December 2012: Recent Faculty Accomplishments

Leticia Arroyo Abad (Economics), with co-coordinators at Denison, Scripps, Furman, and Williams, has received funding through the AALAC Mellon 23 Collaborative Workshop program for a workshop titled Change and Continuity: Economic History in the Liberal Arts Context, to be held in April 2013 at Denison University.  The workshop builds on past efforts and will focus more explicitly on research and teaching in economic history, while continuing to explore the close relationship that economic history has to many fields within economics.  

Leticia also received funding from the National Science Foundation to research the history of fiscal capacity, inequality, and growth in Latin America. Her work is part of the Global Prices and Income History Group, a long-term, NSF-funded collaborative effort administered by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ilaria Brancoli Busdraghi (Italian) contributed an essay called “Proctor and Barre: The Marble and Granite Quarries and the Italian Stoneworkers in Vermont, 1990-1915” to Nature Transformed: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, edited by Juliette Bianco and Pieter Broucke.

Pieter Broucke (Director of the Arts; History of Art & Architecture) has had a very notable accomplishment recently, with the publication of Nature Transformed: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, edited by Juliette Bianco and Pieter Broucke. University Press of New England, 2012.   This is a co-edited catalog of a photography exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth that will be on display at our museum next spring.

His co-editor is the Assistant Director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth, with whom he also co-curated the exhibition itself.  The exhibition consists of Burtynksy’s photographs, historical material, maps, chunks of granite and marble, and text, all contextualizing the images. The catalog does the same thing: contextualize the images of Burtynksy.

In addition to being a co-editor Pieter wrote the introduction.  

Jeff Carpenter (Economics) has had two articles appear:

Network Architecture, Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments, with Shachar Kariv and Andrew Schotter, the Review of Economic Design, 16(2): 93-118 (2012).

Which Measure of Time Preference Best Predicts Outcomes: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment, with Stephen Burks, Lorenz Goette and Aldo Rustichini, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 84(1): 308-320 (2012).

Luis H. Castañeda (Spanish) published a novel for young adults in October, Viaje al norte del verano (Lima: Alfaguara (serie roja)).  In July, he published a magazine article: "Los lazos de la autoría: las novelas de Edgardo Rivera Martínez.” Libros & Artes, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional del Perú. XI.54-55 (July 2012): 27-29.
 
Sunhee Choi (Chemistry & Biochemistry) and Matt Wolf (Midd ’12) co-authored an article which recently appeared:

Wolf, M. W.; Choi, S. "Disproportionation of Pentaammineruthenium(III)-Nucleoside  Complexes Leads to Two-Electron Oxidation of Nucleosides without Involving Oxygen  Molecules" J. Biol. Inorg Chem. 2012, 17, 1283-1291, DOI 10.1007/s00775-012-0942-8.

Svea Closser (Anthropology) received a contract from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation a year ago for a comprehensive research project aimed at assessing the impact of the global polio eradication initiative on strengthening routine immunization and primary health care.  With the help of a full time coordinator, this project involved consultants and paid staff conducting research in Nepal, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Angola. Seven Middlebury undergraduates also made substantial contributions to the research. Portions of the work were subcontracted to ISciences, a quantitative analysis firm in Burlington, and CARE International, a major NGO.  An article on methodology has been published, and a results article and report will be released in the coming months.

Elizabeth (Tina) Endicott's (Professor Emerita of History) book, A History of Land Use in Mongolia: the Thirteenth Century to the Present, was published in November 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Huda Fakhreddine (Arabic) has been offered a NEH fellowship to work on a project titled A Study of Classic Arabic Poetry through the Lens of Metapoesis.

Leger Grindon (Film & Media Culture) published the essay, “Cycles and Clusters:  The Shape of Film Genre History” in Film Genre Reader IV edited by Barry Keith Grant Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2012) pp. 42-59.   This book appeared in November 2012.

Leger also published “Taking Romantic Comedy Seriously in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Before Sunset (2004) in The Blackwell Companion to Film Comedy ed. Andrew Horton and Joanna Rapf (Malden, MA., Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).  pp. 198-216.

Kirsten Hoving contributed an essay called “Digging Deep: Edward Burtynsky’s Quarry Photographs” to Nature Transformed: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, edited by Juliette Bianco and Pieter Broucke.

Jeff Howarth (Geography) was awarded a fellowship by the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to support his project "Mapping Cook’s Narratives on Tahiti."

Jason Mittell (Film & Media Culture) has had two new book chapters appear:

“Wikis and Participatory Fandom,” in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Henderson (Routledge, 2012), 35-42.  and

Book chapter: “The Wire in the Context of American Television,” in The Wire: Race, Class & Genre, edited by Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro (University of Michigan Press, 2012), 15-32.

Jason also published a refereed article: “Playing for Plot in the Lost and Portal Franchises <http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol6no1-2> ,” Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture <http://eludamos.org/> , 6:1 (Spring 2012).

Finally, Jason’s article "Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television" was translated and published in German (in Populäre Serialität: Narration - Evolution - Distinktion, edited by Frank Kelleter, Transcript: 2012), Polish (in The Television's Fall? Transformations of Medium, edited by Tomasz Bielak, Mirosław Filiciak and Grzegorz Ptaszek, Scholar Publishing House: Warsaw 2011), and Portuguese (in MATRIZes, 5:2, Spring 2012).

Kathryn Morse’s (History, Environmental Studies) article titled,  “There Will Be Birds:  Images of Oil Disasters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” appeared in Journal of American History 99:1 (June 2012), 124-134.

Will Pyle  (Economics) has been selected to participate in the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad program for Summer 2013.   The award covers all expenses for the four-week seminar, titled Social Sciences in China.   During the course of visiting four cities, the seminar will examine China’s economic system and growth, political and legal systems, and social and demographic changes.  Will intends to use the experience to help boost the China-related content in his elective courses and, specifically, to learn more about urban land issues.

Pete Ryan (Geology) has been awarded a grant through the National Science Foundation’s RUI program to research rates and mechanisms of mineral reactions and associated chemical changes that occur as tropical soils mature. The project, titled Landscape-scale Implications of Mineral Reaction Rates and Mechanisms in Tropical Soils: Insights from Soil Chronosequences and Synthesis Experiments, involves field work in Costa Rica during the first year, with one Middlebury undergraduate and collaborators from the University of Costa Rica, followed by lab and analytical work with collaborators at IACT in Granada, Spain that will involve one Middlebury undergraduate and a student from the University of Costa Rica. Over the next two years, four additional undergraduates will work on this project at Middlebury.

Pete was also awarded a fellowship by the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to support his project "International Perspectives on Environmental Geochemistry from the Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Terra."

John Schmitt (Mathematics), with colleagues from Dartmouth College, Bard College, Haverford College, St. Michael's College, SUNY Albany, Wesleyan University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, has received funding for a series of four conferences on discrete mathematics to be held at various locations in the Northeast over the next two years.  The first was hosted by Middlebury at Bread Loaf during September.  The main purposes of these conferences are to enhance the national infrastructure for research and education in discrete mathematics by creating and strengthening a regional network of interacting researchers and to facilitate the dissemination of cutting-edge research ideas, methods and results.

Shawna Shapiro (Writing Program) published two peer-reviewed articles recently:

Shapiro, S. (2012).  Stuck in the remedial rut: Confronting resistance to ESL curriculum reform. Journal of Basic Writing, 30(2), 24-52.

Shapiro, S., & Leopold, L. (2012). A critical role for role-playing pedagogy. TESL Canada Journal 29(2), 121-130.

Paul Sommers (Economics) recently had an article appear in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics.  The article was co-authored with Mark B. Whelan ’10. The article is titled, “When is the Honeymoon Over for Baseball's New Stadiums?"

Paul also published an article in Atlantic Economic Journal.  The article was co-written with Andrew Somberg (’11).  

Somberg, Andrew K. (’11)and Paul M. Sommers, "Payrolls and Playoff Probabilities in Major League Baseball," Atlantic Economic Journal, Vol. 40 (September 2012), pp. 347-348.

Su Lian Tan (Music) received contracts for two new titles, Moo Shu Rap Wrap and Ming. Moo is the first collaboration with the Meridian Arts Ensemble (Lotus Lives). The other piece, Ming, has already been recorded by trumpet virtuoso Joe Burgstaller and received its world premier in Singapore at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory on October 27.

