Faculty and Staff Notes

Christopher Trinacty, associate professor of classics, recently published two papers and gave two lectures. The first paper, “Tibullus’ Comedy: A note on Tib. 1.2.87-98” appears in the latest volume of Mnemosyne, a journal devoted to classical philology. This paper shows how Tibullus defines the elegiac lover in part through allusions to Roman comedy. The second paper, “Horatian Contexts for Senecan Tragedy” appears in the edited volume, Seneca and Horace: Interactions, Intertexts, Interpretations. This essay reveals the reception of Horace’s odes in Seneca’s dramatic poetry.

In October, Trinacty gave a lecture outside the walls of Pompeii as part of the Symposium Cumanum entitled “Therapeutic Strategies for Earthquake Survivors: Seneca, Caecilius Iucundus, and the Pompeiian Earthquake of 62/63 CE,” and he gave a talk entitled “Visions and Memories of Lucretius in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones” at the annual meeting of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association.

Assistant Professor of Economics Evan Kresch presented the paper, “Greener on the Other Side? Spatial Discontinuities in Property Tax Rates and Their Effects on Tax Morale” on November 8-10, 2017 at the National Tax Conference. Kresch also served as a discussant at the conference.

Lynn Powell, lecturer in creative writing, has published Season of the Second Thought, a book of poems from University of Wisconsin Press. The book is part of the Wisconsin Poetry Series and is the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry.

Martin Saavedra, assistant professor of economics, presented his paper “Should We Trust Occupational Income Scores?” at University of Michigan, Harvard University, and William & Mary.

Naomi Campa, visiting assistant professor of classics, gave a talk titled "The Critique of Democracy in the Republic: Self-Mastery and Freedom" on November 10, 2017, at the Northeastern Political Science Association's annual meeting.

Tania Boster, director of Bonner Center Curricular Initiatives, gave a series of invited lectures between October 24-28, 2017, on the topic "Collaborative Teaching and Learning in the Liberal Arts: Experiences in Service-Learning curriculum design" at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Boster has been partnering with Constance Chan from the Office of Service Learning at Lingnan through the Global Liberal Arts Alliance (GLAA) Connected Course program.

Cindy Chapman, professor of religion, was awarded "Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible" for 2017 by the Biblical Archaeology Society for her recently published book, The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry (Yale University Press, 2016).

This year, Chapman also presented a paper entitled, "The Hebrew Mother of Seven: An Ingathering of Antecedents," on October 13, 2017, for the Biblical Studies Seminar at New College, University of Edinburgh, and she co-authored with Michael Coogan the fourth edition of The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Crystal (Cal) Biruk, assistant professor of anthropology, presented a chapter of their second book from October 6 to 8, 2017, at the Northeastern Workshops on Southern Africa in Burlington, Vermont.

Emer O'Dwyer, associate professor of East Asian studies and history, gave a talk entitled, "The Case of the Headless Miner and the Pursuit of Justice in Transwar Japan, 1944-55" on October 20 at Stanford University.

Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway, associate professor of anthropology, was awarded an Edward Sapir Book Prize honorable mention in 2017 for her book Signing and Belonging in Nepal.

The Edward Sapir Book Prize was established in 2001 by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and is awarded to a book that makes the most significant contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes.