses in speechwriting, persuasion, history and philosophy of rhetoric, and communication ethics.
Erol Balkan, Economics
Balkan earned a Ph.D. in economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton and joined the Hamilton faculty in 1987. He teaches courses on sustainable development and his current research focuses on the formation of middle classes through education and financial liberalization in developing countries. He has received several awards and grants for his work, including the International Development Research Center Grant in 1996 to study the effects of short term capital flows on the Turkish economy. He teaches economic development and international finance at Hamilton and has lectured as a visiting professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Balkan is awaiting the release of a new book, Making the Grade: Istanbul Middle Class Formation and Elite Education (with Henry Rutz). He is also co-directing the Access Project , a comprehensive program designed to provide low-income parents in Central New York with all of the support necessary to thrive in an academic community.
Peter Cannavo, Government
Peter Cannavo received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000, an M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School in 1992, and an A.B. from Harvard University in 1986. He has been on the Hamilton faculty since 2002. Peter's research and teaching are in areas of political theory, environmental politics, and ethics and geography and land use issues. His first book, The Working Landscape: Founding, Preservation, and the Politics of Place, was published by The MIT Press in 2007.
 Mark Cryer, Theater
Cryer earned a master of fine arts in acting from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, Glasgow, Scotland and studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Art, London. He has appeared in the feature films Mighty Ducks 2, It Could Happen to You and The Peace Maker. Cryer is interested in addressing social issues like the environment in theater, and also wrote and performs a one-act play, 99 Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask an African American But Were Too Afraid to Ask, a look at what we think and what we know about African-Americans. The play has been performed at the annual Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C. and the Edinburgh (Scotland) Fringe Theatre Festival.
Eugene Domack, Geosciences
A member of the Hamilton College faculty since 1985, Domack earned his Ph.D. in geology at Rice University. Specializing in the sediments, paleoenvironments, and glacial geology of the Southern Hemisphere, Domack has been the chief scientist aboard many research vessels to Antarctica. Over the last 15 years Domack has led more than 100 undergraduates to Antarctica as part of his NSF sponsored research program. He has published many articles has edited the book, The Earth's Glacial Record,and has been awarded many grants for Antarctic study by the National Science Foundation, who also presented him with the Antarctic Service Award in 1981. One of his current projects focuses locally on Oneida Lake, a project that is sponsored by the Central New York Regional Planning and Development Board. His teaching interests that relate to sustainability include the international aspect of wilderness and the globalization factors that drive change in these systems. Domack's courses that focus on these issues include Wilderness and Global Environmental Change, in which he covers issues related to global market forces as well as the global warming aspects that change ice sheet behavior, and a Sophomore Seminar on Global Warming, which he co-teaches with Ian Rosenstein. In 2007, he lead a group of students, with Associate Professor of Philosophy Katheryn Doran, to Tasmania where the group focused on the sustainability of old growth forestry CV
Katheryn Doran, Philosophy
Katheryn Doran, associate professor and chair of philosophy, studies and teaches courses on the theory of knowledge, American philosophy, contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, and environmental ethics. She has published several papers on the problem of skepticism, and is currently working on an anthology of the papers presented at Hamilton's 2007 Truax conference: Realism and its Critics. She is interested in the connections between reflective common sense and philosophical theory, and in June, 2007 she teamed up with Eugene Domack, Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies, to take 12 Hamilton students to Tasmania for a three week field studies course.
Steve Ellingson, Sociology
Stephen Ellingson comes to Hamilton from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, Calif., where he was assistant professor of the sociology of religion. His current research, funded by the Louisville Institute, examines the relationships among religious and non-religious environmental organizations. Ellingson earned a doctorate and master's degree in sociology from the University of Chicago. His research interests are the sociology of religion, sociology of culture, and social movements and collective behavior. He is the author of The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-First Century (University of Chicago Press, 2007); co-author of The Sexual Organization of the City (University of Chicago Press, 2004); co-editor of Religion and Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Routledge, 2002) and co-author of Organizational Ethics in Health Care: Principles, Cases and Practical Solutions (Jossey-Bass, 2001). He has also taught at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Religion, Ethics and Health Care and the University of Chicago. Ellingson has served as book review co-editor and associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology.
