Faculty Digest
Anthropology-Sociology
Rita Kipp attended the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in September 1999 at Michigan State University in East Lansing. She was the discussant for papers in a panel entitled "Cultural and Political Issues of Indonesia and Malaysia." Kipp also attended the American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago, Illinois, in November, where she was a discussant on a panel dealing with "Inequality, the State, and the Meanings of 'Tradition': Cases from South-east Asia and Melanesia." She enjoyed a break-fast in Chicago with Jennifer Cameron '95, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Illinois. George "Mac" McCarthy has been named to Kenyon's National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Teaching Professorship (see "Along Middle Path" in this issue of the Bulletin). After taking a sabbatical during the 2000-01 academic year, he will hold the prestigious post for a three-year term beginning in 2001-02. McCarthy recently learned that his two latest books have been accepted for publication. Objectivity and the Silence of Reason: Weber, Habermas, and the Methodological Disputes in German Sociology will be published in the fall of 2000 and Justice Beyond Liberalism: Natural Law and Economic Democracy in U.S., Irish, and German Catholic Social Thought will be released the following spring. In January, the humanities and social sciences divisions of Prentice-Hall jointly honored two books by John Macionis--Sociology and Society: The Basics--as "Book of the Year." The award is given to books that have an unusually great impact on a discipline. A Spanish-language version of Sociology, published in 1999 by Prentice-Hall Hispano-americana in Mexico City, has been added to the textbook's list of foreign-language translations. In March, Macionis was an invited speaker at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in Baltimore, Maryland, where he discussed the consequences of new information technology, especially as it relates to education. On December 31, Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban left Gambier for Honduras, where they will remain until July 1, 2000, leading the Kenyon-Honduras Semester. Eleven current Kenyon students and three alumni are with them, trying to get used to a very small town (the twin "cities" of Petoa and Pueblo Nuevo have, at most, eighteen hundred inhabitants) and the usual vagaries of life in a rural area. Excavations started in late January at the large site of El Coyote, which, they hope, will receive a more dignified name from the municipal authorities in the near future. Urban and Schortman left Honduras briefly in April to present three papers (on ceramic production, distribution, and use in the Late Classic Naco Valley; labor organization and control on the part of the Naco elite; and a review of the Early Classic Period in southeastern Mesoamerica) at the Society for American Archaeology meetings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They will also serve as discussants for a fourth session.
Art and Art History
Sarah Blick will host a session on "The Arts of Regional Pilgrimage Centers in Medieval England and Northern Europe" at the Thirty-Fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May. Joining her as cohost will be Rita Tekippe, a visiting assistant professor of art history at Kenyon in 1998-99 who is now at the University of Central Arkansas. On sabbatical this year, Melissa Dabakis is at work on her new book, The Women of Rome: American Sculpture and the Eternal City, 1850-1890. During the month of August, she held a Smithsonian Short-Term Fellowship at the National Museum of American Art, and in March 2000, she returned to Washington, D.C., to complete her research as a U.S. Capitol Historical Society Fellow. This summer, under the auspices of a Kenyon Summer Stipend, Dabakis plans to visit Rome for two weeks. Claudia Esslinger held an artist's residency in Dresden, Germany, during the fall of 1999. She worked at the Grafikwerkstadt (Printmaking Workshop) in Dresden and visited Berlin, Prague, and London to research the relationship of old and new technology. In August, Esslinger presented a solo showing of her video installation "Barriers" at Ohio Wesleyan University. In September and October, she presented her "Civil Divination" in Cleveland, Ohio, at a group show on video projection called "Physical Landscapes: Between Body and Mind" at the Spaces gallery, and in January 2000, she participated in a group show in Salt Lake City, Utah, called "This Is the Place." Esslinger will present another solo exhibition, "Retopia," at the University of Cincinnati School of Design Art and Architecture from April 14 to June 2. Martin Garhart was an invited participant in the Thirty-Second Annual Invitational Art Auction at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, held in January 2000. He also completed a print for an invitational group print show at the Southern Graphic Association Conference in March 2000 at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. One of his prints will go into the university's permanent collection. Garhart is currently working on a series of large oil paintings--landscape, figure, and still-life composite images--that he calls "Love Songs." In late February, Barry Gunderson learned he had won a public sculpture commission for the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to build and install a sculpture in front of their community library in the "commons" area. His submission was a double archway composed of four figures whose extended arms form the arc. As with most of his work, the piece will be a welded and painted aluminum sculpture, and it will stand about twelve feet tall. Gunderson expects to complete the sculpture by next fall. Karen Snouffer, whose January 1999 exhibit "Ordinary Vanities" appeared in Kenyon's Olin Gallery, participated in a January-February 2000 group show at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, entitled "8-Hour Drawings, Part II." The thirteen participating artists worked directly on the walls of the gallery, within a specified space and with a time limit. Snouffer's contribution was a continuation of her observances of everyday objects, although this piece incorporated a new element: a caricature of extreme proportions.
