The
O'Shea Report: September 2002
At every monthly
faculty meeting during the school year, Dean of Faculty Donal
O'Shea presents brief overviews of recent publications and other
achievements by the Mount Holyoke faculty. Here are excerpts from
his report for September 2002.
Asoka Bandarage,
associate professor of women's studies, received a Ford Fellowship
for about $30,000 in the 2002-03 academic year for her project
Broadening the Prospects for Peace in Sri Lanka. The fellowship
will allow her to complete her book on conflict resolution in
Sri Lanka. She will be based at the Foreign Policy Institute of
the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International
Studies.
Wei Chen, Mary
E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has received National
Institutes of Health AREA funding for her project "Improvement
of the Biocompatibility of PET Implants." She will receive $136,440
over the three-year period June 2002 to May 2005. The grant is
administered through the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging
and Bioengineering and will allow Wei and her students to use
their work in surface chemistry to design materials for organ
and tissue replacement to which proteins do not adsorb and cells
do not adhere. They are going to try to design new implants by
a new strategy of chemically bonding some new classes of molecules
to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) surfaces. This is the second
AREA grant we have been awarded this year (Sarah Bacon,
Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences,
received the other) and brings to five the actual number of AREA
grants currently active. A new record! Wei also received a $5,000
grant from the Office of Naval Research to support organization
of a symposium on "Adsorption of Macromolecules at Solid/Liquid
Interfaces" at the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans,
March 2003. The reason the Navy is supporting this is that antifouling
hull coatings are of great importance to naval interests.
Professors of dance
Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman were joint recipients
of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Choreography Fellowship of
$12,500 this year. These are hugely competitive–there were
three awarded and 59 applicants. The fellowship recognizes exceptional
work and supports further artistic development and continued creative
work. Among Jim and Terese's ongoing projects is one with families
in the region–they are currently making plans to take this
project, a concert of works by regional artists involving parents
performing with their children, on tour to Boston and New York
City. They are also preparing a new piece of choreography, a duet,
to be premiered later this fall.
The National Science
Foundation has awarded $226,560 to Steven Dunn, associate
professor of geology; Amy Frary, assistant professor of
biological sciences; Craig Woodard, associate professor
of biological sciences; Darby Dyar, associate professor
of astronomy and geology; and Wei Chen, Mary E. Woolley
Assistant Professor of Chemistry, under the Major Research Instrumentation
Program: Instrument Development and Acquisition for "Acquisition
of a Scanning Electron Microscope" for the period August 2002
to July 2004. This grant will allow the College to acquire a new
environmental scanning electron microscope with a low-vacuum sample
chamber and energy-dispersive spectrometer. This state-of-the-art
machine will replace our existing scanning electron microscope
(which is now 17 years old). Scanning electron microscopes allow
high resolution studies of texture and composition of both organic
and inorganic materials. The older machines required rather complicated
preparation of specimens (that sometimes destroyed what you were
trying to observe). The new machine will allow faculty and students
to examine both hydrated and uncoated samples, something that
the old one couldn’t do. A key factor in the receipt of the
grant was the quality of the research that the faculty involved
are currently doing and the ways in which they will be able to
use the new machine. Specific studies planned include taxonomic
investigations of marine invertebrates (Rotifera, Copepoda,
and Cladocera), studies of latex-coated industrial materials,
studies of graphite-calcite carbon isotopic exchange during metamorphism
as a proxy of the temperature of formation of metamorphic assemblages,
compositional mapping of Fe-rich mantle phases to better understand
deep earth chemical dynamics and redox conditions, and taxonomic
investigations of agriculturally engineered crops. It ought to
be a very exciting next few years!
The National Science
Foundation has also awarded $82,095 to Sue Ellen Gruber,
Christianna Smith Professor of Biological Sciences; Craig Woodard,
associate professor of biological sciences; Sarah Bacon,
Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences;
Sharon Stranford, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor
of Biological Sciences; and Susan Barry, associate professor
of biological sciences, under the Major Research Instrumentation
Program for "Acquisition of Instrumentation for High Resolution
Light Microscopy and Image Processing" over the period July 2002
to June 2005. The grant will allow the College to acquire instrumentation
for high resolution light microscopy and image processing (in
particular, a research-quality fluorescence microscope coupled
to a high resolution cooled CCD camera and computer hardware and
software appropriate for image processing). Despite the advent
of electron and atomic microscopes, light microscopy is still
the core tool for a number of diverse biological questions. The
new instrumentation will become part of an integrated microscopy
facility that will complement the existing electron microscopes
with up-to-date sophistication in the several modes of light microscopy.