Bill Waldron (Religion) has been offered a NEH Fellowship to work on a book project entitled An Introduction to the Yogacara School of Indian Buddhism.

Susan Watson (Physics) has been awarded supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation to cover travel expenses to Denmark for her and two students for each of the next two years. While at the University of Copenhagen, where her main collaborator has relocated, she and her students will continue the quantum physics research funded by the original grant. In addition, the supplemental funding will cover costs for these students to be trained at the National Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard.

September 2012: Faculty Spotlight

Will Amidon (Geology) has been awarded funding through the National Science Foundation's RUI mechanism for two years of research with collaborators at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The project, titled Reconstructing Mid-Miocene-to-Recent Paleo-Erosion Rates in the Eastern Andes, Northern Argentina, will involve five undergraduate researchers in investigating whether climate oscillations can be linked to changes in erosion rates over millions of years.

Jason Arndt (Psychology) has had several articles published recently:

Arndt, J. (2012). False recollection: Empirical findings and their theoretical implications. In B.H. Ross (Ed.) Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 56, pgs. 81-124. USA: Academic Press.

Arndt, J. (2012). The influence of forward and backwardassociative strength on false recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 747-756.

Giammattei, Jeannette (class of ‘10), & Arndt, J. (2012). Hemispheric asymmetries in the activation and monitoring of memory errors. Brain and Cognition, 80, 7-14.

David Bain (English and American Literatures) recently published a new book, "Bitter Waters: America's Forgotten Naval Expedition to the Dead Sea" (The Overlook Press/Penguin); he read from it in June at the New England Review Faculty and Alumni Readings at the Axinn Center. Also, several works have been released as e-publications under the colophon Gideon Abbey Press: two long-form nonfiction essays ("Camden Bound: Going Home After a Lifetime of Absence" and "The House on Hemenway Hill: A Writer's Unrequited Love For a 200-year-old Abandoned House") and a book-length collection of 37 essays, talks, and reviews, "Mighty Good Road: Writings on Railroads, the West, and American History."

Cates Baldridge (English & American Literatures) has had two items published: An article, "Antinomian Reviewers:  Hogg's Critique of Romantic-Era Magazine Culture in Confessions of a Justified Sinner," was published in the Winter 2011 issue of Studies in the Novel.  A book:  Prisoners of Prester John:  The Portuguese Mission to Ethiopia in Search of the Mythical King, 1520-1526, was just published by McFarland & Company.

Ian Barrow (History) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project titled In the Footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi.  He will travel to three areas of South Asia, each of which exemplifies one or more of the major confrontations in Gandhi’s life. What he learns about how Gandhi and his actions are remembered will help him revamp the course he teaches on Gandhi.

Erik Bleich (Political Science) has published several items:  “France,” in David Samuels, ed., Case Studies in Comparative Politics, New York: Pearson, 2012: 114-49;  “Assessing Islamophobia though Survey Evidence: Where Do Muslims Really Stand?” with Rahsaan Maxwell, in Marc Helbling, ed., Islamophobia in Western Europe and North America, London: Routledge, 2012: 39-55; and “Les politiques de diversité raciale en France et en Grande-Bretagne: De l’incompréhension mutuelle à la concertation?” in James Cohen, Andrew J. Diamond, and Philippe Vervaecke, eds., L’Atlantique multiracial:. Discours, politiques dénis, Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2012: 181-203.

Christal Brown (Dance) was the choreographer of a five movement composition written by Jazz great Fred Ho, which was presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York last November.  Shows were sold out and ended in standing ovations each night.  Link to commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSts0EKHMUk
Link to first review: http://www.icareifyoulisten.com/2011/11/channeling-optimism-in-fred-hos-the-sweet-science-suite/

The Jack Miller Center has awarded the College a grant to help with the expenses of Constitution Day events to be held at Middlebury this fall.  This grant is the result of a proposal submitted by Keegan Callanan (Political Science), with the assistance of Murray Dry (Political Science).  The Jack Miller Center is “dedicated to enriching education in America’s founding principles and history”.     
Jane Chaplin (Classics) has published “Conversations in History: Arrian and Herodotus, Parmenio and Alexander” in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51 (2011) 613-633.

Ricardo Chavez-Castaneda (Spanish and Portuguese) was awarded the 2012 Julio Cortazar Ibero-American Short Story Prize for his short story “Ladrón de niños.”

Molly Costanza-Robinson (Environmental Studies and Chemistry & Biochemistry), with co-coordinators at Vassar and Furman, has received funding through the Mellon Foundation’s Faculty Career Enhancement program for an inter-institutional project titled Sustainability in Europe: The Limits of Possibility. This award provided funding for a diverse group of 18 faculty from Vassar, Denison, Furman, DePauw, Claremont-McKenna, and Middlebury (including Rebecca Gould, Andrea Olsen, Lynn Owens, and Helen Young) to embark on a 10-day travel seminar to Denmark and Germany to engage with scholars and community leaders associated with successful environmental sustainability initiatives. The goal is bring back case studies, problem solving strategies, ideas, and inspiration for advancing sustainability education across the curriculum.

James Calvin Davis (Religion) co-authored an essay with Charles T. Mathewes entitled, "Saving Grace and Moral Striving: Thrift in Puritan Theology."  It appeared as a chapter in Thrift and Thriving in America: Capitalism and Moral Order from the Puritans to the Present, published by Oxford University Press this past summer.

Ophelia Eglene (Political Science) received two fellowships to pursue her research this coming year.  In the fall, she has a Visiting Scholar fellowship at the European Union Center of Excellence University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  In the spring, she will be a Visiting Fellow at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI), Sciences Po in Paris.  Her project is titled Non-Compliance with EU Environmental Law: A Case Study of 15 Court Cases.

Florence Feiereisen (German) has had several items appear recently. She published a monograph: Der Text als Soundtrack—der Autor als DJ: Postmoderne und postkoloniale Samples bei Thomas Meinecke; Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011. She published an edited volume: Florence Feiereisen and Alexandra M. Hill, eds. Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; and coauthored (with A. Hill): “Introduction to the Study of German Sounds: Tuning in to the Aural Ether” (p. 1-16) and “Bonus Track: Teaching German Soundscapes” (accompanying the book; made available on Oxford University Press’s website: http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780199759385) Finally, she published an article in a peer-reviewed journal: “Eternal Interns: Kathrin Röggla’s Literary Treatment of Gendered Capitalism.” Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature 35: 1 (Winter 2011): 95-113.

Irina Feldman (Spanish and Portuguese) had an article published recently. “Heterogeneidad jurídica y violencia fundacional en Todas las sangres” appeared in Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana Año XXXVI, No 72. Lima-Boston, 2do semestre de 2010, pp. 233-252.

Eliza Garrison (History of Art & Architecture) has published her book, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: The Artistic Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012).  The book received a research award from the International Center of Medieval Art and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Noah Graham (Physics) has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation for work with collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dartmouth College, Tübingen University in Germany, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa on a project titled Scattering Theory Casimir Methods and Coherent Structures in the Early Universe. The project, which will involve three undergraduate researchers, will focus particularly on techniques for calculating quantum-mechanical Casimir forces and on how oscillons — stable, localized, self-organizing lumps of nonlinear waves — might affect the process of cosmic reheating that followed the Big Bang.

Heidi Grasswick (Philosophy) has published an edited volume, Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Power in Knowledge, edited Heidi Grasswick (Dordrecht: Springer) 2011. Heidi has also been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to fund a project titled Trusting Knowledge: Agency, Dependence, and Responsible Knowing in a Scientific World. Starting from the premise that knowing agents’ social locations shapes their possibilities for knowledge, it willdevelop a model that explores the need for, and limits of, trust in science. The project will provide support for her 2012-13 leave and for two undergraduate research assistants and will culminate in an eight-chapter monograph on the trust and trustworthiness required for scientific institutions and laypersons to engage in sound and effective knowing.

Leger Grindon published “American Romantic Comedy Film,” an annotated bibliography in the Film and Media section of Oxford Bibliographies Online, July 2012.

Suzanne Gurland (Psychology) received a VGN pilot project grant to support research into children’s prior expectancies of their teachers as a causal determinant of the quality of their relationships with those teachers (title: Do children's expectancies determine teacher-student relationship quality?). The grant provides funding for summer effort during 2012 and includes funds for Dr. Gurland and one student to attend the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting.

