Faculty Promotions Announced at Holy Cross

Six faculty members at the College of the Holy Cross have been promoted to the rank of professor.

Victor Matheson, of the department of economics, earned his Ph. D. and M.A. in economics from the University of Minnesota and his B.A. in math, economics, and statistics from St. Olaf College. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2004, his research interests include sports economics, lotteries and gaming, environmental and energy economics, and forensic economics. He has an extensive publication record authoring over 80 scholarly journal articles or book chapters. He has provided expert commentary to numerous media outlets including Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Bloomberg Television, American Public Media's Marketplace, NPR, and CNN, among others. He currently serves as secretary of the executive board for the North American Association of Sports Economists, associate editor of the “Eastern Economic Journal,” and is on the editorial board for the “International Journal of Sport Finance” and “Journal of Sports Economics.”  Matheson currently lives in Sturbridge, Mass.

Shawn Lisa Maurer, of the English department, earned her Ph. D. and M.A. from the University of Michigan, and her B.A. from Amherst College. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2000, her teaching areas of specialization include British literature of the 18th- century, history and theory of the novel, coming of age, and women’s and gender studies.  She has served as director of the English department's honors program and has also directed the women's and gender studies concentration.  Maurer’s publications combine a focus on women writers with attention to the historical construction of gender, in particular masculinity, across a variety of genres, including periodical literature, fiction, and drama.  She is the author of “Proposing Men: Dialectics of Gender and Class in the Eighteenth-Century English Periodical” and has edited Elizabeth Inchbald’s “Nature and Art” for Broadview Press.  Most recently, she has published “Adolescence in Sense and Sensibility,” part of her current book project exploring adolescence and the novel in the 18th- century.   She has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a faculty fellowship from the College, a Batchelor (Ford) Summer Faculty Fellowship and a Research and Travel grant. Maurer lives in Boston with her husband, Brittain Smith, who directs the College’s study abroad program, and her two teenage children, Anya and Aidan.

Paige Reynolds, of the English department, earned her Ph. D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.A. from Rice University. Her fields of study include modern and contemporary Irish literature and culture, 20th- century British literature, and modern drama and performance. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2000, Reynolds received an Honorable Mention, Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book for her first book “Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle”(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). She has published widely on topics related to Irish studies and edited a 2011 special issue of the journal “Éire-Ireland” focused on material culture.  She is also an editor of "The Pearson Custom Introduction to Literature."  She serves as administrator for the Professor Edward Callahan Support Fund for Irish Studies, as an ALANA and Passport mentor, and as co-director of the Modernism Seminar for Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, among other professional commitments. Reynolds lives in Providence, R.I.

Catherine Roberts, chair of the department of mathematics and computer science, earned her Ph. D. from Northwestern University and her A.B. from Bowdoin College. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2001, Roberts specializes in applied mathematics and mathematical modeling, and has served as a member of the board of trustees for the Institutional Advancement Committee, the Noyce Governance Committee, and the Clare Booth Luce Scholarship selection committee, among others. The author of numerous articles, she is editor-in-chief of the Natural Resource Modeling journal and associate editor for the UMAP Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics and Its Applications and the Mathematical Monthly.  She is deeply involved in providing professional development to K-8 teachers with the Intel Math Program.  She lives in the Worcester area.

Denise Schaeffer, of the department of political science, earned her Ph.D. in political philosophy and her M.A. in political science from Fordham University. She has been a member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1995. Specializing in history of political philosophy, philosophy and literature, and feminist theory, she recently published “Plato: Euthydemus” (Focus Publishing, 2010) with Gregory McBrayer and Mary P. Nichols; and co-edited “Socratic Philosophy and Its Others” (Lexington Books, 2013) with Christopher Dustin.  She is author of the forthcoming book “Rousseau on Education, Freedom and Judgment” (Penn State University Press, 2014), and has published articles in a number of journals including The American Political Science Review,  The Review of Politics, and Polity, where she also serves on the editorial board. Schaeffer was chair of the political science department from 2006-09, and currently serves as director of Montserrat. Schaeffer lives in Natick, MA with her husband and three daughters.

Stephanie Yuhl, of the department of history, earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University, and her A.B. from Georgetown University.  She has been a member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2000.  Yuhl specializes in 20th--century United States cultural and social history, southern history, public history and gender history, and was most recently awarded a 2012-13 faculty fellowship at the College.  A recipient of the Marfuggi Award for Academic Advisement and an O’Leary Faculty Recognition Award, Yuhl has served as a member of the Committee on Tenure and Promotion, director of a Montserrat cluster, and chair of the Committee on Faculty Affairs. In addition to her prize-winning book, “A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston” (UNC Press, 2005), she is the author of numerous essays and articles and her work has most recently appeared in The Journal of Southern History and The Public Historian. Yuhl has served on professional committees for the American Historical Association, the National Council on Public History, and the Worcester Women’s History Project, and has been a longtime participant in the US Department of Education’s “Teaching American History” grants for area high schools. Yuhl lives with her husband and three children in Worcester, Mass.