His research focuses on Greco-Roman rhetoric, the poetics of prose genres, the reception of ancient political rhetoric in the modern day, and literary criticism, including the use of visual media as a critical idiom for judging literature. His first book was a study of a rhetorical dialogue "On the Orators," written by the historian Tacitus (The World of Tacitus' Dialogus, Cambridge University Press, 2014). His second book, Crisis and Critic: The Politics and Poetics of Literary History in Cicero's Brutus, is under press review. This is a study of Cicero's quirky and captivating dialogue, the Brutus, which Cicero dedicated to the soon-to-be assassin of Julius Caesar.
His scholarship is focusing increasingly on the relationship between material objects and visual culture in rhetoric and literary criticism. He's exploring this topic in a broad study of how ancient Greeks and Romans talked about literature: Critical Matter: Performance, Identity, and Object in Greco-Roman Criticism. His rhetorical interests often seek to draw out comparisons between ancient rhetorical theory and the rhetoric of political practice in contemporary America. He is especially interested in why rhetoric not only is but in fact must be a staple of civic communication and decision-making, despite its often poor reputation in political discourse. In 2017 he gave a talk to Amherst Alumni at the Folger Shakespeare Library: "From Cicero to Trump: How Ancient Rhetoric Illuminates the 2016 Presidential Campaign," which drew heavily on material explored in a first year seminar taught in fall 2016.
Although he loves the seasons in Amherst, he still misses California, and makes up for it by swimming and playing water polo. Since arriving to Amherst in 2010 he has coached the Amherst College Co-ed Club Water Polo team, the "Yo-Ho Penguins," which has won several division championships in that time, and regularly beats Williams.
Ceridwen B. Cherry '06 graduated from Amherst in 2006 and received a masters in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a law degree from the University of Michigan. After clerking for the Hon. Nathaniel M. Gorton on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusettes she spent time in private practice litigating international antitrust cases at WilmerHale LLP and political law cases at Perkins Coie LLP. In 2017 she joined the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ceridwen's practice focuses on expanding the electorate through enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act. Most recently she was a part of the ACLU team challenging the Trump Administration's addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census in the recent Supreme Court case New York Immigration Coalition v. Commerce.
Corrales's research focuses on democratization and political economy of development. His new book, Fixing Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018) focuses on Latin America's penchant for constituent assemblies and their impact on presidential powers and democracy.
He is also the co-author with Daniel Altshuler of The Promise of Participation: Experiments in Participatory Governance in Honduras and Guatemala (Palgrave/Macmillan 2013), and with Carlos A. Romero of U.S. - Venezuela Relations since the 1990s (Routledge, 2013). He is the co-editor with Mario Pecheny of The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on GLBT Rights (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), and author of Presidents Without Parties: the Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (Penn State University Press, 2002).
His research has been published in academic journals such as Comparative Politics, World Development, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, World Policy Journal, Latin American Politics and Society, Journal of Democracy, Latin American Research Review, Studies in Comparative International Studies, Current History and Foreign Policy.
Corrales is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has also written for The Washington Post, NPR, and Foreign Policy. He is often cited by journalists and is a frequent guest at various radio shows.
Javier Corrales serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society, the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Americas Quarterly. In 2010 he was appointed by Governor Deval Patrick to serve on the executive board of Mass Humanities, a grant-making organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has taught at the Center for Latin American Research at the University of Amsterdam and at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. He has also offered short courses at the Institute of Higher Studies in Administration (IESA) in Caracas, the School of Government at the University of the Andes in Bogota, and at the Universidad de Salamanca.
In 2000, he became one of the youngest scholars ever to be selected as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. He has also been a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations, the Center for Global Development, Freedom House, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has been a Fulbright scholar twice, in 2005 in Caracas and 2016 in Bogota.
His most recent essay, "So This Is Africa: Race, Sex, and Censorship in the Movies of the 1920s and 1930s," appeared in Journal of American Studies (2011). A review essay, "Religious Liberty in America: Myths and Realities," appeared in Modern Intellectual History (2014). He recently completed a twenty-year term on the Board of Trustees at Mt. Wachusett Community College, and a six-year term as chair of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Review. He is a member and president of Da Camera Singers.
In addition, Douglas has published two novels, The Catastrophist (2007), a Kirkus “Best Books of the Year,” and The Vices (2011), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Prize. He has co-edited fifteen books on contemporary legal issues, and is presently co-editing The Oxford Handbook on Transitional Justice. His commentary and essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian, where he writes on legal issues involving the executive branch.
The recipient of major fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American
Council of Learned Societies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Institute for
International Education, and, most recently, the Carnegie Foundation, Douglas has lectured in more than a
dozen countries and has served as a visiting professor at the University of London and at Humboldt
Universität, Berlin.
In August 2010, he returned to Greece to head the newly established Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) - the successor of the National Statistical Service of Greece following the onset of the economic crisis in Greece. He was President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority until August 2, 2015, in its first five years as an independent National Statistical Office. He led the reorganization and rebuilding of the institution (both regarding statistical production and administration) on a new basis of fully conforming to international and European statistical standards and practices, leading to the establishment of the credibility of Greek statistics. Amongst his tasks was also the coordination of the newly defined and constituted National Statistical System of Greece (Hellenic Statistical System) and he was, inter alia, responsible for the certification of other national agencies' official statistics. Moreover, he organized and let the 2011 National Census in Greece, meeting EU Regulation provisions and applying new quality controls and standards.
He has been an elected Member of the Partnership Group of the European Statistical System (2012-2013); Member of the Partnership Group of the European Statistical System (on account of Greek Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2013-2014); Member of the European Statistical System Committee (2010-2015); elected member of the Bureau of the European Statistical Forum (2013-2015); elected Member of the Editorial board of the European Statistical System Report (2014-2015); and Chairman of the Council Working Party on Statistics during the Greek Presidency of the Council of the EU (2014). In 2013 he was elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He has been Visiting Associate Professor in Finance, Banking and Investment, at the Economics University Bratislava, in the Slovak Republic.
He is currently Visiting Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at Amherst College, where he teaches statistical ethics and macroeconomics. He is elected member of the Council of the International Statistical Institute (2019-2023) and is currently serving as a member of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the American Statistical Association (2018-2020).
He has published on institutional and legal frameworks for national statistical offices, statistical systems, the European Statistical System and the international statistical system, as well as on financial crises and on macroeconomic programming.
Katie Pedersen '19 is a double major in Political Science and French. She also holds Five-College Certificates in International Relations and Swahili. On campus she participates in DQ Acapella, the Choral Society, and Active Minds.
Before joining the Amherst faculty, he was on the faculty of Stony Brook University where he was Professor of Africana Studies and History and Associate Provost, and Bowdoin College where he was Geoffrey Canada Professor of Africana Studies and History. Femi Vaughan is senior editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources, and co-editor of the Routledge Research Encyclopedia of Nigeria. He has been awarded several fellowships and teaching awards, including a Woodrow Wilson National fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship, and a State University of New York Excellence in Teaching Award.
Matthew Walsh '19 is a Senior Political Science and French major at Amherst. His studies at the College have focused on comparative politics and international relations in the developing world, particularly francophone West Africa. Matt spent the spring semester of his junior year in Dakar, Senegal where he took classes in CIEE's Development Studies program and interned at the Senegalese National Agency for Agricultural Insertion and Development. After graduating in May, Matt will be moving to Malden, MA where he's managing a city council campaign and consulting on other local campaigns.