Barbara Hofer (Psychology) has had several items published recently with student co-authors (noted with an asterisk), including:

Hofer, B. K. & Bendixen, L. D. (2011). Personal epistemology: Theory, research, and future directions. APA Handbook of Educational Psychology. Washington: American Psychological Association.

Hofer, B. K.,*Lam, C.-F., *DeLisi, A. (2011). Understanding evolutionary theory: The role of epistemological development and beliefs. In R. Taylor and M. Ferrari (Eds.), Epistemology and science education: Understanding the evolution vs. intelligent design controversy (pp. 95-110). New York: Routledge.

Hofer, B. K. (2011). Student-parent communication in the college years: Can college students grow up on an electronic tether? The Bulletin of the Association of College Student Unions International, 79(2), pp. 36-41.

Kirsten Hoving (History of Art and Architecture) has published an essay, "Digging Deep: The Vermont Quarry Photographs of Edward Burtynsky," in Nature Transformed: Edward Burtynsky's Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, an exhibition catalog accompanying a traveling exhibition of Burtynsky's work.  She also published an essay entitled "Joseph Cornell's Universe: Gravity's Attractions," in the edited volume Gravity and Levity in Art.   Her photographs continue to earn recognition in national and international photo circles.  Her series of photographs, Night Wanderers, was recently featured in Square magazine, published in the United Kingdom. The same series was also featured in Lenscratch.  An article about her work will appear in the Canadian magazine 180, and a slide show of the Night Wanderers will be part of the Outer Limits Talk-Photo event, which is part of the Second Look photo festival in Bristol, United Kingdom.  In March, one of her photographs was included in an exhibition in Florence at the Auditorium of the Duomo, and another was shown at the exhibition, "Intimacy and Voyeurism," at California Institute of Integrated Studies in San Francisco.

Jeff Howarth (Geography) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project titled Mapping Cook’s Narratives on Tahiti.  He will spend one month during his 2012-2013 leave visiting Tahiti.  The main objective of his project is to map information contained in the personal journals of Captain James Cook and his crew in order to visualize relationships between people and places that may not be discernible by reading.  Based on this project, he plans to develop new teaching materials for his classes at Middlebury including Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems, Cartographic Design, and Geography of Islands.    

Jeff Howarth (Geography) and Jeanne Albert (Center for Teaching, Learning & Research) have each received a small grant to develop a blended approach to courses they’re scheduled to teach this coming year:  GEOG 0120 -Fundamental of GIS and MATH 0100 - A World of Mathematics.  These grants are part of the Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave 1 grant initiative based at Bryn Mawr College.  The purpose of this initiative is to integrate open source courseware modules available through the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (CMU OLI) into traditional classroom-based STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses within a liberal arts college setting to enhance student engagement as a means of improving course completion, persistence in the science/math major, and college completion.

Kareem Khalifa (Philosophy) was awarded a grant to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute titled Experimental Philosophy, which was held at the University of Arizona.  In the seminar, he learned how to use experimental methods to explore philosophical questions concerning the nature of knowledge, understanding, and explanation.

Matt Kimble (Psychology) has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health through NIH’s R15 AREA program. The grant provides three years of funding to support a project titled ERP and Eye Tracking Studies of Expectancy Bias in Trauma Survivors, which will engage six students over the life of the grant in research with people who have a history of trauma. The researchers will use electroencephalography, eye-tracking equipment, and subjects’ self-reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder to explore the nature and extent of subjects’ expectancy biases, a poorly understood area of PTSD research.

Chris Klyza (History) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project titled Alaska:  Conservation in the Final Frontier. He will travel to Alaska to experience and photograph its landscapes and to better understand the issues at stake there, especially on lands managed by the major federal land management agencies. This trip is designed to significantly enhance two courses that he teaches every year, Conservation and Environmental Policy and Seminar on American Environmental Politics, as well as all his teaching of environmental studies.

Michael Kraus (Political Science) was elected the Vice-Chair of the Academic Council of the Prague-based Institute for the Study of the Totalitarian Regimes. The Institute, funded by the Czech Government to study, analyze and document Nazi and Communist crimes during 1938-1989, prepares publications, organizes exhibitions, seminars, professional conferences and public discussions.

Michael Kraus (Political Science and Russian & East European Studies) has received a 2012-2013 Fulbright Scholar grant in support of his research and teaching as a visiting professor at the Institute of Political Studies at The Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). His research and teaching will focus on the rise and fall of communist regimes and on the challenges of democratization.

Michelle McCauley (Psychology) received a renewal of VGN grant to continue her work developing a new pediatric interview (title: Adapting the Cognitive Interview for Pediatric Health Interviews: Identifying Why the ECI Works). The grant provides funding for summer and academic-year effort from June 2012-May 2013 and includes a summer stipend for one undergraduate summer research student.

Tom Moran's (Chinese) translation of "Yesterday's Stray Dog Becomes Today's Guard Dog" by Liu Xiaobo has been published in Liu Xiaobo, "No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems," edited by Perry Link et al. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012). Chinese academic and author Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize and is serving an eleven-year jail sentence on a charge of "incitement to subvert state power."
 
Elizabeth Morrison (Religion) was selected to participate this summer in a faculty seminar at Transylvania University in Kentucky, funded by the University’s Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching. The seminar, titled Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept, involved faculty from liberal arts colleges around the country. The award covers all costs of participation, including travel.

James Morrison (Political Science) has been awarded a fellowship to spend his leave this coming year at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The main focus of his research will be a book project titled An Unholy Trinity:   The Influence of John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Maynard Keynes on Britain’s Three Great Transformations. The project traces the processes by which these three key intellectuals developed, saw adopted, and helped to implement their foreign economic policy strategies in Britain.

Kevin Moss (Russian) & Mima Simić have published “Post-Communist Lavender Menace: Lesbians in Mainstream East European Film,” in Journal of Lesbian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 271-283.

Peter Nelson (Geography) has received funding via a cooperative agreement from the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support a research project titled High Cost Mortgage Lending in Rural America and the Great Recession.   The goals of the project are to identify which rural communities and which rural residents are most prone to high cost lending and how the foreclosure crisis has impacted housing markets across rural America.  

Carrie Reed (Chinese) has received a Translation Grant from the PEN American Center for her translation of Youyang zazu 酉陽雜俎 (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang), a ninth century Chinese classical language miscellany by Duan Chengshi 段成式 (c. 800–863).  She estimates that this project, which will be the focus of her leave this coming year, will take about three years to complete. The full project consists of a popular version without many annotations as well as a carefully annotated version. Carrie comments, “Duan was a close observer of his world, a lover of the strange and the foreign, an amateur ethnographer, and recorder of stories and lore of all kinds.  He was unprejudiced in his sources, giving equal importance to every bit of information, whether from a slave, a monk, a civil servant or an imperial relative.”  

Tiffany Rhynard (Dance) recently premiered her documentary film, “Little House in the Big House,” at the Vermont International Film Festival in Burlington. The film chronicles four women in prison where they build a modular home from start to finish through the trades training program by Vermont Works for Women. Rhynard also presented her evening length dance theatre production, “Disposable Goods,” at the State University of Potsdam during a residency in October.

Burke Rochford (Religion) has published “Knocking on Heaven’s Door: Violence, Charisma, and the Transformation of New Vrindaban” in Violence and New Religious Movements (Oxford University Press) and “Boundary and Identity Work among Hare Krishna Children” in The Study of Children in Religions (New York University Press).  His book, Hare Krishna Transformed, was published in Polish this past Spring by Purana Press.

Pete Ryan (Geology) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project titled International Perspectives on Environmental Geochemistry.  He will spend two months during his 2012-2013 academic leave at the Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra (Andalucian Institute of Earth Sciences) in Granada, Spain. The main purpose of his trip is to become immersed in cutting-edge research that he can apply to classes he teaches at Middlebury, particularly Environmental Geochemistry, and can use in advising senior thesis research and other courses.  

John Schmitt (Mathematics) has had two peer-reviewed articles appear in print recently. The first is co-authored with Guantao Chen, Michael Ferrara, Ron Gould, and Colton Magnant.  It is entitled “Saturation numbers for families of Ramsey-minimal graphs.”  It appears in the Journal of Combinatorics, vol. 2 (2011), 435-456.  (Note: the article was accepted for publication this year, 2012, but is being published with 2011 date!) The second is co-authored with Andrzej Dudek.  It is entitled “On the size and structure of graphs with a constant number of 1-factors.”  It appears in Discrete Mathematics, vol. 312 (2012), 1807-1811.

