Faculty News
Art and Art History
Claudia Esslinger traveled to Alaska for the premiere of "Singing Pictures," a video/chamber music concert series on which she collaborated with Korean composer Yunkyung Lee. The piece is called Texture Mapping, and a video installation version of it appeared at the University of Toledo Center for the Visual Arts in August. Her work also appeared in the exhibit "Barriers" at the University of Akron and the exhibit "Connections: Ohio Artists Abroad" at the Spaces gallery in Cleveland. Esslinger is pleased with the new digital classroom that opened this fall in Bexley Hall. It includes sixteen computer stations to be used in electronic photography, video art, and film classes. Martin Garhart was invited to exhibit his work in the Second Biennial Briton Invitational at the Bradford Briton Museum in Sheridan, Wyoming. His art will be shown regularly in the Downey Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Marcella Hackbardt had a solo exhibition at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage in February 2002.Biology
Kathryn Edwards spent her recent sabbatical leave working in collaboration with Tom Egelhoff at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Department of Physiology and Biophysics. She says that her initial purpose was "to gain the research advantages that a model organism offers where the genome has been sequenced and to bring this research tool to Kenyon's biology program." Edwards hopes that her collaboration with Egelhoff will form a new type of relationship between the faculty at neighboring liberal-arts colleges and the faculty at large universities. Next summer, Case Western Reserve University and Egelhoff will provide a summer scholarship stipend to a Kenyon student to work with Edwards, pursuing research at Case Western. During the academic year, the research will continue at Kenyon. Siobhan Fennessy and students Abby Rokosch '02 and Amanda Nahlik '02 attended the Society of Wetland Scientists 2002 Annual Meeting in Lake Placid, New York, in June. Nahlik won the Best Student Poster Award for "Using Amphibians as Ecological Indicators," based on work she did as a Summer Science Scholar in 2001. Her poster was chosen from more than seventy-five others created by graduate students. Rokosch presented a paper entitled "Structural and Functional Comparisons of Natural and Created Wetlands." Fennessy presented two papers at the conference and moderated a symposium on climate change. She was also invited to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored workshop in San Francisco, California, in June to help develop the state's wetland monitoring program. Fennessy is codirector of Kenyon's environmental studies program this year. Robert Mauck is working with Kelly Harkless '99, a former biology major now working towards a master's degree in environmental science at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. During the summer of 1999, they went to Bowdoin College's Scientific Station at Kent Island, New Brunswick, Canada, and investigated foraging behavior in barnacles. Their study was published in the journal Animal Behavior and was recently summarized in Natural History magazine. In August, Joan Slonczewski published "pH-dependent expression of periplasmic proteins and amino acid catabolism in Escherichia coli" in the Journal of Bacteriology, co-authored by students Lauren Stancik '02, Dawn Stancik '02, Michael Barnhart '04,and Yuliya Yoncheva '04. She has completed three chapters on microbial metabolism for her textbook Microbiology: A Genomic Perspective to be published by W.W. Norton. This fall she worked with Habitat for Humanity coordinating student volunteers. The Knox County chapter just celebrated completion of a home for a family in Mount Vernon.Chemistry
Scott Cummings was selected to be a member of the Project Kaleidoscope (PKal) Faculty for the Twenty-First Century. PKal is a leading U.S. advocate for building and sustaining strong programs in science, engineering, and mathematics. He attended the PKal National Assembly at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., October 10-13.Dance and Drama
Julie Brodie recently presented a newly choreographed piece in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. She taught a modern dance workshop at the Bataille Dance Studio in Barrington, Illinois, this summer and plans to attend the annual meeting of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science in October. Brodie and Balinda Craig-Quijada performed in a piece by choreographer Roberta Shaw that premiered at an Ohio State University faculty concert in December. Wendy MacLeod has been invited to teach in the film school at Northwestern University for the spring semester. Her new play, Things Being What They Are, premieres at the Seattle Repertory Theater in April and opens in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater in June. Emeritus professor Maggie Patton is teaching opera students at Ohio State University, and will direct a series of opera scenes for a performance there this winter. Designer Martha Peñaranda participated in "Scenic Design: The Collaborative Process," a master class with designer Ming Cho Lee at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., from July 14 through 27. She also presented a design workshop at the Teatro de Cristobal Colón in Bogotá, Colombia, in August.Economics
David Harrington recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify at the Federal Trade Commission's public workshop on "Possible Anti-competitive Efforts to Restrict Competition on the Internet." He served on a panel examining funerals and casket sales. William Melick recently returned to campus following his one-year appointment as senior economist on President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Along with the National Security Council and Office of Management and Budget, the CEA is housed in the Executive Office of the President. While at the CEA, Melick advised R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the CEA, on international financial issues. During the year, Melick worked on issues involving Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Turkey, and Uruguay as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Melick worked closely with officials in the National Security Council, Office of Management and Budget, and the Treasury and State departments. He also served as the U.S. representative to the Economic Committee of the Asian-Pacific Economic Fora.English
Acting President Ronald Sharp traveled to England in November for the launch of his latest book, Selected Poems of Michael S. Harper, edited and with an introduction by Sharp. He toured England with Harper, giving readings, hosting an alumni event in London, and visiting the College's Exeter program.History
