Fellows: 2011-2012

Clark Maines is Professor of Art History and Kenan Professor of the Humanities. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Bucknell University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University.  His research interests reside in western monasticism, with  emphases on monastic water management, ritual and architecture and construction practice.  His articles have appeared in Gesta, Speculum, Bulletin Monumental, Cîteaux and the Revue archéologique de Picardie as well as in numerous conference acts.  He is the author of two books: The Western Portal of Saint-Loup-de-Naud, a Benedictine priory in the Ile-de-France and Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons, Approaches to its History, Archaeology and Architecture, the mother house of an Augustinian order.

William Pinch is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Virginia, completing his Ph.D. in History in 1990. He is the author of Peasants and Monks in British India (Califormia 1996) and Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge 2006), and the editor of Speaking of Peasants: Essays in Indian History and Politics in Honor of Walter Hauser (Delhi 2008). His articles have appeared in Past & Present, History and Theory, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Modern Asian Studies, and Counterpunch. He has also authored numerous book chapters for edited volumes. Professor Pinch's teaching focuses on South Asian history, world history, religion and history, and maritime history.

For more information: http://wpinch.faculty.wesleyan.edu/

Elise Springer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy as well as a Wesleyan Alum (B.A. in Music, 1990; Ph.D. University of Connecticut, 2000). Her work is in moral theory, with particular attention to moral dialogue, critical encounters, and patterns of moral communication. Other interests include feminist theory, pragmatist philosophy, and ecological psychology. Her articles have appeared in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice and The Journal of Value Inquiry. Her first book, to be released in 2012, is entitled Communicating Moral Concern: An Ethics of Critical Responsiveness.

Johan (Joop) C. Varekamp has a PhD in Geochemistry from Utrecht University in the Netherlands (1979). He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University (1979-1982) on the geochemistry of mercury in active volcanoes and geothermal fluids, and then joined the faculty at Wesleyan University (Earth & Environmental Sciences) in 1983. He has taught in Kyoto, Japan, and served as director of the Wesleyan University Program in Italy. He is one of the initiators of the Environmental Studies program at Wesleyan (Certificate Program), and currently teaches a course “Living in a polluted world”. His research in Argentina/Chile, Greece and Indonesia deals with acid volcanic lakes, and he studies mercury pollution in New England and Long Island Sound. He has edited five scientific volumes on volcanology, volcanic lakes and pollution, and has written more than 60 articles and book chapters while at Wesleyan University. He is also interested in the Dutch colonial history of New England. If not in his lab, he may be found tooling under his classic English sports car.

Jamie Workman graduated cum laude in history from Yale and Oxford in 1990. As a prize-winning investigative journalist in Washington, DC Workman was recruited as special assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, where Workman pioneered river restoration through national dam removals. Moving overseas as senior advisor to the World Commission on Dams under Nelson Mandela, Workman advised corporations, governments and international NGOs on natural resource policy, valuation, mitigation and adaptation. He has published dozens of articles and several books on how to unlock the true value of water, including the award-winning dramatic non-fiction narrative, Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.