Paul Sommers (Economics) has had several articles appear in Journal of Recreational Mathematics:  A recent issue of the Journal of Recreational Mathematics includes four papers co-authored with eight former or current Middlebury College students:

Green ('11), Connor E. and Paul M. Sommers, “Is a Defensive Tackle More Valuable Than a Quarterback?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp.233-239.

Rotatori ('14), Alexandra M., Kathryn K. Logan ('13), Alison J. McAnaney ('11), and Paul M. Sommers,  “Which Winning Streak in College Basketball Would UConn-sider the Best?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp. 222-229.

Farah ('12), David A., Johann N. Riefkohl ('13), Alexandra L. McAtee ('13), and Paul M. Sommers, “What’s the Spin on Serve Speed and Different Court Surfaces?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp. 244-250.

Magotswi ('11), Mwaki Harri and Paul M. Sommers, “Have Bonus Points Affected Scoring in the Rugby World Cup?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3),
pp. 240-243.

In addition, Paul and former student Sarah King have published an article titled “An Analysis of Immigration Rates by State” in Atlantic Economic Journal.

Paul has also had a co-authored article titled “Speed Suits and Swimming t’s” published in the inaugural issue of Journal of Student Research.  His co-author was Alyssa Ha ’11.
Furthermore, Paul has had a research article titled "An Enigmatic Knapp Patriotic" appear in a recent issue of a hobby magazine entitled FIRST DAYS, the journal of the American First Day Cover Society.  The precise citation is:  Sommers, Paul M., "An Enigmatic Knapp Patriotic," FIRST DAYS, May 2012, Vol. 57, No. 3, pp. 36-38.

Paul has also had an article titled “An Analysis of Immigration Rates by State” published in the Atlantic Economic Journal: Volume 40, Issue 1 (2012), Page 103-104.

Other recent publications by Paul include:
Sommers, Paul M., “Do Baseball’s Northernmost Teams Play Hot in Cold Weather?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(4), 2012, pp. 327-329.

Fuqua, Sydney L., Lauren C. Redfield, Schooner J. Sonntag, and Paul M. Sommers, “Lennon? McCartney? Who was the Principal Author in ‘Lennon/McCartney’?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(4), 2012, pp. 330-335.
Sommers, Paul M., “Are Yankees vs. Red Sox Games Too Slow?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(4), 2012, pp. 336-342.

Paul was also a winner of the 2011 Philip H. Ward Award for Excellence in First Day Cover Literature, presented by the American First Day Cover Society.  Paul’s piece tied for second place. Sommers' “Walter G. Crosby’s Earliest First Day Covers” appeared in the January 15, 2011 issue of First Days.

John Spackman (Philosophy) was awarded a grant to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute titled Investigating Consciousness:  Buddhist and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, which will be held at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.    During the institute, John’s goal was to develop more fully a Buddhist-inspired view of the relation between the mental and the physical that he has been working on over the past few years, what he has called "neutral non-dualism."

Mark Spritzer (Biology) has received funding from BioTherapeutix, LLC to support experiments related to research with colleagues at other institutions on the efficacy of various growth factor derivatives in treating the cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Mark also received a renewal of his VGN grant to support ongoing research related to adult neurogenesis and spatial cognition (title: Effects of Testosterone on Spatial Working Memory and Adult Neurogenesis). The grant provides funding for 2012 summer effort and includes summer stipends for three undergraduate students and academic-year support for two additional undergraduate assistants.

Mark Stefani (Psychology) has been awarded an R15 research grant through the National Institutes of Health’s AREA program. This grant will support collaborative work with Mark Spritzer (Biology) to investigate the role that the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) plays in impaired cognition in a rat model of schizophrenia. This grant includes funding for three undergraduate research assistants over the next three years and for laboratory staff, research supplies, and travel to conferences.

Jacob Tropp (History) has published “Locust Invasions and Tensions over Environmental and Bodily Health in the Colonial Transkei” in David M. Gordon and Shepard Krech III, eds., Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Africa and North America (Ohio University Press, Ecology and History Series, 2012).

Neil Waters (Kawashima Professor Emeritus) has been awarded a fellowship from the Associated Kyoto Program to teach and conduct research in Japan during Fall 2012.    He will teach a course titled "The History of Pre-Modern Japan" for the AKP program at Doshisha University and will work on a research project titled, "Recycling Morality: the Life and Afterlives of Japan's Peasant Sage, Ninomiya Sontoku."

Linda White (Japanese Studies) has been awarded a Research grant from the Fulbright Scholar Program to spend her academic leave next year in Japan conducting ethnographic research in Tokyo with citizens and non-citizens, activists, and others concerned about the key document for family and citizenship registration in Japan.  She will be affiliated with Nihon University in Tokyo.  Project title: Family, Name, Citizenship: The Postwar Household Registration System and the Formation of Identity in Contemporary Japan.

Routledge has recently published Mark Williams' (Political Science) latest book on international relations and hemispheric affairs, titled Understanding US-Latin American Relations: Theory and History (New York: Routledge, 2011). Mark has also published a peer reviewed chapter in an edited volume: “The New Balancing Act: International Relations Theory and Venezuela’s Foreign Policy,” in Jonathan Eastwood and Thomas Ponniah, eds., The Revolution in Venezuela: Social and Political Change Under Chávez (Harvard University Press, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2011).

Frank Winkler (Physics) has received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Chandra X-Ray Observatory General Observer Program for a project that involves collaborators from the Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, North Carolina State University, and the RIKEN Institute in Japan. This project involved a comprehensive study of the remnant of the supernova that occurred in 1006 C.E., generally believed to be the brightest stellar event in recorded human history.  Through a series of observations from the Chandra Observatory extending for over 200 hours, Winkler and his colleagues expect to obtain beautifully detailed X-ray images of this supernova remnant, which they will use to study the debris from its explosion and the interaction with its environment.  Frank has also recently been awarded funding from the NASA-funded Space Telescope Science Institute for two research projects related to observations made from the Hubble Space Telescope earlier this year. The project, “Stellar Life and Death in M83: A Hubble-Chandra Perspective,” in collaboration with an international team of scientists from the US and Australia, and led by colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, is  conducting the most detailed study ever undertaken of the galaxy M83, some 15 million light years away.  Known as the "southern pinwheel," has produced six supernovae over the past century---more than any other galaxy except one.       

In addition, Frank’s project, “The Remarkable Young Supernova Remnant in NGC 4449,” in collaboration with colleagues at STScI, Dartmouth, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, will focus on the remains from a supernova that probably occurred 60-100 years ago.  Although no sightings of this event were recorded at the time, today its remnant is the brightest such object known in the Universe.

Phani Wunnava (Economics) has recently published an article titled "Economic impact of a private sector micro-financing scheme in South Dakota <http://community.middlebury.edu/%7Ewunnava/Recent_Papers/SBEJ_2011.pdf> " (with D. Benson, A Lies, and A. Okunade) Small Business Economics: An Entrepreneurship Journal Vol.36, #2, (2011), pp. 157-168.
In addition, Phani’s tenure as a Research Fellow at Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) has been extended to Dec. 31, 2014.
Phani also recently learned that his paper, "GLOBALIZATION, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE ETHNIC DIVIDE: RECENT LONGITUDINAL EVIDENCE" was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for: ERN: Economic Growth & Aggregate Productivity in Developing Economies (Topic).

Dana Yeaton (Theatre and Dance) recently published “Men in Heat,” a play first produced at the Boston Playwright’s Marathon. The script appears in Shorter, Faster, Funnier, an anthology of short, comic plays.

Helen Young (Biology) has been awarded a Research grant from the Fulbright Scholar Program to spend April through July in Scotland during her academic leave in 2013.   She will be based at the University of Stirling where she will collaborate with a colleague on pollination projects involving raspberries, bumblebees, and citizen science.  Her research is titled Exploring and promoting landscape features associated with bee pollinators in Scotland.

Finally, Potomac Theatre Project's 6th New York season was particularly successful, especially the company's production of Caryl Churchill's Serious Money. The NY Times wrote:
 
"If there’s a sharper-edged evening of entertainment in Manhattan at the moment, it involves juggling knives ...the over-the-top comedy remains raw and urgent... Serious Money smartly directed by Cheryl Faraone, is swift and sleek; the cast is nimble, dancing in tightly choreographed numbers, chanting wickedly amusing songs at the end of each of the two acts...of special note are Tara Giordano’s cleareyed Scilla, David Barlow’s oily Zackerman.... The spare, clever set by Hallie Zieselman features chandeliers that double as telephone banks and Champagne bars."
 