 Todd Franklin, Philosophy
Todd Franklin earned his doctorate from Stanford University and joined the Hamilton faculty in 1997. In addition to teaching courses on existentialism, Nietzsche, and critical cultural studies, he is also the author of several scholarly works on the social and political import of various forms of existential enlightenment as well as a co-edited volume titled Critical Affinities: Reflections on the Convergence between Nietzsche and African American Thought (SUNY Press, 2006). Franklin's interests in sustainability pertain to the intersections of sustainability and race in so far as issues of racial equity with respect to life chances are inextricably linked to issues of economics, health, and the nature of one's environment. Focusing on these intersections, Franklin's most recent work deals with the ways in which American ghettos can be transformed from deleterious deteriorating communities into life-enhancing sustainable ones.
 Naomi Guttman, English
A member of the Hamilton faculty since 1996, Naomi Guttman holds a MFA degree from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Southern California. Her teaching interests include poetry and poetics and environmental and feminist literary study. Guttman also regularly teaches a sophomore seminar about food with colleagues in several other departments. With Professor of Russian Frank Sciacca, she is co-leader of the Central Leatherstocking Region Slow Food convivium. Her book, Reasons for Winter, (Brick Books, 1991), won the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry in Quebec, and she has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and an Artist's Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her book of poems, Wet Apples, White Blood, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in the spring of 2007.
 Betsy Jensen, Economics
Jensen earned her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and Ph.D. from M.I.T. She joined the Hamilton College faculty in 1983. Jensen is co-author of Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice, a textbook developed in part from experiences teaching students at Hamilton College. Her recent work investigates the economics of arbitration, student course choice, and the determinants of students' interest in economics. Jensen teaches courses in industrial organization, American economic history, and microeconomic theory. In 2002, she was the recipient of Hamilton's Class of 1962 Outstanding Teaching Award, given every five years to an outstanding tenured faculty member in recognition of distinguished teaching. More about Elizabeth Jensen ...
 Derek Jones, Economics
Jones earned his Ph.D. at Cornell University and master's degree from the London School of Economics before joining the Hamilton faculty in 1972. He has published widely, focusing on the sustainability of firms in transition economics, with more than 100 articles in refereed journals and chapters in books (including several with students) and he has also edited eight books. He undertook some of the first empirical analysis of long established worker cooperatives, employee ownership and participation, is a past president of the international association, Economics of Participation, and co-edits the research series Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor Managed Firms. While he continues to work in that area, much of his current research examines the transition economies of Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and China. Diverse topics are being investigated with a current focus on the determinants of business performance, the nature and effects of executive compensation, and the causes of uneven growth. Another interest is economic development in depressed communities where he is investigating employment practices in local firms. He has a strong interest in the new economy, and is senior editor for the Handbook of Economics in the Digital Age. His work has been supported by many organizations including NSF, Russell-Sage, Rockefeller and the National Council. In 2003 he succeeded Richard Ericson of Columbia as president of the Association of Comparative Economic Studies. Jones recently became the scientific coordinator of the Mondragon Cooperative Academic Community ( MCAC), a new initiative of Mondragon University in Spain. MCAC promotes rigorous research on cooperative ownership and promotes collaboration between experienced researchers from other countries. This collaborative research grooup examines issus of sustainability as they are affected by the very nature of the business enterprise. More about Derek Jones ...
 George (Tom) Jones, Geoarchaeology
G. Tom Jones, who chairs the anthropology department, has conducted archaeology fieldwork in Nevada's Great Basin for the past 16 summers, in addition to time spent studying the prehistorical archaeological record of San Juan Island, Washington. Jones earned his Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Washington. He co-edited Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology for the Cambridge University Press. He was recently awarded the Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for excellence in teaching and received a Sabbatical Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.
 Paul Hagstrom, Economics
Hagstrom attended the University of Wisconsin where he earned his master's and Ph.D. Since coming to Hamilton in 1991, Hagstrom has published many papers, mainly focusing on his interest and teaching field "The Economics of Poverty." Currently he is working on research on "The Economic Impact of Refugee Resettlement" and "The Impact of Refugees on Local Labor Markets" in the Central New York region. He is currently involved with the Alumni Council, Committee on Information Technology, and Human Subjects Institutional Review Board. He is also a former director of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton. More about Paul Hagstrom ...
