Faculty

Jay Cantor

Professor, English

BACKGROUND: Raised in Great Neck, NY; Ph.D., University of California-Santa Cruz; at Tufts since 1977.

PUBLISHED WORK: Five books, including three novels; latest work is Great Neck. Working on next novel, titled The Reborn.

ABOUT WRITING: "It starts with just a love of putting words together and a certain physical feeling that comes with that. Beyond that, without story-telling, I wouldn't know what to do with all the lives that I hear about everyday."

WHY TUFTS: "Tufts is a place very open to a person teaching what they are most interested in.

I think graduate students come to Tufts for the strength of the faculty, its accessibility, and its range of interests. They won't be disappointed by the other students, who, from my experience are a very self-directed, independent minded group."
AFTER-HOURS: "I don't have free time. I say that because I'm either working on classes or I'm researching things for class, or for my novels or essays. But those are all things that I want to do. So you could say that the good thing about my work for Tufts is that it is what I would want to do in my free time. I also write screenplays, as work for hire for studios."

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Jeffrey Taliaferro

Asking Why

Taking an approach that blends political science and psychology, Tufts faculty member, Jeff Taliaferro, sheds new light on the reasons why states become embroiled in counterproductive military situations.

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John D. McDonald

Professor, music

Background: Born in Norfolk, Va., doctorate from Yale;
composer/pianist in residence in Mongolia via the U.S. Information
Agency; at Tufts since 1990.

Compositions: More than 800, including commissions for the Havana
Festival 2000, St. Petersburg Spring Festival 2002, Duke University,
Wellesley College, Vienna Saxophone Quartet, Boston Celebrity
Series, Worcester Chorus, and Florestan Recital Project.

Current work: Annual piano albums (collections of short solo
keyboard pieces); "Peace Process," a work for basset horn and piano
for Tufts Merrin Professor (and clarinetist) Ray Jackendoff; an
evening-long song cycle about animals for voice and piano; a choral
work for the Worcester Chorus.

Goal in music: "I like to confront people, to mark events in our
lives, to capture in music something I've observed that would be
difficult to express in words-something about a person, something
political, or something completely abstract. All my acts of
composing are inherently pacifist."

Why Tufts: "I don't feel I can meet the needs of more than
eight graduate composers at a time, so the smallness of our graduate
music program is important. I also appreciate all the contact I have
at Tufts with people from other departments and disciplines, as well
as the very high quality of our undergraduate students."

After-Hours: Compose, practice, read, and then do those things some
more. What little free time I have, I spend with my wife and children. I also like to run in the woods."

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Jonathan Wilson

Professor and Chair, English; Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate

BACKGROUND: Born in London, England; educated at the University of Essex, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; with a dissertation on the novels of Saul Bellow; Guggenheim fellowship in fiction; at Tufts since 1982.

PUBLISHED WORK: Seven books, including two novels, two collections of stories, two critical works and a biography of Chagall.

ABOUT WRITING: "Writing is a lifetime of unfolding your imagination. It remains a mysterious activity."

WHY TUFTS: "Teaching at Tufts is an undiminished pleasure. It's a pleasant atmosphere for teaching, an intimate atmosphere. I keep up with many of my former students; I get e-mails from some students I taught 22 years ago."

AFTER-HOURS: "I'm a soccer fanatic. [Wilson covered the 1994 world cup for The New Yorker.] I also love watching TV with my sons. I used to play poker but gave that up.

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Krishna Kumar

Professor and Chair, Chemistry, Associate Member, Cancer Center, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Adjunct Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering

BACKGROUND: Born in Madras, India; Ph.D., organic chemistry, Brown University; Skaggs Fellow, The Scripps Research Institute; at Tufts since 1998.

RESEARCH: De novo design and construction of proteins, especially those with nonstick properties; also probing the evolution of proteins by using bioinformatics to deconstruct enzymes to the smallest pieces that still have catalytic properties.

ABOUT HIS WORK: "We use two complementary approaches. One is to take inspiration from biology, to push the frontiers of understanding of how biology works and use that understanding to do chemistry. The second is to use chemistry to endow extra-biological properties to molecules and organisms."

WHY TUFTS: "We have a dual mission of education and research, and I find that Tufts does both quite well. They are synergistic-you can't do cutting-edge research without engaging in and benefiting from teaching, and students must be involved in pushing the research envelope to receive a top education and train other students."

AFTER-HOURS: "I play squash, ski, and sail."