Other faculty and Middlebury alums received strong critical response:
 
"Alex Draper’s realization of Billy Corman comfortably inhabits the gray area between reptilian and seductive often commandeered by dynamic men. Megan Bryne so viscerally presents her cocksure patrician, her speeches seem as if they might draw blood. " Woman Around Town     
 
"(Monster benefits) from "Mark Evancho's evocative lighting." Stage and Cinema
 
And finally, Richard Romagnoli conceived and produced an evening's tribute to the New England Review, with readings by four authors from the NER and a lively reception after the event.

October 2011: Faculty Spotlight

Leger Grindon (Film & Media Culture) has another new book in print, Knockout: the Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011).  Leger was recently interviewed about this book on NPR’s program, “Only a Game.”
 
Michael Katz (Russian and East European Studies Emeritus) has received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support an Emeritus Fellowship.  The fellowship will allow Michael to prepare an annotated edition of three interrelated works of fiction from the Tolstoy family, accompanied by selected excerpts from the principals’ personal letters, diaries, and notebooks. When complete, the volume will be an important resource for understanding the debate over sexual morality in late 19th – early 20th century Russia.
 
Leticia Arroyo Abad (Economics & IPE) was awarded the Department of Education Summer Library Research Fellowship in Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. This grant will allow her to continue her research on Latin American historical inequality. In particular, this project evaluates the impact of colonial institutions on inequality in Peru.

Timothy Billings (English & American Literatures), together with co-organizers at Scripps and Vassar, received funding through the Mellon Foundation’s Faculty Career Enhancement grant for an inter-institutional initiative titled 21st Century Shakespeare. This project provided funding for a group of Literature and Theatre faculty from Scripps, Vassar, DePauw, Denison, Furman, Harvey Mudd, Rhodes, and Middlebury (including also James Berg, Dan Brayton, and Marion Wells) to attend the five-play tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company in New York City this past summer, and then to collaborate in a pedagogy workshop at Scripps in the spring centered on new approaches to Shakespeare.

Jeff Carpenter (Economics) recently published the following article:  Jeffrey Carpenter, Justin Garcia, J. Koji Lum, “Dopamine receptor genes predict risk preferences, time preferences, and related economic choices,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 42(3) (2011): 233-261.
 
Sunhee Choi (Chemistry & Biochemistry) has had an article published recently with several students and alumni.  The article, “Two Electron Oxidation of Deoxyguanosine by a Ru(III) Complex without Involving Oxygen Molecules through Disproportionation,” was published in Inorganic Chemistry 2011, 50, 6567-6574. Co-writers were: Ryu, DW (Midd '11); DellaRocca, JG (Midd '07); Wolf, M. W. (Midd '12); and Bogart, J. A. (Midd '11).
 
Matthew Dickerson (Computer Science) has had several items published recently.  His book on computation and the philosophy of mind, The Mind and the Machine: What it Means to be Human and Why it Matters,was published in May 2011.  His peer-reviewed paper titled “Two-Site Voronoi Diagrams under Geometric Distance Functions,”coauthored with Gill Barequet (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology), David Eppstein (Univ. of California, Irvine), David Hodorkovsky (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology) and Kira Vyatkina (Saint Petersburg State University), was published in the proceedings the 8th International Symposium on Voronoi Diagrams in Science and Engineering. The paper was presented at the conference in Qingdao, China, on June 28-30 by one of his co-authors.

Matt also had an article on literature, “‘Bread, Surpassing the Savour of a Fair White Loaf to One Who Is Starving’: Food and the Culture of Hobbits” published in The Other Journal. The online version can be found at http://theotherjournal.com/2011/07/21/bread-surpassing-the-savour-of-a-fair-white-loaf-to-one-who-is-starving-food-and-the-culture-of-hobbits/

Matt also contributed a chapter, “Water, Ecology, and Spirituality in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth,” exploring ecology, literature, and spirituality in Light Beyond All Shadows: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work, edited by Paul E. Kerry and recently published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.  
 
James Fitzsimmons (Sociology/Anthropology) was awarded a summer fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections in Washington, DC, for work leading to completion of his second book manuscript, The Archaeology of Death in Ancient Mesoamerica.

Claudio González Chiaramonte (Director, School in Latin America) has published a book, Selling Americanism Abroad: U. S. Cultural Diplomacy toward Argentina, 1953-63 (Lambert LAP: Saarbrucken- Germany, 2010).

Kirsten Hoving (History of Art and Architecture) is showing a group of her photographs at Central Booking Gallery in New York in September and October in an invited group exhibition called “Now You See It: Color and the Mind’s Eye” featuring artists working in various media.  Her photographs have recently been included in group exhibitions at the NorthLight Gallery in Tempe, Arizona, and The LightBox Gallery in Astoria, Oregon.  One of her photographs was recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she was awarded the juror’s honorable mention award for her photograph, Fallen Angel, in the group exhibition “Blue.” And one of her photographs was chosen for a collaborative project with artists and writers for the forthcoming book, Water’s Edge. She was a finalist and was awarded honorable mention in the second annual Julia Margaret Cameron awards, an international competition that attracts photographers from around the world.  She also published an article titled “Optical Allusions” in Central Booking Magazine and an essay on Joseph Cornell and gravity in a book of collected essays called Gravity and Levity in Art.  

Jon Isham (Economics) participated in a faculty seminar at Transylvania University in Kentucky, funded by the University’s Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching this past summer. The seminar, “Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept,”involved faculty from liberal arts colleges around the country.
 
Chris McGrory Klyza (Political Science, Environmental Studies) recently had a book chapter published:
“Climate Change and the Management of National and State Owned Land in the United States,” 2011, in Climate Change, Environment, and Land Policies, edited by Gregory K. Ingram and Yu-Hung Hong, Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Land Institute.

Anne Knowles (Geography) has received a Newberry Library Short-Term Fellowship in the History of Cartography for research on her new book project, a critical biography of two twentieth-century cartographers whose innovative maps helped shape Americans’ national and global consciousness from the interwar years to the 1960s. The working title of the book is Mapping the American Century: Richard Edes Harrison and Erwin Joseph Raisz.    
 
Anne also received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend to support her work on a book, “Holocaust Geographies.”  This book is the culmination of an international, multi-disciplinary collaboration between nine geographers and historians developing new approaches for studying the Holocaust with geographical methods.   Anne and a colleague from Texas State University, San Marcos have headed up this project.  Anne will be the lead editor of the book, for which she will co-write the introduction, conclusion, and two case-study essays.

Jim Larrabee (Chemistry & Biochemistry) has recently published an article titled “Electronic and geometric structure of the organophosphate-degrading enzyme from Agrobacterium radiobacter (OpdA).” It appeared in the Journal of Biologic Inorganic Chemistry. Contributors to the article included two recent Middlebury graduates (noted with *): Ely, F.; Hadler, K. S.; Mitić, N.; Lawrence R. Gahan; David L. Ollis; *Plugis, N. M.; *Russo, M. T.; Larrabee, J. A.; Schenk, G.

Sam Liebhaber (Arabic) has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support his academic leave in 2011-2012, during which he plans to complete work on a book project, Bedouin Without Arabic: Language, Poetry and the Mahra of Southeast Yemen. His goal is to create the first monograph-length analysis of the endangered Mahri language in its sociocultural context.  By engaging specifically with Mahri poetry and its reception in Southern Arabia, his work will have broader application to the field of Middle Eastern sociolinguistics and Bedouin vernacular poetry.

Andrea Lloyd (Biology) and colleagues involved in the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research site in Alaska have received funding from the National Science Foundation for a project, Regional Consequences of Changing Climate-Disturbance Interactions for the Resilience of Alaska’s Boreal Forest.  The project is part of the NSF-LTER program, which provides ongoing support of basic scientific research and monitoring in key ecosystems around the U.S. The grant will enable Andi and one undergraduate research assistant to study how climate change and disturbance by insect herbivores are affecting productivity in the forests of central Alaska.  

John Maluccio (Economics) and colleagues from the University of Colorado and the Paris School of Economics have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for a research project titled Effects of Social Transfer Programs on Cognitive, Social, and Economic Outcomes. This project will determine the effects of the Nicaraguan Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program on outcomes such as cognitive abilities, schooling, and labor market success, ten years after the start of the program. Included is funding for Middlebury undergraduates to serve as research assistants.

