Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of German Olesya Ivantsova published a paper in the online journal Communications of the International Brecht Society discussing Bertolt Brecht’s reflections on the written word’s presence in the city space.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian Vladimir Ivantsov has organized and chaired the 2020-21 North American Dostoevsky Society Undergraduate Student Essay Contest. The Contest is designed to recognize outstanding undergraduate essays focused on the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. More on this can be found on the official blog of the North American Dostoevsky Society.

TIMARA Technical Director and Lecturer Abby Aresty and Rachel Gibson '20 presented their course, "Crafting Sound: Simple Sonic Interfaces for Education and Creation," at the international virtual Interaction Design and Children ACM conference. Gibson, Aresty, and Ian Moo '21 also presented their works-in-progress paper, "Apples and Oranges: Comparing Crafty Sonic Circuits for Electronics Education," at IDC.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista debuted "Dragon Fruit," a new performance work as part of The Spill by Excessive Realness. The evening of new works was hosted by Washington, D.C.-based Dance Place's Gaze Festival. 

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón reviewed Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O'Dwyer for World Literature Today.

Abby Aresty, technical director and lecturer in TIMARA, and Rachel Gibson '20 presented their paper "Changing GEAR: The Girls Electronic Arts Retreat's Teaching Interfaces for Musical Expression" virtually at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression in NYU Shanghai, June 14-18, 2021. The paper has won an award (Learn to Play/Play to Learn) and honorable mention (Pamela Z diversity award) at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference.

Emeritus Professor of Politics Ben Schiff's woodworking is published in Fine Woodworking magazine online.

Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca (virtually) presented two studies at the Annual Conference of the French Finance Association in May 2021 which analyzed the effectiveness of Federal Reserve efforts to stabilize the corporate and municipal bond markets during the COVID-19 Recession. One of these appeared as NBER Working Paper 28097 in November 2020 and the other as NBER Working Paper 28437 in February 2021. 

Earlier this year, Applied Economics Letters electronically published a paper that Duca coauthored with Jason Saving, “Media fragmentation and the polarization of the American public.” Together with European coauthors Martin Hoesli and Joaquim Montezuma, Duca also published a timely paper in the Journal of European Real Estate Research, “The Resilience and Realignment of House Prices in the Era of COVID-19.”

Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion Shari Rabin will speak as part of a discussion on "Jews and Muslims in America" at the Graduate Theological Union's Madrasa-Midrasha Program. The conversation begins at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, June 15. Rabin's talk is titled "Placing Jews in American History" and will consider how Jews have been understood and how Judaism has been transformed in American history, using the 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina as its starting point.

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Stiliana Milkova coedited a special issue of the scholarly journal Modern Language Notes (MLN, 136:1, 2021) and published an article in the special issue.