Summer 2013 Faculty Update

Associate Professor of Economics Richard Ball and Associate Librarian of the College Norm Medeiros received a grant from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Sloan Foundation to support an initiative that they are calling Project TIER (Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research). The project focuses on teaching students to document the work they do with statistical data in such a way that all the results they report in their research papers and theses can be easily replicated. This summer, they gave a presentation about Project TIER at the 2013 Stata Conference in New Orleans, in July; gave a lecture about Project TIER at the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods for Social Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in August; and offered a webinar for social science faculty and information management professionals, hosted by ICPSR, demonstrating the protocol they have developed for students to use to document their empirical research. More information about Prject TIER can be found at haverford.edu/TIER.

While recording a new CD of his music with the Quartetto di Venezia in Preganziol near Treviso, Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo performed a solo piano recital of his own and other contemporary music,“From the Dolomites to Etna: pianistic sketches of Italy,” at the Sala Puccini in Milan and the Goethe Institut/Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice. Meyermedia released The Realm of Possibility, Cacioppo's recording of the piano music of fellow composer Mark Hagerty, and his own music was performed at the Curtis Institute, and aired on WRTI Philadelphia. Cacioppo also completed his new“Fantasie-Sonatine (Souvenirs levantines)” for oboe and piano, dedicated to Dan Weiss on the occasion of his inauguration as 14th President of Haverford College.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Louise Charkoudian '03 co-authored a paper,“Expanding the Fluorine Chemistry of Living Systems using Engineered Polyketide Synthase Pathways,” in Science.

Writing Center Fellow Paul Farber has an essay in This is the Day: The March on Washington, a new book on Leonard Freed's photographs of the historic 1963 March. The book was the subject of a recent New York Times blog post and a Slate article.

Assistant Professor of History Andrew Friedman published the book Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia with the American Crossroads Series at University of California Press.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Seth Gillihan gave an invited talk,“Neuroscience of social and affective disorders” at the Neuroscience Boot Camp at the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania in August. He gave another invited talk,“Combated-related PTSD and the brain,” for the Fellowships in Neuroscience Program at the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania in June. Gillihan also published a paper,“Dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatments for anxiety disorders,” in the International handbook of anxiety disorders: Theory, research and practice, Vol. 2.

Assistant Professor of Spanish Aurelia Gómez was invited to deliver a talk,“Entre dos fuegos: memoria y testimonio de la guerrilla de los setenta en Mexico” (“Between Two Fires: Memory and Testimony of the Guerrilla Warfare in Mexico During the 1970s”), at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) on August 7. This event was sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Sciences and Humanities at UNAM.

Professor of Biology Karl Johnson published a paper,“Flagellar waveform dynamics of freely swimming algal cells,” with Emeritus Professor of Physics Jerry Gollub in the journal Physical Review E. This interdisciplinary work involved colleagues at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Delft Institute of Technology and describes a novel insight into the biomechanics of cell swimming that has implications for our understanding of fluid dynamics in systems as varied as human reproduction and oceanic mixing. Additionally, one of the images from the published article was chosen by the journal's editors for their“Kaleidoscope” series for July, 2013, featuring“images that not only convey important scientific information, but also are visually pleasing.”

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen taught a two-week introduction to linguistics course for Zapotec speakers in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Associate Professor of Physics Peter Love gave a talk,“Clifford Quantum Cellular Automata and Hidden Variable Theories,” and chaired a session at the Quantum Information and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics workshop at UBC in Vancouver, Canada. Love also gave a talk,“Approaches to obtaining quantum state information for AQC,” at D-Wave Systems Inc. in Vancouver, Canada. He also gave an invited talk,“Quantum cellular automata and quantum lattice gases,” and chaired a session at the 22nd International Conference on the Discrete Simulation of Fluid Dynamics in Yerevan, Armenia. Love also gave a seminar,“Quantum Shannon Decompositions from Cartan Involutions,” at Georgia Tech.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth gave an invited lecture at the 23rd World Congress of Philosophy, which was held in Athens, Greece, in August. Her lecture,“Conceptions of Logical Form,” was one of three in“The Character of Classical Logic” session.

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology Wyatt MacGaffey published the book Chiefs, Priests and Praise-Singers: History, Politics and Land Ownership in Northern Ghana with University of Virginia Press. MacGaffey also published the paper,“Tamale: election 2008, violence and ‘unemployment'” in Ghana Studies;“A note on Vansina's invention of matrilinearity” in the Journal of African History; and“Minkisi on the Loango coast” in the book Minkisi: skulpturen vom unteren Kongo.