Biology
In December, Kathryn Edwards attended a meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology in Washington, D.C. There she saw Stephanie Levi '98, who presented her research from Case Western Reserve University in poster form, and also met with Rebecca Voorthuis '94, who is now an optometrist working in three locations in the D.C. area. Former Kenyon biology professor David Marcey was there as well, and Edwards reports he is working on more RasMol molecular tutorials for publication. Edwards, who will be on sabbatical as of July 2000, is still raising boxers and Jack Russell terriers, and her boxer Rynwards Red Emma just became a champion. Siobhan Fennessy presented a paper entitled "A comparison of wetland biological indicators with the hydrogeomorphic functional approach" in Washington, D.C., at the January 2000 meeting of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) technical committee of which she is a member. The committee, known as the Biological Assessment of Wetlands Workgroup, was formed to develop biological indicators to use in evaluating the health of wetland ecosystems. During the meeting, she was also asked to be the lead writer on a technical paper the EPA will publish summarizing the scientific progress that the group has made. Christopher Gillen and two of his students, Daniel Bowles '00 and Sara Gage '00, are authors of a poster presented at Experimental Biology 2000 in San Diego, California, in April. The poster, which describes research Bowles and Gage have done in Gillen's lab, is entitled "Measurement of rubidium ion transport using ion chromatography in the shore crab, Carcinus maenas, and Sf9 cells." A paper cowritten by Harry Itagaki titled "Peripheral and central structures involved in insect gustation" appears in Microscopy Research and Technique, Volume 47: 401-415. He also tells us Mark Walsh '95 (Washington University), Heather Heerssen '97 (Harvard University), and Louis D'Amico '97 (Duke University) have all recently passed their Ph.D. qualifying examinations. "In other news," Itagaki continues, "in our efforts to stave off aging, a number of our faculty members have taken to running with a vengeance. Chris Gillen and Pat Heithaus recently ran a fifteen-mile race in Columbus in snow flurries, twenty-degree temperatures, and twenty-five-mile-per-hour winds, while Ray Heithaus opted for a half-marathon in Florida. Last fall, Ray, Pat, and I ran as a team in the Columbus Marathon, garnering some press in the Mount Vernon News for the unusual team name of 'Hornworms.'" In October, a course taught by Joan Slonczewski entitled "Biology in Science Fiction" was featured at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Program Directors Meeting as an innovative approach to general-science education. She was recently awarded a three-year research grant for "Acid and Base Stress in Escherichia coli" by the National Science Foundation. At the American Society for Microbiology annual meeting, in Los Angeles, California, in May, Slonczewski will chair a session and present an invited paper on "Global Gene Expression: Microarrays and Proteomes." Also in May, she will present a guest lecture on "Biology in the Space Age" at the National Space Society meeting in Tucson, Arizona.
