ARTES LIBERALES
Fall 2010 Volume IV, No. I
The Newsletter of the Liberal Arts
A&S DEAN’S LETTER
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Greetings,
forward. For me and the rest of the team
This fall, I enter my 10th year as dean
in the dean’s office, this year remains very
of the School of Arts & Sciences. While
much the same as past years. We’re working
I’m looking forward to the upcoming
to meet the needs of the incoming first-year
semester and all it will bring in terms
class, launching a busy academic calendar, and
of teaching, research, and programming,
recruiting 12 new continuing faculty.
I’m focused on next summer. I’ve long
It’s been a pleasure to get a bird’s eye
believed that a decade is long enough
view of liberal arts education where our
for one person to lead any organization;
student learning and achievement is the
eventually, it’s time to step aside and
highest priority. Seeing so many of the school’s
encourage new ideas to grow. Effective
academic programs change and grow and
June 30, 2011, I will be stepping down as
seeing the positive effects so many Arts &
dean of the School of Arts & Sciences
Sciences faculty have on their students has
and returning to the classroom to teach
been a highlight of my career. I return to full-
psychology after a year long sabbatical in
time teaching inspired by my colleagues and
2011-12.
look forward to seeing those of
A national search
you with an interest in psychology
is underway to find my
in the classroom and lab.
replacement and a fine group of Arts & Sciences faculty is joining Provost Steve Allred to consider the school’s,
Andrew F. Newcomb Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences University of Richmond
and university’s, needs going
Andrew F. Newcomb Dean
Dona Hickey Senior Associate Dean, Faculty Development
Kathy Hoke Associate Dean, Research Support
Scott Johnson Associate Dean and Director, Academic Advising Resource Center
Joseph Boehman
Artes Liberales is published three times a year for faculty, staff, students, and friends of the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond. Electronic issues of Artes Liberales can be found online at http://as.richmond.edu Director of Communications Rachel Beanland Communications Coordinator Erika Neddenien
Associate Dean Dean of Richmond College
Web and Graphic Design Coordinator Kirsten A. McKinney
Juliette L. Landphair
Send story ideas or comments to eneddeni@richmond.edu.
Associate Dean Dean of Westhampton College
Our Mission To explore the liberal arts through intellectual inquiry, shared investigation, and creativity, thereby fostering a community whose members pursue knowledge for its intrinsic value and its contributions to professions, society, and the world. Cover Photo The sarcophogus of TiAmeny-Net, the University of Richmond’s mummy, is on view in the Ancient World Gallery. See story on page 4.
During the summer, temperatures in the University greenhouse can exceed 110 degrees. Yet the plants survive, if not thrive, through the harsh season—largely because of the care of biology professor John Hayden. Hayden arrived at Richmond in 1980, just after the original construction of the Gottwald Science Center had been completed, and was greeted by a greenhouse sparsely populated with the remnants of Maryland Hall’s rooftop garden. “What I recall was that most of the greenhouse benches were empty,” Hayden said. “There was a handful of very tough, hard to kill plants. Since then, we’ve managed to fill it up.” Over the past three decades, Hayden has watched the collection flourish, and spent countless hours tending, researching, and teaching in the greenhouse. And each plant has a story. Some will be used for dissection and identification by his biology and botany students in the fall. Some he had specially shipped from his private collection when he took over care of the greenhouse 30 years ago. Others remind him of students. “I’ve had this orchid since 1992. This student took every botany class that I offered. He went on to graduate school at Cornell, and now he’s tenured at Colorado State University as their botanist. When he left, his orchids became part of our collection.” g
A&S FACULTY TEACHING
Long after students leave, their plants live on in the University Greenhouse
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STUDENT RESEARCH
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Classics and biology student unlocks secrets of university mummy While other 7-year-olds were spending their Saturday mornings watching cartoon superheroes or Disney princesses, Caroline Cobert, ’12, was watching documentaries on ancient Egypt on The Learning Channel. Enraptured by images of tombs and mummies, she’d spend hours watching programs hosted by world-renowned Egyptologist Bob Briar. Thirteen years later, now a junior at
