05-01-07 Research Profiles

Liberal Arts Research Profiles

Mary Meagher,professor of psychology (neuroscience)

Mary’s research focuses on the role of stress and emotion in health, with an emphasis on pain and immune-related diseases: Her work on immune-related diseases examines how psychosocial stressors alter immune processes and vulnerability to an animal model of multiple sclerosis, Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus infection. One aspect of this work examines the effects of early maternal deprivation on vulnerability to infection later in life. Understanding these mechanisms could lead to interventions that prevent or reverse the impact of early life stress on one’s susceptibility to disease as an adult. Finally, Mary is collaborating on a project to identify the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for age-related changes in cellular and memorial function, such as is found in Alzheimer’s disease. Understanding these mechanisms may lead to the development of medications that prevent or alleviate age-related disease.

Dudley Poston, professor of sociology and George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor of Liberal Arts

Dudley’s research focuses almost entirely on Chinese population trends. One of his concentrations has been studying the sex ratio at birth and the implications of that on the country’s future. Since China imposed the one-child-per-couple law in 1979, there have been 120 boys born for every 100 girls. He says China has 25 million extra boys and the difficulty in finding wives will lead them to look outside of the country. Dudley has also studied Chinese migration patterns across China and illegal immigration to America.  He notes there are only so many jobs in China and eventually, Chinese workers will come to the United States in bigger numbers. Dudley has written or edited 12 books and 220 articles or book chapters. He has won many awards and has been on numerous national and international committees. Dudley also is a guest professor at the People’s University in Beijing and at Fuzhou University in Fuzhou, China.

Hilaire Kallendorf, associate professor of Spanish

Hilaire’s research deals with many aspects of religious experience, especially as belief relates to literature and culture.  Her first book Exorcism and Its Texts:  Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain (2003) was published by the University of Toronto Press.  She has published on such topics as self-exorcism, demonic possession, ghosts, Taíno religious ceremonies, and Christian humanism in the Renaissance.  These articles have appeared in such journals as Renaissance Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. This past year Hilaire was one of 22 faculty nationwide selected to receive an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Andrew Mellon Fellowship for Junior Faculty. The fellowship will support work on her second book, The Comedia as Casuistry, a project about conscience, moral dilemmas and sins people were committing during the Renaissance.

Boris H. J. M. Brummans - Ph.D. in organizational communication

Boris studied topics pertaining to organizational communication and language, philosophy of communication, communication and identity, and communication and culture. He taught four different courses and worked with Dr. Linda Putnam on Kellogg Foundation evaluation research and National Science Foundation conflict research. His articles, some co-authored, appear in Journal of Applied Communication Research (2001), Qualitative Inquiry (2003), Organization (2003), and Communication Research Reports (2004). Boris now works as an assistant professor at the University of Montréal in Canada.

Justin Flint, history major (class of 2005), is studying “Arthurian Legend as Tudor Propaganda” as a 2004-2005 Honor Undergraduate Research Fellow.  He began this work last year as a Glasscock Undergraduate Fellow where Justin examined “Tudor Legitimization Through Legend.” Sparked by his interest in the manner by which legend is appropriated to serve the state, he explored ways in which the Tudor dynasty in England attempted to legitimate its rule. History Professor and Glasscock Center Director James Rosenheim is serving as Justin’s Research Fellow mentor.