Faculty Digest
Anthropology
In May 2001, Rita Kipp presented the commencement address for the ninety-second Eastern Oklahoma State College graduation exercises. Kipp is a graduate of the college, which is located in Wilburton, her hometown; in 1989, she was inducted into the Eastern Alumni Hall of Fame. Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban spent roughly two and a half months in Honduras last summer. They say it seemed like a good place to go to escape the heat waves in Ohio. Schortman and Urban worked with Marcela Esqueda '02, Ana Novotny '02, and Lauren Schwartz '01 on analyzing artifacts recovered by students from the site of El Coyote during the Spring 2000 semester of the Kenyon-Honduras Program. That effort yielded roughly 750,000 artifacts dating to between 100 BC and AD 1300. It's still too early to say anything definitive about the findings, but the work greatly enhanced their understanding of local prehistory and external connections. Student research during the Spring 2002 semester of the program will provide additional valuable information.
Art and Art History
Sarah Blick taught two one-day courses on Chinese art history at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts last summer. She and Rita Tekippe, who taught at Kenyon in 1999 as an adjunct, are coediting a book entitled Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage, due out in 2004 from Brill Press in Holland. They are also co-organizers of a session on "Visual Experience at Medieval Pilgrimage Sites in Northern Europe and the British Isles" for presentation at the May 2002 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Along with Assistant Professor of Music Dane Heuchemer, Blick organized and presided over the meeting of the Ohio Medieval Colloquium held at Kenyon in October 2001. Also in October, she lectured to the Rowfant Club in Cleveland, Ohio, on "The Magic of Medieval Pilgrim Souvenirs." Last summer, Eugene Dwyer spent two weeks doing research in Pompeii, Italy, and attended a six-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar held at the American Academy in Rome. The seminar's subject was collecting, with topics ranging from private collections of sculpture and literature to museum collections. At the seminar, Dwyer reported on certain aspects of archaeological collections from Pompeii. While on sabbatical this year, he is working on a project entitled "Pompeii as Intellectual Property," which he is currently writing as a book. Dwyer's article "The Unity of the Plan of the House of the Faun" appeared in the September issue of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Over the summer of 2001, Claudia Esslinger went to Seoul, South Korea, to work on a collaborative project with composer Yungi Lee. She also attended a web-design conference in Seattle, Washington, and developed a web site with her Mellon Grant collaborator, Ron Abram of Denison University, based on the product of their class collaboration last year, "Printmaking in a Digital World." In late September, Martin Garhart conducted a three-day drawing workshop in Yellowstone National Park for Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyoming. On sabbatical for the 2001-02 academic year, Garhart was serving as a guest artist at Northwest, where John S. Giarrizzo '77 is a member of the art department. Marcella Hackbardt presented a solo exhibition at the Moreau Art Gallery of St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. The exhibition, entitled "Home Fires Burning" ran from August 31 to September 21. Professor Emeritus of Art Joseph Slate received the Association for Childhood Education International's 2001 Outstanding Maryland Author Award on May 5, 2001, in Silver Spring, Maryland. The award citation honored Slate for his "commitment and outstanding contributions to the field of children's literature." The fourth of Slate's Miss Bindergarten series came out this past July, and two of his Christmas books were reissued by HarperCollins and Putnam last fall. His new web site is www.josephslate.com.
Biology
Christopher Gillen reports that he had the good fortune of working with three Kenyon Summer Science Scholars last summer, Neal R. Heilman '02, Brandon J. Lute '02, and Anne E. Mayer '03. Gillen learned that an article from the work of previous Summer Science Scholars in his lab will be published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. Kenyon students Nora Colburn '02 and Sara Gage '00 were coauthors with him. In March 2001, Wade Powell attended the annual meeting of the Society of Toxicology in San Francisco, California, and while there gave a talk on "The aryl hydrocarbon receptor and bHLH-PAS protein family." In July 2001, he attended the Eleventh International Symposium on Pollution Responses in Marine Organisms (PRIMO11), held in Plymouth, England, where he gave a talk on the interactive effects of hypoxia and dioxin during development in Fundulus heteroclitus, a saltwater fish.
