Fall 2011 Faculty Update

Associate Professor of Physics Suzanne Amador Kane and Haverford students Emma Oxford '13 and Marjon Zamani '13 attended the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology's 2011 Natural Sound Recording Workshop at San Francisco State University's Sierra Nevada Research Station in the Tahoe National Forest near Sattley, Calif.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nikhil Anand had two articles based on his research published this month:“Pressure: The Polytechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai,” which appeared in Cultural Anthropology, and“Housing in the Urban Age: Inequality and Aspiration in Mumbai,” which appeared in Antipode.

Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of History Farid Azfar gave an invited lecture,“River Time: The Eighteenth-Century Indus Between the History of Empire and the History of Sexuality,” at the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University.

Associate Professor of Fine Arts Markus Baenziger showed his work at the College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery in Field Guide, an exhibit of his sculptures curated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature John Muse. Read the Philadelphia Inquirer review here.

Francis B. Gummere Professor of English Kimberly Benston presented the Alain Locke Lectures, entitled“Black Hauntologies: Slavery, Modernity, Photography,” at Harvard University's W.E.B. Dubois Institute.

Assistant Professor of German Imke Brust organized the special guest-related panel“Transforming Race and Gender Through Performance and Multi-Lingualism” at the 36th Annual Conference of the Coalition of Women in German (WiG) in Augusta, Mich. Brust also presented“Von Mauerhasen und Zaungästen Exploring Post-Wall Germany 50 Years after the Building of the Wall” at the 24th Annual Pennsylvania Foreign Language Conference in Pittsburgh.

The compositions of the Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music Curt Cacioppo were performed at the College, in Philadelphia, in Wayne, Pa., and in Catania, Sicily. He presented colloquia on his work at Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice, and at the Benetton Foundation Research Studies Center at Palazzo Bomben in Treviso. Cacioppo's article,“Un Pianista nell' Inferno di Dante,” appeared in the international journal Acoustical Arts and Artifacts – Technology, Aesthetics, Communication, published by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. With pianist Emanuele Arciuli, he offered a“Thanksgiving Tribute to Native Americans” in MacCrate Recital Hall. Cacioppo has also received commissions for two new works from the Quartetto di Venezia and the Carmel Bach Festival.

Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature Roberto Castillo Sandoval's book of essays, chronicles, columns and miscellaneous texts, Letters From the Antipodes (which will be published in 2012), was awarded a Special Prize from the National Council for the Arts and Culture. This is one of the two awards given by the Chilean Ministry of Culture for unpublished manuscripts in the context of the“Writings for Memory” literary contest. He traveled to Chile to give a talk and take part in the awards ceremony, which was held at the Museum of Memory.

Visiting Instructor in the Writing Program Christian DuComb completed his Ph.D. dissertation,“From the Meschianza to the Mummers Parade: Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia,” in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.

Associate Professor of Independent College Programs Kaye Edwards was a panelist on“Public Health Educational Opportunities in a Five Institution Public Health Consortium” in the Undergraduate Public Health Curriculum session at the American Public Health Association's 139th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Edwards was also a panelist on“Stretching Boundaries through Partnerships: The Campus-Community Coalition for Health Education, Engagement and Research” at the Quarterly Meeting of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND).

Professor of Biology Robert Fairman published a paper,“Characterization of mesoscale coiled-coil peptide-porphyrin complexes,” in Biomacromolecules with co-authors that included Brian J. Pepe-Mooney '10. Fairman also published a paper,“Thermodynamic analysis of self-assembly in coiled-coil biomaterials,” in Biochemistry. His co-authors on that paper included Associate Professor of Mathematics Robert Manning, Heidi S. Bretscher '09 and Betty Tsang '07.

Professor of Anthropology Maris Gillette has been co-directing Muslim Voices of Philadelphia, a community media project that provides an opportunity for interested Muslim community groups to document the histories, practices and contributions of the many Muslims who have come to call the region home, for two years. And in November, Muslim Voices of Philadelphia premiered two pilot videos produced by Lajna Ima'illah, Women's Auxiliary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the New Africa Center. The Council on American-Islamic Relations-PA (CAIR-PA) awarded Gillette and her co-director, Louis Massiah, their Courage in Media Award for this work.

