Faculty and Staff Notes

Three faculty members presented "Transformative Imaginations: Decarceration and Liberatory Futures" at the October 2018 Imagining America National Conference in Chicago. The faculty were: Jody Kerchner, professor of music education, director in the division of pedagogy, advocacy, and community engagement, and community-based learning/research faculty fellow; Jennifer Fraser, associate professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology; Adrian Bautista, comparative american studies and senior associate dean for strategic initiatives.

Assistant Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder was quoted in the Gizmodo article "Trying to Understand the Size of This New Space Discovery Will Short-Circuit Your Brain."

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, delivered an invited lecture, "Glimpsing the Flight from Enslavement" at DePaul University in Chicago on October 18. The lecture was sponsored by the university's Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies, and the Center for Black Diaspora.

Associate Professor of Neuroscience Patrick Simen gave a talk "Evidence for continuous, online adaptation of decision biases, geared toward reward maximization" for the Cognitive Forum series in Michigan State University's Psychology Department.

Tania Boster, director of the Bonner Center's curricular initiatives, presented on transnational partnerships for community-based learning and research at the Association of American Colleges & Universities' (AAC&U) October 2018 Global Engagement and Spaces of Practice conference in Seattle.

Michael Parkin, professor of politics, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study candidate use of the internet during the 2018 congressional campaign. This is the fifth NSF grant that Parkin and his co-authors James N. Druckman (Northwestern) and Martin Kifer (High Point University) have been awarded for their work on congressional campaign behavior and its impact on voting and representation.

Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca presented a paper "The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business" at Harvard Business School.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Cal Biruk gave an invited book talk (Cooking Data, Duke Universtiy Press) at Princeton University's Global Health Colloquium on October 5.

Heidi Thomann Tewarson, professor emerita of German language and literature, brought out her new book Die ersten Zürcher Ärztinnen. Humanitäres Engagement und wissenschaftliche Arbeit zur Zeit der Eugenik (The First Zurich Women Physicians. Humanitarian Engagement and Scientific Work during the Age of Eugenics). Published by Schwabe of Basel, Switzerland, Tewarson’s study tells the story of four pioneering Swiss women physicians, who entered their profession at the end of the nineteenth century and developed a special interest in the new discipline of psychiatry. Confronting the developing field of eugenics espoused by their male mentors, they objected to its ideologically driven aspects, including biologically determined heritability of mental disease, alcoholism, and other deviant social traits, and degeneration theories that disadvantaged women and the poor. As their scientific publications show, they remained committed both to empirical science and humanitarian values, including the care, welfare, and the rights of women. The study's broadly conceived exploration also provides insight into the broader medical and social history during these turbulent times.

Jiyul Kim, visiting instructor of history, presented a lecture on October 5, 2018, at Kendal at Oberlin about U.S. global engagement and the military as part of Kendal's Great Decisions lecture series.