Six members of the Hamilton College faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor. Associate professors Debra Boutin, mathematics; Naomi Guttman, English; Shoshana Keller, history; Doran Larson, English; Herm Lehman biology; and Gary Wyckoff, government, were promoted, effective July 1.
Debra Boutin came to Hamilton in 1999. She earned her undergraduate degree
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| Debra Boutin |
from Smith College in 1991 and her Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 1998. Her mathematical interests include graph theory, geometric graph theory and group theory. In particular, she works with graphs, their drawings and their symmetry groups. Boutin’s recent papers include “Geometric Graph Homomorphisms” with Sally Cockburn in the
Journal of Graph Theory (forthcoming), "Thickness and Chromatic Number of r-Inflated Graphs" with Michael O. Albertson and Ellen Gethner in
Discrete Math (forthcoming), and “Determining sets, resolving sets, and the exchange property" in
Graphs and Combinatorics 2009.
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| Naomi Guttman |
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 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. Guttman's teaching interests include poetry and poetics and environmental and feminist literary study. With Professor of Russian Frank Sciacca, she is co-leader of the Central Leatherstocking Region Slow Food convivium.
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| Shoshana Keller |
Shoshana Keller focuses on Soviet and Central Asian history and has written on Soviet Marxism as a missionary faith, the women's liberation campaign in Soviet Uzbekistan, and the development of Soviet government structure in Central Asia. Keller is the author of
To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign Against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941 (2001, Praeger Publishers). Her current research concerns the development of Uzbek national identity after World War II. She is also planning a resource book for undergraduate classes on the political and cultural interactions of Eurasian peoples in the modern period, tentatively titled
The Long Frontier: Inner Eurasia and the Caucasus, 1800-2000.
Doran Larson teaches courses in prison writing, the history of the novel, 20th-century American literature and creative writing. He has published articles on Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James and popular film. Since November of 2006, he has taught a creative writing course inside a maximum-security state prison. Larson's essays on prison writing and prison issues have been published or are forthcoming in
College Literature, Radical Teacher, English Language Notes and
The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is the author of two novels,
The Big Deal (Bantam, 1985), and
Marginalia (Permanent, 1997). Larson's stories have appeared in
The Iowa Review, Boulevard, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and
Best American Short Stories. The Iowa Review published his novella,
Syzygy, in 1998. He has also published travel writing, magazine features and paid op-eds.
Herm Lehman’s research is focused on the development and function
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| Herm Lehman |
ofneurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are molecules released by neurons and mediate communication throughout the nervous system. Thus, the proper expression and maintenance of neurotransmitter levels is a critical, yet largely unknown, aspect of the metabolism of the neuron. Lehman has a long-standing interest in the identification and function of novel invertebrate neurotransmitters. His interests began with the study of mollucan FMRFamide neuropeptides and have continued with the identification of new insect neuropeptides. Most recently, students in Lehman’s laboratory have discovered that nitric oxide may interact with octopamine to form novel bioactive compounds.
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| P. Gary Wyckoff |
Paul Gary Wyckoff earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is the director of the Public Policy Program at Hamilton. Wyckoff's teaching duties include Data Analysis (Government 230), Introduction to Public Policy (Public Policy 251), Topics in Public Policy (Public Policy 382), and Senior Project (Public Policy 500 and 501). An economist by training, Wyckoff's current research focuses on the empirical foundations of public sector decision-making, and his book on this topic is forthcoming from the Urban Institute Press. He serves as executive editor of Insights, Hamilton's undergraduate social science journal.