 Larry Knop, Mathematics
Knop earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. Areas of interest are mathematical modeling and improper integrals, and differential equations
 Cheng Li, Government
Born in Shanghai, Cheng Li grew up during the Cultural Revolution. In 1985, he came to the United States where he later received an M.A. in Asian Studies at U.C.-Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Political Science at Princeton. He was a residential fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, in 2002-2003. He is currently a Brookings Institution non-resident senior fellow, a trustee of the Institute of Current World Affairs in Hanover, New Hampshire, a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and a member of the Academic Advisory Group of the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Li is the author of Bridging Minds across the Pacific: The Sino-U.S. Educational Exchange 1978-2003 (2005), China's Leaders: The New Generation (2001) and Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform (1997). He is currently working on two book manuscripts: Chinese Technocrats and Urban Subcultures in Shanghai. More about Cheng Li ...
 Seth Major, Physics
Major works in quantum gravity, a field devoted to finding the structure of spacetime on the smallest possible scales (see the link below for more information). Recently, his research focuses on finding observable consequences of quantum gravity and constraining the theory using current astrophysical observations. He maintains an interest in sustainability, particularly in precisely understanding what this entails through analysis. An example is his interest in evaluating sub-development plans with a carbon footprint analysis. Prior to taking a position at Hamilton he was a Lise Meitner Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Vienna and a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College. He earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Pennsylvania State University. He has published articles in professional journals including American Journal of Physics, Classical and Quantum Gravity, the New Journal of Physics, and Physical Review D. More about Seth Major ...
 Mike McCormick, Biology
McCormick joins the Biology Department with a shared teaching commitment in Geology. His research interests lie in Geomicrobiology and the influence that cell/mineral interactions have on the transformation of environmental contaminants. He joins Hamilton having completed a Ph.D. and post-doctoral fellowship in Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. He recently published a research article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology demonstrating that minerals produced by bacteria can play a major role in the degradation of common ground water pollutants (2002, 36(3):403-410). More about Mike McCormick ...
Onno Oerlemans, English
Oerlemans earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. He has published articles on the form and function of lyric in Whitman, Milton, and Wordsworth, on literary theory and Henry James, and on animal rights and taxonomy in romanticism. His book Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature (University of Toronto Press, 2002) examines the many ways in which romantic-period authors explore and represent the physical presence of the natural world. He has recently published articles on the representation of animals in Coetzee and Gowdy, the romantic origins of environmentalism, and architecture in romantic period writing. His current research is on the representation of animals in 20th century literature.
John O'Neal, French
John O'Neal, a member of the Hamilton faculty since 1984, earned a master's in French from Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. from U.C.L.A. He was named a Knight in the Order of the Palmes Academiques by the French Ministry of Education in 1998. A major area of O'Neal's research is 18th-century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who could be considered the world's first environmentalist. O'Neal organized a conference at Hamilton in 2005 on Rousseau's last work, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and is editing a collection of essays for the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford entitled The Nature of Rousseau's Reveries: physical, human, aesthetic. His own article for the volume is on nature as refuge. In addition, he has written extensively in both French and English about 18th-century French literature and thought. More about John O'Neal ...
Steve Orvis, Government
Orvis, who earned a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies comparative politics with an emphasis on Africa. His articles on rural development in Kenya and African democratization have appeared in African Studies Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Journal of Asian and African Studies. His book, The Agrarian Question in Kenya, is published with University Presses of Florida. He served as an international election observer in Kenya's transitional elections to democratic rule, and led 11 Hamilton students on the Kenya Field School in summer 2000 and 2004. More about Stephen Orvis ...
Ann Owen, Economics
Owen, formerly a Federal Reserve economist, earned a Ph.D. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from Babson College. She has diverse research interests and has published several papers on long-run growth and income distribution as well as teaching economics to undergraduates. Her current research projects examine the effects of international trade on health, the role that trust plays in the implementation of sustainability programs, and the impact of religious beliefs on pro-environment behavior. She teaches courses in economic growth, monetary policy, macroeconomic theory, and statistics. Owen also serves as director of the Sustainability Program at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center . More about Ann Owen ...
Bill Pfitsch, Biology
Pfitsch researches how plants meet the challenges of living in potentially stressful conditions. In recent years, he has focused his research on the limitations of different plants in their natural habitats, specifically examining physiological and morphological differences of asters in the forest and open fields. Currently, Pfitsch focuses on plant interactions with other organisms (specifically symbiotic fungi and bacteria) that help them meet those challenges. Pfitsch earned his Ph.D. in botany at the University of Washington. His research has been supported by funds such as the Emerson Grant for Collaborative Research, and Howard Hughes Research. Currently, Pfitsch is working on a collaborative project with the Hamilton College Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Biology Ernest Williams, The Nature Conservancy, and the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation on a project which has received funding from the National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy. A member of the Environmental Studies Advisory Committee at Hamilton College, Pfitsch has published extensively. His articles were published in journals including Ecology and Oecologia, and he wrote a chapter for Tropical Alpine Environments: Plant Form and Function (Cambridge University Press). More about William Pfitsch ...