Jason Mittell’s (Film & Media Culture) book chapter, "Serial Boxes: DVD-Editionen und der kulturelle Wert amerikanischer Fernsehserie,” recently appeared in Serielle Formen: Von den frühen Film-Serials zu aktuellen Quality-TV- und Onlineserien, edited by Robert Blanchet et. al. (Schuren, 2011). (Translated into German from the English original.)

Tom Moran (Chinese) has been awarded a Research grant from the Fulbright Scholar Program to spend four months in China during Spring 2012.  He will be based at Capital Normal University in Beijing, working on a research project titled,   Xu Gang and the Origins and Development of Ecological Literature in Reform-Era China.  He plans to write the first English-language monograph on contemporary Chinese shengtai wenxue (ecological literature), a history of the genre from 1988 to the present.    
 
Tom’s translation of "The Voice of History and the Voice of Women: A Study of Huang Shuqin's Women's Films" by Xingyang Li and his co-translation with Robin Visser  (UNC Chapel Hill) of "Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language" by Yu-shan Huang and Chun-chi Wang have been published in Chinese Women's Cinema: Transnational Contexts, edited by Lingzhen Wang, (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Tom's translations of Jiang Hao's poems, "The Shape of the Sea" and "A Poem of a Wandering Immortal," have also been published in Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China, edited by Qingping Wang, Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt (Copper Canyon Press, 2011).

Amy Morsman (History) has been awarded a short-term fellowship for research at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston (the Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship for research in African-American history). She will be working on her project titled North of Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Reform in the Postbellum North and will be visiting the archives at the MHS during her leave in 2011-2012.

Bill Peterson’s (Mathematics) co-authored book Probability Tales was published recently.  The book is a culmination of efforts begun during Bill’s last leave.
 
Will Pyle (Economics) recently reported that his article, “Organized business, political competition and property rights: evidence from the Russian Federation,” was published in Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, April 2011, 2-31.
 
Patricia Saldarriaga (Spanish and Portuguese) recently had an article published. "Resemantización del ícono guadalupano en el México posbarroco,” in Del Barroco al Neobarroco: Realidades y transferencias culturales, edited by R. de la Fuente Ballesteros, Jesús Pérez-Magallón, J. R. Jouve-Martín. Valladolid, Spain: Universitas Castellae, 2011. 285-294.
 
Roger Sandwick and Kathy Jewett (both Chemistry & Biochemistry) have co-written an article, “Ribose 5-Phosphate Isomerase Investigations for the Undergraduate Biochemistry Laboratory <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed100670a> ,”
for the Journal of Chemical Education.   

John Schmitt (Mathematics) recently published an article, “A survey of minimum saturated graphs” with Jill Faudree (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Ralph Faudree (University of Memphis) in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 18 (2011).

Katy Smith-Abbott (History of Art, Dean of Students) was one of five semi-finalists within her institutional category who were nominated as Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate.  She was listed on an honor roll of advocate semifinalists at their awards ceremony at the 30th Annual Conference on The First-Year Experience in Atlanta, Georgia, February 2011.
 
Paul Sommers (Economics) had a paper appear in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics recently. The paper, “Are First-Round NFL Draft Picks Better than Second-Round Picks?,” was written with former student Jeffrey S. Everson ’10.  This paper is an extension of work he did with Paul in Economics 0485 (Spring 2010), the senior seminar on "The Economics of Sports."
 
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, there are four papers which Paul co-authored with eight former or current Middlebury College students:
 
Green ('11), Connor E. and Paul M. Sommers, “Is a Defensive Tackle More Valuable Than a Quarterback?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp.233-239.
 
Rotatori ('14), Alexandra M., Kathryn K. Logan ('13), Alison J. McAnaney ('11), and Paul M. Sommers, “Which Winning Streak in College Basketball Would UConn-sider the Best?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp. 222-229.
 
Farah ('12), David A., Johann N. Riefkohl ('13), Alexandra L. McAtee ('13), and Paul M. Sommers, “What’s the Spin on Serve Speed and Different Court Surfaces?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp. 244-250.
 
Magotswi ('11), Mwaki Harri and Paul M. Sommers, “Have Bonus Points Affected Scoring in the Rugby World Cup?” Journal of Recreational Mathematics, Vol. 36(3), pp. 240-243.
 
Susan Watson (Physics) and collaborators at Harvard University have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Physics at the Information Frontier (PIF) program to conduct research in the field of quantum information processing, in which the unusual features of quantum physics are harnessed to allow the rapid encoding and manipulation of information. The team of researchers will exploit the unique properties of carbon nanotubes, which are themselves newly understood and are a forefront area of fundamental physics, to create and investigate quantum bits – the fundamental building blocks of quantum computation. Over the course of three years, at least 6 undergraduates will be involved in this research effort.  The project is titled Carbon-based long-coherence quantum bit.

Phani Wunnava (Economics) has been appointed as a researcher at Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN). This is a policy based think-tank run by the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a Major Research Instrumentation grant to Middlebury College for acquisition of an integrated system of instrumentation to be used in lake-studies research conducted by faculty and students. Under the direction of geology professors Patricia Manley and Thomas Manley, this grant will fund purchase of a multibeam sonar system (that provides detailed bottom bathymetry and characterization) and an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. This equipment will be mounted on the College’s new research vessel, currently under construction, but can be transferrable for use by other vessels in the region. This new system will expand the range of research and curricular projects on Lake Champlain, involving other members of the geology department as well as faculty in biology and environmental chemistry.      
 
Middlebury College is one of the baccalaureate partner institutions participating in a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Vermont. This grant continues the Vermont Genetics Network support that has been a significant source of funding for faculty and student research in the past decade. The following faculty members received individual grants from this program to support their research this coming year:
 
Mark Spritzer (Biology)— Renewal of support for ongoing research related to adult neurogenesis and spatial cognition (title: Effects of prolactin and sexual experience on adult neurogenesis in male rats). The grant provides funding for summer and academic-year effort from June 2011-May 2012 and includes a stipend for one undergraduate student.
 
Mark Stefani (Psychology)—Renewal of support for ongoing research that seeks to understand whether abnormalities in the balance between neural excitation and inhibition underlie the memory and decision-making problems associated with schizophrenia (title: The role of GABAergic signaling in schizophrenia-related cognitive disorders). The grant provides funding for summer and academic-year effort from June 2011-May 2012 and includes a stipend for one undergraduate student.
 
Michelle McCauley (Psychology)—New project grant to adapt and test the effectiveness of a forensic interview protocol for use as a pediatric dietary interview (title: The Adapting the Cognitive Interview for Pediatric Health Interviews).  The grant provides funding for summer and academic-year effort from June 2011-May 2012, including academic leave salary, and stipends for two undergraduate research students.

May 2011: Faculty Spotlight

Bill McKibben (Scholar in Residence) has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He will be inducted at a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 1, 2011.

The book, Social Justice Education: Inviting Faculty to Transform Their Institutions (Stylus, 2010), edited by Kathleen Skubikowski (Writing Program, English), Catharine Wright (Writing Program), and Roman Graf (German) was published in late October.  Other Middlebury faculty involved in this project were Julia Alvarez (Writer in Residence); Priscilla Bremser (Mathematics); and Kamakshi Murti (German).  A Middlebury student contributed a chapter as well—Zaheena Rasheed ’11.

Julia Alvarez (Writer in Residence) has published, How Tía Lola Learned to Teach (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House Children's Books, 2010), a novel for middle readers, 8-12,second of a four book series, the Tía Lola stories.

Febe Armanios’ (History) book, Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt, has been published by Oxford University Press.

Tom Beyer (Russian) has translated Mikhail Morgulis, Yearning for Paradise, into English from Russian, and the book has been published by CreateSpace and is also available as a Kindle edition.

Timothy Billings (English & American Literatures) and co-organizers at Scripps and Vassar have received funding through the Mellon Foundation’s Faculty Career Enhancement grant for an inter-institutional initiative titled 21st Century Shakespeare.  This project provides funding for a group of Literature and Theatre faculty from Scripps, Vassar, DePauw, Denison, Furman, Harvey Mudd, Rhodes, and Middlebury (including also James Berg, Dan Brayton, and Marion Wells) to attend the five-play tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company in New York City this summer, and then to collaborate in a pedagogy workshop at Scripps in the spring centered around new approaches to Shakespeare.

