Summer 2018 Faculty Updates

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Writing Fellow Eli Anders presented "'Every Reasonable Prospect' of 'Ultimate Recovery': Defining Convalescence in Late Victorian England" at the Society for the Social History of Medicine conference at the University of Liverpool in July. His review of Melanie A. Kiechle's book Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America was published in the July issue of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

President and Francis B. Gummere Professor of English Kim Benston presented a lecture, "Cornel West, Malcolm X, and the 'Politics of Conversion,'" at the "RaceMatters@25" Conference at Dartmouth College.

Assistant Professor of Economics Carola Binder published "Inequality, Redistribution, and the Individualism-Collectivism Dimension of Culture" in Social Indicators Research and, with Samantha Wetzel '18, "The FOMC versus the Staff, Revisited: When do Policymakers Add Value in Economics Letters. She presented research on "Inequality and the Inflation Tax" at the Liberal Arts Macroeconomics Workshop at Wake Forest University, and served as a discussant. She also attended the National Bureau of Economics Summer Institute for Monetary Economics. Here on campus, Binder led a Stata bootcamp and weekly economics reading club for the Economics Department summer research assistants.

Visiting Instructor of Music Christine Cacioppo gave an invited colloquium to graduate piano pedagogy students at the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University last October, discussing her textbook, Classic Piano for the Adult Beginner, and sharing her perspectives on teaching children over the past four decades. This summer, she completed the revised edition of her piano anthology, Treasures from the Piano Bench, Volume I.

Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo recorded piano music of fellow composer Christopher Shultis for the Neuma Records release Waldmusik. He was commissioned by the Post Classical Ensemble in residence at the Washington National Cathedral to compose "(I, madly struggling, cry)" for baritone voice and piano on passages from Walt Whitman. Along with this, he also completed the violin and piano work Faust Narrative No. 2 for Abbiati prize-winning violinist Francesco D'Orazio. In addition to being featured composer and panelist at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vt., Cacioppo also produced two new video posts, About the Clouds (performing music written for him by Massimo Iamone, with art work by Professor of Fine Arts Ying Li), and Tuscan Folio (his Symphony No. 3).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian '03 was awarded a $75,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support the creation of "Failure as part of Learning, A Mindset Education Network" (FLAMEnet) with collaborators Lisa Corwin (University of Colorado Boulder) and Jen Heemstra (Emory University). This network will bring together STEM instructors, educational researchers, and psychologists to coordinate diversity and inclusivity efforts focused on growth mindset and student response to failure. The network plans to develop modules that can be plugged into courses and disseminated across a range of institutional types and disciplines. Charkoudian was also selected by the Research Corporation and the Gordon and Betty More Foundation as a 2018 Scialog Fellow.

Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies Christophe Corbin taught a course about French wars in French fictions since the 19th century, "La France touchée dans sa chair. La guerre au miroir de la fiction depuis le XIXe siècle," at the Institut d'Avignon, Bryn Mawr College's French summer program.

John C. Whitehead Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Music, and Associate Provost for Curricular Development and Support Richard Freedman was awarded a research fellowship from Le Studium, based on Orleans, France, that will support a year-long collaboration with research partners at the Centre des études supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France. Freedman will be in Tours from January until December of 2019. Le Studium fellowships are awarded to roughly a dozen scholars annually from across the globe, supporting a wide range of research projects in all fields. Additionally, Freedman's recent book, Music in the Renaissance (W.W. Norton), has just been issued in a Spanish translation by Akal publishers in Spain as La música en el Renacimento.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sorelle Friedler gave a keynote, "Optimizing Society? Ensuring Fairness in Automated Decision-Making," at the Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT) in Malmo, Sweden, in June.

Frank A. Kafker Professor of History Lisa Jane Graham published an article, "What Made Reading Dangerous in Eighteenth-Century France?" in French Historical Studies. The article was part of a special forum, "Looking for Readers in Early Modern France," which Graham co-edited.

Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship Eric Hartman published a book, Community-based Global Learning: The Theory and Practice of Ethical Engagement at Home and Abroad (Stylus Press), in collaboration with co-authors Richard Kiely (Cornell University), Christopher Boettcher (Castleton University), and Jessica Friedrichs (Carlow University). Hartman was also featured as a discussant in the Campus Compact Podcast, "Live from the 5th Global Service-Learning Summit at the University of Notre Dame."

Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Nimisha Ladva was awarded a Leeway Foundation "Window of Opportunity Grant" to support bringing her play, Uninvited Girl-An Immigrant Story, to the Women in Theater Festival for its New York City premiere. Ladva was invited to perform her story, "Lunch with My Mother-in-Law" in Washington, D.C. at a live show for the RISK! podcast in July, and her story, "An American Family," was included in the RISK! Book anthology, edited by Kevin Allison. The anthology was featured in a Wall Street Journal article on podcasts turning into books.