Chemistry
Several students who have worked with Scott Cummings as Summer Science Scholars or during the academic year have presented their research results at recent conferences. Mauricio Cortes '99, now at the University of Chicago, and Christopher Fry '99, now at Johns Hopkins University, presented talks on photochemistry and photophysics at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research at the University of Rochester in April 1999. At the Tenth Annual Argonne Symposium for Undergraduates in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics, held in November 1999 at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, Jessica Carney '00 gave a talk on work with platinum (II) terpyridine complexes, and Sara Beddow '02 gave a talk on the photo-chemistry of cisplatin. Beddow also presented a poster at the Central Ohio Undergraduate Research Symposium at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, in October 1999. Cummings attended the Oesper Symposium on photochemistry at the University of Cincinnati in October, and on April 26, 2000, he presented a departmental seminar for the chemistry department of the University of Akron entitled "From Artificial Photosynthesis to Light-Activated Drugs: Excited State Chemistry of Platinum(II) Complexes." In June 1999, Rosemary Marusak gave a presentation entitled "Iron Complexes of Cardioprotective ICRF Compounds: Solution Thermodynamics and DNA Cleavage Activity" at the American Chemical Society Midwest Regional Meeting in Columbus, Ohio. In July, she presented the same material at the Inter-national Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her subject was the product of work done with Kenyon students Ndeye Khady Diop '99, Thomas Magliery '96, Lizabeth Vitellaro '97, and Mount Vernon (Ohio) High School teacher Paul Arnold. Last summer, Marusak supervised four Summer Science Scholars--Mark Wilson '00, Jennifer Fraley '01, Scheroi Taylor '01, and Ansley Scott '03--whose work was funded by the American Cancer Society-Ohio Division. Also working in her lab was Beloit College student Seth Levine, son of Kenyon Professor of Psychology Michael Levine. In March, Marusak and Fraley will present work entitled "Solution studies involving iron complexes of the cardioprotective ICRF compounds: Preliminary electrochemical investigations of FeICRF -247" at the American Chemical Society Two Hundred Nineteenth National Meeting in San Francisco, California. Marusak, who is presently chair of the chemistry department, has had two research articles accepted for publication in 2000, one in the journal Inorganica Chimica Acta and one in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry. Elizabeth Ottinger has received a Cottrell College Science Award of $33,874 from the Research Corporation, a foundation for the advancement of science and technology. The prestigious award will support a project entitled "Design of peptides that inhibit the activity of protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2." Ottinger, an organic-chemistry specialist who also teaches in the biochemistry and molecular-biology programs, will conduct her research with assistance from students, both during the academic year and as part of the Summer Science Scholars Program.
Classics
In mid-January, Cliff Weber went to New York City to hear the first American performance since 1971 of Richard Strauss's penultimate opera, Die Liebe der Danae. Strauss completed the work in 1940 to a libretto by Josef Gregor, whom a recent commentator has described not only as a "dim librettist" but also as "a fusty classical scholar." At the performance, Kenyon was represented both in the audience and backstage, by Joseph Fouse '99 and Reed Woodhouse '70, respectively. Woodhouse is the vocal coach of the singer who sang the title role, Lauren Flanigan.
Dance and Drama
Wendy MacLeod and her play Sin, which ran at INSIDE gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, for four weeks in October 1999, were featured in the Sunday, October 3, edition of the Plain Dealer. The story discussed the plot of Sin, as well as MacLeod's career and current work as a writer and executive story editor for the Warner Brothers television series Popular. MacLeod's newest play, Schoolgirl Figure, will have its premiere at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Illinois, in April. The Goodman characterizes the play as "a scathingly funny look at the ultimate high-school clique and their obsession with obtaining the perfect size-four figure." MacLeod is currently on a leave-of-absence from Kenyon, living in Los Angeles, California, and focusing her energy on the production of Popular. Margaret Patton, professor emeritus of dance, has retired from the College to work in the field of light opera and opera. She has been working for Opera/Columbus in its educational outreach program and directing a children's opera called Monkey See Monkey Doo, which had its Columbus premiere in December with eighty children participating. Patton will also direct Strauss's The Gypsy Baron in July 2000 at the Southern Theater for the Columbus Light Opera Company, and she has been asked to direct and choreograph Die Fledermaus for Opera/Columbus at the Palace Theater in November 2000. Jonathan Tazewell and Thomas Turgeon emerged from behind the scenes to perform in February's Kenyon College Dramatic Club presentation of Shakespeare's Othello. Tazewell performed the title role and Turgeon played the villain, Iago. Also participating in the production was Daniel Turner '99, who played Desdemona's father, Brabantio. Harlene Marley directed.
Economics
In July 1999, Priscilla Cooke presented a paper at the Western Economic Association annual meeting in San Diego, California, entitled "Changes in Intrahousehold Labor Allocation to Environmental Good Collection: A Case Study from Rural Nepal, 1982 and 1997." In September, she traveled to Goteborg University in Sweden for a repeat presentation.