Erik Bleich (Political Science) had an article, “Social Research and ‘Race’ Policy Framing in Britain and France,” appear in British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 13 (January 2011): 59-74.

Daniel Brayton (English & American Literatures) whose book, Shakespeare’s Hungry Ocean: Ecocriticism, Early Modern Culture, and the Marine Environment, is under contract with the University of Virginia Press, has learned that he won the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) First Book Prize. The Modern Language Association is the professional organization of language and literature scholars (English, French, Spanish, etc), and NeMLA is its northeast regional body.

Jeff Carpenter (Economics) published “Do Social Preference Increase Productivity? Field experimental evidence from fishermen in Toyama Bay,”with Erika Seki, Economic Inquiry, 49(2): 612-630 (2011).

Jeff also published “Jumping and Sniping at the Silents: Does it matter for charities?” with Jessica Holmes (Economics) and Peter Matthews (Economics), the Journal of Public Economics, 95(5-6): 395-402 (2011).

Jeff Carpenter (Economics) and Caitlin Myers (Economics) have published, “Why Volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, reputation and incentives,”in the Journal of Public Economics, 94 (11-12): 911-920 (2010).

Jeffrey Cason (Political Science, Dean of International Programs) has published a book, The Political Economy of Integration: The Experience of Mercosur (Routledge, 2011).

Mary Kay Cavazos (Religion) had a paper accepted to the Black Women’s Intellectual and Cultural History Project which will be holding its conference the end of April.  Her proposal was one of 40 selected out of 200 submissions.  The Project is headed up by some of the premier scholars in the field of African American women’s studies.

Ricardo Chávez-Castañeda (Spanish & Portuguese) has published two books, La última epidemia de risa and Desapariciones, with Biblioteca Mexiquense del Bicentenario, 2011.

Sunhee Choi (Chemistry & Biochemistry) had an article, “Oxidation of a Guanine Derivative Coordinated to a Pt(IV) Complex Initiated by Intermolecular Nucleophilic Attacks," published by Dalton Trans. 2011, 40, 2888-2897. The article was co-authored with Personick, M. L. '10; Bogart, J. A. '11; Ryu, DW '11; Redman, R. M. '12; Laryea-Walker, E. '12.

Svea Closser’s (Sociology/Anthropology) new book, Chasing Polio in Pakistan, was published by Vanderbilt University Press (2010).

Marcia Collaer (Psychology) and a colleague at St. Michael’s College have received funding through UVM’s NASA EPSCoR program (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) for their project Stress & spatial cognition: Effects of acute stress on spatial navigation & attention. Their research investigates the influence of stress on individuals’ ability to navigate virtual spatial environments and on their performance in spatial attention tasks.

James Calvin Davis (Religion) has published a new book, In Defense of Civility: How ReligionCan Unite America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

Darién Davis (History) and a colleague from Vassar have received funding through the Mellon Foundation’s Faculty Career Enhancement grant for an inter-institutional initiative titled Intellectuals Abroad: Cross-National Influences of Dispersal during World War II and Beyond. The grant will fund a workshop in New York City for 19 participants (from Middlebury, Vassar, Dennison, DePauw, Furman, Harvey Mudd, Rhodes, and Scripps) that will provide opportunities for them to enhance their knowledge and share ideas about the role and impact of the dispersal, exile and movement of intellectuals (broadly defined) across national borders since World War II.

Matthew Dickerson (Computer Science) has received funding from the National Science Foundation’s TUES program (Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science) program for a project  Teaching Computational Thinking through Multi-Agent Simulation: Increasing Recruitment, Retention, and Relevance of Undergraduate Computer Science. This three-year grant will support development of a new approach to introductory level Computer Science, with applications to both environmental studies and economics. It will be integrated into a new track in the major and will also help train students majoring in other disciplines in computational thinking.

James Douglas (Executive in Residence) has published a book, The Douglas Years (The Fourteenth Star Press, 2011).

Ophelia Eglene (Political Science) has had her new book, Banking on Sterling: Britain’s Independence from the Euro Zone, published by Rowman & Littlefield (2010).

Laurie Essig’s (Sociology & Women’s and Gender Studies) book, American Plastic:  Boob Jobs, Credit Cards and Our Quest for Perfection was recently published by Beacon (2011).

James Fitzsimmons (Sociology/Anthropology) received a Dumbarton Oaks grant for this summer.

James has also had an edited volume published--“Living with the Dead: Mortuary Ritual in Mesoamerica.”  It was co-authored with Izumi Shimada and published by University of Arizona Press.

Eliza Garrison (History of Art & Architecture) has learned that her recent book Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture (Ashgate, 2011) has received a research award from the International Center of Medieval Art (the ICMA) and the Kress Foundation.

Eliza also had an article appear in Gesta, a juried journal published by the International Center of Medieval Art.  Its full bibliographic info:  “A Curious Commission: The Reliquary of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg,” Gesta vol. 49, no. 1 (2010): 17-29.

Leger Grindon (Film & Media Culture) has published Hollywood Romantic Comedy:  Conventions, History, Controversies (Malden, Ma.:  Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

Leger has also been awarded a “Robert De Niro Fellowship” from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin to support his research in the Robert De Niro Papers at the Ransom Center.  The grant will fund his research trip to the Ransom Center this summer and further work on a project, “Subjectivity and Sensation:  Filming the Fights in Raging Bull.”

Larry Hamberlin (Music) has had a new book published, Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Mario Higa (Spanish & Portuguese) has recently had several items published.  They are:

A book titled Poemas reunidos by Cesário Verde, annotated edition by Mario Higa, published by Ateliê,  2010.  For this edition, he wrote a 59-page long critical introduction, established the text of the poems comparing several 19^th and beginning 20^th century editions, and prepared hundreds of cultural, historical, linguistic, and literary notes.

A second book:  Antologia de crônicas by Lima Barreto, annotated edition by Mario Higa, published by Lazuli/Companhia Editora Nacional, 2010. For this edition, he wrote a 19-page long critical introduction, selected 45 “crônicas” among over 400 written by Lima Barreto, and prepared the explanatory notes.

An article: “Diante das armadilhas da interpretação” [“Before the Interpretation’s Traps”]. Article on the 50^th anniversary of Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, published in O Estado de S. Paulo, Sep. 25^th 2010, p. S6.

And an interview. “Ele acreditava numa verdade objetiva” [“He believed in an objective truth”]. Interview with Middlebury College Professor Jay Parini about his novel The Last Station, published in O Estado de S. Paulo, Nov. 20^th 2010, p. S4.

Note: Founded in 1875, O Estado de S. Paulo is the oldest newspaper of São Paulo state. It has presently the largest circulation in São Paulo state and the fourth in Brazil.

Jessica Holmes (Economics) and Peter Matthews (Economics) have published, “Endogenous Participation in Charity Auctions,” in the Journal of Public Economics, 94(11-12): 921-935 (2010).

Jon Isham (Economics) has been selected to participate this summer in a faculty seminar at Transylvania University in Kentucky, funded by the University’s Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching. The seminar, titled Twenty-first Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept, will involve faculty from liberal arts colleges around the country. The award covers all costs of participation, including travel.

Hedya Klein (Studio Art) participated in a group exhibition titled Of Weeds and Wildness: Nature in Black & White which ran from January 13 to March 13 at Union College in Schenectady, NY.  It was curated by Sally Apfelbaum and Rachel Seligman.  Other artists represented included: Robert Adams, Desirée Alvarez, Arnold Bittleman, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Harold Edgerton, Robert Gober, William Kentridge, Danny Lyon, Abelardo Morell, Margaret Moulton, Michelle Segre, James Siena, Kiki Smith, Charles Steckler and Kate Temple.

Chris McGrory Klyza (Political Science, Environmental Studies) recently had an article published (co-authored with David Sousa): “Beyond Gridlock: Green Drift in American Environmental Policymaking.” Political Science Quarterly 125 (Fall 2010): 443-463.

Sam Liebhaber (Arabic) has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support his academic leave in 2011-2012 during which he plans to complete work on a book project, Bedouin Without Arabic: Language, Poetry and the Mahra of Southeast Yemen. His goal is to create the first monograph-length analysis of the endangered Mahri language in its sociocultural context.  By engaging specifically with Mahri poetry and its reception in Southern Arabia, his work will have broader application to the field of Middle Eastern sociolinguistics and Bedouin vernacular poetry.

