Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of Neuroscience and Pre-Medical Program Director Lynne Bianchi  published Developmental Neurobiology, a full length textbook describing the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie embryonic development of the nervous system. The book was launched from November 11 to 15 at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held in Washington, D.C. The publisher, Garland Science, hosted a "Meet the Authors" session on November 13 during which Bianchi discussed her book with other instructors.

The book includes descriptions of ground-breaking discoveries that had a major influence on the field, including discoveries by Oberlin alumni Roger Sperry '35, '37, Stanley Cohan '45;  Bruce McEwen '59, and Larry Zipurski '77.  It also features contributions from five recent graduates;  Hillary Mullan '14, Roman Corfas '08, Zeeba Daruwalla Kabir, '05, Briana Carroll '11, and Josh Kogan '14.   

Professor of East Asian studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager was interviewed and quoted by USA Today in an article about North Korea. Read the article, "Is Kim Jong Un Crazy? The North Korea Leader is Just a Cold Calculator, Experts Say."

Cello professor Darrett Adkins teamed with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Timothy Weiss in a 2017 release titled Myth & Tradition. ClevelandClassical.com weighed in—“deep in the Passacaglia of Richard Wernick’s Concerto for Cello and Ten Players (1979), the cellist opens a door and finds himself alone. Manic, thoughtful, and personal, his four-and-a-half minute cadenza is the heart of the album.” Read the complete review.

Christina Neilson, associate professor of Renaissance and Baroque art history, gave three lectures in the United Kingdom. Neilson presented "Wood, Flesh, Vermillion, Blood: Making Supernatural Sculpture" on November 27 in the Department of the History of Art at the University of York. She gave the annual Robert H. Smith Renaissance Sculpture in Context Research Seminar titled, "Animating Automata in the Age of the Miraculous, 1400-1600” on November 29 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Neilson gave a talk, "Incarnating Skin: Polychroming Sculpture in Early Modern Europe" at The Porous Body in Early Modern Europe conference on December 1, at King's College in London.

Farshid Emami, assistant professor of Islamic art history, gave a talk titled "Safavid Shahrashub: Literary Form and City Experience in Seventeenth-century Isfahan" on September 29 at the Comparative Persianate Aesthetics Symposium at Boston University.

Jiyul Kim, visiting assistant professor of history, presented a lecture, “Prospects for Afghanistan and Pakistan” on December 1, 2017, as part of the Great Decisions lecture series at Kendal at Oberlin.

Karl Offen, professor of environmental studies, presented "Environment and Space in Colonial Afro-Latin America" in September for the Department of Geography at Kent State University and in October for the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Pittsburgh The presentations were a shortened version of a chapter written for the book Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews and slated to publish in 2018 by Cambridge University Press.

The presentations illustrated how environment and space are constitutive of human experience, and they explored how Afro-Latin Americans established important cultural relationships with their environments and transformed abstract spaces into meaningful places in ways that profoundly influenced other dimensions of their lives and those around them.

Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber has co-authored an article in the Nation about political corruption in Spain. Read the article, "Spain's Conflict Over Catalonia is Covering Up Massive Political Corruption."

Professor of East Asian studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager was interviewed and quoted by USA Today in an article about North Korea. Read the article, “How Safe is the U.S. from a North Korea Nuclear Attack?”

Associate Professor of Music Theory Arnie Cox gave a keynote address at the 12th International Conference on Music Theory and Analysis in Belgrade, Serbia, on October 15, 2017. While in Serbia, Cox also gave lectures at the Institute of Musicology (of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) and to music students at the University of Arts in Belgrade.