Emeritus Members

Evelyne Accad

Professor Emeritus, Department of French. Dr. Accad's research interests include contemporary, Arab women's contribution to literature and Arab feminist writing; gender, war and non-violent alternatives; creative writing.

Pallassana R. Balgopal

Professor Emeritus, School of Social Work. Dr. Balgopal's research centers on immigrant families, HIV Aids in South Asia, social problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, the elderly, etc.

Shyamala Balgopal

Assistant Professor of Library Administration and Reference Librarian of the Asian Library at University of Illinois.

Vincent J. Bellafiore

Professor Emeritus, Department of Landscape Architecture. Dr. Bellafiore's research interests and expertise include the evolution of urban form, the history of town planning, adaptive use of urban space, and vegetation policy and guidelines for small communities.

Rajwant S. Chilana

South Asian Studies Librarian. Associate Professor in Library Administration.

Stephen P. Cohen

Professor Emeritus, Departments of Political Science and History. Dr. Cohen is a Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. His current project is a book-length project that will examine the social, economic, political, and strategic factors that will shape the future of Pakistan. Other interests include the study of India's likely emergence as a significant economic, military, and political power within the next decade; Pakistan and U.S. policies toward Pakistan.

C. Ernest Dawn

Professor Emeritus, Department of History. Dr. Dawn's research focuses on Middle Eastern history

Rajmohan Gandhi

Research Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and Academic Director of the Global Crossroads International Living/Learning Community.

Room 418; 517 E. Green St.; Champaign, IL 61820; 217 265-0574 and Global Crossroads; 106 PAR; College Court; Urbana, IL 61801; 217 265-0574.

Hans Henrich Hock

Hans Henrich Hock, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Sanskrit, the Classics, and in the Campus Honors Program. Professor Hock's research focuses prominently on Sanskrit and its relation to other languages of South Asia; he also has done work on ancient Iranian (Old Persian, Avestan) and Iranian languages of the Indosphere. He is co-editor of an upcoming volume on the languages and linguistics of South Asia. He teaches a course for the Campus Honors Program on language history and ideology, with special focus on South Asia.

Lewis D. Hopkins

Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Associate Dean College of Fine and Applied Arts. Dr. Hopkins research interests include: how has urban development been affected by plans?; how can we choose appropriate geographic, functional, organizational, and temporal scopes for plans?; can computing tools improve collaborative sketch planning; computing tools for sketch planning and urban modeling and effects of urban infrastructure on urban form.

Braj B. Kachru

Center for Advanced Study Professor of Linguistics and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Emeritus. Dr. Kachru's research interests include sociolinguistics, World Englishes, multilinguialism, and South Asian Languages and Literatures.

Yamuna Kachru

Professor Emeritus, Linguistics. Dr. Kachru's Research interests include syntax, pragmatics, South Asian linguistics, discourse analysis, second language acquisition, varieties of English around the world, and Hindi language and literature.

Harold E. Kauffman

Professor Emeritus, Department of Crop Sciences, and Interim Assistant Dean of International Activities. Dr. Kauffman is an expert on biodiversity in South Asia.

P. R. Kumar

Franklin W. Woeltge Professor and Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Kumar's current research interests are in wireless networks, semiconductor wafer fab operations, learning, and financial economics.

Barry Lewis

Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology. Dr. Lewis' primary research focus is the ethnohistory and archaeology of late medieval and early modern South India.

Frederic K. Lehman

Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Department of Linguistics, and Program in Cognitive Science. Dr. Lehman's main research efforts are devoted to mathematical anthropology, cognitive science, and linguistics, as well as to the anthropology, linguistics, and history of Southeastern and South Asia. His major research has been on the peoples of the region from Easternmost India through Burma to Northwestern Thailand.

John A. Lynn

Professor Emeritus, Department of History. Dr. Lynn's research interests include Absolutism and armies in France, 1600-1789; the formation of revolutionary armies, 1792-1796.

Erica F. McClure

Professor, Department of Educational Psychology. Dr. McClure's current projects include content analysis and grammatical analysis of children's stories written in English and Spanish, the description of Romanian-Bulgarian codeswitching, the description of Assyrian-English codeswitching, the description of the role of the maintenance of Assyrian language skills in the maintenance of Assyrian ethnic identity.

Gerald Nelson

Senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and theme leader of the Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security Research Program of the CGIAR.