Sam was also awarded a grant from the Fulbright Middle East and North Africa Regional Research Program for a research project, The Mahra of Oman and the Imazghen of Morocco: Language Diversity and Language Ideology in the Arab World. He was unable to accept this award because the dates overlap with those for his NEH Fellowship that funds related, but different research.

Shannon Donegan ‘08 , John Maluccio (Economics), Caitlin Myers (Economics), Purnima Menon, Marie Ruel, and Jean-Pierre Habicht have published, "Two food assisted maternal and child health nutrition programs help mitigate the impact of economic hardship on child stunting in Haiti," in Journal of Nutrition, 2010, 140(6): 1139-1145.  The article is based on Shannon’s senior thesis.

John Maluccio (Economics) and colleagues from the University of Colorado and the Paris School of Economics have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for a research project Effects of Social Transfer Programs on Cognitive, Social, and Economic Outcomes. This project will determine the effects of the Nicaraguan Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program on outcomes such as cognitive abilities, schooling, and labor market success, ten years after the start of the program.  Included is funding for Middlebury undergraduates to serve as research assistants.

Patricia Manley (Geology) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to support a project, Geology of National Parks.  She will travel through the northwest United States, where she will experience and photograph active volcanoes in the region’s National Parks and the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.  These visits will inform and enhance her teaching in three introductory-level Geology courses.

Michelle McCauley (Psychology) has been awarded a grant from the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation at the New York Community Trust for a project, Translating Research into Application: Creating a Manual for Social Workers and Police to use the Cognitive Interview with Children. The goal is to develop and publish a training manual for professionals and practitioners who use the Cognitive Interview to collect information.

Sujata Moorti (Women’s & Gender Studies) and Laurie Essig (Sociology), along with colleagues at  Dennison, DePauw, Furman, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, and Vassar, have received funding through the Mellon Foundation’s Faculty Career Enhancement grant for an inter-institutional initiative,  Queering the Curriculum:  A Proposal for Re-envisioning the Liberal Arts Curriculum. Through workshops at Middlebury, this project is intended to stimulate participants to make changes in the curriculum at their respective institutions.  There will be follow up meetings next year to share experiences and assess progress.   Interested faculty should contact Sujata or Laurie about participating.

Tom Moran’s (Chinese) translation of Wu Zuguang's 1942 play "Return on a Snowy Night" was published in December in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, edited, with a critical introduction, by Xiaomei Chen (Columbia University Press, 2010):  448-546.

Furthermore, Tom was invited to serve as one of five jury members for the 2011 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, representing North America. The other jury members were from Great Britain, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. In October 2010 the prize was awarded to Han Shaogong.

Elizabeth Morrison (Religion) has had a new book recently published, The Power of Patriarchs:Oisong and Lineage in Chinese Buddhism (Brill, 2010).

Amy Morsman’s (History) book, The Big House After Slavery: Virginia Plantation Families and their Postbellum Domestic Experiment, was published in the fall with University of Virginia Press.

Amy has also learned that she has received a Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society to help support the research for a second book project on gender, race reform, and Reconstruction in the North.

Caitlin Myers (Economics), Grace Close ‘11, Laurice Fox ‘12, John William Meyer ‘10, and Madeline Niemi ’11, have published an article, "Retail Redlining:  Are Gasoline Prices Higher in Poor and Minority Neighborhoods?," in Economic Inquiry, forthcoming.  The student co-authors were all in Caitlin’s 2009 Winter Term course Deconstructing Discrimination.

Victor Nuovo’s (Philosophy, emeritus) book, Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment: Interpretations of Locke, was published by Springer (2011).

Middlebury College has received a renewal of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support an Emeritus Fellowship for Victor Nuovo, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy.  The grant provides funding for research trips and other expenses related to his ongoing research on John Locke.

Linus Owens (Sociology/Anthropology) has been awarded a grant to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, American Material Culture:  19^th-Century New York, which will be held at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City.  He is currently working on a project researching mobilities in social movements, hoping to extend his focus to include not only moving bodies, but also objects. Further, he intends to incorporate the information from the course into his teaching, including more attention on material culture in his classes on cities and on the environment.

Cynthia Packert (History of Art & Architecture) has had a new book published, The Art of Loving Krishna: Ornamentation and Devotion, with Indiana University Press (2010).

Roberto Pareja (Spanish & Portuguese) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to visit archives in Bolivia and Peru, where he will collect print and photographic materials for a new interdisciplinary seminar titled National Culture and Space: Art, Narrative, and Travel in 19th-Century Bolivia and Peru.

Patricia Saldarriaga’s (Spanish & Portuguese) article “La monstruosa creación de las imágenes divinas” appeared in an electronic magazine, La Habana elegante. Fall-Winter 2010, vol. 48.  See: http://www.habanaelegante.com/

Patricia also published an article (co-authored with Emy Manini) titled “Hacia la búsqueda del sentido en la representación: Juan Damasceno y Jacques Derrida,” Lienzo 31, 2010, 175-202.

Michael Sheridan (Sociology/Anthropology) has been awarded a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for a project, African Landscapes in the Americas.  He will travel to three Caribbean islands and visit botanical gardens, sugar plantations, and farming communities there to inform development of a unit on African diasporic landscapes for his class Africa: Continuity and Change.

Paul Sommers (Economics) has recently published several articles, the first five of which appeared in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics:

--"'Born to Run' ... Chi-Square Tests: Mathematics in Music," Vol. 35(4), pp. 261-267;

--"Is There Home-Field Advantage in Interleague Play?," Vol. 35(4), pp. 268-274; and

--"Derby Drop-Offs" (co-authored with Nicholas B. Angstman ‘11, Andrea L. Buono ‘11, Trevor B. Dodds ‘11, and Andrew K. Somberg ‘11), Vol. 35(4), pp. 275-280.  The four student co-authors were members of Paul’s 2009 Winter Term course, “The Application of Statistics to Sports.”

--“Do New Ballparks Affect the Home-Field Advantage?” Vol. 36(1), 2011, pp. 16-20.

--“Does Shooting Efficiency Matter in Explaining NBA Salaries?” Vol. 36(1), 2011, pp. 21-23.

Note:  These final two articles are Paul’s 163^rd and 164^th journal articles with a total of 155 Middlebury College student co-authors.

Paul also published, "Have Sports Venues Mitigated the Home Foreclosure Crisis?," in Atlantic Economic Journal 38 (December 2010): 459 and  “Real March Madness: Rewarding Schools for Low GSRs” in Atlantic Economic Journal.  The latter was co-written with Alyssa Allen Chong ’10.

Steve Snyder’s (Japanese Studies) translations into English of two Japanese novels, Yoko Ogawa’s Hotel Iris and Kotaro Isaka’s Remote Control, have recently been published.  His translation of Hotel Iris was a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Louisa Stein (Film & Media Culture) has had an essay published recently, "'Word of Mouth on Steroids': Hailing the Millennial Media Fan," in Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Steve Trombulak (Biology, Environmental Studies) has had the book he co-edited with Robert Baldwin published recently—Landscape-scale Conservation Planning (Springer, 2010).  Steve began working on this book during a Mellon-funded course release in fall 2008.

Frank Winkler (Physics) has received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Chandra X-Ray Observatory General Observer Program for a project that involves collaborators from the Space Telescope Science Institute, Johns Hopkins University, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the University of New South Wales, Australia. A long Chandra observation will be done to detect and measure properties of X-ray sources in the spiral galaxy M83, located 16 million light years away--a galaxy in which the rates of star formation, and destruction via supernovae, is unusually high. The goal is to study the life cycle of stars, and how they interact with the interstellar medium to produce X-ray emission.

Rich Wolfson (Physics) published a paper, "Spreadsheet Lock-in Amplifier," in the November issue of The American Journal of Physics.  His coauthor, Darcy Mullen ‘10, is the daughter of one of Wolfson’s first thesis students, Peter Mullen ‘78.

Rich has also had a second edition of Essential University Physics published by Pearson Addison Wesley, 2010.

Phani Wunnava (Economics) has recently published an article, “The Value of Green: The Effect of Environmental Rankings on Market Cap,” co-authored with Nate Blumenshine ’09.5, published by Technology and Investment in November 2010.

Phani has also had a co-written journal article published in African Finance Journal,  “Southern African Economic Integration: Evidence from an Augmented Gravity Model.”   It was co-written with Thierry Warin (Economics), Kirsten Wandschneider (formerly of the Middlebury Economics Department), and Moshi Optat Herman ’06.