Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of Physics Yumi Ijiri was awarded a three-year, $225,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support her project entitled "RUI:  Magnetic Morphologies and Excitations in Ferrite Nanoparticle Assemblies."  The grant will fund research into unusual magnetic arrangements that form in very small magnets.  Professor Ijiri and her students will make use of equipment at Oberlin and travel to the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, MD to perform experiments.  The work will is in collaboration with scientists at Cambrian Technologies, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, and NIST.

Assistant Professor of Classics Chris Trinacty gave two papers at the University of Cincinnati on October 4 and 5, 2016. The papers, “Humanius est deridere vitam quam deplorare: Seneca on Comedy” and “Earthquakes and Trauma: Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones 6” will be featured in edited volumes.

Chris also recently published an article “Intertextual Translation in Seneca, Ovid, and Hughes” in the Classical Receptions Journal. The article investigates how these poets use translation to position themselves in relation to their poetic predecessors.

Associate Professor of History and Comparative American Studies, Shelley Lee, was appointed to the Asian American History and Culture series editorial team at Temple University Press.

Barbara Sawhill, assistant professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies, presented her research at the American Association of Spanish and Portuguese Annual Conference and in a webinar at the Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland. Her research is focused on how teachers use the award-winning Spanish language podcasts produced by Radio Ambulante.

Barbara was recently named the Spanish Language Education Coordinator for Radio Ambulante, where she shares her expertise in language learning and pedagogy.

Marco Wilkinson, managing editor of Oberlin College Press and instructor of RHET 307 From Nature Writing to Ecopoetics, published a lyric essay in DIAGRAM 16.4.

Ruberta T. McCandless Professor of French Matthew Senior presented an invited paper, “Taxonomy: Human and Animal Patterning, 1485-1760,” at the Patterns in Early Modern France conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Shelley Lee, associate professor of history and comparative American studies, coauthored the op-ed “Renewing Alliances in Troubled Times” for Inside Higher Education.

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager presented lectures on her new book project The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia, 1876-1905 at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Prof. Jager conducted the workshop on 24 Nov at the University of Cambridge on "War, Empire, and Modern Korea" based on her previous work Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has been elected to the Board of Directors for the Society for Classical Studies. The SCS (formerly the American Philological Association) is the primary professional organization in North America for scholars of ancient Greek and Roman literature, language, history, and culture, and it cooperates with the Archaeological Institute of America in the study of ancient Mediterranean archaeology. Prof. Ormand’s term begins in January 2017 and will last for three years.

Laurie McMillin, professor and chair of rhetoric and composition, wrote a piece called The Guide that was published in The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True Stories from the World's Best Writers, edited by Don George, out this month from Lonely Planet publications, London. The volume also includes tales by T.C. Boyle, Lily King, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, Francine Prose, and more.