Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Faculty Notes
Faculty Notes
Faculty Notes
On Board
Diane Ramirez (Physical Education and Athletics) was named head coach of women’s
basketball and equipment manager. Ramirez is a 2007 graduate of Baruch College, where
she served as assistant women’s basketball coach for the past two seasons, and played for
three seasons prior to that.
Presenting…
George Andreopoulos (Government) presented a paper on “The Regulation of Corporate
Activities Under Human Rights Treaties” at the annual conference of the International
Academy of Business and Economics in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 19-22. The paper
was co-authored with Giuliana Campanelli and Alexandros Panayides of William
Paterson University.
Adina Schwartz (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) presented “
‘I Know It When I See It’ and Criminalistics” at the annual meeting of the Northeastern
Association of Forensic Scientists meeting on October 3, during a general session on
“Debating the Forensic Science in Forensic Science.” On October 23, Schwartz made a
Continuing Legal Education presentation on “Firearms & Tool Marks” at the Texas
Criminal Defense Lawyers Association’s annual forensics seminar in Dallas, TX.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) addressed a group of
students from the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry at the Martin Luther
King, Jr. Educational Campus about self-esteem enhancement and choosing an academic
career over criminal activity on October 15.
Peer Review
Miriam Ehrenberg (Psychology), in her role as executive director of the Institute for
Human Identity (a nonprofit psychotherapy center in Manhattan), was awarded a grant
from the New York State Department of Health for Family Q, a five-year innovative
program that offers free workshops to gay and lesbian parents and prospective parents on
the emotional issues involved in alternate family building. The grant also provides
counseling training for selected interns on the special issues such parents face in raising
families. (Students who might be interested in applying for the program should visit
www.ihi-therapycenter.org/familyq and contact Professor Ehrenberg.)
(Published in @John Jay on October 29, 2008)
Presenting…
M. Victoria Pérez-Ríos (Government) presented a paper, “On the Effectiveness of
International Tribunals (ICTY and ICTR),” at the American Political Science
Association’s annual meeting in Boston, MA, August 28-31. She also presented two
papers — “Investing in Renewable Energies: Are Some Third-Generation Human Rights
More than Wishful Thinking?” and “Accountability for Disappearances: The Role of
Regional Courts” — at the annual meeting of the Research Committee on Sociology of
Law in Milan-Como, Italy, in July.
Rosemary Barberet (Sociology) and Andrés Rengifo, a graduate of the PhD program in
criminal justice and currently an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-St.
Louis, were part of a Commission of Independent Experts selected by the Colombian
statistics agency, DANE, to evaluate crime statistics produced by the National Police of
Colombia, from September 15-19.
Mangai Natarajan (Sociology) had her newest book, Women Police in a Changing
Society: Back Door to Equality, published by Ashgate Publishing in September 2008. The
book focuses on a unique and highly successful experiment begun in Tamil Nadu, India,
in 1992, in which all-female police units were established as a way of enhancing the
confidence and professionalism of woman officers.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) was named
contributing editor of Getting Out by Going In (GOGI), a monthly newsletter published
by a nonprofit organization of the same name. GOGI educates federal, state and juvenile
offenders in California and Arizona. In addition, Professor Kimora wrote the foreword for
Mara Leigh Taylor's book Women in Prison: Women Finding Freedom. In May, Kimora
visited female inmates at the Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood, CA, where
she spoke about the importance of the GOGI program.
Edward Snajdr (Anthropology) had his book, Nature Protests: The End of Ecology in
Slovakia published by Washington University Press. The ethnographic study investigates
why Slovakia’s ecology movement, so strong under socialism, fell apart so rapidly
despite the persistence of serious environmental problems in the region.
Barry Luby (Emeritus, Foreign Languages & Literatures) recently published a new
book, The Uncertainties in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Analytic Thought:
Miguel de Unamuno the Precursor. The work was published in September by Juan de la
Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs.
Peer Review
Susan Opotow (Sociology) was presented with the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution
Award at the 2008 American Psychological Association Convention in Boston this past
August. The award, presented by the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and
Violence (Division 48 of the APA) recognizes Opotow “for her outstanding contributions
as a scholar, teacher, and mentor.”
(Published in @John Jay on October 8, 2008)
Peer Review
Jeremy Travis (President) was named chair of the New York State Juvenile Justice Task
Force by the Hon. David Paterson, Governor of New York State. Over the coming year,
the newly constituted task force is charged with developing strategies for transforming
the state’s juvenile justice system and developing what Travis hopes will be “a more
comprehensive and less punitive approach” to handling juvenile offenders.
Maria Volpe (Sociology) won the 2008 Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award,
presented by the New York State Dispute Resolution Association in collaboration with
the New York State Unified Court System Office of ADR and Court Improvement
Programs. Volpe will also be the honoree at the Network for Peace Through Dialogue
recognition night on October 30 in New York City.
Joseph King (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) won the 2008
Roberta Thornton Award, presented by the CUNY Graduate Center’s PhD Alumni
Association in recognition of his outstanding achievement as a criminal justice
practitioner and scholar.
Presenting…
Keith A. Markus (Psychology) spent five weeks visiting the University of Canterbury in
Christchurch, New Zealand, on an Erskine Fellowship to work with Professor Brian Haig
on a joint methodological research project. While there, he presented a colloquium on
"Construct Validity and Causal Modeling." Closer to home, at the annual convention of
the American Psychological Association in Boston, Markus presented a poster titled
“Abductive Inferences to Psychological Variables: Weighting Competing Criteria”
coauthored by Samuel W. Hawes, a John Jay alumnus, and Rula J. Thasites, a current
John Jay student.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) published an article
titled “The Punishment Potlach: A Way Out” in the fall 2008 issue of Insights, a
publication of the Offender Preparation and Education Network Inc. In the article,
Kimora and her coauthor, attorney Mark Hazelbaker, contend that this punishment
potlach in the United States has ignored the cost of criminal justice, and they advocate an
aggressive program of intervention for incarcerated individuals.