Projects under investigation by the five participating biology
faculty members are wide ranging. One examines the immunological
interactions between a mother and fetus that influence the success
of pregnancy. A second explores the action of antimalarial drugs
in microorganisms. A third, unique in North America, aims to document
the biodiversity of neglected invertebrate groups. The remaining
projects dissect the events giving rise to programmed cell death
in plants, sort out the identity of cell surface features that
may be responsible for AIDS-related immunodeficiency in mice,
and examine the role of steroid hormones in the development of
fruitflies. In all instances, the enhanced ability to obtain and
process high quality microscope images will open up new avenues
of experimentation for faculty and students.
Darren Hamilton,
Mary E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has received
a three-year (July 2002 to August 2005) award of $49,500 from
the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund for his
project "Exploration of a General Strategy for Assembly and Application
of Responsive Organometallic Host Systems." The grant will allow
Darren and his students to build on their previous work, which
established a reliable, general way to construct a variety of
complex organic molecules with prescribed geometry and a core
including metallic atoms (designer molecules). Their ultimate
aim had been to build molecules that will detect prescribed molecules
and that could be fashioned into, for example, films around which
sensing devices could be constructed. The grant will allow them
to start to create these sensing molecules.
Gail Hornstein,
professor of psychology and education, has received a School of
Advanced Study Visiting Professorship for the 2002-03 academic
year at the Institute for Historical Research of the University
of London. The fellowship will allow her to continue her work
on patient narratives of mental illness.
Research Corporation
has awarded a Cottrell College Science Award of $46,000 to Janice
Hudgings, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics,
for her project "The Role of Spin Coupling and Dichroism in Semiconductor
Laser Dynamics." The grant will allow Janice and her students
to continue working toward a deeper understanding of the fundamental
physics and perplexing nonlinear phenomena that govern the behavior
of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. In particular, it
will allow them to get at a number of questions regarding physical
response to optical feedback that have immediate applications
to the development of such lasers for commercial use.
The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation has awarded professor of anthropology Andrew Lass
$15,000 to support his continuing work with the Czech and Slovak
Library Information Network and the Tallinn Conference for Union
Catalogs. The Mellon Foundation also awarded the College $290,000
to conduct a three-year study of the impact of our new SAT-optional
admission policy and $46,000 to support last April's "In Search
of Wisdom" conference.
Associate professor
of French Catherine LeGouis was one of seven individuals
(out of 125) to receive an Individual Advanced Research Opportunity
Grant given by the National Endowment for the Humanities and administered
by the International Research and Exchanges Board. Her project
"Reflections in a Broken Mirror: The Person and Persona of Nina
Petrovskaya" will ultimately result in a literary biography of
Nina Petrovskaya. The grant will allow Catherine to travel to
Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Moscow to study Petrovskaya’s
correspondence, gather other materials, and converse with specialists.
Petrovskaya is best known as the model for Renata in Briusov's
Ognennyi angel (1907) (and, hence, for Renata in Prokofiev’s
opera The Fiery Angel) and for her tragic destiny as she
tried to make her personality conform to Renata’s. Catherine
argues that Petrovskaya has been underestimated as a creative
figure in her own right. This grant is a partial counter example
to the first principle of grant writing ("If you don’t
ask, you don’t get."). To keep costs down, Catherine
had asked for support for two months overseas. The granting agency
asked her if she might be able to use four months.
Laurie Priest,
senior lecturer in physical education and director of athletics,
and the Physical Education department have received an award of
$30,000 from the National Collegiate Athletic Association to support
a graduate internship for women and ethnic minorities interested
in athletic administration. Laurie was also one of two persons
this year to receive an Honor Fellow Award from the National Association
for Girls and Women in Sport (NAGWS). The citation lauds Laurie’s
"extraordinary contributions to NAGWS and to all girls and
women in sport." As if that were not enough, Laurie was selected
as the Division III Administrator of the Year by the National
Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators (NACWAA).
Laurie will receive the award this October in Saint Louis at the
NACWAA annual meeting. This is a big deal.
Deborah Strahman,
visiting instructor in computer science, has received a National
Science Foundation subcontract award of $40,644 for a two-year
period beginning in September 2002 through the University of Utah
for the project "A Grid for Research and Education in Distributed
Systems and Networks." Some years ago, researchers at the University
of Utah constructed a controlled system designed to emulate the
Internet. Others followed suit, and there are a number of such
simulation systems running around the country. The main proposal
seeks to link all these simulations into a single federated entity
on which experiments on large-scale loosely coupled distributed
systems could be safely run. One could, for instance, simulate
Internet attacks and counter attacks. The grant will allow Mount
Holyoke students involved in Research Experiences for Undergraduates
to join students from other institutions at the University of
Utah in using the original simulation system and federated system
currently being built.
