Faculty and Staff Notes

Catherine Oertel presented a lecture at the Gordon Research Conference on Solid State Chemistry in New London, NH. Entitled "Inspired by Corrosion: Synthesis and Crystal Chemistry of Lead Oxide Carboxylates," it reported on studies of corrosion of lead-based cultural objects such as organ pipes and detailed structural analysis of the corrosion products that form. She conducted this research with undergraduate coworkers including Elaine Liu '14, Izumi Yamakawa '14, Shiva Mandala '15, and Calvin Gang '17.

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jiyul Kim published a chapter on "United Nations Command and Korean Augmentation" in the Ashgate Research Companion to the Korean War (James Matray & Donald Boose, eds).

Assistant Professor of Cynthia Taylor published a paper entitled "Leveraging Open Source Principles for Flexible Concept Inventory Development" in the Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. She gave a presentation on the work at the conference.

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jiyul Kim published an article entitled "Strategic Culture of the Republic of Korea" in the journal Contemporary Security Policy. The article explores the interaction between Korean foreign policy and Korean culture, a subject that he has taught for the last three years at Oberlin.

Assistant Professor of Classics Christopher Trinacty recently published his first book, Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry, about the relationship between Seneca's dramatic poetry and the poetry of the previous generation with the Oxford University Press.  He also presented a paper entitled "Tragic Translatio and Allusive Aemulatio in Senecan Drama" at the 8th Trends in Classics International Conference in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Rebecca Whelan recently coauthored an article titled "MUC16 (CA125): tumor biomarker to cancer therapy, a work in progress." The article appears in the journal Molecular Cancer, and provides an in-depth review of the current understanding of the structure, biochemistry, and physiological function of most widely used biomarker for ovarian cancer. Kevin Hu (OC '11) is a co-author.

Associate Dean of Campus Life Adrian Bautista presented at the 2014 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900. Bautista served on a panel entitled “Latinas/os and the Great Outdoors?” and his paper examined the tensions between American agrarianism, the plight of migrant farmworkers, and the Catholic Church’s role in the campaign to organize farm workers in northern Ohio.

Associate Professor of English Wendy Hyman recently published two essays: “‘For now hath time made me his numbering clock’: Shakespeare’s Jacquemarts," in Early Theatre and “Physics, Metaphysics, and Religion in Lyric Poetry,” in the Blackwell Companion to British Literature. Her work in literature and the history of science has also resulted in several talks, including “A Bawd for Figure: Form and Motion in Poetic Making,” at the 2014 Modern Language Association (MLA), and“Arcimboldo’s Post-human Assemblages,” at the Society for Literature and Science in the Arts in October 2013. She gave an invited talk, “Breaking the Sonnet,” at the Hiram College Bissell Symposium in February 2014, participated in the Visual Studies and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Smith College in May 2014, and led a seminar called "Words and Things" at the Shakespeare Association of America in March 2014, inspired by an Oberlin course she teaches by the same title.

Professor of French Matthew Senior gave an invited talk, “1671: The Zoomorphic Face in Charles Le Brun,” at an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley, April 11-12. Entitled “About Faces,” the conference examined philosophical theories of the face as well the history of the face in film, literature, physiognomy, portraiture, surveillance, and plastic surgery.

Associate Professor of Psychology Cindy Frantz and Professor of Psychology Stephen Mayer published an article entitled “The Emergence of Climate Change.” The article appears in the Journal of Social Issues, a publication of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. It explores the psychology behind the disparities between the scientific consensus on climate change and people’s willingness to recognize and respond to it.