Chemistry
Scott Cummings has been working on a new research project using fluorescence spectroscopy to investigate the microstructure of catanionic surfactant micelles. He is working in collaboration with Jack Zakin, a faculty member in the Ohio State University Department of Chemical Engineering. The project is supported by a grant from the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society. In May 2001, Cummings attended a National Science Foundation workshop on "Retention of Underrepresented Students in Science" held in Dayton, Ohio, and returned with plans to introduce new teaching and mentoring methods into his classes.
Classics
Carolin Hahnemann spent last summer getting ready for her junior research leave this fall. After traveling to Germany for her sister's wedding, she spent the rest of the summer at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., where she had a summer fellowship, constructing an argument that will further reduce the role of Greek literature in the traditional canon. Her goal was to prove that the last scene of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes was, in fact, not written by Aeschylus himself. As this argument will make lighter the load of scores of students who are assigned this play every semester, she expected to be greeted with cheers when she returned to campus in January.
Dance and Drama
Last June, Balinda Craig-Quijada attended a computer workshop at the Ohio State University Department of Dance's Technologies Division, to learn how to use the dance documentation software DanceCodes. Using the DanceCodes template, she created a teaching-tool CDrom entitled "Introduction to Les Ballets Russes," the first in what she hopes will become a series of CDroms to use in teaching Dance 105, "Introduction to the Dance." Maggie Patton, professor emerita, directed and choreographed The Gondoliers, by Gilbert and Sullivan, for Opera Columbus at the Southern Theater in June 2001. In July 2001, she choreographed The Merry Widow, by Franz Lehar, for Opera Columbus, taught a week-long opera workshop for high-school students at Capital University, taught for Opera Columbus's Education program, and staged a production of Pinocchio for an Opera Columbus school tour beginning in September. She also worked on staging an opera, premiered in March 2002, entitled Somebody's Children, a story about the children of the orphan train. Patton also tells us that last summer she and her husband, David, had a collision with a black bear near Hazelton, Pennsylvania. Luckily, they were not severely injured, though her face was bruised and abraded by the air bag, the bear was killed, and the car's front end was badly damaged. Her advice? "If you're a short person, please keep your seat as far back from the dashboard as possible to avoid getting punched out by the air bag!" Martha Penaranda created the scene design for the January 200l presentation of Another Round, by Adam Russell, at the City Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She followed this in June 2001 with the scene design for Tartuffe, by Moliere, again at the City Theater in Pittsburgh. She also worked on the design of costumes and props for a December 2001 production of The Nutcracker, presented by Ballet San Antonio at the Lila Cockrell Theater in San Antonio, Texas.
English
Erin Belieu, a visiting instructor of English at Kenyon from 1998 to 2000, received the 2001 Ohioana Book Award in the poetry category for her second book of poems, One Above and One Below, published in May 2000. Belieu is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Ohio University. "How I Fell and How it Felt," a poem by Jennifer Clarvoe, was posted Tuesday, October 2, on the e-magazine Slate.com. In addition to the printed text, the site offered audio of Clarvoe reading the poem. The 2001 Ohioana Citation for Distinguished Service in the Field of Literature has been awarded to Fred Kluge "for his considerable accomplishments as a writer of international reputation." In early October, Kluge spent several days at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he lectured on the strengths of American liberal-arts colleges, and the tensions and dangers confronting them, and taught a creative-writing class and a first-year seminar on World War II. During his lecture, he read from his current project, a crime novel set at a liberal-arts college, tentatively titled "Final Exam." In March 2001, Ronald Sharp was an invited participant in an international poetry conference in Athens and Delphi, Greece, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the European Cultural Center. He has also been working on a British edition of Michael Harper's selected poetry for Ark. An article by Timothy Shutt entitled "Cultural Transmissions: Electronic Orality and Ergonomics of the Mind" appears in a volume entitled Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in the Age of Globalization, edited by Reneo Likic and Michael Brint.