English
A poem by Erin Belieu, "Choose Your Garden," was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2000, published by Scribners and edited by Rita Dove. On February 1, Jennifer Clarvoe gave a Common Hour reading at Kenyon from Opposites, her second manuscript, completed during her sabbatical last year. A poem by James Kimbrell entitled "Blackberry Winter" appears in the February 2000 issue of Poetry. P.F. Kluge was recently named a contributing editor of National Geographic Traveler, a bi-monthly magazine published by the National Geographic Society. In February, he headed for Louangphrabang, Laos, to do a piece for the periodical. Earlier, Kluge and his wife, Pamela Hollie, welcomed the millennium on Pohnpei Island in the Federated States of Micronesia, site of Kluge's Peace Corps service. He also revisited the island of Saipan and the Republic of Palau. "It's like stepping back into a soap opera," Kluge says. "You've missed some episodes, but you know the characters and you know the story. In that way, it's also like returning to Gambier." Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky has returned to Gambier after spending last year in England as the resident director of the Kenyon-Exeter program. In January, he attended a Midwest Faculty Seminar at the University of Chicago on "Shakespeare and Film." Lobanov-Rostovsky's third novel, Cold Steel Rain, is coming out in the fall from Putnam under his pseudonym, Kenneth Abel. An article by Kim McMullen entitled "'That the Science of Cartography is Limited': Historiography, Gender, and Nationality in Eavan Boland's 'Writing in a Time of Violence'" will appear this year in the special Irish women's writing issue of Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. McMullen will also deliver a paper on two recent Irish films at the international narrative conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in April. Both essays form part of a book-length manuscript, tentatively entitled "Decolonizing Rosaleen: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationality in Contemporary Irish Literature," to which she is dedicating her sabbatical this year. Next fall, McMullen, her husband, Alan Narovec, and their son, Conor, will travel to England, where she will be the resident director of the Kenyon-Exeter program.
History
Clifton Crais is organizing the next Northeast Workshop on Southern African Studies, to be held in Burlington, Vermont, in October. The three-day conference is unusual in that it is organized around intensive discussion of pre-circulated papers. It is the only conference of this kind in North America for scholars working on Southern Africa. Crais will present a paper entitled "The Other Conversion: Alternative Visions of Nation in South Africa." In November, Crais was elected to a seat on the Granville, Ohio, village council. Ellen Furlough has resigned from the faculty to accept an associate professorship in history at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. She encourages former students and colleagues to stay in touch at furloug@pop.uky.edu (please note that there is no "h" in the address). As codirector of Kenyon's School-College Articulation Program (SCAP), which helps prepare students--primarily from large inner-city high schools in Cleveland, Ohio--for college, Peter Rutkoff has spent the last three years helping found what he calls a "national organization of SCAP-like programs." This fall, the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) became a reality with twenty-plus members. Last summer, along with William Scott, he organized and taught workshops for public-school teachers in Cleveland, based on the three-year series of National Endowment for the Humanities-funded "North by South" seminars the two have been presenting at the College. Funding for the Cleveland workshops was provided by grants from the Cleveland Foundation, East Ohio Gas, and the Ohio Humanities Council. In January 2000, Rutkoff and Scott traveled with this year's "North by South" students to Birmingham, Alabama, and environs for a week's fieldwork, and in March they visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a week. New York Modern: The Arts and the City, cowritten by Rutkoff and Scott and published in June by Johns Hopkins University Press, was feted in November at Bloomberg News in New York City, thanks to Matthew Winkler '77, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief. Two of Rutkoff's short stories will be published this summer, in Nine and Story Quarterly. Roy Wortman spent the fall semester as a visiting researcher and lecturer at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, Regina Campus, in Saskatchewan, Canada. In late October and early November, he was invited to the Department of Aboriginal Education at the University of Saskatchewan, where he addressed a graduate seminar on curricular issues, met with administrators from the university, and visited with the Indian Teacher Education Program and the Saskatchewan Urban Native Education Program. He also attended Assiniboine Indian ceremonies at Fort Peck, Montana, and at the Carry-the-Kettle Band Reserve in Saskatchewan. Wortman recently received an appointment to serve on the evaluation committee for the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowships for Minorities.