Larry Sullivan (Library) had his article “Prison is Dull Today: Prison Libraries and the
Irony of Pious Reading” published in the May 2008 issue of PMLA, the journal of the
Modern Language Association. His review essay of The Encyclopedia of the Library of
Congress appeared in the April 2008 issue of Library Quarterly.
PRESENTING…
Effie Papatzikou Cochran (English) was the lead discussant on a panel titled “Four
Interrogating Concepts and Cases: Family, Law, and Language” at the Law and Society
Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada, on May 31.
Elise Champeil and Gloria Proni (Sciences) co-authored the lecture “Use of NMR
Spectroscopy for the Detection of Opioids in Human Fluids” that was presented at the
American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition in Philadelphia in late
August. Donna Wilson, a recent graduate of the master’s degree program in forensic
science, worked on this project as a fulfillment of her thesis requirement.
BETWEEN THE COVERS
Benjamin Lapidus (Art and Music) will have his new book, Origins of Cuban Music
and Dance: Changüí, published by The Scarecrow Press on October 28. The book is the
first in-depth study of changüí, a style of music and dance in Guantánamo, Cuba, that
contributed to the development of salsa.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) and Michael
Aman (Communication and Theatre Arts) co-authored an article, “No Country for Old
Men: Psychopathic Elements in an Academy-Award-Winning Film,” in which they stress
the importance of criminal justice professionals learning elements of psychopathy from
the film. The article appeared in the July/August issue of Community Corrections Report
on Law and Corrections Practice.
PEER REVIEW
Robert Garot (Sociology) has won a faculty fellowship for the spring 2009 semester at
the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College. The fellowship will
help facilitate Garot’s research project on “Immigrants and the Law in Contemporary
Tuscany.”
Allison Kavey (History) has been awarded a $15,000 faculty development grant by the
City University of New York to fund her proposal, “Teaching Portfolios: An Analysis of
their Uses for History Pedagogy.”
(Published in @John Jay on August 27, 2008)
ON BOARD
Laura Drazdowski (Physical Education and Athletics) was appointed head coach of the
John Jay women’s softball team. Drazdowski, the College’s Assistant Director of
Athletics for Marketing and Promotion, served as interim softball coach for the 2008
season, leading the team to a 12-23 record and a fourth place finish in conference play.
“After the hard work the team and I put in last season, I am thrilled to be continuing on
the path of success that started last February,” she said. Over the summer, John Jay added
two other new head coaches. Carl Nedell was named head women’s tennis coach,
succeeding Amy Rowland, who resigned earlier this year. Nedell had previously coached
the John Jay men’s tennis team during the 2000 season, and has also coached for Hunter
College, James Monroe High School and Forest Hills High School. Jessica Kolackovsky
will serve as interim head coach of the women’s swimming team for the 2008-09 season,
filling in for Jane Katz, who will be on sabbatical. Kolackovsky served as a volunteer
assistant coach under Katz last season, and also serves as the College’s head lifeguard.
She was a Big East Conference Academic All-Star as an undergraduate swimmer at Seton
Hall University.
Mary Gibson (History) received a Senior Fulbright Research Grant and a National
Endowment for the Humanities' Fellowship to finish a book on the history of prisons in
modern Italy. Her article “Ai margini della cittadinanza: le detenute dopo l’Unità italiana
(1860-1915) [At the Margins of Citizenship: Women Prisoners after Italian Unification]”
was recently published in the journal Storia delle Donne [Women’s History].
Danielle Sapse (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration), Elise
Champeil and Anne-Marie Sapse (Sciences), working in collaboration with two
professors from the University of Rouen, France, had their paper "Interaction of DNA
Fragments with Methyl Lithium" accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus
des Seances de L' Academie Francaise. The paper applies theoretical methods to the
study of DNA fragments interaction with methyl lithium and its possible use for criminal
investigation.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) and Michael
Aman (Speech, Theatre and Media Studies) co-authored an article, “No Country for Old
Men: Psychopathic Elements in an Academy-Award-Winning Film,” in which they stress
the importance of criminal justice professionals learning elements of psychopathy from
the film. The article appeared in the July/August issue of Community Corrections Report
on Law and Corrections Practice.
PRESENTING…
Margaret Wallace (Sciences) was an invited speaker at the Fourth Annual Conference of
the Korean Academy of Scientific Criminal Investigation. Wallace’s presentation on
“Forensic Science: the Interface between Scientific and the Law” discussed the role of
forensic biology in human identification and genotyping of botanical and entomological
samples. Wallace was also appointed Foreign Editor of the Journal of the Korean
Academy of Scientific Criminal Investigation by the president of the academy.
Edgardo Diaz Diaz (Foreign Languages) addressed a full house of doctoral students and
faculty members at the University of Padova, Italy, on April 22. Diaz, an
ethnomusicologist, spoke about the meaning and influence of Italian opera in the
Caribbean.
Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) spoke to members of
the Correctional Services Division of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on
May 23, about the educational needs of adult offenders and the programs funded by the
National Institute of Corrections.
Maria Hartwig (Psychology) received the "Early Career Award" from the European
Association of Psychology & Law, for "her excellent track-record in peer reviewed
papers in international journals and chapters in national and international volumes, and
for being an inspiring example showing how a young researcher from a small place can
find her way to a top position in the international arena.”