Four members of the Hamilton College faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor. Associate Professor of Chemistry Timothy Elgren, Associate Professor of French Martine Guyot-Bender, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Richard Seager and Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures De Bao Xu were promoted, effective July 1.
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| Timothy Elgren |
Elgren received his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College and brought his expertise in biophysical chemistry to Hamilton in 1993. His current efforts are dedicated to the examination of metalloproteins encapsulated in sol-gel glasses. The porous nature of these materials allow the encapsulated enzymes to retain their catalytic functions. The transparent materials also allow us to examine the properties of the enzymes using spectroscopic methods. Elgren has received numerous grants and has published articles in the
Journal of the American Chemical Society, Biochemistry, the Journal of Chemical Education, and
The Chemical Educator. He is the past president of the Council on Undergraduate Research.
Elgren was instrumental in obtaining a $500,000 Department Development Award from Research Corporation (RC) to increase faculty and technical staffing in the chemistry and physics departments. He also recently has received a $259,000 award from the National Science Foundation in support of his continuing research.
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| Martine Guyot-Bender |
Martine Guyot-Bender specializes in 20th and 21st century French literature and cultures. She joined the Hamilton faculty in 1991 after receiving her bachelor's degree from the University of Metz in France, and her master's degree and doctorate from the University of Oregon (1991). Guyot-Bender is the author of
Poétique et politique de l'ambiguité chez Patrick Modiano (1999), and the co-editor of a collection of essays,
Paradigms of Memory: The Occupation and Other Hi/stories in the Novels of Patrick Modiano (1998). Her more recent publications focus on contemporary popular culture and literature. They include articles on the stereotypes of France in American tourist magazines, trends in French popular fiction and recent French cinema. She is currently working on a book on the representation of writing and reading in contemporary French novel. Guyot-Bender is co-editor of
Women in French Bulletin and a visiting regional scholar at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University. In 2006-2007, she will be directing the Hamilton program in Paris for the fourth time.
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| Richard Seager |
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.
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| De Bao Xu |
De Bao Xu earned a master's in history of the Chinese language at Beijing Normal University in 1985, and M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1988 and 1991 respectively. He teaches modern Chinese, classical Chinese, and Chinese culture courses. Xu is the editor-in-chief (with James Huang, Harvard University) of
Contemporary Linguistic Theory Series. He is the author and co-author of textbooks and multimedia software:
Chinese Breakthrough and China Scene: An Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course, Crossing Paths: Living and Learning in China and
Shifting Tides: Culture in Contemporary China. Xu is the chair of the organizing committee of the biennial International Conference on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century.
