Faculty and Staff Notes

Evan Kresch, assistant professor of economics, presented on development economics at the June 2018 World Bank's Annual Bank Conference.

Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature Kazim Ali's essay,  "Jerusalem Syndrome: A Commentary on 'If Infinite Worlds, Infinite Centers' by Margaret Cavendish," will appear in the fall issue of the Ben Jonson Journal.

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager published a review of Travis Jeppesen's See You Again in Pyongyang (Hachette Books, 2018) in the New York Times.

Assistant Professor of Economics Paul Brehm presented his paper, “To Trade or not to Trade: Oil Leases, Information Asymmetry, and Coase” at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Alison Ricker, head of the science library, was invited to present at the American Library Association annual conference held June 21-26 in New Orleans. Her talk was part of the Association of College and Research Libraries Science and Technology Section program "Librarians are a Force for Science: Science Communication and Science Literacy." She was joined by panel members Lauren Young, web producer and science journalist for public radio's Science Friday, and Craig McClain, executive director of Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies Cindy Frantz gave the keynote address on June 20, 2018 at the Nature Connections Conference at the University of Derby in Derby, United Kingdom. Frantz’s talk was titled "Connection to Nature: A Core Social  Motive Approach.”

Danielle Terrazas Williams, assistant professor of history, was awarded a Huntington long-term fellowship to conduct research at the library for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Tania Boster, associate director of the Bonner Center, gave a talk with Chryssa Zachou, head of the Department of Sociology at Deree College-the American College of Greece, about Community-Based Oral History Research and Global Course Connections. The talk held at Deree College in Athens, Greece was part of the Great Lakes Colleges Association's Oral History in the Liberal Arts initiative and the Global Liberal Arts Alliance Global Course Connections program.

Assistant Professor of Dance Alysia Ramos presented her new choreographic work Forgone Territory with Oberlin Dance Project in DanceWorks at the Cleveland Public Theater June 7-9, 2018. The work interwove text, movement and music in an examination of the shadow side of the sharing age, asking, “What is private when technology increasingly infiltrates personal lives?"  Oberlin Dance Project is a new project that brings together talented college students with local professionals and nationally established guest artists to collaborate on the creation of new works and establish professional networks. In this production, five Oberlin students joined Ramos and New York City-based guest artist Nathan Trice to create and perform the work for the professional stage. The company shared the DanceWorks evening with Cleveland-based company Marquez Dance Project

Chie Sakakibara, assistant professor of environmental studies & East Asian studies, received a $10,000 research grant from the Foundation for Research & Promotion of Ainu Culture for her project titled "Community-Partnered Exploration of Ainu Environmental Justice and Heritage Resources.” Sakakibara will initiate an interdisciplinary ethnographic project on environmental justice and heritage in the indigenous Ainu community in Biratori, Hokkaido, Japan. Biratori is a community that has been known for its environmental activism since the 1970s. Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum received a gift of photographs taken by the German-American photographer Arnold Genthe (1869-1942; gift of Christopher Thomas ’75). Twenty-five photos in the collection were taken in 1908 in Biratori, and they are identified as the second-oldest set of photos that documented the people and environment of the settlement. This grant will allow Sakakibara to recover detailed contextual information about the photographs; develop community-wide consensus on the proper and future access and uses of these materials; support and enable contemporary and innovative uses of these materials by Ainu artists, educators, environmentalists, and the community.