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“Politics was something my family never shied away from talking about within our household,” Samantha Acuña says. “My parents have had very different trajectories in terms of their life and immigration experiences because of the political histories of their respective countries. All the work I do is inspired by my family and our own history.”

Acuña, an assistant professor of politics, is one of 13 new tenure-track faculty at Occidental this year. She has a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA, where she was a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, and a B.A. in public policy, Spanish, and English from the University of Redlands. Acuña is interested in constitutional law, immigration policy, judicial behavior, and gender-based violence.

As a first-generation college graduate who attended a small liberal arts college, Acuña calls Occidental a “perfect fit.” She enjoys teaching the constitutional law sequence of courses, although she hopes to teach an immigration law class next year.

Having a larger understanding of both checks and balances as well as civil rights and civil liberties “could not be more relevant in this moment,” she says. “Immigration is at the heart of this nation and now more than ever its history is something we should not put aside or forget.”

Cristina Awadalla (assistant professor, Latino/a and Latin American studies) comes to Occidental from UC Santa Barbara, where she earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in sociology, with an emphasis in feminist studies. Her scholarship studies the intersections of gender conservatism, populism, and authoritarianism, with a focus on Central American politics and Latin American feminisms.

Having grown up in Highland Park and Glendale, Awadalla was drawn to SA���ʴ�ý’s small-classroom environment and emphasis on collaboration, experiential learning, and community engagement. “I saw Occidental as a place where I could bring teaching and service together and explore ways to bridge the town-gown divide in ways that serve our students and the local community,” she says.

Awadalla witnessed these elements of an SA���ʴ�ý education in her Latina Labors course last semester. For their final project, students were asked to interview a Latina about her experiences in the labor force; many students chose to interview their mothers.

“It was powerful to hear their stories and see them apply course theories to personal experiences,” Awadalla says. “Through the project, students were able to see how their mothers’ experiences speak to global issues we tended to in class as well as how their moms are key knowledge holders.

“SA���ʴ�ý students are incredibly thoughtful, engaged, well-rounded, and eager to ask critical questions,” she adds. “I also appreciate how they draw connections between course content and the world around them.”

Hector Camarillo Abad (assistant professor, computer science) comes to Occidental from Universidad de las Américas Puebla, where he received a Ph.D. in intelligent systems, a master’s in computer science, and a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and intelligent systems. His research involves designing, developing, and evaluating wearable technology to enhance the teaching and learning of physical activities, such as dance.

Camarillo Abad first became interested in wearable technology during a Ph.D. course in which he had the freedom to create his own project using a wearable technology device. A dance aficionado, he used the device’s vibration capabilities to simulate cues from the leader in a couple’s dance, prompting partners to perform the correct dance step.

“I enjoyed every second of my day doing that project,” he says. Now, by incorporating dance into electronic engineering, he’s able to “blend everything I like into my research.”

Outside the classroom, Camarillo Abad is a member of SA���ʴ�ý’s Folk and Historical Dance Troupe, an organization that was founded in 1971, and is active in the Gaming Club, which he joined after talking to student members at the Involvement Fair. “I enjoy a friendly competition every Monday night with them, and everyone is very welcoming.”

Ramona Gonzalez ’09 (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music) is a Los Angeles-based musician, multimedia artist, and scholar. A Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, her dissertation, Why Sad Song? Women’s Laments in Popular Music, investigates the function of lament in the music of Björk, Rosalía, and Sade.

Gonzalez herself is a professional recording artist, having worked for over a decade as Nite Jewel. Her music has received accolades from outlets such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian.

A decade after graduating from Occidental, Gonzalez returned to her alma mater as the Johnston-Fix Professor in the Practice of Songwriting, having previously guest-lectured on topics related to the music industry and music production. She describes her students as “thoughtful and inspiring.”

Gonzalez first became interested in the musical tradition of women’s lament while taking a course on baroque opera at UCLA. In a similar vein, her favorite SA���ʴ�ý class she has taught so far is Music and Gender: “How could you not love a course on pop music, gender, and authenticity?”

