HSA Department Updates, Spring 2026

Sabbaticals Beginning and Ending

The department welcomes Vivien Hamilton (Professor of the History of Science) and Salvador Plascencia (Associate Professor of Creative Writing) back from their fall semester sabbaticals.  Isabel Balseiro (Professor of Comparative Literature and Alexander and Adelaide Hixon Professor in the Humanities), David Cubek (Professor of Music), and Dede Long (Assistant Professor of Economics) are heading off on sabbaticals or leaves this semester.  The department wishes them a happy and fulfilling time away!

The Game of Democracy 

This semester, Ken Fandell (Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson Professor in Arts and the Humanities) and Harvey Mudd College President and professor of Engineering Harriet Nembhard are co-teaching a new, experimental course, “The Game of Democracy: Art, Engineering, Chance, Choice, and Civic Life.”  The course descriptions reads as follows:  

The Kleroterion was a sortition device used over 2,500 years ago at the dawn of Athenian democracy to randomly select citizens for public offices and juries. Using [multidisciplinary artist] Taryn Simon’s Kleroterion (2024) as an organizing metaphor and learning object, this course explores how randomness, fairness, engineering, and aesthetics have shaped — and could reshape — democratic life. We will explore historical precedents, contemporary dilemmas, and speculative futures where STEM disciplines are called upon to uphold democratic ideals. Students will engage in weekly discussions, interactive activities, and cross-disciplinary design thinking culminating in the creation of their own “devices of democracy” as tools or systems meant to foster more just civic processes. Guest speakers will expand the conversation and bring expertise from the worlds of art, engineering, design, mathematics, and political science. 

Guest speakers in the course include Mary Flanagan, Professor of Film and Media Studies and Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College, and Daniellle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University.  Course readings include work by Flanagan, Allen, and a range of other scholars and practitioners across several academic disciplines.  For more information, including a look at students’ independent projects, see the “Game of Democracy” course page.

New Faculty Member in STS

After an extensive tenure-track search in the fall, the department has appointed Hae-Seo Kim as Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society beginning July 1 of this year.  Kim is completing her PhD in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Irvine.  She fills the position formerly held by Marianne de Laet, who in 2024 became director of the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam.  “My dissertation research,” Kim says, “is about the sociopolitical environment in which outer space is explored in South Korea, where shamanist, folk, and scientific cosmologies co-constitute the material and social relations of South Korea’s space exploration. Specifically, I work with Korean shamans, astrology readers, political activists and science practitioners who make up South Korea’s ‘Space Age.’ I am interested in learning about different cosmologies and folk stories of outer space from around the world, and in my broader academic work I work with feminist, postcolonial, and indigenous theories of science and technology.”  The department congratulates Kim on her appointment and looks forward to welcoming her in July!

Media Arts Project Space

After an extensive renovation of an existing space on the first floor of Parsons, the department’s new Media Arts Project Space opened last fall for use by studio-based courses in media studies and architecture.  The space provides new Mac Studios and other equipment, along with configurable work tables for seminar discussions and group work, and storage for students’ individual projects.  Students in the relevant courses have access to the space and the equipment after hours to facilitate their work on course projects.       

Department Chair Transition

Professor Philosophy and Willard W. Keith, Jr., Fellow in the Humanities Darryl Wright will end his current term as department chair on June 30 to begin a year-long sabbatical.  Wright joined the department in 1991 and previously served as chair from July 2009 to June 2013.  He resumed the chair position in July 2023.  Effective July 1, Professor of the History of Science Vivien Hamilton will begin a three-year term as chair.  Hamilton joined the department in 2011 and has served in leadership roles as a member of the Harvey Mudd’s Faculty Executive Committee and as the director of the Hixon-Riggs Program for Responsive Science and Engineering.