Summer 2009 Faculty Updates

Associate Professor of Economics Richard Ball travelled to the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP) and Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE) joint conference on the topic“Behavioural Economics, Economic Psychology: Theory and Policy,” held July 8-11 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He presented a paper entitled“Does Wealth Buy Any More or Less Happiness than Income?”, which was co-authored by Sanjay De '08.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo produced the eight-event concert and colloquium series“American Roots,” celebrating music of Native American, African American and Latin American inspiration.  He was featured composer in seven radio broadcasts throughout the Northeast, and in programs at the Hartt School (CT), St. Michael's College (VT), and the Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore).  His new major work“Lenape Refrains,” commissioned by the Philadelphia Music Project and the National Endowment for the Arts, was premiered May 8 by the Philadelphia Classical Symphony.  Over the summer he completed another commission for the American Composers Orchestra to be premiered at Carnegie Hall on November 30.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science John Dougherty and Associate Professor of Computer Science David Wonnacott were invited to submit a retrospective discussion of their 2005 publication“Use and Assessment of a Rigorous Approach to CS1” for the Annals of Research on Engineering Education (AREE). To read the article, visit http://www.areeonline.org/ (free registration required).

Frank A. Kafker Associate Professor of History Lisa Jane Graham attended a meeting of the Old Regime Group for French History on April 24 in Baltimore. She presented a paper entitled“A Taste for Independence: The Nogent Affair (1740-1750) and the Moral Politics of the Early Enlightenment.” Graham also has a forthcoming article in The Carceral Notebooks in French based on her research in police archives entitled“La Police et Leurs Archives: L'Invention de la Normalité au XVIIIe Siècle” (The Police and their Archives: The Invention of Normality in the 18th Century).

Associate Professor of Chinese and Linguistics and CV Starr Professor of Asian Studies Shizhe Huang presented a joint paper called“Looking into Clauses” at the 21st North American Conference of Chinese Linguistics, June 6-8 at Bryant University in Rhode Island; and also gave a talk titled“Some remarks about HE-Conjunction” at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics, July 2-4 in Paris, France.

Assistant Professor of French Duane Kight gave a talk titled“Using Flash Animations to Teach French Grammar” at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, April 16-19 in Lexington, Ky.

Professor of Fine Arts Ying Li served an artist's residency at Fundación Valparaíso in Almaria, Spain, May 5-31. In addition to focusing on her own work she held open studios and participated in discussions with fellow residents. She was invited to show her work at the School of Art 100th Anniversary Exhibition at the Art Gallery at Chautauqua Institute in New York, and was part of a two person exhibition titled“From Away, Ying Li and Joe Nicoletti,” at the Greenhut Galleries, Portland, Maine, May 1-31. She gave a public lecture on her work at the gallery on May 2. She was also invited to give a lecture on her own work at Chautauqua Institute and served as a summer faculty member to teach drawing for the Institute's School of Art, June 26-July 10.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Casey Londergan and three students gave presentations at the 23rd symposium of the Protein Society, July 25-29 in Boston. They were: "Cyanylated Cysteine Is an Infrared Probe of Order-Disorder Transitions in Transiently Helical Proteins," presented by Connor Bischak '10; "Covalently Bound Thiocyanate as a Localized Probe of Membrane-Protein Interactions," presented by Heather McMahon '10 and Kate Alfieri '10; and "Cyanylated Cysteine: A Site-Specific Probe of Protein and Solvent Dynamics." Alfieri and McMahon won the award for best undergraduate poster presentation and were recognized at the Society's annual awards banquet on July 29.

Assistant Professor of Spanish Ana Lopez-Sanchez attended the Sixteenth International Conference on Learning, July 1-4 in Barcelona, Spain, where she gave a talk entitled“Re-Writing the Goals of Foreign Language Teaching/Learning: The Achievement of Multiple Literacies and ‘Symbolic Competence.'”

Associate Professor of Mathematics Robert Manning organized a mini-symposium on“Modeling DNA as an Elastic Object” and was a speaker for another mini-symposium called“Elastic Rods and Applications” at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Conference on Applied Dynamical Systems, May 18-21 in Snowbird, Utah.

Two articles by Associate Professor of Political Science Steve McGovern were published in academic journals:“Mobilization on the Waterfront: The Ideological/Cultural Roots of Potential Regime Change in Philadelphia” in Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 44 No. 5 (May 2009); and“Evolving Visions of Waterfront Development in Postindustrial Philadelphia: The Formative Role of Elite Ideologies” in the Journal of Planning History, Vol. 7 No. 4 (Nov. 2008).

Professor of Biology Philip Meneely presented two posters,“HIM-8 interacts with SUN-1” and“XND-1 and HIM-5 affect crossover control” at the International C. elegans Conference, June 24-28 at UCLA. At this meeting he also chaired and presented at an education workshop on maintaining scholarship and research after tenure.

An article co-authored by Assistant Professors of Chemistry Alex Norquist and Joshua Schrier, Hernan Sanchez Casalongue '08 and Sarah Choyke '10 was published in the Journal of Solid State Chemistry, Vol. 182. The article is entitled“Charge density matching in template molybdates.”

Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts was one of six keynote speakers at“Asterisks and Obelisks: Classical Receptions in Children's Literature,” the first international conference on classics and children's literature, held July 6-10 at the University of Wales at Lampeter. She and Sheila Murnaghan (Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania), who are collaborating on a book on this topic, presented two jointly-written papers:“Picturing Antiquity: Visual Narrative in Classical Works for Children,” and“Pan in the Alps: Conflating Child and Adult in H.D.'s The Hedgehog.”

Professor of Philosophy Kathleen Wright presented a paper called“Gadamer on ‘Broadening the Way' to Chinese Philosophy'” at the International Symposium on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, hosted by the Husserl Archives at Alberts-Ludwig-University of Freiburg, Germany, July 3-5.