Mathematics
Bradley Hartlaub, who continues to work with the Advanced Placement program in statistics, has been invited to serve on a committee for a major American Statistical Association initiative in undergraduate statistics. He is also working on a book project, with Doug Wolfe of Ohio State University, to provide a non-calculus-based introduction to statistics from a nonparametric point of view, more widely applicable than more traditional approaches. Hartlaub and Wolfe are the first to attempt to implement this approach at the introductory level. Not to be outdone by the biology department, Hartlaub and two students, Llewellyn Jones '01 and Bridgit McVie '01, represented the math department in last fall's Columbus Marathon. Judith Holdener is enjoying her work with modeling growth in biological systems. Last summer, she studied the mathematical principles governing tree growth with Summer Science Scholar Llewellyn Jones, and she expects to work with two students during summer 2000--one continuing the work in tree growth, one studying spider webs. Kenyon Dissertation Fellow Keith Howard has defended his dissertation at Vanderbilt University on the modeling of diseases. Most of his dissertation work dealt with the disease aplastic anemia. Albin Jones, new to the College this year in a tenure-track position, is a 1999-2000 Project NEXT (New Experiences in Teaching) Fellow. NEXT is a national network of new faculty members who explore important issues in mathematics teaching, sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America and the Exxon Education Foundation. He is currently working with data-structures students on a project to create a web-based checkers game that will eventually include a computer player. Brian Jones, along with Brad Hartlaub and Zaven Karian of Denison University, is the recipient of a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to develop exploratory computer modules to support instruction in the calculus-based "Probability and Mathematical Statistics" sequence. Jones is implementing these modules for the first time in "Mathematical Statistics" this spring. He plans to leave Kenyon at the end of this year to become a full-time stay-at-home father for his daughter, Noelle (now almost three), and the new Jones son or daughter expected in August. Carol Schumacher is at work on a second edition of her book Chapter Zero: Fundamental Notions of Abstract Mathematics, to be released by Addison-Wesley-Longman later this year. She continues work on "The Analysis Tree," a metric space-based introduction to Real Analysis that she hopes to finish over the next year, and she has started a project with her husband, Associate Professor of Physics Benjamin Schumacher. Their Surprises at Infinity will discuss the role of self-similarity and self-reference in the mathematics of the infinite and, unlike Carol's other books, it will be aimed at a general audience. Stephen Slack has been working on computer animations and 3D-drawings to enhance the visual intuition of students in third-semester calculus. He says, "The drawings in 'Calculus C' are bigger, better, and more colorful than ever!"
Modern Languages and Literatures
Jianhua Bai, who is on leave this year, is serving as the chair of the Academic Committee (similar to the role of program chair) for the International Conference on Chinese Pedagogy to be held in Wuhan, People's Republic of China, in June. He will read a paper on the integration of multimedia technology into the Chinese curriculum and also serve on the review committee for the conference proceedings. In October, Bai presented a paper on the integration of culture into the advanced curriculum of Chinese as a foreign language at Columbia University's International Conference on Chinese language teaching and learning. In November, he chaired a panel and presented a paper entitled "The spiraling principle and the Chinese curriculum" at the American Council for Teachers of Foreign Languages/Chinese Language Teachers Association annual conference at Dallas, Texas, and he was invited to evaluate the simulated SATII Chinese test developed by the Association of Chinese Schools. After serving as an outside evaluator for the promotion committee of the East Asian Studies Department of Brown University in February, Bai went to Western Michigan University in March to lecture on social and cultural aspects of learning the Chinese language.
Music
Theodore Buehrer attended the national conference of the Society for Music Theory, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in December. The highlights included a paper session on the analysis of the music of Duke Ellington and a paper on the use of rhythm in Chopin's dance music. Thanks to the new Music Computer Classroom in Storer Hall, this spring Buehrer is able to offer for the first time a course entitled "Introduction to Computer Music and MIDI," in which students have the opportunity to explore the basics of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) systems and common music software applications such as Cakewalk (music-sequencing software), Finale (music-notation software), ET Drill (ear-training software), and Sound Forge (sound-editing software). The Music Computer Class-room is also where all of the department's music-theory courses are taught. This past summer, Jane Ellsworth, adjunct instructor of woodwinds, presented a paper entitled "English Clarinet Music, 1800-1870: Reclaiming a Repertory" at the conference of the International Clarinet Association in Oostende, Belgium. She also performed as a guest artist at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in September and as a soloist with the Knox County Symphony in November, performing Rossini's "Introduction, Theme, and Variations" for clarinet and orchestra. Ann Stimson, adjunct instructor of flute, will perform at the National Flute Association Conference this August in Columbus, Ohio. She plans to perform "Pacific Variations III," a piece for flute and interactive electronics by Columbus composer Marc Ainger. In the piece, her flute sound goes through a microphone to a computer and then speakers. The computer executes a series of sound-processing programs, such as reverberation, pan effects, added frequencies, and other distortions, which take place at specific moments of the flute score, making the flute sound much more powerful and flexible--like a "superflute."