Nicholas Grebe (assistant professor, psychology) comes to Occidental from the University of Michigan, where he was a postdoctoral fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of New Mexico and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Grebe’s research interests span the fields of psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. Through a combination of lab work and field research, he studies how behavioral and hormonal mechanisms have evolved to support social diversity in human and non-human primates.

Grebe knows exactly when he first became interested in evolutionary biology and who inspired his curiosity. Grebe’s high school biology teacher, Mr. Hays, refused to cave to significant pressure from their politically conservative, evangelical Christian community to provide equal classroom time to both evolution and intelligent design, a pseudoscientific form of creationism that lacks empirical support.

“Evolutionary biology was already something of a subversive topic, which I’m sure piqued my interest,” Grebe says. “But more importantly, Mr. Hays taught me how an idea, like evolution by natural selection, could be beautiful: It organized the natural world in a logical way, it explained where we came from and the amazing diversity of creatures on our planet, and, despite 150 years of exploration, the full implications of this theory had yet to be determined.”

Grebe found the newer discipline of evolutionary psychology—the observation that evolutionary forces have acted on the brain just as they have on the body—particularly compelling. (“It blew my mind,” he admits. “I’m just as hooked as I was in high school.”) As he charted his academic path, he realized he wanted to work at an institution like SA���ʴ�ý, where he could grow as a teacher-scholar.

“I love that there’s a norm for students to get involved in research early here,” he says, noting that he hopes that he can provide students with opportunities to research alongside him as he conducts fieldwork with wild mountain gorillas at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda. “I’m really excited to bring this field work component to SA���ʴ�ý, and to bring students with me to Rwanda and other primate range countries.”

Claire Grossman (assistant professor, English) comes to Occidental from Stanford University, where she earned her Ph.D. in English and earned numerous fellowships, including the Stanford Humanities Center Next Generation Scholar Fellowship and a Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Grossman’s research interests include 20th- and 21st-century U.S. literature, comparative ethnic literary studies, Asian American literature, and postwar racial and economic discourses. With Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, she has co-written Crowd Control: Riot and Literary Reward, a forthcoming study on how race riots led to the invention of literary “excellence” in the United States.

Thus far, Grossman has particularly enjoyed teaching The American Experience in Literature (ENGL 289), which studies works that critique and converse with each other across centuries. Her syllabus includes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; James Baldwin’s 1955 essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” a takedown of Stowe’s racialized sentimentalism; and stories by Sui Sin Far and Zitkála-Šá, which play with ideas of how fiction can represent or evoke cross-racial sympathies.

“A survey class is meant to cover the greatest hits—the novels, poems, and essays deemed important,” Grossman says. “These books don’t just fall from the sky.”

She appreciates her students’ approach to the writers they’re studying, noting their “affectionate irreverence” for their favorite canonical writers and their comfort with contradictions. “They can sit with ideas that don’t make sense together,” she says, “or use that as a starting place for conversation.”

Shengyun Gu (assistant professor, cognitive science) comes to SA���ʴ�ý from the University of Connecticut, where she earned her Ph.D. in linguistics and was a postdoctoral fellow. She also holds a Ph.D. in foreign linguistics and applied linguistics from East China Normal University and a B.A. in medicine and healthcare communications from Tianjin Medical University. Her research aims to better understand language through the lens of both Shanghai Sign Language and American Sign Language.

“Languages can be heard, but languages can also be seen,” Gu says. “Studying sign language offers a unique way to inquire how our mind works, how language is intricately related to other cognitive abilities, and how the notion of multimodality is not only for deaf communities but extends to all of us.”

Gu’s classes at SA���ʴ�ý include courses on language and culture in deaf communities, language acquisition, and language diversity. Because linguistics is so interdisciplinary in nature, Gu hopes that her classes will provide a springboard for students who are interested in not only languages and cultures but also cognitive science, analytical thinking, puzzle- solving, and the creation of more linguistically equitable societies.

