Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Economics Maggie Brehm published “The Effects of Federal Adoption Incentive Awards for Older Children on Adoptions From U.S. Foster Care” in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey presented new work on the memorialization of the slave trade in Ghana in his presentation "Dirt, Concrete, and the Substance of Memory in Slavery's Dungeon" at Honoring Ancestors in Africa: Art and Actions held on April 6-7 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison .

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey was one of a select group of invited participants to "The Future of African Art: A State of the Field Convening" at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, March 22-24. The gathering brought together curators, professors, independent scholars, and collectors of African art from three continents to discuss future directions and challenges in the study of African art history.

Professor of Physics Yumi Ijiri coauthored an article, "Spin canting across core/shell Fe3O4/MnxFe3-xO4 nanoparticles," published in the journal Scientific Reports.  Ian Hunt-Isaak ’17 and Hillary Pan ’17, are coauthors, and the work was completed in collaboration with scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Daresbury Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of Manitoba, and University of York.

Kathy Abromeit, public services librarian in the conservatory library, published “Peer Instruction in the Oberlin Conservatory Library: Three Models of Engagement” in Ideas, Strategies, and Scenarios in Music Information Literacy. Highlighted in the publication are activities of the conservatory library's student reference assistants.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Cal Biruk's book, Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World was published on Duke University Press.

Ombudsperson Kimberly Jackson Davidson is serving on the Higher Education Committee of 50, also called “Forward50.” This national committee is comprised of forward-thinking higher education leaders who are tasked with producing practical policy solutions and recommendations for members of Congress.

Nicholas Jones, professor emeritus of English, has published A Poetry Precise and Free: Selected Madrigals of Guarini (University of Michigan Press, March 2018). Giovanni Battista Guarini, one of the most noted poets of 16th-century Italy, wrote hundreds of madrigals—that is, short lyric poems—that were widely read in their own right and also served as the texts for musical madrigals composed by the greatest composers of the day, including Claudio Monteverdi.

Jones’ project, begun during a sabbatical from Oberlin in 2001-02, gives these poems new life by translating them into contemporary English poetry: the book contains 150 of Guarini’s madrigals in the Italian and in Jones’ poetic translations, with a brief commentary on each poem. An introduction places Guarini’s poetry in its social and cultural context, both poetically and musically, and an appendix lists the many musical compositions derived from these madrigal poems.

More information is available at the University of Michigan Press website.

Assistant Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Paul Brehm participated as a paper presenter, session chair, and discussant at the annual Midwest Economics Association convention in Illinois.

Marco Wilkinson, managing editor of the Oberlin College Press presented at the national 2018 AWP creative writing conference. Wilkinson spoke on intersections of mindfulness, collaboration, and coexistence in the nature-writing classroom on the panel, "Beyond the Workshop Model: Innovations in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom."