Robert O’Meally (Fall ’11)
Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he founded the Center for Jazz Studies. He is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: a Black Odyssey. He also edited or co-edited The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, Uptown Conversation, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and several other volumes. His articles on literature, music, and visual art have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Callaloo, and American Scholar. For his curation of the Smithsonian record set, The Jazz Singers, he was nominated for a Grammy Award. Since 2009, O’Meally has co-curated exhibitions at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Shamus Khan (Fall ’11-Spring ’12)
Shamus Khan is an assistant professor in the department of sociology. He was the inaugural scholar in residence at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy and directs the Culture in the Social Sciences group, the Business and Politics group, and the Elite Research Network at Columbia University. Khan is currently researching the history of elites in New York City, the structure of fame, and deliberative decision-making in multiethnic groups. With a primary focus on inequality, Khan’s first book, Privilege, explored the life of an elite boarding school. Rather than write on the poor, Khan emphasizes the importance of knowing more about the rich when making sense of contemporary inequality. Khan has also written on the development of gender theory and political decision-making. He is editing a book on research methodology, The Practice of Research (Oxford) and a monograph on the Elite New York, Exceptional: The Elites of New York and the Story of American Inequality. In 2011-2012 Khan will be in residence at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, where he is the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow.
Jean Cohen (Spring ’12)
Jean Cohen is the Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Political Thought. She specializes in contemporary political and legal theory, continental political thought, contemporary civilization, critical theory, and international political theory. She works on civil society, sovereignty, human rights, gender, and the law. She is the author of numerous books and articles including Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory (University of Massachusetts Press: 1982); Civil Society and Political Theory (co-authored with Andrew Arato) (MIT Press 1992); Regulating Intimacy: a New Legal Paradigm (Princeton University Press: 2002); and Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legitimacy and Legality (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012). She has published over 50 articles in journals such as Constellations, Ethics and International Affairs, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Social Research, Political Theory, Telos, Thesis 11, and in numerous law reviews in addition to chapters in edited books.
Gregory Mann (Spring ’12)
Historian of francophone West Africa, Gregory Mann teaches in the History Department of Columbia University. He is currently working on a book project entitled The End of the Road: Nongovernmentality in the West African Sahel. Drawing on research conducted primarily in Mali, as well as in Senegal and Niger, the project analyzes the rise of novel forms of political rationality among governments and non-governmental organizations in the Sahel from 1946 to the late 1970s. Mann’s articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of African History and Politique Africaine, among other publications. His award-winning book Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the 20th century was published by Duke University Press in 2006.
Reinhold Martin (Spring ’12)
Reinhold Martin is Associate Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, where he directs the PhD program in Architecture, and the Master of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design. He is a founding co-editor of the journal Grey Room, a partner in the firm of Martin/Baxi Architects, and has published widely on the history and theory of modern and contemporary architecture. He is the author of The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (MIT Press, 2003), and the co-author, with Kadambari Baxi, of Entropia (Black Dog, 2001) and Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries (ACTAR, 2007).
Laurence Tubiana (Spring ’12)
Laurence Tubiana is founding director of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) in Paris. She is also professor and director of the Sustainable Development Center at Sciences Po Paris. She is member of several scientific boards of main research institutions such as the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the India Council for Sustainable Development, and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. From 1997 to 2002, Laurence Tubiana served as senior advisor on environmental issues to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, and she conducted a number of international negotiations on this subject. She has been a representative of the European NGOs at the World Bank and directed the French-based NGO Solagral. She is founder of the journal Le Courrier de la Planète and co-director of the annual review Sustainable Development in Action – A Planet for Life.
Eric Foner (Spring-Summer ’12)
Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country’s most prominent historians. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. He is one of only two persons to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians, and one of a handful to have won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year. Professor Foner’s best-known books include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970; reissued with new preface 1995); Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988); and his survey textbook Give Me Liberty! An American History appeared in 2004. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Pulitzer Prize for History, and The Lincoln Prize) was published in the fall of 2010. For more information, please visit http://www.ericfoner.com/