Faculty and Staff Notes

Kathy Abromeit, public services librarian in the Conservatory Library, attended the annual meeting of the Music Library Association where she discussed her new book, Spirituals: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography for Research and Performance​ (2015), during a roundtable and panel. The meeting took place February 25 through March 1 in Denver, Colorado.

The roundtable was "Black Music Collections," and the panel, which Abromeit organized, was "Getting Published: a Panel Discussion with Authors and Editors from MLA's Three Monographic Series." The Music Library Association publishes three book series in collaboration with A-R Editions. MLA publishes practical guides, bibliographies, thematic catalogs, and technical reports that are used by librarians, scholars, and performers worldwide. Spirituals: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography for Research and Performance was published as part of the series.​

Also at the meeting, Abromeit was appointed as a member of the Editorial Board for the Music Library Association's Basic Manual Series, which publishes bibliographies and thematic catalogues used by librarians, scholars, and performers worldwide.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has given a number of public talks this semester. In February, Ormand traveled to the University of North Carolina, Asheville, (UNCA) to give a talk titled “Sexualized Violence: The Eurymedon Vase in Context” as a part of the UNCA Humanities Colloquium series.

In March, Ormand delivered the keynote address at the Indiana Classical Conference, hosted by Earlham College. The subject of his talk was "Perversion in Antiquity: Seneca, Foucault, and the Invention of Psychiatric Reasoning.”

In April, Ormand delivered a revised version of the same paper at the conference Foucault: La Sexualité, L’Antiquité: 30 ans après held at the University of Paris-Diderot and sponsored by the Laboratoires ANHIMA (Paris) and Archimède (Strasbourg) and the Centre Michel Foucault (Paris).

Andaleeb Badiee Banta, curator of European and American art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, presented the paper "Simultaneous Vision in Oberlin's Holy Family over Verona" at the 2015 Renaissance Society of America's annual conference at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.

At the annual meeting of the Music Library Association held in Denver in late February, Conservatory Librarian Deborah Campana was appointed to a five-year term (beginning in July) as the new editor of the association's journal, Notes. During the meeting, she completed a term as co-editor of the MLA Basic Manual Series and participated on a panel exploring issues related to the association’s three monographic series.

In addition, while recently visiting Spain, Campana met with librarians in two music conservatories, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona, and Musikene, Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco in San Sebastian.

“NOVA transmission chain models for epidemic forecasting: Ebola and Measles,” co-authored by Richard Salter, professor of computer science, and Wayne M. Getz, A. Starker Leopold professor of wildlife ecology at UC Berkeley, was presented by Getz on March 24 at the Impact of Environmental Changes on Infectious Diseases conference in Sitges, Spain.

Getz's presentation showcased the results of the pair's NOVA model of disease transmission as described in their recent journal article, "Tactics and Strategies for Managing Ebola Outbreaks and the Salience of Immunization." NOVA, a software platform designed by Salter for building rich, multi-layered simulation models, continues its growth with users around the world.

Salter, who built the models Getz presented at the conference, is continuing his development of NOVA as both a desktop and web-based platform for simulation. He and Nancy Darling, professor of psychology, will be presenting a 70-minute NOVA workshop at Innovations in Collaborative Modeling in the Social Sciences at Michigan State University in early June. A weeklong conference in Oberlin titled Workshop on Quantitative Reasoning Pedagogy & Computational Modeling with NOVA Software will take place in mid-June. The conference is in collaboration with CLEAR Center Director Marcelo Vinces.

Shelley Lee, associate professor of history and comparative American studies and affiliate of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, has accepted an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, for two months in summer 2015. The fellowship will allow Lee to work on a book project about immigration and race relations in Los Angeles since 1965.

Dan Stinebring is a senior member of NANOGrav, a research group searching for low-frequency gravitational waves. The National Science Foundation has awarded NANOGrav $14.5 million over five years to create and operate a Physics Frontier Center. The project will focus on the direct detection of low-frequency gravitational waves, which are produced by orbiting supermassive black holes and exotic changes in the early universe.

Stinebring will play a critical role in the project by using methods and analysis to remove interstellar delays of distant pulsars. Read the full article, Chasing Cosmic Waves.

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jiyul Kim published a chapter on the "Strategic Culture of the Republic of Korea" in Security Cultures and Security Policies In the Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2015). This is a book edition of the article published in a special issue of the journal Contemporary Security Policy (35.2, June 2014). The chapter explores the interaction between Korean culture and its foreign/security policy.

Professor of Psychology Nancy Darling presented the results of three research projects at the Society for Research in Child Development 2015 Biennial Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work involved collaborations with colleagues from Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Tanzania. 

Darling co-authored a paper on parents' sexual socialization of their adolescent children in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with Lusajo Kajula, Sylvia Kaaya, and Heinz De Vries. This qualitative paper focused on the marked differences in parents' attitudes toward girls and boys as they enter adolescence. 

She also presented a poster on differences in how adolescents interact with their romantic partners during socially supportive and conflictual conversations. These data involved intense codinga of videotaped interactions. This paper was co-authored with Andrew Burns and four Oberlin undergraduates: Akensheye Daniels, Elena Gold, Will Lynch, and Caitlyn Rodgers.

Finally, Darling served as discussant for a panel of papers on the juncture between adolescents' right to privacy and parents' socialization goals and privacy invasion. Work included a discussion of parenting in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Darling (March, 2015). Privacy and Parenting During Late Childhood and Adolescence: Exploring Links Among Cognitions and Behaviors. Discussant for symposium presented at the Society for Research on Child Development Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Darling, N., Burns, A., Daniels, A., Gold, E., Lynch, W., & Rodgers, C. (March, 2015). Continuity in Observed Adolescent Behavior During Conflict and Social Support Interactions with Romantic Partners. Poster presented at the Society for Research on Child Development Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Kajula, L., Kaaya, S., Darling, N. De Vries, H. (March, 2015). Parenting practices and styles associated with adolescent sexual health in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Poster presented at the Society for Research on Child Development Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Adrian Bautista, associate dean of campus life and director of residential education, presented at the symposium Las Hermanas: The Struggle is One held March 19-21 at University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. The symposium honored the history, development, and legacy of Las Hermanas, a grassroots Latina movement formed 40 years ago to challenge and change the church and its role in society.

Bautista's paper, “Hermanas, Esposas, y Feministas: The Deacon’s Wife as an Agent of Social Change,” was part of a Latinas/os in Ministry panel presentation.