Faculty and Research
Brandeis faculty are accomplished scholars, who bring their expertise into the classroom. Whether it’s conflict in the Middle East or the global economy or post-colonial literature – or a host of other topics – Brandeis faculty are contributing to the advancement of knowledge in their fields. Their work can be found in scholarly journals and books, and is presented at national and international conferences. Here is a small sample:
International Business School professor Catherine L. Mann researches the globalization of the U.S. economy, including technology and trade in services, as well as international capital flows and the dollar. Mann has served at the top levels of the Federal Reserve Board, the World Bank, and the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Hispanic studies professor Fernando J. Rosenberg examines how artistic movements across Latin America simultaneously adopt and criticize ideas of global modernity. The author of The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America, Rosenberg looks at literature, film, and art in relation to issues of justice and human rights.
Charles Golden, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, is currently conducting research in the Parque Nacional Sierra del Lacandón, Petén, Guatemala. He is researching the socio-political organization of the Classic Maya (A.D. 250 - 900), and consequently helping to protect and sustain the development of natural and cultural resources in Guatemala. Most recently, Professor Golden completed research on the royal palace of Piedras Negras.
Faith Lois Smith, Assistant Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and English and American Literature, teaches courses in Anglophone Caribbean literature and Caribbean women and globalization. Professor Smith is currently editing a collection of essays on sexuality and citizenship in the Caribbean.
Antony Polonsky is the Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies and a professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Russian and East European Studies Departments. He is currently editing three volumes of POLIN on Jews in Krakow, on Jewish-Lithuanian Relations, and on Jews in the Kingdom of Poland.
Cengiz Sisman, a native of Turkey, is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Program and in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. He has recently been working on contemporary debates around the idiosyncratic Muslim community (e.g. accusations of being "crypto-Jewish") and its relation to the rise of Islamism, anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism in Turkey and the Middle East. Some of his findings were already published in his book in Turkish, which concentrated on the Sabbataianism and minority issues in the contemporary Islamic world. His third book analyzes interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
Sajed Kamal, a native of India, is an adjunct lecturer at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New England Region, which he received at a ceremony at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall. Dr. Kamal has served as an international speaker and consultant on solar energy and implementation of pilot projects in the US, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Armenia. His most extensive work has been guiding a nation-wide village program on renewable energy through the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. Learn more about the launch of Professor Kamal's solar energy program with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.
Marisol Negrón is a Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Latin American and Latino Studies. Professor Negrón, whose work includes themes of migration and the formation of transnational identities, is currently working on a manuscript that examines the development of salsa as a cultural product in the 1960s and 1970s. She is examining the music's significance to New York Puerto Rican communities and the impact of salsa and Nuyorican identities in Latin America.