History
The Politics of Evil in South Africa, written by Clifton Crais, is due out this year from Cambridge University Press. A second book by Crais, The Culture of Power in Southern Africa, will also appear soon, as part of Heinemann's "Social History of Africa" series. He continues to work on a book provisionally titled "A Century of Sadness: Power and Poverty in South Africa." Crais spent part of last summer preparing for a new seminar on the comparative history of poverty, and he also continued work on the NorthEast Workshop on Southern Africa, of which he was an organizer. The workshop was held in April in Burlington, Vermont. The first novel by Peter Rutkoff, Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago, was published in April 2001 by McFarland and Company. He is now Kenyon's first professor of American studies. In the wake of his endowed professorship, Roy Wortman received a certificate of appreciation and a gift celebrating civil liberties from members of the Class of 1969,including two current trustees and one former trustee, as well as other friends, citing his "determined . . . defense of the principles of intellectual diversity and uninhibited inquiry so essential to liberal education." On May 10, 2001, as invited speaker for the Norman Thomas Memorial Lecture at Ohio State University in Marion, Wortman spoke on "Major Turning Points in American Indian History." He spent July and early August at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College researching North American Native historiography and autobiography.
Mathematics
Brian Jones will be honored by the Section on Statistical Education at JSM (Joint Statistical Meetings) 2002 for presenting the Best Contributed Paper at JSM 2001, held in Atlanta, Georgia, last August. The paper addressed the results of a joint project by Jones, Bradley Hartlaub, and Zavien Karian of Denison University. For a short description of the work see http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2001/. The abstract is #301479.
Music
Cary Dachtyl, an adjunct instructor specializing in percussion, performed with the progressive rock group "Yes" as a member of the "Yes Symphonic Orchestra," playing marimba and other percussion during their August 11, 2001, concert in Columbus, Ohio. He was timpanist and percussionist in the pit orchestra for Opera Columbus's Light Opera Season in their June 2001 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers and July 2001 production of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow. Dachtyl serves as a production staff member during Opera Columbus's regular season. His jazz trio, QED, performed at the Columbus "Rhythm on the River" series concert in late June, and he and his wife, Linda, started a new Hammond Organ quartet, LDB3, that played several of the jazz clubs in Columbus over the summer. Beginning in January 2002, the quartet will be playing every second Thursday at the 5:01 Jazz Club in Columbus's Arena District. In the studio, Dachtyl engineered and mastered several projects for Columbus artists over the summer. In July 2001, Adjunct Instructor Jane Ellsworth spent two weeks on the faculty of a music festival at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. In addition to teaching clarinet, she played concerts in the cities of Taichung and Douliu. In August, Ellsworth performed for a fourth year at the Eisenstädter Sommerakademie, a music festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. She played co-principal clarinet in the orchestra there, and also performed the Schubert Octet and the Mozart C minor Wind Serenade. An article by Ellsworth entitled "Haydn Clarinet Concertos: A Case of Wishful Thinking" appeared in the December 2001 issue of The Clarinet, the journal of the International Clarinet Association. In addition, Ellsworth regularly writes book reviews for Fontes Artis Musicae, the journal of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres. In June 2001, Dane Heuchemer served on the faculty of the North Central Ohio Adult Music Camp, which was hosted by Ashland University. He directed the brass ensemble, coached sectionals, made a presentation on historical instruments and performance practice issues, and performed with the band in their final concert. For the first three weeks of July 2001, he worked at the Sachsische Universitat und Landesbibliothek in Dresden, Germany, continuing his three-year project of inventorying the institution's collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prints and manuscripts. He also visited the Sachsische Staatsarchive and the town and church archives of a number of Saxon villages, looking for information on court and village Renaissance music establishments. His trip was funded by a Whiting Summer Scholarship Stipend, awarded by Kenyon, and the results were presented at the national meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Tempe, Arizona, this spring. For the rest of July and the first week of August 2001, Heuchemer conducted the Mount Vernon Players' production of Cinderella. He has also been busy on the book-review front, with four in progress or already completed since May 2001. Last but not least, he has started working as a volunteer for the Knox County Humane Society Canine Program.
