Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, Anna Lordan, was awarded the Theodosius and Irene Senkowsky Prize for Achievement in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University's Ukranian Summer Institute.

David Forrest's new book, A Voice but No Power: Organizing for Social Justice in Minneapolis (University of Minnesota Press), was released this week. The book examines the work of social justice organizations in Minneapolis following the 2008 recession. Through this examination, it explains why social justice organizations more broadly so often displace as much as empower popular struggles for egalitarian and emancipatory change. And it explores how they can better reach their potential as advocates for the abolition of exploitation, discrimination, and other unjust practices. The book is available in paperback and can currently be purchased from the University of Minnesota Press at a 40% discount using this code: MN89530 (code expires Oct. 1, 2022).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shuming Chen recently published a paper in Nature Communications, "Selective skeletal editing of polycyclic arenes using organophotoredox dearomative functionalization." Co-authors on the article include Cassie Davies ’24 and collaborators from UCLA and the University of Arizona.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has had one of his essays (originally published in French) published in English. "Perversion in Antiquity? Foucault, Seneca, and Psychiatric Reasoning," appears in Foucault, Sexuality, Antiquity, edited by Sandra Boehringer and Daniele Lorenzini (Routledge 2022), pp. 47-64. The essay originally appeared as “Peut-on parler de perversion dans l'Antiquité? Foucault et l'invention du raisonnement psychiatrique,” in  Foucault, la sexualité, l’Antiquité, eds. S. Boehringer and D. Lorenzini.

(Éditions Kimé, 2016).

On Tuesday August 2, 2022, Robert Klock OC ’21 and Xiaoyun Gong OC ’21 presented research papers coauthored by James F. Clark Professor of Mathematics Robert Bosch OC ’85 at the 2022 Bridges Math/Art Conference. Both papers are available at the Bridges Archive. Rob and Bob's paper, "Controlling Textures in TSP Art," can be viewed at this link, and Xiaoyun and Bob's paper, "Collaborative Gomoku Mosaics," is available for viewing here.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutierrez Negron has published the article "La impresión conservadora: los hermanos Uribe y Alcalde y el campo tipográfico del primer conservadurismo mexicano, 1828-1836” in Decimonónica: A Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production. Halfway between biographical reconstruction and cultural analysis, this article offers a joint profile of minor printers Tomás and José Uribe y Alcalde, who were active in Mexico between 1822 and 1836. This account allows the reader to observe the inner workings of the Mexican typographical field and its relationship to the nascent economy of conservative knowledge, as well as the possibility of social mobility it provided.

Annemarie Sammartino's new book Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York (Cornell University Press, 2022) on the Bronx housing development and neighborhood Co-op City was featured on the "Bowery Boys Bookshelf." The Bowery Boys is a popular podcast about the history of New York City.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shuming Chen has recently published a paper in ACS Catalysis: "Visible Light-Mediated, Highly Diastereoselective Epimerization of Lactams from the Most Accessible to the More Stable Stereoisomer." Co-authors include Cassie Davies '24 and collaborators from Yale University.

Catherine Oertel recently published an article, "(C₅H₆N)Pb₂X₅ (X = Cl, Br): Hybrid Lead Halides Based on Seven-Coordinate Pb(II)," in Inorganic Chemistry. Coauthors on this paper were Alyssa Chow ’20 and Xinyue (Joy) Zhong ’22 as well as collaborators from Purdue University and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany.

Jan Miyake, associate professor of music theory and director for Oberlin Conservatory’s Music Theory Division, has been elected as the next president of the Society for Music Theory. The society promotes music theory as both a scholarly and a pedagogical discipline. Its members are scholars, teachers, and students of music theory, as well as performers, composers, and scholars in related areas such as musicology, ethnomusicology, philosophy, media studies, and cognitive science.