the University of Richmond, Cobert had the chance to meet her childhood idol when he spoke on campus about the University’s own mummy, the 3,000-year-old Ti-Ameny-Net. Ti-Ameny-Net, called Djai Ameni Niwet by some translators, arrived in Richmond in 1867. Buried in the sands of Egypt sometime between 950 and 730 BCE, she was unearthed by Edwin Smith, an American who claimed to have discovered 30 mummies in one day. Richmond College professor Dr. Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry purchased her while he was touring the Middle East. She now resides in the Ancient World Gallery, a small space located in North Court. After attending Briar’s lecture and reading about the mummy’s colorful history in The Collegian, Cobert developed an idea for a research project that would allow her to combine her two majors, biology and classics. “I saw the article, and in it they mentioned that they didn’t know much about the mummy,” Cobert said. “They mentioned that they had x-rays done in the 1970s, but not much work had been done since then.” She approached classical studies professor Elizabeth Baughan and biology professor April Hill with a proposal. Cobert hoped to complete new and more advanced scans of Ti-Ameny-Net and be approved to obtain a bone sample for DNA mapping, a test that had only recently been performed on a much more famous mummy, King Tut. Baughan, who curates the Ancient World Gallery, says Cobert approached her about
In late summer the mummy will be transported to VCU Medical Center where, in addition to retrieving the bone sample, a team will perform new x-rays and scans, and possibly treat Ti-AmenyNet with gamma radiation to kill mold that has begun to grow on her. “I’m really confident that we’ll be able to obtain great results,” Cobert said. “When we do have the results, we’ll be able to match them up to different DNA sequences and databases online. We’ll try to trace it to a population, and see if it’s been mutated or modified in any way. There’s a lot of potential.” Cobert plans to continue her research after the summer comes to a close. She hopes to better analyze the hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus and help redesign Ti-Ameny-Net’s display in order to prevent further deterioration. “After decades of, maybe not abuse, but at least neglect, I think it would be great to restore her,” Cobert said. “She was a person once. It’s sometimes hard to connect a 3,000-year-old body that we stare at in a museum with an actual living human being, but I think it’s important that we do that.” “Science is revealing her stories and history to us. We need to listen to them just like we would listen to our grandmother on our front porch.” g
STUDENT RESEARCH
the project more than a year ago. “It seemed like a very big idea for a firstyear student, but her passion for ancient Egypt and her determination to bridge her interests in biology and classics were evident,” Baughan said. “And in fact, only a first-year student could plan the sort of multi-year project she has begun.” After receiving the go-ahead from the classics department, Cobert spent the last year reading everything she could on Richmond’s oldest resident, ancient Egypt, and the mummification process, going to Baughan when she had questions about the literature. In April Hill’s lab, she set to work preparing for the DNA extraction procedure; Hill has practiced DNA forensic techniques for more than 20 years. “On the day we took cotton swab specimens from the mummy, I thought Caroline was going to pass out from excitement,” Hill said. “She has been doing many control experiments this summer to prove that she can amplify DNA from mummified material and to show that she can get the DNA markers to amplify from sources of human DNA.” Since the practice is so new, there are very few published works detailing how to obtain DNA from a mummy. King Tut only underwent testing in February. In order to ensure the best chances of securing a viable sample, Cobert mummified two rats this past February to practice extraction techniques. She tried to mimic as closely as possible the ancient Egyptians’ sacred practice. “I kind of freaked out half of the wiccans and pagans in Richmond when I went to an occult store and asked for myrrh resin and cedar oil,” she said. “These were some of the original materials Egyptian embalmers used after the corpse was dried out, before they put the bandages on, to make it smell better.”
