International Studies Faculty Research and Activities

Professor Raysa Amador served as a Consultant for the Center for Integrated Language Communities’ at the Community Nexus research project, City University of New York, 2014-2016. She served also as peer reviewer at the International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office of Postsecondary Education at the US Department of Education for the National Resource Centers Competition and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program, August 4-8, 2014 in Washington, DC. She attended the ADFL Seminar East at George Mason University in Washington, DC in June 2015 and attended the ADFL East Seminar at NYU in June 2016. Coordinating revisions to the Spanish and French curricula, she has been invited to serve as a consultant in May 2016 for ADFL-MLA. Dr. Amador has assumed the French, Italian and Spanish Placement Exam coordinating responsibilities as of Spring 2016. She coordinates the online tutorial services, supervising students hired through the prestigious Hire a Panther program. In June 2016 the Languages alumni reunion will take place under her direction in conjunction with the Alumni Office. Prof. Amador is also revising a proposal for a co-authored textbook, Lengua y vida.

Professor Regina Axelrod was the chairperson of a panel—”Roundtable on Innovative Teaching of Global Environmental Governance and Policy”—and a discussant on “Water Security: 3rd Annual Fred Friendly Seminar in International Affairs & Foreign Policy,” at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA on March 16, 2016.

Professor Rakesh Gupta presented “South India: Land of Temples, Technology, & Medical Tourism” to the Community Club of Garden City, NY, November 2015. He also refereed papers for the Journal of Business Ethics and the Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research. Professor Gupta was the recipient of a faculty development grant to study urban sustainability in South Africa, June 2016. He advised and accompanied teams of Adelphi international students to make presentations at Wantagh High School “East meets West” programs in November 2015 (on China) and April 2016 (on Japan). Professor Gupta is also frequently quoted on money and credit matters in Newsday, NBC/Telemundo, TheStreet.com, Yahoo! Finance, and MSN.com.

Professor Katie Laatikainen co-edited the two-volume, 7- chapter Sage Handbook of European Foreign Policy, which was published by Sage in late 2015. She was responsible for two sections of the handbook (14 chapters) for which she wrote the introductions. She also wrote the chapter on the EU’s relationship to the United Nations. Aside from that project, she had a chapter, “The EU Delegation in New York: A Debut of High Political Drama,” published in The European External Action Service: European Diplomacy Post-Westphalia, edited by David Spence and Josef Batora. In September 2015, she was promoted to full Professor. In March 2016, she attended the International Studies Association annual meeting in Atlanta, GA, where she presented a paper, “Norms and Negotiations: The Nature of Group Politics at the UN” and served as a chair for the panel “The EU, The Rising Rest and The Multilateral System: A Decade Dealing With the Power Transition.” In June 2016, she presented a paper “Conceptualizing Groups in UN Multilateralism: The Diplomatic Practice of Group Politics” at the annual meeting of the Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS). She is also co-editing a special issue of the journal Hague Journal of Diplomacy entitled “The Multilateral Politics of UN Diplomacy,” which should appear in late 2016 or early 2017. Her paper “Conceptualizing Groups in UN Multilateralism: The Diplomatic Practice of Group Politics” has been accepted after review for inclusion in that volume. In 2016- 2017, Professor Laatikainen is on sabbatical. While on sabbatical, she has been invited to teach a month-long workshop for the graduate program in international relations at the University of Tampere in Finland.

Professor Yun Lee published two co-authored journal articles. With S. Ha, she published “Consumer Use of the Internet for Health Management,” in the Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 20 (1–2): 1-18. With Z.S. Johnson and J.T. Paniculangara, she published “Helping Through Morality Versus Identification: Implications for Consumer Helping Behaviors,” in the International Journal of Business & Applied Sciences, 4(2): 43-57. Over the past year, she presented three papers at two conferences. In April, she presented “The Moderating Role of TwoWay Communications with Sellers on the Relationships Between Need for Touch and the Technology Acceptance Model in E-Commerce,” with S. Yang and Z.S. Johnson, at the ACRA Annual Conference in Secaucus, NJ. With S. Yang, she attended the Academy of Marketing Science Annual Conference in Lake Buena Vista, FL in May, where they presented two papers, “Are the Factors Affecting Satisfaction and Actual Purchase the Same? Comparisons Between Unplanned and Planned Purchase” and “Evolution of Interactivity from B2C to C2C: Exploring Flow Theory and WOM.”

Professor Traci Levy attended two professional conferences in June 2016. One conference, held at Barnard, immersed her in a pedagogy called “Reacting to the Past.” In this method of teaching, students are assigned roles in historical debates and approach the primary and secondary source readings from the perspective of their roles. They also work on teams and debate political, historical, and philosophical issues in character. The other conference focused on professional development for department chairs and was held in Portland, OR. Prof. Levy serves as Chair of the Political Science Department and Director of the Gender Studies Program.

Professor Nicole Rudolph spoke in February 2016 at the Maison Française at Columbia University on her book, At Home in Postwar France, dialoguing with architectural historian Mary McLeod and historian of France Herrick Chapman. She also gave a podcast interview about the book to Roxanne Panchasi as part of the New Books in French Studies series. She delivered a conference paper on the unlikely celebrity of the Frenchwoman Mère Denis at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies at Vanderbilt University in March 2016. In April 2016, Prof. Rudolph was an invited participant at New York University’s Institute of French Studies conference on the future of French Studies, and in August she will travel to Helsinki to deliver a paper on understandings of nature in postwar French housing at the European Association of Urban Historians’ biennial conference. Over the past year, Prof. Rudolph secured a $5,000 study abroad scholarship grant for IS majors, and in the Spring she served on the AU AAUP chapter’s negotiating team as the faculty sought to settle a new contract. Prof. Rudolph serves as Special Features Editor for the journal French Politics, Culture & Society. She also heads the European Studies minor and was chosen in Fall 2015 to co-chair the AU International Leadership Coordinating Committee with Shannon Harrison, director of the Center for International Education. In January 2016 she was granted a joint appointment as an Associate Professor in the Department of History.

Professor Rakhel Villamil-Acera organized and chaired the panel entitled, “Representaciones de lo trágico en el siglo XX español”, at the 47th Northeast Modern Language Association convention, held in Hartford, CT March 17- 20, 2016. As part of this panel, she also presented the paper entitled, “Teatro y copla: La zapatera prodigiosa (Federico García Lorca, 1930) y Te he de querer mientras viva (Rafael de León y el maestro Quiroga, 1959-60).” In addition, Professor Villamil-Acera’s translation of the article “Souvenirs of Hatred: Identity and Tourism and the Postcolonial Destination,”–“Un recuerdo de odio: turismo e identidad en un entorno poscolonial”–will be included in a volume in honor of Mexican writer María Luisa Puga to be published by Universidad Autónoma de México Press in Fall 2016.