Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Anna Lordan facilitated a workshop on Listening to Silence: An Experiential Exploration through Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry, as part of the series "Silence: practices, experiences and rituals" offered through Jagiellonian University, Kraków, on December 19.

Yveline Alexis was invited to Yale University for The Caribbean Digital conference to present on Caribbean Studies and social justice. She, along with scholars from Jamaica, Antigua, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Belize, and Trinidad & Tobago discussed digitizing projects like Irish slaveowners in Cuba, the presence and destruction of colonial records, and how Caribbeans archive their stories.

David Forrest's book, A Voice but No Power: Organizing for Social Justice in Minneapolis (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), has been named a 2023 "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shuming Chen has recently published three articles with Oberlin student coauthors. “Chemoselective Quinoline and Isoquinoline Reduction by Energy Transfer Catalysis Enabled Hydrogen Atom Transfer” was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition with Kyogo Nagashima ’24 and collaborators from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “Pd/IPrBIDEA-Catalyzed Hydrodefluorination of gem-Difluorocyclopropanes: Regioselective Synthesis of Terminal Fluoroalkenes,” appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society with Zachary Cheng ’25 and collaborators from Renmin University of China. Most recently, “Nitrene-Mediated Enantioselective Intramolecular Olefin Oxyamination to Access Chiral γ-Aminomethyl-γ-Lactones,” was published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. with Clayton Ritter ’23 and collaborators in Marburg, Germany.

On November 11, Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake started her two-year term as President of the Society for Music Theory.

Professor of Physics Jason Stalnaker and Oberlin students Eduardo Castro Muñoz ’23 and Ehsan Nikfar ’25 have coauthored a paper in Physical Review D on a search for magnetic signatures of hidden-photon and axion dark matter in the wilderness. The article is being highlighted by the journal as an Editors’ Suggestion.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published a new article in a volume of collected essays dealing with notions of temporality in ancient Greek and Latin literature. Ormand's essay, titled " 'But Now': The Temporality of Archaic Greek Invective" appears in Making Time for Greek and Latin Literature from Routledge Press, pp. 121-139. The volume is edited by Kate Gilhuly and Jeffrey Ulrich.

Professor of German Steven Huff has recently published a book chapter titled "Amnesia, Chaos, Trauma: Kleist's Memory Games" in Memory in German Romanticism: Imagination, Image, Reception. Ed. Christopher R. Clason et al. London: Routledge, 2023. Chap. 1, 23-47.

Public Books and Dr. Marlene Daut commissioned Yveline Alexis to write an essay, which she named, "Tracing Women: Haitian and Black Cuban Women Archivists." The work explores themes between Drs. Grace Sanders Johnson and Takkara K. Brunson's books about feminism, black political organizing, and our multilingual archives.

Professor Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine recently attended the Arab American Book Awards ceremony at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, on Saturday, November 11, where he received the 2023 Evelyn Shakir Creative Nonfiction Award for his coedited anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. Hadha Baladuna explores the diverse range of the Arab diaspora in the Detroit metro area.