Associate Professor of Political Science Steve McGovern published“Ambivalence over Participatory Planning within a Progressive Regime:  Waterfront Planning in Philadelphia” in the Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Shannon Mudd attended the Impact Investing In Action conference held at Georgetown University in May with William Leeser '15 to get updates on the field and hear pitches by social entrepreneurs trying to raise investment capital. Mudd also worked with Travis Taylor '13 on a feasibility study for the Microfinance Consulting Club to offer microfinance products and services to our local area. The Club is now negotiating a collaboration with EntrepreneurWorks (EW) to provide ongoing market research and mapping of small businesses in under-banked areas in Philadelphia to facilitate EW and other local microfinance organizations' expansion of their services. The feasibility study was informed and inspired both by last year's work by the club on payday lending and by a conference,“US Poverty, Microentrepreneurs and Microfinance,” which was held in March and jointly sponsored by Haverford's Microfinance and Impact Investing Initiative (Mi3) and the Department of Economics.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan demonstrated the learning game“The Crisis of Catiline” at the Reacting to the Past Developers Conference at Central Michigan University. Mulligan also published a digital commentary,“Life of Hannibal by Cornelius Nepos: Introduction, Text, and Commentary,” with Dickinson College Commentaries. Three students worked with him over the summer to complete the commentary and digital resources.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist and his collaborators at Youngstown State University and Oberlin College received funding from the National Science Foundation to purchase a single crystal X-ray diffractometer. The award,“MRI Consortium: Acquisition of a Cyber-Enabled Single-Crystal X-ray Diffractometer for Materials Research at PUIs,” is for $470,000.

William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature Deborah Roberts published a review in Translation and Literature 22 of two recent translations of Apuleius's Golden Ass (one by Joel Relihan, published by Hackett in 2007, and one by Sarah Ruden, published by Yale in 2011).

Associate Professor of Mathematics Joshua Sabloff published“Legendrian Contact Homology in Seifert Fibered Spaces” with Joan Licata (of Australian National University) and“Obstructions to Lagrangian Cobordisms Between Legendrians via Generating Families” with Bryn Mawr College's Lisa Traynor. Sabloff also presented“Topologically Distinct Lagrangian Fillings and Generating Family Homology” at the“Workshop of Legendrian Submanifolds Holomorphic Curves, and Generating Families” at the Academie Royale de Belgique in Brussels. The presentation included joint work with Chang Cao '13, Nate Gallup '13, and Kyle Hayden '13, as well as other work with Traynor and Frederic Bourgeois (Orsay).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier, Associate Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sorelle Friedler received a grant of $299,998 from the National Science Foundation for“The Dark Reaction Project: a machine learning approach to materials discovery,” a research project to use data-driven approaches to accelerate the synthesis of new materials by hydrothermal synthesis. Schrier also joined the editorial board of Frontiers in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry and co-authored a paper,“Entropy-Driven Molecular Separations in 2D-Nanoporous Materials, with Application to High-Performance Paraffin/Olefin Membrane Separations,” in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C with Kylen Solvik '15, Jessica Weaver '13, and Anna Brockway '12.

Visiting Associate Professor of Art History, Independent College Programs Carol Solomon was an invited speaker at the 35ème Moussem Culturel International d'Assilah, in Assilah, Morroco. She gave her paper,“Paradox and Ambiguity in the Orientalist Journey of Lalla Essaydi,” at the symposium“Les nouveaux contours de l'Orientalisme à l'international et dans les arts contemporains arabes … pour mieux les préciser et les redéfinir, à la lumière de leur histoire.” Solomon also published“About Gardens and Gardening: Symposium Commentary,” in Of Elephants and Roses: French Natural History, 1790-1830, the proceedings of the symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition by the same name at the American Philosophical Society in Philadephia.

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing published a peer-reviewed article,“Mali,” in Oxford Bibliographies and published a solicited article,“Briefing Mali: Politics of a Crisis,” in the journal African Affairs. Wing also gave interviews to Radio France International and NPR's Worldview, and gave an invited paper,“Hands off my Constitution: Constitutional Reform and Crisis in Mali,” at the workshop“The Gap from Parchment to Practice: Ambivalent Effects of Constitutions in Democratizing Countries” at American University in May.

Professor of Philosophy Kathleen Wright published an essay,“Die Heroisierung Hölderlins um 1933,” in the second edition of the essay collection Heidegger Handbuch: Leben - Werk – Wirkung. Wright's piece is a critique of how Heidegger seeks to establish the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, as“the” hero of Germany in 1933.