“Linguistics is one of the fundamental disciplines of cognitive science,” Gu says. “It also says a lot about humanity through topics such as language equality, language rights, language preservation, and linguistic diversity.”

Lydia Harmon ’13 (assistant professor, geology) comes to Occidental from Arizona State University, where she was a postdoctoral scholar at the School of Earth and Space Exploration. A geology major at SA���ʴ�ý, she earned her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in earth and environmental sciences from Vanderbilt University. Through a combination of fieldwork, lab work, and computer modeling, Harmon studies volcanoes and magma systems, focusing on the processes and tectonic influences that govern magma formation and eruption.

Harmon credits her Occidental education with fostering her interest in volcanoes and magma systems. She returned, in part, because the College’s location provides geology students with robust opportunities to participate in hands-on, experiential education.

“For many students, this is their first time exploring the San Gabriel Mountains or the Mojave Desert, so there is often a combination of excitement, uncertainty, and enthusiasm,” she says. “It is so rewarding to see students gain confidence and independence in the field to develop a greater appreciation for the landscapes around them.

“I know firsthand that studying geology at SA���ʴ�ý is life-changing,” she adds. “I am thrilled to be back to help inspire the next generation of students and geologists.”

In true liberal arts fashion, Harmon is quick to emphasize that geology “isn’t just about rocks.” Through classroom teaching and fieldwork, she hopes to impart a better understanding of the planet and its resources, and humans’ place among it all: “I hope students learn to see the world through a geological lens, whether they become geologists or simply develop an appreciation for Earth’s dynamic processes.”

Jingyi Li (assistant professor, Asian studies) comes to Occidental from the University of Arizona, where she earned her Ph.D. in East Asian studies with a focus on Japanese history and literature. Prior to that, she earned her M.A. in premodern Japanese literature from Kyushu University and her B.A. in Japanese language and literature from East China Normal University. Her research centers on Japanese popular literature, print culture, and cultural identity in the 19th century, and she volunteers as a podcast host on the New Books Network’s Japanese studies channel.

Li’s interest in Japanese culture began in high school, when, as a self-described “huge anime fan,” she started reading Japanese history to better understand the animated works’ context. She was particularly drawn to the cultural history of the 18th and 19th centuries; her current research focuses on 19th-century calligraphy and painting salons and the role they played in transforming the social perception of educated elites in Japan. In exploring these salons and their impact, she hopes to highlight the fluidity of cultural hierarchy and the influence of national identity in shaping cultural history.

Like other faculty, Li was drawn to Occidental because of the experiential learning opportunities offered by its small class sizes and location. “Los Angeles has had a strong presence of Japanese culture, making SA���ʴ�ý an exciting place to teach Japanese language and culture,” she says. “I was excited for the opportunities that students would have to connect what they learn in the classroom with what they see and feel in the streets of L.A.”

One of Li’s favorite moments of connection during her first year at SA���ʴ�ý, however, happened on campus. During a visit to the Mary Norton Clapp Library’s Special Collections, Li’s class on early modern Japanese pop culture and literary traditions viewed a series of rare books from early modern Japan.

“The students were able to ask amazingly sharp questions even without any formal training in book culture or paleography,” she says. “They paid such close attention to detail and integrated all kinds of knowledge from class. It was one of my favorite moments.”

Samuel Luterbacher (assistant professor, art and art history) comes to Occidental from Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. in art history and received the Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C. He earned his M.A. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a B.A. in art history and Japanese language and culture from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on the arts of the early modern Portuguese and Spanish empires, particularly Iberian expansion in Asia and its connections to colonial Latin America.

Having spent three years as a visiting assistant professor at SA���ʴ�ý, Luterbacher appreciates the opportunity to examine artistic movements from broader and more cross-cultural perspectives. “I have always been curious about rethinking these traditional parameters and considering the diverse cultural influences that shaped art both within and beyond Europe,” he says. “Studying the art of the past allows us to preserve nuance, complexity, and diversity in cultural discourse.”

