Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Professor of Neuroscience Patrick Simen gave a talk "Evidence for continuous, online adaptation of decision biases, geared toward reward maximization" for the Cognitive Forum series in Michigan State University's Psychology Department.

Tania Boster, director of the Bonner Center's curricular initiatives, presented on transnational partnerships for community-based learning and research at the Association of American Colleges & Universities' (AAC&U) October 2018 Global Engagement and Spaces of Practice conference in Seattle.

Michael Parkin, professor of politics, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study candidate use of the internet during the 2018 congressional campaign. This is the fifth NSF grant that Parkin and his co-authors James N. Druckman (Northwestern) and Martin Kifer (High Point University) have been awarded for their work on congressional campaign behavior and its impact on voting and representation.

Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca presented a paper "The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business" at Harvard Business School.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Cal Biruk gave an invited book talk (Cooking Data, Duke Universtiy Press) at Princeton University's Global Health Colloquium on October 5.

Heidi Thomann Tewarson, professor emerita of German language and literature, brought out her new book Die ersten Zürcher Ärztinnen. Humanitäres Engagement und wissenschaftliche Arbeit zur Zeit der Eugenik (The First Zurich Women Physicians. Humanitarian Engagement and Scientific Work during the Age of Eugenics). Published by Schwabe of Basel, Switzerland, Tewarson’s study tells the story of four pioneering Swiss women physicians, who entered their profession at the end of the nineteenth century and developed a special interest in the new discipline of psychiatry. Confronting the developing field of eugenics espoused by their male mentors, they objected to its ideologically driven aspects, including biologically determined heritability of mental disease, alcoholism, and other deviant social traits, and degeneration theories that disadvantaged women and the poor. As their scientific publications show, they remained committed both to empirical science and humanitarian values, including the care, welfare, and the rights of women. The study's broadly conceived exploration also provides insight into the broader medical and social history during these turbulent times.

Jiyul Kim, visiting instructor of history, presented a lecture on October 5, 2018, at Kendal at Oberlin about U.S. global engagement and the military as part of Kendal's Great Decisions lecture series. 

Sebastiaan Faber, professor and chair of Hispanic Studies, published an article about Amsterdam's new city government in the Nation magazine on October 2. On October 3, together with Gijs Mulder, he published an interview with the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, in the Spanish Revista Contexto. On September 29, Faber was interviewed on the KPFA evening news (Berkeley, CA) about the escalating situation in Catalonia. He was also interviewed for the October issue of the monthly magazine La Marea about an investigative piece that revealed irregularities in the Ph.D thesis by Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez--a topic that dominated Spanish national news in September.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Hal Sundt's piece "Norman Doors" was published in the New York Times Magazine.

Professor of Economics Ron Cheung gave a talk at Brock University in Canada about household debt and local public finances.