Fall 2009 Faculty Updates

Professor of Psychology Marilyn Boltz gave a talk called“Music Videos: Effects of Visual Information on Music Perception and Remembering” at the Meeting of the Society of Music Perception and Cognition, August 2-7 in Indianapolis.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo delivered his essay“Un pianista nell' inferno di Dante,” an analytical and aesthetic commentary on Marino Baratello's“Divina Commedia: Cerchio VIII—Malebolge,” September 30 at Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice, Italy.

Professor of Music and department chair Richard Freedman presented a paper entitled“Josquin, the Multi-voice Chanson, and the Sublime” at the Josquin and the Sublime Conference, sponsored by the Royal Society of Dutch Musicology. It took place July 12-16 in Middlebourg, The Netherlands.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Lilgendahl gave a talk entitled“Taking a ‘Principled' Approach to Personality” at the Association for Research in Personality meeting, July 17-18 in Evanston, Ill.

Professor of Computer Science Steven Lindell attended the Tenth International Workshop in Logic and Computational Complexity, held August 10, and chaired two sessions at the Twenty-Fourth Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, held August 11-14. Both took place at UCLA.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Weiwen Miao gave a talk entitled“An adaptive parametric test for paired data” at the Festschrift celebrating 45 years of statistical activity for Professor Joseph L. Gastwirth of George Washington University, held August 1 in Washington, D.C. Her research was motivated by a legal case about“profit sharing” for a Wall Street firm. In addition, a paper she co-authored, called“Formal statistical analysis of the data in disparate impact cases provides sounder inferences than the U. S. government's ‘four-fifths' rule: an examination of the statistical evidence in Ricci v. DeStephano,” was accepted for publication by the journal Law, Probability and Risk.

The National Science Foundation has funded a research proposal by Assistant Professor of Chemistry Alex Norquist. The title of the proposal is“Synthesis of organically template gallium sulfites.”

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jesse Shipley had two articles published in anthropology journals.“Comedians, Pastors, and the Miraculous Agency of Charisma in Ghana,” which appeared in Cultural Anthropology, focused on popular theater and charismatic preachers.“Aesthetic of the Entrepreneur: Afro-Cosmopolitan Rap and Moral Circulation in Accra, Ghana,” from Anthropology Quarterly, looked at hip hop/hiplife music as an aspect of youth culture.

Visiting Associate Professor of Independent College Programs Carol Solomon was one of the recipients of the Abraaj Prize, which was established by the Dubai-based private equity company Abraaj Capital to give international exposure to artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Solomon curated an installation created by French-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah. In conjunction with this award, Solomon participated in panels at Art Dubai, UAE, and at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Last spring, she gave a lecture entitled“The Empress Josephine: Visual Politics and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy” at the Bryn Mawr Center for Visual Culture Colloquium.

Assistant Professor of English Theresa Tensuan's article“Crossing the Line: Graphic (Life) Narratives and Collaborative Political Transformations” appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of Biography. She presented a workshop on“Comics in the Classroom” for the American Studies program at Cornell University on March 9, and gave a paper entitled“Drawing the Line: Comics and the aesthetics of war and resistance” at the March 26-29 American Comparative Literature Association meeting at Harvard.  In collaboration with the filmmaker Mary DiLullo, Tensuan was awarded a 2009 Arts Commentary Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

During the past year, several photography collections acquired work from either or both of Professor of Fine Arts William Williams' series The Unsung Heroes-African American Soldiers in the Civil War and Uncovering the Path to Freedom-Photographs of the Underground Rail Road. They are: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas; Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y.; and Magill Library Rare Books at Haverford.

Assistant Professor of Astronomy Beth Willman co-organized and chaired sessions at the workshop for the Stellar Populations and the Milky Way/Local Volume science collaborations of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project, held August 20-21 in Tucson, Ariz.  Willman is a chair of the Milky Way and Local Volume science collaboration of the LSST project.