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L. Michael Romero

Professor, biology; Professor, environmental and population health, Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine

BACKGROUND: Raised in Albuquerque, NM; Ph.D. in biology, Stanford; post-doctoral fellowships from National Science Foundation and American Psychological Association; at Tufts since 1996.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Using neuroscience, physiology, and ecology-in the lab and in the field-to learn about stress in vertebrates, specifically how levels of stress-related hormones released in an animal are barometers for how well it is coping with its environment; currently focused on what role those hormones play in survival.

WHY TUFTS: "It's rare to find a department where faculty members co-author papers the way we do here. That's because it's rare to find a biology department with such a wide range of faculty as we have-including a physiologist, plant scientist, ecologist, neurobiologist, molecular biologist, geneticist, conservation biologist, and animal behaviorist. Tufts also is unusual in the closeness graduate students have with their advisers; most of our biology labs have only two or three graduate students in them."

AFTER-HOURS: "I read science fiction voraciously; I also enjoy hiking, skiing and bridge.

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Martin J. Sherwin

Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History

American Prometheus -- Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer -- contains lessons that resonate today.

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Maryanne Wolf

Professor, Child Development;
Director; Tufts Center for Reading and Language Research
John DiBiaggio Professor Citizenship and Public Service, Tisch College Adjunct Faculty

BACKGROUND: Born in Indiana; Ed.D., Harvard; Fulbright fellow in Germany; at Tufts since 1980.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Integration of research in cognitive neurosciences, linguistics, and child development to understand the evolution, development, and variations in the reading brain; the application of this knowledge to the design of tests and interventions for children with dyslexia.

HONORS: Awards from the International Dyslexia Association, Fulbright Fellowship, American and Massachusetts Psychological Associations; and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; DiBiaggio Chair of Citizenship and Public Service.

WHY TUFTS: "I tremendously value a place where I can be real friends with everyone from the maintenance person to the president; this is a place where people care about each other. It is also a place where the scholar-teacher is at the core of the academic mission. That is the core of who I am."
AFTER-HOURS: "Every night at 11:00 or 11:30 (and sometimes at 4:00 a.m.) I return to my roots as an English lit. major and quietly read poetry and fiction. I also swim, ski (badly), play the piano, and travel to places where I can grin in gratitude at the variety of creation."

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Richard Lerner

Professor, child development Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science; Director, Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development

BACKGROUND: Born in Brooklyn, NY; Ph.D.,City University of New York; at Tufts since 1999.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Groundbreaking work on the nature of positive development among adolescents. Several longitudinal studies are underway exploring how adolescents develop in positive ways and how this development is juxtaposed with risk behaviors (alcohol, drug use, unsafe sex, delinquency, etc.) often seen during this period.

LATEST BOOK: Liberty:Thriving and Civic Engagement Among America's Youth.

WHY TUFTS: "Tufts has a great liberal arts tradition and is making a difference in the world for individuals, communities, and civil society more generally. Having the opportunity to work at an institution that has this traditional excellence and yet this commitment, this pillar, to application to real world service is just an enormous opportunity, a great gift."

AFTER-HOURS: "I like to spend time with my kids and my wife, who is a professor at Boston College. I also jog every day and do crossword puzzles."

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Sara Lewis

Bright Ideas

Biology Professor Sara Lewis' groundbreaking research, performed in conjunction with colleagues, students, and even her husband, has shed much light on fireflies and people alike.

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Xueping Zhong

Associate Professor, German, Russian, and Asian Languages

Background: Raised in Shanghai, China; Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of Iowa; at Tufts since 1994

Current Research: Completing a manuscript on Chinese television drama titled In and Outside the Other Chinese Box: Television Drama, Society, and Production of Meaning in the Age of Economic Reforms and a multi-year and multi-institution collaborative project on "Culture and Social Transformation."

Finding: "Chinese television drama is an important social-cultural phenomenon that should not be readily dismissed as "soap operas." Through examining the relationship between the context and texts of Chinese television drama, especially in relation to the emergence of various subgenres within, this research helps shed light on some of the social-cultural-political issues that are central to the changes rapidly taking place in China and to the changing meanings of this latest round of China's quest for modernity and its search for a path to modernization."

Why Tufts: "The working environment of the Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literatures has allowed me to evolve as a scholar and teacher. The University is ideally located with easy access to academic activities in the Boston area, and to some of the best libraries and bookstores."

After-Hours: "Read."

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