Faculty

For every professor at Knox, there are 11 students, our classes average 14 students, and our institutional ethos is that we're all capable of contributing to the project of moving the world forward. What does that mean for you? It means you will be heard, you will be seen, your professors will know your name, and you'll know theirs. And that's just the start.

What comes next is this: Your professors will know you as a whole person, see you in shows or at the Gizmo or at a poetry reading. They'll invite you to join (or start) research projects, they'll encourage you to apply for fellowships or internships or study abroad, they'll help you think through (and create your own) options. They'll cook meals at their house and invite the entire class for dinner. They'll provide unusually thorough, thoughtful recommendations (because they know you so well) for graduate school and future employers. They'll be lifelong colleagues, friends, and sources of inspiration. Yes, they're that good; and yes, they matter that much.

Faculty Bookshelf

Our faculty are true scholar-teachers; in addition to making the classroom a forum for a shared pursuit of knowledge, they actively contribute scholarly works to their respective academic disciplines.

The following are recently published books authored by our scholar-teachers:

Understanding Elections Through Statistics: Polling, Prediction, and Testing

Ole J. Forsberg, Associate Professor of Mathematics; Chair of Statistics; Chair of Data Science

Elections are random events. From individuals deciding whether to vote, to people deciding for whom to vote, to election authorities deciding what to count, the outcomes of competitive democratic elections are rarely known until election day...or beyond. The second edition of Understanding Elections through Statistics: Polling, Prediction, and Testing explores this random phenomenon from two points of view: predicting the election outcome using opinion polls and testing the election outcome using government-reported data.

Written for those with only a brief introduction to statistics, this book takes you on a statistical journey from how polls are taken to how they can—and should—be used to estimate current popular opinion. Once an understanding of the election process is built, we turn toward testing elections for evidence of unfairness. While holding elections has become the de facto proof of government legitimacy, those electoral processes may hide a dirty little secret of the government illicitly ensuring a favorable election outcome.

Software Development, Design, and Coding

John F. Dooley, William & Marilyn Ingersoll, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science

Learn the principles of good software design and then turn those principles into great code. This book introduces you to software engineering — from the application of engineering principles to the development of software. You'll see how to run a software development project, examine the different phases of a project, and learn how to design and implement programs that solve specific problems. This book is also about code construction — how to write great programs and make them work. This new third edition is revamped to reflect significant changes in the software development landscape with updated design and coding examples and figures. Extreme programming takes a backseat, making way for expanded coverage of the most crucial agile methodologies today: Scrum, Lean Software Development, Kanban, and Dark Scrum. Agile principles are revised to explore further functionalities of requirement gathering. The authors venture beyond imperative and object-oriented languages, exploring the realm of scripting languages in an expanded chapter on Code Construction. The Project Management Essentials chapter has been revamped and expanded to incorporate "SoftAware Development” to discuss the crucial interpersonal nature of joint software creation. Whether you're new to programming or have written hundreds of applications, in this book you'll re-examine what you already do, and you'll investigate ways to improve. Using the Java language, you'll look deeply into coding standards, debugging, unit testing, modularity, and other characteristics of good programs.

The Gambler and the Scholars

John F. Dooley, William & Marilyn Ingersoll, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science

In May 1917, William and Elizebeth Friedman were asked by the U.S. Army to begin training officers in cryptanalysis and to decrypt intercepted German diplomatic and military communications. In June 1917, Herbert Yardley convinced the new head of the Army’s Military Intelligence Division to create a code and cipher section for the Army with himself as its head. These two seminal events were the beginning of modern American cryptology, the growth of which culminated 35 years later with the creation of the National Security Agency. Each running their own cryptologic agencies in the 1920s, the Friedman-Yardley relationship was shattered after Yardley published a tell-all book about his time in military intelligence. Yet in the end, the work they all started in 1917 led directly to the modern American intelligence community. As they got older, they became increasingly irrelevant in the burgeoning American cryptologic fraternity.

A Pedagogy of Kindness

Cate Denial, Mary Elizabeth Hand Bright and Edwin Winslow Bright Distinguished Professor of American History; Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College

Part manifesto, part teaching memoir, part how-to guide, A Pedagogy of Kindness urges higher education to get aggressive about instituting kindness, which Denial distinguishes from niceness. Having suffered beneath the weight of just “getting along,” instructors need to shift every part of what they do to prioritizing care and compassion—for students as well as for themselves. A Pedagogy of Kindness articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom. Her suggestions for concrete, scalable actions outline nothing less than a transformational discipline—one in which, together, we create bright new spaces, rooted in compassion, in which all engaged in teaching and learning might thrive.

The Scotsman

Rob Smith, Professor of English

The Scotsman is the story of a Glasgow detective investigating his own daughter's death in Washington, D.C. Six months after the murder of Catriona Cowan, a Scottish exchange student, her father arrives in D.C. skeptical of the findings of an earlier police investigation. Chic Cowan's own inquiries lead him from the deprived neighborhoods of Southeast D.C. to the townhouses of Capitol Hill and to the suspicion that his daughter's death is connected to an upcoming Senate election. But the obsessed and grieving father, wrestling with sobriety, comes to question his own sanity as he closes in on the truth.

