Olivia DrakeScott Higgins, associate professor of film studies, edited the book, Arnheim for Film and Media Studies, published by Taylor & Francis, 2010. Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was a pioneering figure in film studies, best known for his landmark book on silent cinema Film as Art. He ultimately became more famous as a scholar in the fields of art and art history, largely abandoning his theoretical work on cinema. However, his later aesthetic theories on form, perception and emotion should play an important role in contemporary film and media studies. In this new volume, edited by Higgins, an international group of leading…
Mark Slobin, professor of music, is the author of Folk Music: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press, 2010. According to the publisher, "This is the first compact introduction to folk music that offers a truly global perspective. Slobin offers an extraordinarily generous portrait of folk music, one that embraces a Russian wedding near the Arctic Circle, a group song in a small rainforest village in Brazil, and an Uzbek dance tune in Afghanistan. He looks in detail at three poignant songs from three widely separated regions--northern Afghanistan, Jewish Eastern Europe, and the Anglo-American world--with musical notation and lyrics included.…
David PesciAndy Szegedy-Maszak, Jane A. Seney Professor of Greek, professor of classical studies, joined the guests on a recent episode of WNPR’s Colin McEnroe Show to discuss narcissism in our society. The show was inspired by an article in The New Yorker by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who also joins the show.
The biography of Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, tutor in the College of Social Studies, is published by the Marquis editors’ Who's Who in America 2011. The 2011 edition contains more than 96,000 biographies of the nation's most noteworthy people in a single, comprehensive resource. The book is a biographical reference tool for networking, prospecting, fact-checking, and numerous other research purposes. He also appeared in the 2010 Who's Who.
Ethan Kleinberg, associate professor of history, associate professor of letters is spending the year as director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Paris Program and an invited scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During the Fall 2010 semester, Kleinberg delivered two lectures based on his current book project, The Myth of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a French Jewish philosopher who turned to the use of Jewish (more…)
Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, tutor in the College of Social Studies, is the author of The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics, published by Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010; and Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism, published by Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Eric GershonLaura Stark, assistant professor of sociology, is the author of "“The Science of Ethics: Deception, The Resilient Self, And the APA Code of Ethics, 1966-1973,” published in the fall 2010 issue of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. The paper examines the process by which the American Psychological Association determined that deception could be used as an acceptable research method.
Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry and environmental studies, has received a $193,809 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project called “Imaging Lignin Degradation." Taylor will collaborate with colleagues at Penn State University and the University of Tennessee. Taylor hopes to use fluorescence imaging and isotope trace experiments to develop probes for finding organisms that can break down lignin. She plans to test complex biological samples. "Think going to the forest and bringing home a bucket of dirt containing small insects and lots of microorganisms and then figuring out which ones can break down lignin. This is…
A Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) award will fund a biomedical research project on tobacco-related illnesses. On Oct. 26, Senator Joseph Crisco (D-Woodbridge) presented Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, with one of the eight awards, supported by the Connecticut DPH Biomedical Trust Fund. Hingorani received a $165,083 grant to promote understanding of the mechanisms whereby DNA mismatch repair suppresses carcinogenesis and development of refractory cancers. "While we have made considerable progress in the area of tobacco use prevention, tobacco-related illnesses continue to be the leading causes of disability and death," said Senator Crisco, sponsor of…
Dana Royer, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, assistant professor of environmental studies, accepted the gold Donath Medal at the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) annual meeting in Denver, Colo. Nov. 1. The award came with a cash prize of $10,000. The award recognizes a scientist, aged 35 or younger, for outstanding original research marking a major advance in the earth sciences. On a GSA press release, Peter D. Wilf of Pennsylvania State University said, “Dana is a true innovator who successfully tackles extremely important questions in paleoclimatology and paleoecology, in part using paleobotanical proxies calibrated with a remarkable…
Mary-Jane Rubenstein, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, was a guest panelist at a conference titled “Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality” held Oct. 21 at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, New York University. Focusing specifically on sexuality, Rubenstein and other panelists discussed the ways in which transnational and non-governmental Christian organizations have an impact on legal and social policies in different areas where Christians may comprise a small minority or a larger percentage of the population. In addition, sexuality continues to rankle and even divide Christian churches themselves, as evidenced…
Edward Taylor, associate professor of mathematics; Petra Bonfert-Taylor, associate professor of mathematics; and David Bodznick, dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, received a grant worth $199,924 from the National Science Foundation for their “Collaborative Research: Analytic and Geometric Methods in Limited Angle Tomosunthesis.” The grant expires Aug. 27, 2011.