Thomas Wartenberg,
professor of philosophy, received an $800 Service Learning Course
Development Grant from the American Philosophical Association's
Committee on Teaching to support his course Philosophy for Children.
Virginia Bastable,
director of SummerMath for Teachers; Jill Lester, assistant
director of SummerMath for Teachers; Susan Jo Russell, Deborah
Schifter, and Traci Higgins have released the fifth book, Statistics:
Working with Data, in their series Developing Mathematical
Ideas. As with the other members of the series, the "book"
actually consists of two volumes, a facilitator’s guide and
a casebook, and a video. The casebook presents 28 cases in which
students from grades K-5 develop their ideas about collecting,
representing, and analyzing data. You see how students gradually
develop a sense of a data set as a whole that can be summarized
and described. The facilitator’s guide gives suggestions
about how a teacher might elicit and develop students’ ideas
and further pursue some of the issues raised in the cases. Although
these materials are aimed at primary school teachers, both parents
and teachers will find them fascinating. They provide a real window
into how children think and grapple with ideas. What’s even
better is that the ideas themselves are fascinating; if the word
"data" terrorizes you, then these books provide a very
gentle introduction to how one thinks about data.
Judaism in Practice:
From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period, an anthology
edited by Lawrence Fine, Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor
of Jewish Studies, was published last fall by Princeton University
Press. It focuses on the wide range of Jewish religious practice
and religious experience (as opposed to Jewish political, social,
or economic history) in the years between 600 ce and 1800 ce Larry
contributes the introductory essay, four others in different sections
of the book, and numerous translations. The essays are arranged
under seven headers: Rituals of Daily and Festival Practice; Rituals
of the Life Cycle; Torah, Learning, and Ethics; Religious Sectarianism
and Communities on the Margin; Art and Aesthetics; Magic and Mysticism;
and Remarkable Lives. Professor of history Jonathan Lipman
contributed an article entitled "Living Judaism in Confucian
Culture: Being Jewish and Being Chinese" to the fourth section.
The essays are varied and wildly interesting.
The legendary guitarist,
Andrés Segovia, left a number of recordings that he had
transcribed from piano or harpsichord. However, he never published
most of his transcriptions. With the authorization of Segovia’s
wife and other close collaborators, music instructor Phillip
de Fremery undertook the task of transcribing the notes that
Segovia actually played and the strings on which they were played.
The result of this dazzling musicianship is the recent book Andrés
Segovia: Transcriptiones (Berben, Ancona, Italy, 2002).
Eugenia Herbert,
professor emeritus of history, has written a lovely book entitled
Twilight on the Zambezi: Late Colonialism in Central Africa
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). She studies colonial administration
and life in the Upper Zambezi Valley with particular emphasis
on the year 1959. She points out that at that time there was no
inkling of the headlong rush to independence that would take place
a mere year later, and colonial rule (and its woolly mission of
preparing the subject races for self-government in the distant
future) seemed assured for the immediate future. She tells the
story beginning at a local, almost personal, level in one of the
colonial stations, and fanning out to a regional view from the
native authority, to pre-national disputes between settlers and
African nationalists in Northern Rhodesia, to the imperial view
from London. Because of the different vantage points, one gets
different stories–the Rashomon approach she calls
it. The result is utterly absorbing: a composite snapshot of a
moment in time when the future seems relatively certain and the
reader knows otherwise.
Karen Remmler,
associate professor of German studies and codirector of the Weissman
Center for Leadership, and Leslie Morris (of the University of
Minnesota) have edited the recent book Contemporary Jewish
Writing in Germany; An Anthology (University of Nebraska Press,
2002). They focus on four current authors: Katja Behrens, Maxim
Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Barbara Honigmann, translating
several substantial pieces of each into English and contributing
a long introductory essay. The pieces they have chosen are striking
and leave one wanting to read more. One also marvels at the issues
of translation with which Karen and her collaborator must have
had to deal.
Assistant professor
of Spanish Nieves Romero-Diaz’s book manuscript Nueva
nobleza, nueva nvela: Reescribiendo la cultura urbana del Barroco
(New Nobility, New Novel: Rewriting the Urban Culture of the
Baroque) has been accepted by Juan de la Cuesta Press. On
a totally different topic you can check out Nieves’s most
recent article "`Na
nacido una estrella’: Leyendo a Zayas para la television"
in Laberinto: An Electronic Journal of Early Modern Hispanic
Literatures and Cultures. If, like me, you have a hard time
reading Spanish, you can still enjoy the embedded video clips.