Legitimating Nationalism Political Identity in Russia’s Ethnic Republics

Katie Stewart, Associate Professor of Political Science

Russia is a large, diverse, and complicated country whose far-flung regions maintain their own histories and cultures, even as President Vladimir Putin increases his political control. Powerful, autocratic regimes still need to establish their legitimacy; in Russia, as elsewhere, developing a compelling national narrative and building a sense of pride and belonging in a national identity is key to maintaining a united nation. It can also legitimate political power when leaders present themselves as the nation's champions. Putin's hold thus requires effective nation building-- propagating the ever-evolving and often contested story of who, exactly, is Russian and what, exactly, that means.
Even in the current autocratic system, however, Russia's multiethnic nature and fractured political history mean that not all political symbols work the same way everywhere; not every story finds the same audience in the same way. The message may emanate from Moscow, but regional actors--including local governments, civic organizations, and cultural institutions--have some agency in how they spread the message: some regionalization of identity work is permitted to ensure that Russian national symbols and narratives resonate with people, and to avoid protest. This book investigates how nation building works on the ground through close studies of three of Russia's ethnic republics: Karelia, Tatarstan, and Buryatia. Understanding how the project of legitimating nationalism, in support of a unified country and specifically Putin's regime, works in practice offers crucial context in understanding the shape and story of contemporary Russia.

Religion and Science Fiction

James H. Thrall, Knight Distinguished Professor for the Study of Religion & Culture

Religion and Science Fiction: An Introduction guides students into deeper understanding of how religion and science fiction engage often overlapping questions.
This textbook introduces key ideas of religious studies through critical consideration of print and visual media that fall within the general category of science fiction. The goal throughout is to help students move beyond simply identifying points of interrelation between religious studies and forms of what is often called, more broadly, speculative fiction, to considering how the studied texts open new ways of thinking about human (and nonhuman) experience taken to be religious.
With discussion questions, lists of key terms, extensive additional resources, and suggestions for projects and essay questions, this book is a foundational text for students and instructors of religion and science fiction.

Reckoning with Restorative Justice

Leanne Trapedo Sims, Daniel J. Logan Professor of Peace and Justice; Co-Chair of Peace and Justice

In Reckoning with Restorative Justice, Leanne Trapedo Sims explores the experiences of women who are incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center, the only women’s prison in the state of Hawai‘i. Adopting a decolonial and pro-abolitionist lens, she focuses particularly on women’s participation in the Kailua Prison Writing Project and its accompanying Prison Monologues program. Trapedo Sims argues that while the writing project served as a vital resource for the inside women, it also remained deeply embedded within carceral logics at the institutional, state, and federal levels. She foregrounds different aspects of these programs, such as the classroom spaces and the dynamics that emerged between performers and audiences in the Prison Monologues. Blending ethnography, literary studies, psychological analysis, and criminal justice critique, Trapedo Sims centers the often-overlooked stories of incarcerated Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women in Hawai‘i in ways that resound with the broader American narrative: the disproportionate incarceration of people of color in the prison-industrial complex.

Ecological Restoration and Environmental Change

Stuart K. Allison, Watson Bartlett Professor of Biology and Conservation; Director, Green Oaks Biological Field Station

The book addresses and challenges key issues which question the core values of the science and practice of restoration ecology. The author explains that the process of restoration has always been defined by human choices and examines the development of restoration practice, to describe different models of restoration with respect to balancing ecological benefit and cultural value. He develops ways to balance more actively these differing areas of concern while planning restorations. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to reflect changes in the field and the new challenges posed to restoration ecology in the face of the rapid pace of climate change. With strong coverage of North and South American, Europe, and Australia, this new edition has been expanded to also address indigenous perspectives and restoration projects in Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Asia. It places special emphasis on the need for restorationists to appreciate and understand the intricacies of planning and managing restorations in novel ecosystems. Lastly, it provides a critique of the new restoration standards published by the Society for Ecological Restoration in 2019.

American Massif

Nicholas Regiacorte, associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program Tupelo Press (2022)

American Massif follows the first stages of one American. His life begins to resemble a human life. His mother appears human. His wife and children, human. His own birthplace and childhood. His appetites, sins, faith, cynicism, big plans. All apparently human. At the same time, all of these things are relinquished or increasingly subject to the story of his own extinction.

Understanding Elections through Statistics: Polling, Prediction, and Testing

Ole J. Forsberg, Associate Professor of Mathematics; Chair of Statistics
Chapman & Hall/CRC Press (2020)

Based on his research into what citizens can learn from claimed election polls and from claimed election results, Forsberg wrote this book to help people become better informed about polls. He explores the subject from two points of view: predicting the election outcome using opinion polls and testing the election outcome using government-reported data.