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies Hank Glassman lead a group of 11 students to Japan for two weeks in September and October as a part of Bryn Mawr College's 360-degrees course cluster,“Contemplative Traditions.” Glassman also attended Columbia University's international conference on“Buddhism and Performance in Medieval Japan,” and gave an invited talk,“Playing on that Liminal Shore: the segakie and the birth of sai no kawara,” at“The One Who is Really Lost: A Conference in Honor of William R. LaFleur” at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Emeritus of Political Science Harvey Glickman completed two papers on case studies of Islamism in Sub-Saharan Africa. One was delivered in November, at the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, in Washington, D.C. The other will be delivered next year. Also, his essay,“Why Are We in Uganda?” was published online at PJMedia.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Anne Kane published her book, Constructing Irish National Identity: Ritual and Discourse during the Land War, 1879-1882 (Palgrave Macmillan), in November.

Professor of Economics Vladimir Kontorovich published“A Child, Not a Tool of the Cold War,” a review of Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts by David C. Engerman in the summer 2011 issue of Kritika.

Professor of Fine Arts Ying Li was an Artist in Residence at Maryland's St. Mary's College in September. While there, she gave a lecture,“From Yangzi River to St. Mary's River,” analyzing how Chinese painting and calligraphy and Western painting, especially Abstract Expressionism, interact with each other, and how they shaped and inspired her work, artistic development and teaching. Li also gave two lectures on her work at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in October, and gave workshops at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach and the Chautauqua Institute. Her work was exhibited at the Lancaster Museum of Art, the College of William and Mary, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Wisconsin and the Lohin Geduld Gallery in New York, the latter of which was a solo exhibition that was written about in the September issue of Art in America.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Lisa McCormick received a grant from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom to be Visiting Fellow in Sociology of the Arts there during her junior faculty leave. McCormick was also the invited speaker at a one-day conference on artistic professions at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Linnaeus University in Vaxjo, Sweden, in September, and presented papers at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Las Vegas and the European Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Geneva. In addition, her research is discussed in an article by Benjamin Ivry in the current issue of International Piano Magazine.

Kies Family Associate Professor in the Humanities and Associate Professor of Religion Anne McGuire presented a lecture,“Mysteries of Union: Language, Ritual, and Gender in The Gospel of Philip,” at Harvard Divinity School.

Associate Professor of Spanish Graciela Michelotti presented a paper at the XXI Annual Conference of AILCFH (Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica),“Inhabiting Gender,” in Barcelona, Spain. The paper focused on the novels Los vigilantes (Diamela Eltit, Chile, 1996) and La azotea (Fernada Trías, Uruguay, 2010), analyzing the representation of the urban space inhabited by marginal women characters.

Assistant Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan delivered a paper,“Ludicrum Naturae: Reading Variation in Claudian's Nature Poems,” at“The Classics Renewed: New Approaches to the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity” conference at Brown University.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist published a paper with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Joshua Schrier in the journal Crystal Growth and Design. This paper detailed their direct observation of the importance of weak interactions in the formation of vanadium tellurites. Three Haverford undergraduates also appear as co-authors: Matt Smith '13, Sam Blau '12 and Kelvin Chang '10.

The premiere of Georges Perec's play The Machine, translated by Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature Ulrich Schönherr, was performed at Bloc Space in Sheffield, England, on October 25.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jesse Shipley screened his film, Living the Hiplife, in Austria and at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt. His newest film was just signed with Third World Newsreel for distribution.

Assistant Professor of Astronomy Beth Willman presented an invited colloquium to the University of Texas, Austin, astronomy department and to the National Optical Astronomy Observatory/University of Arizona astronomy department. Both were titled“What is a galaxy?” Willman also gave a talk,“Mapping the Milky Way,” to the Chesmont Astronomical Society, a local group of amateur astronomers.

Assistant Professor of Biology Jonathan Wilson was awarded a $49,000 matching grant from Li-Cor Biosciences Environmental Education Fund toward the purchase of an enhanced ecophysiology instrumentation package for his teaching and research programs.

Associate Professor of Political Science Susanna Wing received the U.S. Department of State Speaker and Specialist Grant to lecture on women and electoral processes in Bamako, Mali, in October. Wing also presented the paper,“Rights Based Approaches to Development: Justice and Legal Fiction in Africa” at the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting in Seattle, and participated in the roundtable“Rethinking Counter Terrorism in the Trans Sahel: Development, Democratization and Capacity Building” at the African Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. In addition, she presented the paper,“Grassroots Democracy and Civil Society” as an invited participant at the Executive Seminar on Mali in Washington, D.C.

Professor of Philosophy Kathleen Wright gave a reading on“K'un (Oppression)” from the I Ching (Book of Changes), including the remarks by Confucius, as part of Authors of Mischief, an annual event held at Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum and Library that celebrates books that have been burned or banned.

Associate Professor of English Christina Zwarg published a review essay,“Easy A, or Who's Your Daddy? The Scarlet Letter Once More,” about Easy A, the recent playful film adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, in the September 2011 issue of Adaptation.