Brokered Homeland:
Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan, a new book by assistant
professor of anthropology Joshua Roth, has just
appeared with Cornell University Press. More next time.
Marion Katz
of the religion department, whom we lost this summer to New York
University, has had two books appear. Body of Text: The Emergence
of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity, which appears in the SUNY
Series in Medieval Middle East History (SUNY Press), recounts
and reconstructs the debates among Muslim scholars concerning
ritual purity in Islamic law and practice. Ritual purity is everywhere
in the daily life of ordinary believers, yet is not well understood.
Marion looks at how the law was shaped by competing theories,
practices, and politics. The other is an edited volume, The
Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence: Meccan Fiqh Before the Classical
Schools, in the Islamic History and Civilization series
(Brill Publishers). She is both a coeditor (with Harald Motzki)
and a translator.
Associate professor
of art Anthony Lee has been awarded the hyper-prestigious
Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art by
the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The 14th Annual Eldredge
Prize was awarded for his book Picturing Chinatown: Art and
Orientalism in San Francisco, an "outstanding study of the
visual, social and political culture of San Francisco's Chinatown
from 1850 to 1950 . . . Anthony Lee's beautifully written book
and thoughtful approach adds to the story of the United States,
a nation that has defined itself through immigration over the
past three centuries." The prize recognizes originality, significance,
and depth of research, as well as excellence of writing. Further
information about the Eldredge Prize and a complete list of past
winners is available on
the museum's Web site. Tony will give the annual Eldredge
Prize lecture, titled "Orientals and Orientalists in the American
Scene," in the Grand Salon at the Renwick
Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, located at
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., on
October 16 at 4 pm.
Assistant professor
of English Amy Martin received her doctorate (from Columbia
University) with distinction.
The Henry Luce Foundation
has approved the appointment of Jillian McLeod as Clare
Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Mathematics. The Clare Boothe
Luce Program is currently supporting eight women science faculty
at Mount Holyoke, a new record.
The winter/spring
2002 issue of the Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society:
A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy is an extraordinary
Festschrift dedicated to Richard Robin, professor emeritus
of philosophy. What is most interesting about the essays is not
the work of Peirce, Rorty, Santayana, Dewey, C.I. Lewis, and others
that they discuss, but the extent to which they show how Dick
influenced his own discipline, and the high regard in which he
is held by other philosophers. Here are three fragments from three
different essays: "My purpose here is to revisit issues that
Richard Robin discussed in his groundbreaking essay …";
"…here he was, the famous Richard Robin, the author
of the "Robin" catalog …"; "And we have
Robin to thank for leading us to see this, as well as for so much
else." Another philosopher remarks on the pleasure of honoring
an individual who never sought any honors, another on Dick’s
influence on German philosophers, and so on. Best of all, is the
short biography of Dick with which the volume begins. The volume
is a moving testament to Dick’s extraordinary achievement
and his deep modesty.
Symphony No. 1
by professor of music Allen Bonde was recorded and performed
(in Allen’s presence) by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra
of Olomouc, Czech Republic at the Seventh International Festival
of New Music. It will be released on CD by Vienna Modern Masters
in early 2003.
Many papers appeared
during the summer. I mention a few that I managed to read and
delude myself into thinking I understood. My favorite is "Galileo’s
Discovery of Scaling Laws," a paper in the American Journal
of Physics by Mark Peterson, professor of physics and
mathematics. A large part of Galileo’s last book concerns
what we would now call "dimensional analysis"–the
analysis of how different quantities scale up or down, such as
the observation that surface area doesn’t increase as fast
as volume (so that killer giant tomatoes would suffocate) or length
as fast as surface area (so doubling the diameter of a deep dish
pizza quadruples the calories). Mark traces back a key passage
on scaling invariance in Galileo’s last book to some very
early lectures that Galileo had given on the shape, location,
and size of Dante’s Inferno. In particular, he shows how
Galileo’s insight into scaling came when he belatedly realized
that an argument he had advanced regarding the shape of the Inferno
was utterly wrong, essentially for scaling reasons. Roberto
Marquez, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Latin American
and Caribbean Studies, has an extraordinarily broad-ranging (both
in time and space) paper entitled "Raza, Racismo, e Historia:
'Are All My Bones From There?' " in Latino(a) Research Review.
Beginning with a lovely quotation from Nicolas Guillen, Roberto
reflects on how race, racism, and history have shaped, and continue
to shape, Afro-Latino identity and perspective in the Americas.