Philosophy
Andrew Pessin is trying to make the name of Nicholas Malebranche more widely known in philosophical circles. Pessin considers Malebranche the most important philosopher in seventeenth-century France in the period after Descartes, but he is only infrequently studied today. Two of Pessin's articles on aspects of Malebranche's work will be published in March, in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy and in Religious Studies, a philosophy of religion journal. He is next investigating the implications of his work on Malebranche for the exegesis of Descartes's views on the causal powers of mind and matter.
Physics
Kenyon's early physics-teaching apparatus is the subject of an article by Thomas Greenslade published in December in the journal Rittenhouse under the title "Collection Profile: Visits to Apparatus Collections I: Kenyon College." This is the first of a new series of articles he is writing on visits to apparatus collections. The second article is about the large collection at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, which he visited in November. In February, Greenslade visited the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to photograph their early apparatus and give a lecture on nineteenth-century physics. In March, he attended a meeting of the North Carolina section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and lectured on the history of photography and on early physics teaching, and on the way home he stopped to look at apparatus collections at Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Greenslade's article "Scientific Travels in the Irish Countryside" has been accepted by Physics in Perspective. Franklin Miller recently reprinted his textbook College Physics in response to requests from professors at several institutions. The book had gone through six editions since its first publication in 1959, but the publishers took it out of print. In an unusual move, Miller decided to reprint the next-to-last edition, which he and others felt had a better page layout and, as a side benefit, would be less expensive for the students to buy. Benjamin Schumacher presented a talk on "Optimal Signal Ensembles" at the special session on Quantum Information and Computation at the American Mathematical Society's national meeting in Washington, D.C., in January. He tells us this was one of the rare occasions when both professors Schumacher, math and physics, could be found at the same conference. In March, Schumacher gave an invited colloquium on quantum information theory at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Political Science
Joseph Klesner, who is serving as chair of the faculty this year, has contributed a chapter entitled "Legacies of Authoritarianism: Political Attitudes in Mexico and Chile" to Democracy through Latin American Lenses: Citizen Views from Mexico, Chile, and Costa Rica, edited by Roderic Ai Camp and published this year by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He gave presentations of this material at the City in August and at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego in November. Klesner is completing a chapter on Mexico and Brazil for the textbook Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction, forthcoming in 2001 from McGraw-Hill. In November, he traveled to Salamanca, Spain, as part of a reaccreditation team for the off-campus studies program run at the University of Salamanca by the Institute for the International Education of Students.
Psychology
In February 1999, Andrew Niemiec presented a paper entitled "Chinchillas do not show masking release in co-modulated noise" at the Midwinter Research Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, held in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. Two Kenyon alumni, Andrew Winter '96 and Zachary Florin '99, were coauthors of the paper. At this year's February meeting, he presented a paper entitled "The use of spectral and temporal cues by chinchillas in comodulation masking experiments," again cowritten by Winter and Florin. Niemiec has been asked to serve as a grant reviewer for the Tinnitus Research Consortium, a private agency that promotes tinnitus research through the stimulation and support of scientifically meritorious research projects. This fall, Linda Smolak signed a contract for a new book, to be coedited with Ruth Striegel-Moore of Wesleyan University. Entitled Eating Disorders: New Directions for Research and Practice, the book will be published by the American Psychological Association. Smolak, along with psychology-department colleague Michael Levine and J. Kevin Thompson of the University of South Florida, has also had an article accepted for publication in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Entitled "The use of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Scale with middle-school boys and girls," the article looks at how young teens internalize social messages about body shape. Smolak is currently on sabbatical, as is her husband, James Keeler of the economics department. They planned to visit their daughter Marlyce in Florence, Italy, in March.
Religion
Miriam Dean-Otting, who is on leave this year, spent most of the fall semester in India, interviewing members of the Jewish community of Calcutta. She also worked at the British Library in London, England, researching the same topic. This semester, she is writing an article on that research. Dean-Otting is the guest editor of the American Academy of Religion's "Spotlight on Teaching the Holocaust," which will appear in the November issue of their publication, Religious Studies News.
Women's and Gender Studies
The Women's and Gender Studies Program has renamed its annual prize the Molly R. Hatcher Prize in Women's and Gender Studies, in honor of Hatcher, a member of the Class of 2000 and concentrator in the program, who was killed in an accident on January 13, 2000. The prize, established in 1989, is awarded annually to a current student for the best artwork, composition, essay, performance, scientific study, or other work, produced during the previous calendar year, in which gender is a central theme.
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