Maria’s Work
Outside of the health situation, Maria has been doing well. She teaches two classes each semester at Villanova (aka “Vanillanova” which should tell you something about the composition of the student body). That’s a lighter load than usual for a new faculty member, but she negotiated for it during her hiring process, so she’d have time to do research too. She has a number of papers and book chapters in the works right now. Her area of research is Asian political economy, and the politics of the Japanese finanical system in particular. Don’t ever ask her a question about Japanese banking ;-). She’s having a hard time with a book chapter she’s working on now. I offered to write it for her, but she didn’t take me up on the offer - I’m not sure why 
. She’s going to Montreal next month for a conference, and she has a couple trips to Japan planned for the summer. Kai and I will join her for one trip, in late May/early June. I’ll need to see how much time I can get off from work, as I won’t have accumulated much vacation time by then.