A book by Clifton Crais, The Politics of Evil, will be published soon and is being issued as a special paperback for the African market by Cambridge University Press. Another of his books, The Culture of Power in Southern Africa, is due for release in February. Roy Wortman sends thanks to all those who helped honor him with the creation of the Distinguished Professorship in History. Wortman and a colleague were awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant of more than $95,000 to teach and coordinate a summer seminar for teachers called "Native Voices: Self and Society through American Indian Autobiography." The seminar will be held at Kenyon. This summer, Wortman enjoyed "a wonderfully insightful and productive" Larom seminar on the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Cody, Wyoming. Wortman is developing new courses in political history and on the idea of freedom.Modern Languages
Jianhua Bai has been elected vice president of the Chinese Language Teachers Association.Music
Camilla Cai spent June in Leipzig, Germany, at the Felix Mendelssohn Academy researching Norwegian and Norwegian-American musicians who studied there in the nineteenth century. Cai was in Muenster, Germany, for the International Edvard Grieg Conference. She gave a paper on the Norwegian composer's choral piece "Impromptu," the original manuscript of which she discovered in a collection at the State Historical Society in Iowa. She spent the end of the summer in Maine at a lake cabin compiling Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dances, to be published in a comprehensive collection of his music. Benjamin Locke spent eight days in Bulgaria as part of the Fourth Annual Varna International Conductors' Workshop this past summer. Eight current or former Kenyon students joined him and sang in the chorus for a performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem. Locke sang in the chorus for Brahms's Ein deutches Requiem under the direction of Andre Previn in Carnegie Hall this past January. Locke has written Two Motets for String Orchestra, dedicated to Robert and Buffy Hallinan, and it will be premiered at the November concert of the Knox County Symphony. Cary Dachtyl has been named music director of the Welsh Hills Symphony Orchestra in Granville, Ohio. The orchestra's concerts this season will take place in Swasey Chapel at Denison University, the Dawes Arboretum, and the new Midland Theater in Newark, Ohio. Dane Heuchemer published "American Popular Music in Weill's Royal Palace and Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf: Influences and Usage," in Jazz and the Germans: Essays on the Influence of "Hot" American Idioms on 20th-Century German Music, volume 17 of the series Monographs and Bibliographies in American Music. He recently presented three papers at three different conferences and conducted the Kenyon Symphonic Wind Ensemble in performances at the Ohio Private College Instrumental Conductors Association Annual Honor Band Festival Concert at the Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and with the Ashland University Concert Band at Ashland University. He served on the faculty of the North Central Adult Music Camp at Ashland University in June.Philosophy
Andrew Pessin spent much of the summer in North Carolina finishing an article on the seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicholas Malebranche and studying Latin in preparation for research into sixteenth-century scholastic philosophy.Physics
Thomas Greenslade Jr. presented a seminar at the University of Vermont on "Natural Philosophy at the University of Vermont" as part of the dedication of a new exhibit of early physics teaching apparatus in October. On the way to Vermont, he stopped to visit the physics department at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. His newly created web site on early physics apparatus can be found at www2.kenyon.edu/depts/physics/earlyapparatus/. The site includes pictures of Kenyon apparatus, as well as apparatus from fifty-five other colleges and museums. Paula Turner reports that Franklin Miller Jr. recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday at a gathering of physics and mathematics faculty, students, and invited guests. The gathering featured homemade desserts provided by physics faculty members and was held in the Crozier Center for Women, once Miller's home. Miller reminded assembled students and faculty of the need for scientists to take responsibility for the eventual uses of their scientific advances by refusing to work on or enable socially or morally questionable applications of their work. Turner says Miller "remains as intellectually vibrant as ever and continues to regularly attend College and department events." In August, Turner acted as instructor and site director for the Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Education in Astronomy at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. The program engaged students in hands-on research projects using highly advanced equipment coupled with some of Mount Wilson's historic telescopes.Political Science
Joseph Klesner is serving as the presidential search coordinator in 2002-03. He presented two papers at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston from August 29 through September 1: "The Mexican Voter, Electoral Dynamics, and Partisan Realignment: Reflections on the 2000 Elections with an Eye toward 2003" (with Chappell Lawson of M.I.T.) and "Social Capital and Political Participation in Latin America." He will join the editorial board of PS: Political Science and Politics, an American Political Science Association journal, in January. Devin Stauffer spent the past year in Boston working on a research project on Plato's Gorgias and has an article forthcoming in The Review of Politics. He was married last June. David Rowe's article "Binding Prometheus: How the Nineteenth Century Expansion of Trade Impeded Britain's Ability to Raise an Army," will be published in the December 2002 issue of International Studies Quarterly.Psychology
Mikhail Lyubansky and Elaine Shpungin celebrated the birth of a son, Aaron, on July 5.Religious Studies
Joseph Adler's book Chinese Religious Traditions was published by Prentice-Hall last March. In May, he traveled to China to attend the International Symposium on the History of the Jewish Diaspora in China. Eugen Kullmann died on June 24 at the age of eighty-seven. A memorial is planned for March 23, 2003.Sociology
John Macionis reports that in March 2002 the ninth edition of his textbook Sociology was published by Prentice Hall. In April, Prentice Hall Europe published the second edition of Sociology: A Global Introduction (written with Kenneth Plummer), which is used at universities in Europe, Australia, and the Caribbean. In August, he traveled to Chicago, Illinois, to attend the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association and received their award for Distinguished Contribution to Teaching. The honor recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to the teaching of the discipline beyond their home campus at a national and international level. The award committee noted the leading role Macionis's texts have played in incorporating global material, CD-ROMs, internet sites, and other new teaching technology. Macionis reports that during the summer much of his time was spent skippering a Thistle-class sailboat in races on Lake George. "I can report considerable improvement over last year's performance, having finished most of last year's races near the end of the pack but completing the first half of this summer in third place at the Northern Lake George Yacht Club."Do you have feedback on this page?