Philosophy
Andrew Pessin spent last summer preparing several new courses that he taught during his fall sabbatical, spent on Semester at Sea, a college on a ship that travels around the world. (For details, see www.semesteratsea.com.) The courses included "Introduction to World Philosophy," "Eastern Philosophy," and "Relativism and Multiculturalism." Having greatly enjoyed learning these new subjects, he looks forward to introducing one or more of the courses into the Kenyon curriculum at some point after his return.
Physics
Benjamin Schumacher spent four weeks last summer researching quantum information theory at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He reports that while he did not see any kangaroos during his stay, he did have part of one for dinner once and found it to be delicious. He also presented papers at conferences in Rochester, New York, and in Vaxjo, Sweden.
Psychology
Mikhail Lyubansky spent ten weeks last summer as a fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. (For information on the center, go to www.psych.upenn.edu/sacsec/.) Linda Smolak coedited two books that were published in April 2001. The first, coedited with J. Kevin Thompson of the University of South Florida, is entitled Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Obesity in Youth: Assessment, Prevention, and Treatment. She co-edited the second book, Eating Disorders: Innovative Directions in Research and Practice, with Ruth Striegel-Moore of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Religious Studies
With Ellen Kittell, associate professor of history at the University of Idaho, Mary Suydam has coedited a volume of essays entitled The Texture of Society: Women in Medieval Flanders. The volume has been published by Palgrave, the scholarly and reference division of St. Martin's Press. Suydam is on the editorial board of Medieval Feminist Forum (published by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship), and she is serving as general editor for 2001-02. For fall 2001, she planned a special issue, entitled "Gender, the Academy, and the Arts in Medieval Studies." Suydam continues to work on "Seraphic Glory: Angelic Guides in Hadewijch of Antwerp's Visions," an ongoing research project into the use of angelic guides in medieval visionary writings.
Sociology
John Macionis and his family spent last summer at their farm in upstate New York. When not at work on his textbooks, Macionis found time to improve his skill as skipper of a Thistle class sailboat with his wife, Amy, often serving as his crew. The sixth edition of Macionis's Society: The Basics was published last summer, and this October his new book, Social Problems, appeared. The product of ten years' work, Social Problems represents a new, "social-constructionist" approach to the basic course dealing with social problems and policy, asking why certain situations or conditions become defined as problems in the first place and by whom. In October, Macionis received word that the U.S. Justice Foundation cited materials from Society: The Basics in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court. The material was cited in support of the importance of schooling to upward social mobility in the United States. In July 2001, George "Mac" McCarthy participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, Austria, on "The People of Vienna in a Century of Turmoil, 1848-1955." McCarthy's latest book, Classical Horizons: The Origins of Sociology in Ancient Greece: Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, has been accepted for publication.
Former faculty members
William Frame, a former member of the political-science faculty at Kenyon, is now the president of Augsburg College, a Lutheran-affiliated institution in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was recently among a group of college and university presidents asked by the Chronicle of Education what they would do with a $1-billion gift. Frame made his old colleagues proud by starting his list with scholarships, a perennial list-topper for liberal-arts colleges. Joan Straumanis, a former member of the philosophy faculty and academic dean at Kenyon, was recently named president of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. A graduate of Antioch, Straumanis had most recently been at the Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education, in Washington, D.C. Frame and Straumanis are following in the footsteps of John Agresto, also a former member of the political-science faculty at Kenyon, who served for a number of years as president of St. John's College in Sante Fe, New Mexico. Now president emeritus there, he is also president of John Agresto and Associations, an organization dedicated to educational reform. Next year, he will be affiliated with the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Agresto was awarded an honorary doctorate at Kenyon in 1989.
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