Jeff Pliskin, Economics
Jeff Pliskin is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center at Hamilton. Pliskin earned his master's and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and joined the Hamilton College faculty in 1982. His recent research has examined the incidence of profit sharing and flexible workplace practices and their effects on firm performance. Pliskin teaches courses on econometrics, international trade, human resource management practices, microeconomic theory, and introductory macroeconomics.
Todd Rayne, Geosciences
Rayne's area of interest is hydrogeology and environmental geology. He received his doctorate in geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and before that he worked in the petroleum and environmental consulting industries. Rayne's current research involves using numerical models to predict the impacts of urbanization on ground water flow systems. He also is involved with modeling ground water flow through fractured aquifers and wellhead protection studies. He is the author of two solution manuals for hydrogeology textbooks and has published papers in Hydrogeology Journal, Nordic Hydrology, and Northeastern Geology and Environmental Science.
Ian Rosenstein, Chemistry
Rosenstein holds a Ph.D from Duke University and teaches a course on global warming. His work focuses on free radicals. His goal is to develop a model that will allow chemists to carry out free radical reactions to form a preponderance of one stereoisomeric product. With the methodology he is currently creating, Rosenstein would be able to efficiently produce the single stereoisomer that is effective in pharmaceutical medications. He has published articles in Tetrahedron Letters, Synthetic Communications, and the Journal of Chemical Education. He has received grants from several agencies such as the American Chemical Society/ Petroleum Research Fund and the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, Phi Lambda Upsilon, the Council on Undergraduate Research, and Sigma Xi. More about Ian Rosenstein ...
Frank Sciacca, Russian Studies
Sciacca, who has been a faculty member at Hamilton since 1984, earned a Ph.D and master's from Columbia University. Sciacca regularly teaches an interdisciplinary seminar about food with colleagues from other departments. With Associate Professor of English Naomi Guttman, he is co-leader of the Central Leatherstocking Region Slow Food convivium. He has lectured extensively on iconography and Russian churches, and contributed articles to Slavic Review, Journal of Slavic and East European Arts, and Ulbandus Review. His ongoing research interests are the Pochaev Monastery - the cultural politics of Right Bank Ukraine, iconography of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and recent canonizations in the Russian Orthodox churches. With Professor of English Naomi Guttman, he is co-leader of the Central Leatherstocking Region Slow Food convivium.
Richard Seager, Religious Studies
Seager's field of study is the religions of the United States. His interests include immigration, ethnicity and religion, and religion and the environment, but he has written most extensively about Asian religions in this country. His first two books were devoted to the World's Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893. More recently, he published Buddhism in America (Columbia, 1999), an examination of prominent communities and leading figures in a range of Buddhist traditions currently setting down roots in this country. Seager published his latest book, Encountering the Dharma (University of California Press) in March, 2006. It offers a rare insider's look at Soka Gakkai Buddhism, one of Japan's most influential and controversial religious movements, and one that is experiencing explosive growth around the world.
Julio Videras, Economics
Videras has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His work focuses on how cultural and social factors influence sustainable development practices and the provision of the public good of environmental quality. He has published in Ecological Economics, Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy,the Review of Social Economy, the Journal of Socio-Economics, and Contemporary Economic Policy and is author of a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. More about Julio Videras ...
Stephen Wu, Economics
Stephen Wu received his Ph.D. and master's degree from Princeton University and his bachelor's degree from Brown University. He is currently engaged in survey research that investigates how people make decisions to engage in pro-environmental behavior. He has published papers in the areas of health economics and labor economics, with a particular emphasis on the interaction between psychology and economics. Some of the topics of his current research include the relationship between health and socioeconomic status, determinants of savings and consumption decisions, and academic labor markets. His papers have appeared in professional journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Economic Education. Wu regularly teaches courses in microeconomics, statistics, health economics,and labor economics and is currently writing an introductory economics textbook. More about Stephen Wu ...
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