The major news for the Lander College for Women is its upcoming move to a new facility on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The College will occupy a beautiful new space in the center of one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in New York, and also take its place in an educational and cultural corridor already occupied by John Jay College, Fordham University Law School, and Lincoln Center. The new LCW home will consist of five floors, totaling 48,000 square feet, and will include state-of-the-art technology, a 4,000 square foot library, 17 classrooms, computer science labs, biology and chemistry labs, a gymnasium, exercise room, cafeteria, art studio, student lounges and a 3,800 square foot outdoor terrace. The move is planned for early November.

Dr. Melanie Harris, assistant professor of psychology, has recently taken on new administrative responsibilities and a second title - director of academic programs - assisting Dean Marian Stoltz-Loike in addressing student concerns, from academic to personal.

“I view a central part of my role as helping to facilitate a positive, fulfilling, enjoyable, and successful academic experience for students by addressing whatever concerns they may have, and guiding them towards their goals,” Dr. Harris told The Independent, LCW’s student newspaper, in a published interview announcing her new appointment.

The past year has been a busy one for the academic faculty. Dean Stoltz-Loike will have a book published by L. Earlbaum & Associates in 2007. Dr. David Luchins, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Political Science Department, has spoken extensively in the United States and abroad about the ever-changing political climate in the Middle East. Professor Maya Katz and Adjunct Professor Leslie Ginsparg both presented papers at the First Jerusalem School in Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem this summer. Dr. Katz has published a number of papers on various topics in Jewish art history, which will be forthcoming over the coming months. Adjunct Professor Roberta Rosenberg Farber co-authored a book on contemporary issues in Jewish sociology and has also written a number of articles on related topics. Professor Tzvi Kaplan has presented a number of papers and written a series of articles on topics related to Jewish 19th century history. Professor Howard Feldman has written a number of articles and presented a variety of papers on geological discoveries of Jewish and general interest.

Below are details about some of the recent and forthcoming publications and presentations of LCW faculty:

Dean Marian Stoltz-Loike:
Working on book to be published with Dr. Roger Morrell, to be entitled, “Making the Internet Century Accessible to Older Adults.” To be published by L. Earlbaum & Associates in 2007.

Appeared on a platform at the Bronfman Center at New York University with Ambassador John Bolton, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, in spring 2006.

Appeared on a platform with the Ambassador to the U.N. from Denmark at Princeton University in spring 2006.

Invited to present at the “Aging by Design” Conference in Boston in October on “Flexibility in the Workplace: The Interface Between Technology Capabilities And Older Workers.”

Dr. David Luchins, chair of the Political Science Department
This past summer, for the 23rd summer, Dr. Luchins was the guest instructor at the Aish HaTorah College of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where he lectured on Middle East and American politics. This year he also lectured at the University of Denver and the Pacific Beach Jewish Center in Venice, California on the topic “If America is becoming a more religious country, where does that leave the Jews?” Recently he was a Scholar-in-Residence at Congregation Mogen David in Los Angeles, California, where he discussed the war in Lebanon and the upcoming mid-year elections.

Maya Balakirsky-Katz, Professor, Communications and Arts, Humanities Departments
“Painting vs. Caricature: ‘footnotes’ on Manet’s Zola and Zola’s Manet,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Spring/Summer 2006: 34/3-4,323-337.

"Émile Zola, the Cochonnerie of Naturalist Literature, and the Jüdensau," Jewish Social Studies 13: 1, Fall 2006, forthcoming.

"Imaging Dynasty in Habad Portraiture," First Jerusalem School in Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, July 8-16.

"On the Master-Disciple Relationship in Hasidic Visual Culture: The Life and Afterlife of Rebbe Portraits in Habad, 1798-2006," Images: A Journal of Art and Jewish Culture, Brill Press, forthcoming January 2007.

“Photo Finish: The Last Image on the Dreyfus Affair at the World’s Fair,” 38th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, San Diego, California, December 17-December 19, 2006.

Roberta Rosenberg Farber, Adjunct Professor, Sociology Department
“Jewish Studies in Violence: A Collection of Essays,” co-edited with Simcha Fishbane, University Press of America, forthcoming 2006.

“The Programmatic Response of the Ultra-Orthodox to Wife Abuse: A Study of Social Change in Traditional Communities,” Contemporary Jewry, Vol. 26, 2006.

“Jewish Religious Communities and Wife Abuse,” in “Jewish Studies in Violence: A Collection of Essays,” co-edited with Simcha Fishbane, University Press of America, forthcoming 2006.

“The Use of Social Capital Resources in the Ultra-Orthodox American Jewish Response to Wife Abuse.” Papers of the Fourteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, World Union of Jewish Studies, forthcoming 2006-07.

Book Review of “The Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” by Hella Winston. Shofar, Spring. Vol.25, No. 3. Forthcoming 2007.

Leslie Ginsparg, Adjunct Professor, History Department
Presented a paper, "Femininity and Power: Master and Disciple Relationships in Jewish Women's Education," at the First Jerusalem School in Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Zvi Kaplan, Professor, History and Humanities Departments
Article "Mendelssohn’s Religious Perspective of Non-Jews" to appear in The Journal of Ecumenical Studies in the fall 2006.

Article "The Thorny Area of Marriage: Rabbinic Efforts to Harmonize Jewish and French Law in Nineteenth-Century France" will appear in Jewish Social Studies, Spring 2007.

A paper, "Between Clericalism and Anti-Clericalism: French Jewry and the Problem of Church and State," will be presented in October 2006 at the Western Society for French History conference in Long Beach, California.

Howard Feldman, Professor, Biology Department
Abstracts Published (and papers delivered):

2006 (with others), “Traditional climbing, geology and biodiversity in the ‘Gunks’,” Geological Society of America Northeastern Section Meeting, Camp Hill/Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 38:11.

(with others), “A shallow-water microsolenid community from the Jurassic (Callovian) of southern Israel,” Geological Society of America North-Central Section Meeting, Akron, Ohio, 38:37.

(with others), “The first known intact seven nozzle stone oil lamp from the Second Temple period,” Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 38: (to be delivered in October).

(with others), “A brachiopod faunule from the Ordovician Martinsburg Shale, Shawangunk Mountains, New York, Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 38: (to be delivered in October).

Papers submitted to journals for publication:

(with others), “A new equatorial, very shallow marine sclerozoan fauna from the Middle Jurassic (late Callovian) of southern Israel, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

(with others), “The first known intact seven nozzle stone oil lamp from the Second Temple period,” Geoarchaeology.

(with J. Thompson), “Geology, biodiversity and climbing in the ‘Gunks’,” Natural History magazine.

- Contributed by Dean Marian Stoltz-Loike