Faculty and Staff Notes

The book Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea by Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager has been selected by Ms. Magazine as a book for learning about American wars in the inaugural War Edition of its “What You Never Learned About American History series.” The purpose of the series is to recommend “books that cover topics in ‘hidden’ history.”

The paper “Panmictic and Clonal Evolution on a Single Patchy Resource Produces Polymorphic Foraging Guilds” by Wayne M. Getz, A. Starker Leopold professor of wildlife ecology at UC Berkeley; Richard Salter, professor of computer science; Andrew J. Lyons, vice provost for the office for undergraduate research at Stanford University; and Nicolas Sippl-Swezey ’11 was published August 14 in the prestigious online journal PLOS ONE.

The paper uses a model designed by Salter for his Nova modeling platform to study how genetic traits and experiential changes in the state of agents and available resources influence animal foraging and movement behaviors. These behaviors are manifest as decisions on when to stay and exploit a current resource patch or move to a particular neighboring patch, based on information of the resource qualities of the patches and the anticipated level of intraspecific competition within patches. It uses a genetic algorithm approach and an individual’s biomass as a fitness surrogate to explore the foraging strategy diversity of evolving guilds under clonal versus hermaphroditic sexual reproduction.

The focus of the paper's analysis is on the question of how the biomass production efficiency and the diversity of guilds of foraging strategy types, exploiting resources over a patchy landscape, evolve under clonal versus random hermaphroditic sexual reproduction. Results indicate greater biomass production efficiency under clonal reproduction only at higher population densities, and demonstrate that polymorphisms evolve and are maintained under random mating systems.

The paper is an outcome of the ongoing collaboration between Salter and Getz. Getz and Sippl-Swezey were most recently in Oberlin as instructors in last summer’s Nova Workshop, attended by 20 faculty and graduate students from Oberlin, The Ohio State University, Michigan State, and other institutions.

Two articles coauthored by Sebastiaan Faber, professor of Hispanic studies and chair of Latin American studies, and Bécquer Seguín were recently published in the Nation.

Read “The Spanish Media Are the Worst in Europe. These Upstarts Are Trying to Change That” and "Will Catalonia’s Regional Elections Lead to the Breakup of Spain?."

The article “The Historiography of Feminicide in Ciudad Juárez: Critical and Revisionist Approaches” by Steven Volk, professor of history and director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence, was published in the September issue of Forum for Inter-American Research, the journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). See Volk’s article in a PDF of the complete issue on the IAS website.

Ben Fitch-Fleischmann, assistant professor of economics and environmental studies, presented his paper “The Political Economy of Aid Resources After Climate Catastrophes: Micro-level Evidence from Nicaragua” at the annual Liberal Arts Colleges Development Economics Conference (LAC-DEV) on Friday, September 11, at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. The conference schedule with a link to Fitch-Fleischmann’s paper can be seen here.

James C. Dobbins, James H. Fairchild professor of religion and East Asian studies, was recently appointed as co-editor of The Journal of Japanese Studies for a three-year term.

The Journal of Japanese Studies is the most influential journal dealing with research on Japan in the United States. It is a multidisciplinary forum for communicating new information, new interpretations, and recent research results concerning Japan to the English-reading world. Dobbins' co-editor at the Journal is Janet Hunter, Saji professor of economic history at the London School of Economics.

Holly Handman-Lopez, visiting assistant professor of dance, and Bobby Wesner, visiting instructor of dance, performed their duet "eleven years in" at the Spring to Dance Festival in St. Louis.

Their piece was selected by a panel led by Dance St. Louis Artistic and Executive Director Michael Uthoff. They shared the stage with The Joffrey Ballet, ODC/San Francisco, and Camille A. Brown and Dancers, among others.

The article “An Examination of Gender Differences in the American Fisheries Society’s Peer Review Process,” co-authored by Professor of Psychology Cindy Frantz and Grace Handley ’12, has been published in the September issue of Fisheries, an American Fisheries Society publication. According to Frantz, she and Handley found gender differences but no evidence for gender bias on the part of editors and reviewers.

Frantz also delivered the invited talk "Metaphors as Magic Bullets? Harnessing Psychological Science to Promote Sustainability" on September 7 at Davidson College.

Andrew and Pauline Delaney Professor of Mathematics Susan Colley has been appointed editor-elect of the The American Mathematical Monthly, the flagship journal of the Mathematical Association of America and the most widely read journal in the math community.

Colley will remain on the faculty throughout her year as editor-elect and subsequent five-year term as editor-in-chief, but she will reduce her teaching commitments beginning in spring 2016.

Read more on the News Center.

Roderic Knight, emeritus professor of ethnomusicology, is one of 14 authors who have published a chapter in the book The Other Classical Musics: Fifteen Great Traditions (edited by Michael Church and published by Boydell & Brewer). Knight’s chapter, “Mande Jaliyaa,” focuses on the vocal and instrumental music—played on harps, lutes, and xylophones—of the Mande people of Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, and Mali.