A recent book entitled Donne and the Resources of Kind
(A.D. Cousin and D. Grace, editors, London: Associated University
Presses, 2002) features essays by Eugene Hill, professor
of English, and Frank Brownlow, Gwen and Allen Smith Professor
of English. Gene explores subversion and counsel in one of Donne’s
sermons, and Frank examines transgression and convention in some
of Donne’s religious sonnets. Gene also has a very amusing,
and very learned, chapter entitled "Revenge Tragedy"
in A.F. Kinney’s A Companion to Renaissance Drama
in which he argues that the best examples of the revenge genre
have a complex Janus-like quality that far transcends mere "blood-and-guts-mongering."
Associate professor of geology Lauret Savoy has a beautiful
meditation entitled "Hardness" on hardness, race, time,
and landscape in the spring issue of Orion: "As a
child I believed earth and sunlight made my rust-tan body . .
." In the March New England Quarterly, assistant professor
of English Lois Brown details Susan Paul’s pioneering
efforts in the Northern antislavery struggle in Boston in the
1830s. Her essay examines how Paul’s use of a juvenile choir
deflected attention away from her and to the children in her charge.
The result was that African American voices were heard in the
antislavery struggle, which prevented the struggle from becoming
an abstract political battle, the terms of which would be articulated
only by white reformers. Lilian Hsu, Elizabeth Page Greenawalt
Professor of Biochemistry, has an amazing paper in the July issue
of Nature Structural Biology that describes the (very different)
geometry and topology of two forms of RNA polymerase and explains
how the differing geometry results in significantly different
transcription properties of the two forms. One sees from the article
the mechanism by which the enzyme moves along the DNA (or, rather,
how the DNA moves through the enzyme). Sarah Bacon, Clare
Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, has an
article with two colleagues in the journal Biology of Reproduction
discussing some issues in the immune response (or lack of it)
of a pregnant mother horse to the embryo she carries. It turns
out that the degree of contact between maternal uterine tissue
and fetal tissue is very different in horses than in humans or
rats. In fact, placentation is so different that it suggests that
there must be some strong, but different-than-human, mechanisms
to make sure that the equine fetus is not rejected by the mother
horse. In a paper that appeared in a Festschrift in honor of John
Onians, John Varriano, Idella Plimpton Kendall Professor
of Art, discusses the engendering and eroticization of classical
columns and pilasters beginning in the sixth century bce and continuing
through to eighteenth-century France. "The essential femininity
of its [the lowly pilaster’s] demure personality had always
been there, but it remained unrecognized until there came an age
. . ." A paper by Angelo Mazzocco, professor of Spanish
and Italian, "The Italian Connection in Juan de Valdes’s
Dialogo de la Lengua," was selected as one of the best articles
to appear in the last 20 years in the Amsterdam Studies in
the Theory and History of Linguistic Science and was reprinted
in the 100th volume.
Our chemistry department
was out in force at the summer meeting of the American Chemical
Society in Boston. Wei Chen, Mary E. Woolley Assistant
Professor of Chemistry, and her students presented two posters,
and Wei gave a talk. Her student, Mamle Quarmyne '03, won the
award for producing one of the six best posters in the Division
of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. This is the first time that
an undergraduate researcher has ever won such an award. The title
of the poster was "Adsorption of Poly(vinyl alcohol) to Surface
Modify Polymers." In addition, Darren Hamilton, Mary
E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and his students
also presented a poster and Sean Decatur, associate professor
of chemistry, and his students presented three. The fourth edition
of Biochemistry (Thomson-Brooks/Cole) by Mary K. Campbell,
Class of 1929 Virginia Apgar Professor of Chemistry, and Shawn
Farrell also debuted at the meeting.
Sheila Browne,
professor of chemistry, and Curtis Smith, professor emeritus
of biological sciences, served as panelists on the selection
committee for the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowships for
Minorities Program. Will Millard, associate professor of
psychology and education, served as a panelist on the selection
committee for the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral and Dissertation
Fellowships for Minorities Program, and Craig Woodard,
associate professor of biological sciences, served as a panelist
for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship
program. A number of others served as reviewers for the National
Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. This
is important work, and we should all be grateful to those associated
with it.
Rachel Fink,
associate professor of biological sciences, had yet another letter
published in the New York Times (this one on Pavarotti).
Darlington’s
Fall by Brad Leithauser, Emily Dickinson Senior Lecturer
in the Humanities, received a glorious review in the Washington
Post on June 11.
--The May 2002 O'Shea
Report more>
--The
April 2002 O'Shea Report more>
--The March 2002 O'Shea Report more>
--The February 2002 O'Shea Report more>
--The December 2001 O'Shea Report more>
--The November 2001 O'Shea Report more>
|