Making School Integration Work: Lessons from Morris

Co-authored by Deirdre Dougherty, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies
Teachers College Press (2020)

Making School Integration Work: Lessons from Morris is the exploration of the story of two New Jersey school districts—one a predominantly white and wealthy suburban community and the other a more diverse and urbanized community. They combined into a single district to work toward a solution to school segregation, and the authors focus on how the merged district succeeded.

Ekstase und Elend: Deutsche Kulturgeschichte 1900 bis heute (Ecstasy and Misery: German Cultural History 1900 to today)

Co-authored by Todd Heidt, Associate Professor in Modern Languages, and Emre Sencer, Professor of History
Hackett Publishing (2020)

Knox faculty members Heidt and Sencer teamed up with University of Alberta’s Kost on this German-language intermediate/advanced textbook for German studies courses. The book presents the cultural history of German-speaking Europe from roughly 1900 to now, offering the necessary historical, political, and social context.

Elsewhere, That Small

Monica Berlin, Professor of English
Parlor Press (2020)

Elsewhere, That Small uses poetry to address the relentless nature of day-to-day experiences and ordinariness. This perspective is hopeful to help people be aware of and thankful for where they are. 

Mystic Moderns: Agency and Enchantment in Evelyn Underhill, May Sinclair, and Mary Webb

James H. Thrall, Knight Distinguished Associate Professor for the Study of Religion & Culture
Lexington Books (2020)

Mystic Moderns: Agency and Enchantment in Evelyn Underhool, May Sinclair, and Mary Webb examines the responses of three British authors—Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), May Sinclair (1863–1946), and Mary Webb (1881–1927)—to the emerging modernity of the long early twentieth-century moment encompassing the First World War.

Making School Integration Work

Deirdre Dougherty,  Assistant Professor of Educational Studies
Teachers College Press (2020)

Making School Integration Work is an important book that tells the story of how two school districts—one a predominantly White and wealthy suburban community and the other a more diverse and urbanized community—were merged into a single district to work toward a solution for school segregation.

The Accidental

Gina Franco, Professor of English
The University of Arkansas Press (2019)

The Accidental makes a character of the soul and traces its pilgrimage from suffering toward transcendence. “The soul saw,” Franco writes, “that it saw through the wound.” This book tenders a creation myth steeped in existential philosophy and shimmering with the vernacular of the ecstatic.

The Earth Is Not for Sale: A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World That is Still Possible 

Peter Schwartzman, Professor of Environmental Studies, and David Schwartzman
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. (2019)

The Earth Is Not for Sale provides a thought provoking outline of the solutions already in hand to the challenges now facing humanity with respect to prevalent gross social and economic inequalities, ecological thresholds and tipping points, and the ever-looming threat of climate catastrophe. 

Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live 

Monica Berlin, Professor of English
Southern Illinois University Press (2018)

Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live resides at the turbulent confluence of relentless news cycles and the repeated rending of our interior lives. These poems notice the day in the wind, the night tucked up to the train tracks, and a slipping-in of yesterday, memory-laden, alongside the promise of a more hopeful tomorrow. Here is the Midwest, vibrant and relic, in the ongoing years of collapse and recovery. Here the constant companionship of weather lays claim to its own field of vision.

Organizing for Policy Influence: Comparing Parties, Interest Groups, and Direct Action

Benjamin Farrer, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Routledge (2018)

Organizing for Policy Influence explains how activists can influence the policies they care about, even when they are outnumbered and their issues are ignored. The solution lies in a surprising place: organizational choice. Different types of organizations will be more influential under particular democratic institutions. If they choose the optimal type of organization - given their institutional context - then even minority groups can be influential. Environmentalists are a key example of how small groups can sometimes punch above their weight. Environmentalists in different countries have made different organizational choices. These choices explain whether or not they succeeded in influencing policy.

Competing Economic Paradigms in China: The Co-Evolution of Economic Theory and Economic Education, 1976-2016

Steve Cohn, Charles W. and Arvilla S. Timme Chair in Economics
Routledge (2017)

Competing Economic Paradigms in China explains how and why neoclassical economic theory replaced Marxist economic theory as the dominant economics paradigm in China. It rejects the idea that the rise of neoclassical theory was a triumph of reason over ideology, and instead, using a sociology of knowledge approach, links the rise of neoclassical economics to broad ideological currents and to the political-economic projects that key social groups inside and outside China wanted to enable. The book concludes with a discussion of the nature of economic theory and economics education in China today.

Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey: Military Cultures of the 1930s

Emre Sencer, Associate Professor of History
Routledge (2017)

Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey examines processes of military, political and cultural transformation from the perspective of officers in two countries: Germany and Turkey in the 1930s. The national fates of both countries interlocked during the Great War years and their close alliance dictated their joint defeat in 1918.

Poesía Quechua en Bolivia (Quechua Poetry in Bolivia)

Julio Noriega, Professor of Modern Languages and Chair of Latin American Studies
Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos (2016)

More than eight million people speak Quechua, an indigenous language spoken primarily in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, but few have seen it in print. Poesía Quechua en Bolivia (Quechua poetry in Bolivia), puts poetry in Quechua in print.