This fall, Whitman will welcome 12 new tenure-track professors to campus in disciplines ranging from theatre to politics. The Pioneer caught up with two of these professors via e-mail to learn about their research, courses and what drew them to Whitman.
Arielle Cooley – Assistant Professor of Biology
Pioneer: Talk a little about your scholarly interests
Cooley: I am interested in the evolution of biological diversity. Because I like finding out how things work, I try to connect interesting aspects of biodiversity to their underlying genetic, molecular and developmental mechanisms. I am especially interested in parallel evolution, which is when a similar trait evolves multiple times independently. For instance, humans are great at solving logical problems, and so are crows – cognitive ability has evolved in parallel in the primates and the corvids. Parallel evolution is like a natural replicate of an evolutionary experiment, and allows us to see what aspects of trait evolution tend to be consistently repeated.
P: What research are you working on right now?
C: In my postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan, I am investigating the molecular basis of a pigmentation difference between two species of fruit flies. My goal is to understand when, why, and how this species difference evolved.
At Whitman I will return to my doctoral work on the parallel evolution of flower color in several species of “monkeyflowers” (Mimulus) from South America. I will investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the independent gain of red pigment in multiple monkeyflower species, and how this gain of pigmentation affects the plant’s “lifestyle” (in terms of how well it performs in different types of habitat). I would also like to survey some of the local populations of monkeyflowers and learn more about their evolution and ecology. Because monkeyflowers tend to grow in beautiful places, often near hot springs, this should be a pretty fun task.
P: What courses are you teaching this semester?
C: I will be teaching “Evo-Devo,” which is shorthand for Evolution & Development, as well as a section of Genetics.
P: Why did you decide to come to Whitman?
C: I was actually born in Pendleton, so it is sort of like coming home! On my visit here, I really enjoyed spending time with both faculty and students. I like the combination of great academics and great appreciation for the outdoors.
P: What’s something about yourself that would surprise your future students?
C: My partner Paul and I managed to go both swing and salsa dancing in Walla Walla prior to moving here!
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Adam Gordon – Assistant Professor of English
Pioneer: What brought you to academia?
Gordon: My mother taught English at the college level, so in some ways I went into the family business, though I’ve always been an avid reader and looked to literature for wisdom and guidance. Books like “The Great Gatsby,” “Heart of Darkness,” “Waiting for Godot” and “The Sun Also Rises” shaped my view of the world and influenced the decisions I’ve made throughout my life. At some point in college, when I began to think seriously about what career would make me happy, I quickly realized that going to graduate school for English would allow me turn the things I loved––reading, writing, teaching, thinking critically about the world around me––into a profession. And since I grew up in Massachusetts, a short drive from Hawthorne’s Salem, Dickinson’s Amherst, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond, nineteenth-century American literature just seemed like a natural fit.
P: Talk a little about your scholarly interests.
G: I work on American literature from the early years of its development in the seventeenth century through the mid-twentieth century. While my interests are wide ranging, my work specializes on the nineteenth century and on writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Fern, and the Transcendentalists. Methodologically, I approach literature by situating it within its historical contexts and looking at the active interplay between literature and society. I’m particularly interested in nineteenth-century print culture, in the way authors, editors, publishers, and critics worked together to create works of fiction and poetry, and in the various material forms that literature took as the industrial book trade began to develop in the early decades of the century. Just as the digital revolution is changing our relationship to texts in the twenty-first century, in the mid-nineteenth century the introduction of the steam-press made literature cheaper and more accessible to an expanding mass of readers. In short, technology transformed readers’ relationships to texts, and I’m interested how these innovations changed both the individualized experience of reading and the mass consumption of literature.
P: What research are you working on right now?
G: I’m working on a book project about the relationships between critics and authors in pre-Civil War America. In the first half of the nineteenth century, there was a dramatic increase in the number of newspapers and magazines and as a result the critic became a much more central cultural figure. My work traces the way that authors like Hawthorne and Melville responded to the looming specter of the critic in their writings. Edgar Allan Poe, who was himself a prolific and notorious critic, always insisted that if American literature was going to get any better, it needed fearless, honest critics like himself. My book takes this claim seriously, looking at the way the expanding critical culture helped shape the development of American literature. More generally, I ask what function literary criticism serves? What role does it play in our culture both in the nineteenth century and today? I was fortunate to receive a year-long postdoctoral fellowship this past year at the American Antiquarian Society, widely held to be the best research library in the country for early American literature and history, and while in residence there I spent my time pouring through magazines from the mid-nineteenth century and immersing myself in the critical culture of the day. In the next year or two, I’ll be applying the insights gained during my fellowship year to my manuscript as I revise it toward publication.
P: What courses are you teaching this semester?
During the fall semester I’ll be teaching two courses: Introduction to Fiction and an upper-level seminar on Poe and Hawthorne. The Intro to Fiction class will focus on the blurry line between fiction and reality from the earliest epistolary novels of the eighteenth century to graphic narratives written within the last few years. The upper-level seminar is much more historically focused, examining Poe and Hawthorne in depth, reading extensively within each author’s corpus, and using a comparative treatment of the two authors as a window into the literary world in the mid-nineteenth century. Students who only know “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Scarlet Letter” have some great reading ahead of them.
P: Why did you decide to come to Whitman?
G: Ever since I began teaching in graduate school years ago, I’ve known that my ideal job would be at a great small liberal arts school with smart students and a lot of close student-teacher interaction. This made Whitman an easy choice. I love teaching and can’t wait to share my excitement about literature with my students. Literature is really one of those subjects that benefits from small classes with lively discussions and Whitman excels at fostering this kind of environment.
P: What’s something about yourself that would surprise your future students?
G: Well, this may not be too surprising given my penchant for old books, but I’m an ardent music collector. In grad school I started collecting vinyl records and have amassed hundreds of them over the years. There’s just something about the warm, crackling quality of the sound, the accompanying album art, the process of listening to a record all the way through instead of cherry-picking individual tracks and the thrill of hunting through dusty record stores that’s got me hooked. I hear there’s a record store in downtown Walla Walla and I’m sure I’ll be spotted there frequently.