Professor of Psychology Benjamin Le attended the 2018 meeting of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) in Grand Rapids, Mich., in June.

Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Danielle Lillehaugen was awarded the 2018 Ernest A. Lynton Faculty Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty. Lillehaugen also co-produced a documentary webseries, Dizhsa Nabani – Lengua Viva – Living Language, with Moisés García Guzmán, Hilary Brashear '13, Laura Deutch, Sabea K. Evans '18, HCAH Visual Media Scholar Vicky Funari, Kathryn Goldberg BMC '18, Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe '18, Edward Ogborn '19, Lucia Palmarini, and Catherine Rodgers '18. Lillehaugen co-authored "Un testamento zapoteco del valle de Oaxaca, 1614," which was published in Tlalocan XXII. She also published two literary translations of work by Felipe H. Lopez, Liaza chaa 'I'm going home' and Seven Poems, online on Latin American Literature Today.

Professor of Computer Science Steven Lindell gave a presentation, "Traversal-invariant elementary definability and logarithmic-space computation," at the 19th International Workshop on Logic and Computational Complexity, part of the Federated Logic Conference at the University of Oxford in England. This is joint work with Scott Weinstein at the University of Pennsylvania, and provides a mathematical characterization of memory-efficient computation based on first-order logic and well-known traversal algorithms such as breadth-first search.

T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy Danielle Macbeth published "Sellars and Frege on Concepts and Laws" in Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy (Routledge), "Proof in Mathematics and in Logic" in The Logica Yearbook 2017 (London: College Publications), and "Logical Form, Mathematical Practice, and Frege's Begriffsschrift" in Annals of Pure and Applied Logic. Macbeth gave two keynote lectures: "Ampliative Deductive Proof in Mathematical Practice: Lessons from Kant and Frege" at the 32nd International Symposium Logica 2018 at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Hejnice, Czech Republic, and "Diagrammatic Reasoning in Peirce and Frege" at the 6th World Congress and School on Universal Logic in Vichy, France. She also gave two lectures, one invited and one contributed, at the 24th World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing, China: "Leibnizian Languages in the Practice of Mathematics" at the session of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice: Some Uses of Diagrams in Mathematical Practice, and "Logic and Thought" in a session on the Philosophy of Logic.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Karen Masters attended Science Foo Camp (SciFoo) at the Google "X" Campus in San Francisco. This is an invitation only, interdisciplinary science conference organized by O'Reilly Media.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Kristopher Micinski, along with a collaborator at the University of Alabama (Tom Gilray) and summer student Zhanpeng Wang '20, successfully implemented a new programming language that tracks and enforces privacy policies on user data. This new language is built on top of the Racket programming language, which is taught at Haverford in a 200-level computer science courses, and its potential applications include securing social networking, health databases, gradebooks, and more. Micinski and his team authored a paper on this language, which was accepted to be presented at the workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming (co-located with the International Conference on Functional Programming).

Director of Microfinance, Impact Investing, and Social Entrepreneurial Programs and Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Shannon Mudd was a discussant at the annual Macroeconomic Research in the Liberal Arts Conference held at Wake Forest University in early August. Mudd also received word this summer that the administration responded to a May letter composed by students of the Econ298 "Microfinance" course advocating that students workers be paid on a bi-weekly basis, rather than monthly, to help them more easily manage irregular income and expenditure flows and reduce the stress of financial management. Starting this semester, student workers will now be paid on a bi-weekly basis.

Associate Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan published a chapter, "Epigrams, Occasional Poetry, and Poetic Games," in A Companion to Late Antique Literature, and worked with student assistants to release a revised version of The Bridge vocabulary tool. He also secured a $1,500 program grant from the Classical Association of the Atlantic States to support the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellows Conference on the Ancient World at Bryn Mawr and Haverford, which is scheduled for November 9–11.

Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist published a paper, "Understanding structural adaptability: a reactant informatics approach to experiment design' involves the use of machine learning to better understand structural and electronic adaptability in a vanadium selenite later topology," in the journal Molecular Systems Design & Engineering. Four Haverford students (or alums) appear as co-authors—Rosalind Xu '18, Jacob Olshansky '12, Yongjia Huang '15, and Matthew Smith '13—as does Associate Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier.

