Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Politics and Comparative American Studies Jenny Garcia published a coauthored article, "The Empowering Effects of Racial Messaging: The Link Between Racial Outreach, Descriptive Representation and Black Political Mobilization," in Political Communications.

Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of German Elizabeth Hamilton published a translation and literary-historical interpretation of Franz Fühmann and Dietmar Riemann's Was für eine Insel in was für einem Meer in an open-access digital edition with Lever Press: What Kind of Island in What Kind of Sea. First published in East Germany in 1986, the original work depicts residents of the Samariteranstalten, a church-run institution for people with cognitive disabilities, in astonishing black-and-white photographs by Riemann and in probing, poignant writing by Fühmann.

Hamilton's book was reviewed by Michele Ricci-Bell in Reading in Translation, a journal edited by Stiliana Milkova, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature. The review appears here.

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.