Westmont Magazine Faculty Footnotes

JOHN BLONDELL (theater arts) will direct a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. “Globe to Globe” will feature 37 international companies presenting every single Shakespeare play during six weeks beginning in April. Blondell will direct Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part 3,” staged by actors from the National Theatre of Macedonia and performed in their language. In February, Blondell directed his Lit Moon Theatre Company in an English version of “Henry VI, Part 3” in Santa Barbara.

STEVE BUTLER (music) has composed a new work,“Hymns of Divine Love,” a cantata based on poetry from Symeon the New Theologian, a 10th-century Orthodox monk and poet. The Westmont College Collegium Musicum, a new faculty-student musical ensemble directed by MICHAEL SHASBERGER (music), presented the world premiere of this piece in February.

ALISTER CHAPMAN (history) published “Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement” (Oxford University Press, 2011), which Christianity Today reviewed in its February 2012 issue. He discusses the book in an interview at London’s Oak Hill College: vimeo.com/35502975. He also wrote an essay in November 2011, “John Stott’s Lasting Impact on American Evangelicalism,” for the Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/alister-chapman/ john–stotts–american-evangelicalism _b_1088924.html.

CHARLES FARHADIAN (religious studies) has edited a book, “Introducing World Christianity” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). He has contributed several articles,“Mission/ Missionaries,” “Papua,” “World Religions,” and “Church” to the Encyclopedia of Global Religion (2011).

BETH HORVATH (biology) will speak at the Southern California Association of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists in Santa Barbara in March. She will discuss the new species she described last spring and explain how to identify species in the more problematic gorgoniangenera. She will also introduce her monograph on gorgonians of the California Bight.

TOM KNECHT (political science) and his coauthor, Lisa Martinez, published “Engaging the Reluctant? Service Learning, Interpersonal Contact, and Attitudes toward Homeless Individuals,” in the January edition of PS: Political Science. He joined SUSAN PENKSA (political science) in speaking at the Westmont Downtown lecture series on “National and Global Security in the 21st Century,”which focused on the contributions of Robert Gates, former secretary of defense.

In January, CHANDRA MALLAMPALLI (history) gave two lectures in New Delhi to the Young India Fellows, a scholarship program for outstanding Indian students: “Trials of an Interracial Family in Colonial India” and “Undoing the Irrational in History: Witch Hunts, Footbinding, and Sati.”

ALLAN NISHIMURA (chemistry) co-authored a chapter, “The Effect of Substitution on the Fluorescence Property on a-Alumina and Its Application to Energy Transfer and Excimer Formation,” in “Naphthalenes: Structure, Properties and Applications.” His co-authors are Samantha Gardner ’13, Laura Selby ’11 and Rachel Teranishi ’12. He co­authored two papers, “Excimer of Naphthalenes on Glass,” in The Chemical Educator and “ODMR Linewidth of 2­Indanone” in the Journal of Undergraduate Chemistry Research with Rachel Teranishi ’12. She presented the research on the latter at the 59th Annual Western Spectroscopy Association Conference in Pacific Grove, Calif. At the same conference, Samantha Gardner ’13 presented “Temperature Dependent Excimer Luminescence of Naphthalenes on a-Alumina.” Collaborators from Point Loma Nazarene University assisted in all this work.

Oxford University Press has published a book by EDD NOELL (economics and busi­ness), “Reckoning With Markets: Moral Reflection in Economics.” James Halteman from Wheaton College co-authored the volume. Noell wrote a review of “Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World” by Bruce W. Longenecker for the Journal of Markets and Morality.

OMEDI OCHIENG (communication studies) presented “The Articulation of Prophetic Wisdom: Martin Luther King Jr. in the African-American Intellectual Tradition” for Westmont’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in January.

GREGORY ORFALEA (English) will give a lecture about Junipero Serra as part of the Serra 300th anniversary festivities at Mission Santa Barbara. In February, he attended the conference of the California Missions Studies Association at Mission San Rafael.

CARYN REEDER (religious studies) has published a book, “The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond” (Baker Academic, 2012).

RAY ROSENTRATER (mathematics) gave a talk,“Connecting Linear Algebra Concepts,” at the annual joint meetings of the major U.S. mathematical organizations in Boston in January. The Mathematical Association of America sponsored the session that featured his talk.

JEFF SCHLOSS (biology) wrote two articles: “Looking Past vs. Overlooking Cognitive Evolutionary Accounts of Religion” with psychologist Justin Barrett and philosopher Michael Murray for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion; and “Critically Appraising Evolutionary Theories of Belief in Supernatural Punishment” with Michael Murray for Religion, Brain, and Behavior. He gave four presentations: the closing plenary address at the International Conference on the Evolution of Morality and the Morality of Evolution at Oxford University,“Must an Evolutionary Realist Be a Moral Skeptic?”;“Evolution, Theism, and the Problem of Suffering” with Michael Murray at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University; “Human Genome, Human Origins, Human Nature,” the closing address at the Science for Ministry Conference at Asbury Theological Seminary; and “Evolution, Faith, and the Nature of Love, ” a Veritas Lecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

GREG SPENCER (communication studies) gave four talks on the theme Communication and Christian Virtue for the Ann Wharton Lecture Series at Liberty University in Virginia in February.

JIM TAYLOR (philosophy) was elected to the executive committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers for his second three-year term. He attended the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago in February.

ERLYNE WHITEMAN (kinesiology) has stepped down as director of the college’s dance program after teaching dance since 1974. She helped choreograph her last presentation for “Continua in Light,”which opened in January at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. The installation featured sight, sound and dance, incorporating the work of artists Cheryl Calleri and Thekla Hammond and choreography by Whiteman and three student dancers. Whiteman will continue teaching as an adjunct professor for the kinesiology department.

PAUL WILLIS (English) gave a poetry reading in January at a meeting of the California Native Plant Society in San Diego.