Luterbacher enjoys engaging with students in experiential ways, whether through museum field trips or through inviting artists from multiple disciplines to lead hands-on workshops in his classroom. He encourages his students to think “not only about the history behind artifacts, but also about the politics of their display, accessibility, and provenance in modern-day museums.”

Ben Ratskoff (assistant professor, critical theory and social justice) comes to Occidental from Hebrew Union College and USC. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in comparative literature from UCLA and his B.A. in English from Northwestern University. He specializes in histories and theories of antisemitism, race, and fascism; Holocaust and genocide studies; Black diasporic culture and thought; and critical theory and cultural studies.

Ratskoff was first drawn to the intersection of Black and Jewish studies as an undergraduate, when his general education courses in Black studies led to a deeper interest. “It was in these courses that I first developed a critical curiosity around histories of diaspora, race, nation, and genocide, and that I acquired a new language to understand dimensions of Jewish culture and life,” he says.

Ratskoff previously taught in Occidental’s Religious Studies Department while he was completing his doctorate. He appreciates the College’s tight-knit community and support for civic engagement, and admires his “remarkably curious, worldly, inquisitive, and driven” students who are eager to engage deeply in their own education.

“In my experience, SA���ʴ�ý students model rich engagement across difference and disagreement in the classroom, making for exciting and productive class discussions, and are also eager to extend their learning outside of the classroom, from self-organized reading groups to attending public cultural events in Los Angeles,” he says.

S.K. Ritadhi (assistant professor, economics) comes to Occidental from Ashoka University. He earned his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley, and his B.A. in economics from Grinnell College. Prior to his teaching career, Ritadhi worked as a research economist at India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India. He is an applied microeconomist whose research interests lie at the intersection of development and finance.

Ritadhi is slowly realigning his research toward his first love: political economy. He first became interested in economics during India’s 2004 federal elections, when the incumbent party campaigned on a platform that highlighted the nation’s GDP growth but lost to a more liberal coalition that called for greater inclusivity in the economic growth process. “This dichotomy between aggregate growth, citizens’ participation in the growth process, poverty, and inequality—and how these aspects all manifested through the electoral process—was my primary attraction to the field of economics,” he explains.

At Occidental, Ritadhi enjoys the ability to balance his research with teaching and extracurriculars. (When he’s not in the classroom, he’s competing on the cricket oval in the Southern California Cricket Association’s local league.) He also appreciates students’ robust engagement in classroom discussions.

His favorite class, Econometrics, “is challenging to teach, as it introduces students to a new methodology,” he says. “But I greatly enjoy the responsibility of offering students a completely new approach with which to analyze questions in the world of economics.”

Vikram Shende (assistant professor, chemistry) comes to Occidental from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he was a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in chemical biology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a pair of bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Michigan-Dearborn. His research group studies the structure and function of molecules found in nature, and how we can engineer enzymes—proteins that catalyze chemical reactions—that biosynthesize these “natural products.”

Shende first became interested in isolating molecules from natural sources when he attended an American Chemical Society national conference as an undergraduate. A presenter described the isolation of halichondrin B, a natural product that comes from a sea sponge, and how a version of that molecule was brought to market as an FDA-approved treatment for metastatic breast cancer.

“Since that presentation, I have been fascinated by the diversity of molecules that can be found in nature and have dedicated my career to finding new natural products and exploring their potential applications in medicine, agriculture, and as commodity chemicals,” Shende explains.

Shende was drawn to Occidental because of the faculty’s rich history of STEM research and his sense of community and engagement on campus. “Since I first stepped foot on campus I have been impressed by the kindness, determination, and curiosity of all the students,” he says. “The faculty, staff, and administration have been so welcoming and have made it easy to know that I made the right choice and am here for keeps.”

Top photo: From left, assistant professors Jingyi Li (Asian studies), Cristina Awadalla (Latino/a and Latin American studies), Hector Camarillo Abad (computer science), Lydia Harmon ’13 (geology), Nicholas Grebe (psychology), Shengyun Gu (cognitive science), Ramona Gonzalez ’09 (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music), and Claire Grossman (English).