Spring 2015 Honor Roll

Elizabeth Son, assistant professor of theatre, has been awarded a Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The yearlong fellowship, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, allows exceptional junior faculty to work on their research and writing in pursuit of tenure. Son’s current research focuses on the relationship between performance and politics in a transnational Asian/American context. In her book manuscript, “Embodying Redress: ‘Comfort Women,’ Performance and the Transpacific Politics of Memory,” she explores the political and cultural significances of performances in Korea, Japan and the United States for the processes of reckoning with the history of Japanese military sexual slavery.

Kyla Ebels-Duggan, associate professor of philosophy at Northwestern, has been selected as an inaugural senior fellow at the Center for Ethics and Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison -- the first academic center of its kind in the United States. The center began operation this spring with a goal of creating a network for philosophers to explore moral and political questions in educational policy and practice. Ebels-Duggan specializes in moral and political philosophy and their history.

Kathleen J. Green, the Joseph L. Mayberry Professor of Pathology and professor of dermatology, has been named the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award. The award is conferred in recognition of lifetime achievements in research and provide recipients the opportunity to carry out research alongside colleagues in Germany. At Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Green is researching how cells stick together to better understand how they regulate chemical signals important for development and differentiation. Her lab is particularly interested in tissues, such as skin and the heart, that are major targets for adhesion-related diseases, including inherited, autoimmune and bacterial-toxin mediated disorders and cancer.

Laurie Zoloth, professor of religious studies, has been named a life member of the Clare Hall College of the University of Cambridge. The university grants life membership at the college to scholars who have completed a fellowship and contributed to the intellectual life of the university. Zoloth has served on the NASA National Advisory Council, the NASA Planetary Protection Advisory Committee and the executive committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. This is the first life membership awarded to a Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences faculty member. 

S. Hollis Clayson, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History, has been named the 2015 Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (NYU). Clayson is a historian of modern art who specializes in 19th-century Europe, particularly France, and transatlantic exchanges between France and the U.S. She is the only art historian to have been honored with all three of the field's prestigious visiting professorships: The Sterling Clark Visiting Professorship (Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art), the Samuel H. Kress Professorship (National Gallery of Art), and the Varnedoe (NYU). Read more about Clatyon’s honor.

Daniel Immerwahr, assistant professor of history, has been named a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at The Huntington. In June 2015, Immerwahr will begin the prestigious yearlong research fellowship at one of the nation’s leading research libraries in San Marino, California. His first book, “Thinking Small,” deals with the United States' mid 20^th-century pursuit of grassroots development at home and abroad. Immerwahr is currently researching another book, “How to Hide an Empire,” about U.S. territory overseas — colonies, occupation zones and military bases — in the 20th century.

Elizaveta Strakhov, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of English and the Department of French and Italian, received an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography from the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Strakhov is one of 20 early-career academics selected for the highly competitive, three-year fellowship, which seeks to revitalize bibliographical studies within the humanities. Her research reconsiders the idea of Anglo-French cultural exchange in the late medieval period and under-explored cleavages between French speakers throughout Europe. Strakhov will become an assistant English professor at Marquette University in August 2015.

Yong-Chao Ma, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Feinberg School of Medicine and Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, has received a 2014 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award for his proposal, "Rescuing Motor Neuron Degeneration in Spinal Muscular Atrophy." The award made by The Hartwell Foundation provides research support for three years at $100,000 direct cost per year. Ma studies the regulation of motor neuron and dopaminergic neuron functions in health and disease, specifically spinal motor neurons in spinal muscular atrophy and dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson’s disease. By winning an Individual Award, Northwestern also has qualified to receive a Hartwell Fellowship that provides postdoctoral support for two years at $50,000 direct cost per year to a candidate in biomedical research. For additional information see http://www.thehartwellfoundation.org.

The American Society of International Law awarded Karen Alter, professor of political science in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Law, with a Certificate of Merit for preeminent contribution to creative scholarship for her book, “The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights.” The awardees are selected by the society's executive council on the nomination of the scholarship awards committee and presented at the society’s annual Meeting. Her book provides a framework for comparing and understanding the influence of the 25 existing international courts and for thinking about how different domains of domestic and international politics are transformed through the creation of international courts.