Faculty & Staff News

BY Richie Rodriguez

WGSS professor recognized by Council for American Overseas Research Centers

Dr. Azza Basarudin, associate professor in the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, was selected as one of 14 professors from across the country to participate in the Overseas Faculty Development Seminar “Between Political and Climate Change in Southeast Asia,” held this past summer.

The seminar was presented by the Center for Khmer Studies in Cambodia and the Inya Institute in Myanmar. Sponsored by the Council for American Overseas Research Centers, the seminar aims to assist faculty and administrators in developing international courses and curricula at their home institutions.

“As a feminist scholar for the past 20 years, I have sustained an extensive global network of academics, activists, and civil society actors that I frequently tap into for research and programming," she says. "This award broadens my network and enhances my pedagogical practices. It advances my knowledge of Cambodia and Myanmar’s political and climate change implications and how civil societies, media professionals, and environmental organizations respond to these challenges.”

Dr. Basarudin is an interdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersection of gender justice and transnational feminist politics in Muslim communities in North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

English professor to teach in Bulgaria as Fulbright Visiting Scholar

Professor Clint Margrave, a lecturer in the English department and published poet, will head to Bulgaria in the spring 2025 semester as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar.

Margrave will teach creative writing and literary studies courses at Sofia University in the department of English and American Studies while also working on a personal poetry project focusing on the literal and metaphorical definition of “place.”

One of Margrave’s passions is exploring different cultures. In Bulgaria, he plans to connect with the poetry community by setting up poetry readings of his work and that of his colleagues. He also hopes to build bridges between his students at Cal State Long Beach and those in Bulgaria.

“Eventually you have to go outside of the classroom, and traveling is one of the greatest ways to find inspiration and reflect on things and learn more about other cultures,” he says.

CLA Communications Specialist Wins Staff Award

Over the past 34 years at CSULB, Debbie Hildreth Pisarcik found her niche as the communications specialist in the College of Liberal Arts, where she maintained the college’s web pages and documented all of its many events with her camera. For her efforts, she was recognized this past spring with the John and Phyllis Jung Endowed Full-Time Staff Award.

Hildreth Pisarcik says her passion for photography has allowed her to connect with faculty, staff, and students. Every photography assignment, she says, gave her a chance to focus on the details and gain a different perspective.

“I used to like to say, I’ve never worked a day in my life,” she says. “I’m blessed to be able to do what I do, and I don’t think it's work. It’s helping people move through this little section of life.”

Hildreth Pisarcik was photographing the CLA scholarship awards event when the award was announced and was completely surprised by the honor. It’s especially meaningful, she says, because this fall she will retire and decamp for her new home in Tennessee, where she looks forward to capturing new landscapes with her camera.

History professor receives NEH grant to research gender and family in Asia

Dr. Guotong Li recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to further her research on gender and family in maritime Asia during the encounters between the Muslim diaspora and Chinese merchants.

The current project grows out of her previous book about chain and family migration of the ethnic She people. Dr. Li appreciates the RSCA and sabbatical awards from CLA, which allowed her time to keep up with her research.

She plans to use the grant to complete the manuscript for a book about the Chinese Muslim community in Quanzhou during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), highlighting their significant yet often overlooked impact on local and global history.

“I will use the one year to finish the writing part, and my goal is to send a book proposal to a university publisher and have my book manuscript submitted for review,” she says.

Dr. Li credits her colleagues and mentors with inspiring her to apply for the grant.

“My advisor back at UC Davis was a very inspiring force for my research,” she says. “She gave me lots of advice on my new project, and every time I had a publication, she would share her opinion or comments on my publication and push me to go forward.”

Communications studies lecturer and Hauth Center director wins part-time lecturer award

A graduate of CSULB two times over, Jamie Wiles has dedicated her career to her alma mater as a lecturer in the communications studies department and the director of the Hauth Center. For her efforts, she received the John and Phyllis Jung Endowed PartTime Lecturer Award from the College of Liberal Arts this spring, an honor she says was deeply gratifying.

At the Hauth Center, Wiles helps students, staff, and community members hone their communication skills by providing one-on-one training in the effective delivery of presentations and speeches. She says the role allows her to establish a connection with students who are looking to move to the next step in their academic career.

“When a student comes in, I want them to leave feeling seen, feeling recognized, and feeling heard,” she says. “And so we try to empower them through helping them find their voice so that they can go out into the world and share their thoughts and feelings with others.”

Her love for Cal State Long Beach and its students and faculty is what’s kept her at the university since she finished her master’s program in 2007.

“Times have changed, so having to reinvent yourself as an instructor, your curriculum, and all of that has been challenging, but very, very rewarding all these years,” she says.

Fulbright award sends English professor to Romania

Inspired by her visit to a friend in Ireland and her deep dive into her own Romanian Jewish ancestry, Dr. Patty Seyburn, a professor in the English department, started writing a book of poems and essays weaving her own personal history with broader themes of immigration and migration.

She will work on her book this fall as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi in Romania, while also lecturing, teaching workshops, and

assisting with the literary magazine at the university.

“I think it’s going to be fascinating for me to see what levels of experience and what kind of knowledge of poetry students are bringing to the table,” she says. “I’m sure I will learn a great deal from them, as well!”

A member of the English department faculty at Long Beach State since 2006, Dr. Seyburn teaches poetry at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

History professor named member at Institute for Advanced Study

Assistant professor Dr. Rajbir Singh Judge’s initial reaction was surprise upon learning of his selection as a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Soon, though, he was filled with excitement at the prospect of working with leading social scientists to develop and complete his second book.

The institute, founded in 1930, provides support for academics studying history, mathematics, and natural and social sciences so that they can focus on theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Each year, they invite about 200 scholars of the nearly 1,500 applicants from around the world to

become members and spend a year on a research project of their choosing.

During his fellowship, Dr. Judge will be working on the manuscript for his second book, “A Critique of Contextual Reason.” It follows Sikh life in colonial Punjab in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“Throughout the work, I attend to the paradoxes of contextual reasoning, including Sikh relations to time and space that remain irreducible to context,” he says.

His inspiration to pursue the fellowship came from colleagues in the history department.

“I was particularly inspired by my

colleagues who have won multiple fellowships in the Department of History," he says. "There is a tradition of brilliance one must maintain in order to show one belongs, even though all outward signs might point otherwise.

"But, beyond tradition, my colleagues and friends in history and American Studies, Ulices Piña, Isacar Bolaños, and Preeti Sharma, have won competitive writing fellowships and wanted to, let’s say, pass the baton, which was a challenge I felt compelled to accept.”