Professor of Chemistry Rob Scarrow gave an invited talk, "Syntheses, structural and stability comparisons of [Co(DIG3tren)X]Y, (X = halide or pseudohalide; Y = X or BPh4)," at the 255th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Darshan Suryavanshi Magar '18 and Benjamin Burke '18 did much of the research as part of their senior thesis projects and were listed as co-authors. Scarrow presented a broader overview of his lab's work at the 37th Summer Symposium in Molecular Biology at Penn State University in a poster, " Modelling second sphere H-bond donation with cobalt and iron complexes of a guanidine-based ligand," which also highlighted the research of co-authors Karina Gomez '16 and Jeffrey Schneider '12.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier published "Understanding structural adaptability: a reactant informatics approach to experiment design" in Molecular Systems Design and Engineering with Haverford collaborators Rosalind Xu '18, Jacob Olshansky '12, Yongjia Huang '15, Matthew Smith '13, and Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist. Schrier presented "Data-driven approaches to discover reactions and uncover mechanisms for exploratory materials synthesis" at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in April and at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in May. He presented "Are machines smarter than human chemists, or only less biased? The unreasonable effectiveness of random experiments," in "Revolutionizing Chemical Sciences with Artificial Intelligence" at the 256th American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston; "The Dark Reactions Project: A Case Study in Using Machine Learning to Accelerate Exploratory Materials Synthesis" at the ARPA-E Machine Learning-Enhanced Energy-Product Development Workshop in Falls Church, Va.; and "Data-driven approaches to predicting reaction outcomes in solid state chemistry" at the conference on Machine Learning in Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. He also presented "Overview of the 2018 Mission Innovation Workshop Report on 'Accelerating Advanced Energy Materials Discovery by Integrating High-Throughput Methods with Artificial Intelligence" at the NIST/EERE Workshop on A Multi-Agency, Multi-Year Program Plan in Advanced Energy Materials Discovery, Development, and Process Design: Utilizing High-Throughput Experimental Methods, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, and a Collaboratory Network at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Gaitherburg, Md. At that workshop he gave an invited talk, "Overview of the 2018 Mission Innovation Workshop Report on 'Accelerating Advanced Energy Materials Discovery by Integrating High-Throughput Methods with Artificial Intelligence,'" and was the technical discussion chair for the session "Integration of AI, ML, and Experimentation for Energy Materials Design and Processing." He also gave an invited talk, " The Dark Reactions Project: A Case Study in Using Machine Learning to Accelerate Exploratory Materials Synthesis," at the ARPA-E Machine Learning-Enhanced Energy-Product Development Workshop in Falls Church, Va. Schrier was also interviewed for the article "Is Machine Learning Overhyped?" in the Aug. 27th issue of Chemical and Engineering News.

Associate Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Jill Stauffer gave two conference presentations: "What is Temporal Privilege and Why Does it Matter?: Scales of Time, Skepticism, and Decolonial Law" at the Scales of Justice Workshop at Kent University Law School in London, UK; and "What is Settled?: Skepticism, Land, and Resistance in Settler Colonial Territories" at the Levinas Research Seminar at Salisbury University in Maryland.

Douglas and Dorothy Steere Professor of Quaker Studies David Harrington Watt led a seminar on the history of mysticism within the Religious Society of Friends at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England.

Assistant Professor of Biology Kristen Whalen organized a two-week summer research intensive for undergraduates at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Ga., to study phytoplankton-bacteria interactions outlined in her NSF award. Two Haverford students, Scott Pollara '19 and Davis Chase '21, participated in this two-week program with co-instructors from the University of Georgia and the University of Rhode Island. This immersive field research course engaged students in the study of how bacterial infochemicals control the growth and mortality of phytoplankton. Students had the opportunity to learn the latest instrumentation and broke out into small groups with other students to investigate physiological response of marine phytoplankton. This research intensive will be held again next year and include a new group of Haverford students. Whalen and her postdoctoral investigator, Jamie Becker, were invited to present a poster, "Listening In: How Bacterial Signaling Molecules Influence Microbial Community Composition and Phytoplankton Physiology," at the Gordon Research Conference in Marine Microbes in Tuscany, Italy, in July.

Audrey A. and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography William Earle Williams' exhibition A Stirring Song Sung Heroic opened at the Sardoni Gallery at Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, Pa., on August 21. The exhibition will be on view until October 7. Williams spoke at Wilkes about the work with special emphasis on the role that Wilkes Barre played in the Underground Railroad and its African American residents' role as soldiers in the Civil War.

Associate Professor of English Christina Zwarg was invited to give papers at two conferences: "Frederick Douglass, Phrenology, and the 'Money Nerve' of Religion" at the American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco, and "Glimpsing Goethe's Corpse: Translating the Now in Fuller's Eckermann" at the North American Society for the Study of Romantic Literature Conference in Providence.