Bruno Nettl

Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology and School of Music. Dr. Nettl's principal interests include ethnomusicology; musical cultures of Native American peoples, Iran, and South India; theory and methodology of ethnomusicology; ethnomusicological study of Western classical music culture.

George Ordal

Professor Emeritus, Department of Biochemistry and Professor of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine.

M.A. Pai

Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande

Professor, Emeritus, Department of Linguistics and Department of Religion. Dr. Pandharipande's research interests include sociolinguistics, language of religion, syntax, semantics,lLiterature of Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit, Sanskrit literary criticism, Asian mythology, history and theology of Hinduism, and Hinduism in diaspora.

 

Maryline Gisele Parca

Associate Professor Emerita of the Classics. Currently Visiting Scholar in the History Department at the University of California in San Diego.

 

Anand Pillay

Swanlund Chair and Professor, Department of Mathematics.  Dr. Pillary's area of interest and specialization are model theory, and applications to algebra, geometry and number theory.  Professor Pillay was awarded a Humboldt Research Award recently.

Gary G. Porton

Professor, Department of Religion, Department of History, and Comparative Literature. Dr. Porton also holds the Drobny Professor of Talmudic Studies and Judaism. His major research interests include "the other" in Judaism, rabbinic ideas of the gentile, conversion in Judaism in late antiquity, Jewish biblical exegesis, literary studies of rabbinic literature, the feminine in rabbinic literature, and American liberal Judaism.

Mastura Raheel

Professor Emeritus, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Raheel's research emphasis centers on textile chemistry and textile physics, namely: (1) structure-property relationships in fiberous systems; (2) chemical finishing of textiles to enhance performance (3) protective apparel systems; and (4) utilization of agricultural biomass to produce textile fibers.

Ranga Rao

Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics.

Salim Rashid

Professor, Department of Economics. Dr. Rashid's research focuses on money, banking and economic development; religion and economics, especially applications to South and East Asia. He has served as a consultant to the Bangladesh Planning Commission.

Constantin A. Rebeiz

Professor Emeritus, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Rebeiz's research interests focus on chemistry and biochemistry of the greening process; development of photodynamic herbicides, insecticides, cancericides; structure-function studies; intermediary metabolism and plant yield; bioengineering of photosynthetic membranes; cell cytoecology; chemical and biochemical three-dimensional modeling. Professor Rebeiz is also interested in Middle Eastern politics and development.

See also President Rebeiz Foundation for Basic Research (www.vlpbp.org)

Fazal Rizvi

Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies. Dr. Rizvi is currently working on issues of identity, culture and the movement of students across national boundaries, focusing particularly on Indian students.  He is interested how international education transforms the identity of these students, and the ways in which they become attached to the Indian diasporas abroad.

 

Michael Shapiro

Professor Emeritus, Department of English, and Director of the Drobny Program in Jewish Culture and Society.

M. Mobin Shorish

Professor Emeritus, Department of Education Policy Studies. Dr. Shorish's current projects include the development and expansion of education in the Persian-speaking world: Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. A new area of research for Professor Shorish will be post-war reconstruction of education in very poor counties and education in warring societies.

Charles C. Stewart

Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor, Department of History. Dr. Stewart's research interests include 19th century West Africa, Islam in the 18th through 20th centuries, and African historiography.

Zohreh T. Sullivan

Professor Emerita, Department of English. Dr. Sullivan's areas of interest are colonial and postcolonial studies and the literatures of  globalization and diaspora.   

Burton E. Swanson

Professor Emeritus of Rural Development, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics.Coordinator, Worldwide Extension Study, IFPRI and Component 3 leader, Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) Project.

 

Marvin G.Weinbaum

Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science. Dr. Weinbaum continues to write on the foreign and domestic policies of Afghanistan and Pakistan for academic publications while employed full time as the Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research in Washington.

Klaus G. Witz

Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Dr. Witz's research interests include qualitative research methods in the social sciences, Philosophy of Science, and philosophy of consciousness and the self. Professor Witz is the author of The Supreme Wisdom of the Upanishads: An Introduction, 1990, Delhi, India: Motilal Banarasidass, Spiritual aspirations connected with Mathematics: The experience of American University students, 2007, Edwin Mellen Press; and is just completing the MS of Cognition and the Universal Heart: Sri Sathya Sai Baba and the Upanishads on Divinity and Reality (expected publication 2012) ,