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A&S FACULTY RESEARCH
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Professor asks if motivational support increases weight loss Why do so many people struggle to maintain weight loss? According to psychology professor Jeni Burnette it has more to do with your state of mind than your proclivity for junk food. “People’s mindsets matter,” she says. “It influences the ways in which they interpret events and deal with setbacks. There are inevitable setbacks with dietary goals.” This summer Burnette is examining how successful groups with two opposing mindsets, fixed and incremental, are at achieving and maintaining significant weight loss. Her research draws from the implicit theoretical framework approach created by Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University to study intelligence. People with a “fixed mindset” believe that success is based on innate ability. Those with an “incremental mindset” believe that success is achieved through effort and hard work. “People with fixed mindsets are all about achieving a single goal, making the grade,” Burnette says. “People with a growth or incremental mindset are more focused on the process, and have learning-oriented goals.” Burnette is applying this theory to her weight-loss research. She believes that people with an
incremental mindset of weight loss are more capable of achieving their goals than those with a fixed mindset. “Incremental theorists are more likely to be active in coping, more likely to seek advice. They’re driven by the expectation that they will be able to succeed.” And this summer she is putting her theory to the test. Burnette is running a weight-loss intervention, encouraging self-regulation among study participants, and is then measuring their success against a control group. She recruited 150 Richmond residents to participate in the study. Each came in for an initial weigh-in, and will return three months later to evaluate their progress. All participants will check in online and track their weight loss. Members of the “incremental mindset” group, however, will receive motivational information. “We’re fostering an incremental mindset in this group through activities and literature,” Burnette says. “We’re examining who perseveres when challenges arise.” The project will continue through the fall, and Burnette is confident that the results will support her theory. “Hopefully, this will indicate that we’re on the right track. We’ll know that if we can just change the way people think about weight loss, we can make a dent in the obesity population.” g
There’s no question that technology has affected the way our world communicates. News can circulate the world in a matter of minutes via a 140-character tweet, and parents can share photos of their children with family, friends, and casual acquaintances with a click of the mouse. Technology makes it easy to share the present, but now researchers are questioning whether technology affects the way we view our past. Rhetoric and communication studies professor Paul Achter is studying how technology, specifically television, affects the way we view and record history. He and a group of collaborators received a $540,000 grant from the Swedish Central Bank Foundation to fund three years of research. “We’re looking at how television creates this instant history and what this means,” Achter said. “This new form of history isn’t how historians think about history.” The project, “Chronicle, Catastrophe, Ritual: Television Historiography and Transnational Politics,” will examine how television affects cultural memory. Achter will focus on three temporal modes of television: chronicles (history, documentary, fiction); catastrophes (such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina); and rituals (organized global media events such as U.S. presidential elections or the World Cup). Achter has collaborated with professors at Södertörn University in Sweden for five years, and in 2009 he brought 12 University of Richmond students with him to Sweden for a course in media studies and nationalism. He was hoping to bring Swedish students to Richmond to continue his research in the
summer of 2011. “When we started to think about what the exchange would be, we realized that the Swedish students wouldn’t be available until the summer,” Achter said. “We didn’t want to bring the students to an empty campus in June. We knew we’d have to do something more creative.” Achter’s solution: take the students on the road. Next summer he and Södertörn colleague Steffan Ericson will teach a Tocqueville seminar that will include a bus tour of the American south. He’s joining forces with professor Melissa Ooten, director of the Women in Living and Learning program, who’s offered a three-week summer travel course on the Civil Rights movement since 2006. Students enrolled in “A Course in Motion: The Civil Rights Movement in the South” have traveled through nine southeastern states, visiting memorials and museums and meeting with scholars and activists. The two professors will team teach “Monument, Museum, Memorial,” which will focus on civil rights; race, space and place; transnational history; and memory. “The new course will be centered on American studies and utilize a truly interdisciplinary framework,” Ooten said. “We hope to combine our interests and expertise in the Civil Rights movement, women’s and gender studies, media studies, and cultural studies to create a course that will push students to interrogate both the historical and contemporary south.” Both she and Achter are eager to utilize the global perspective the Swedish students will bring to the class. “It’s also exciting that Swedish students will be joining us, as it will allow for even deeper conversations about the South and its place not only within the larger U.S., but also globally.” g
A&S FACULTY RESEARCH
Examining television’s effect on cultural memory ultimately exposes Swedish students to cultural memory of U.S.
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A&S IN THE COMMUNITY
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Local middle school math teachers try their hands at the crab game.
Faculty show middle school teachers how to explain math with the help of a little science Commanding the attention of a room full of pre-teens is a difficult feat. Engaging them in good discussion about math concepts is even harder. Middle school math teachers are faced with the unenviable task of pulling a generation of plugged-in tweens’ minds away from their text messages and into their textbooks. The University of Richmond is arming area educators with new tactics to liven up their lesson plans during a threeweek-long course that encourages the incorporation of science concepts in the math classroom. The course is offered at no cost to local middle school teachers and is funded through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). “One of the goals of HHMI is to foster connections across disciplines,” said math professor, Chip Hoke, who
co-instructs the course. “This program was created to promote the mutual utility of math and the sciences for one another.” Seventeen middle school math and science teachers were selected to participate in the program’s inaugural run this summer. For the first two weeks, the group gathered in the lab of a different University of Richmond faculty member every morning to participate in a science demonstration that incorporated math. Participants then spent the afternoon discussing how to better develop the math components and their practical applications in the classroom. During the final week of the program, participants split into teams and developed instructional resources for each activity. “I am always looking for ways to expand my skills and incorporate cross-curricular activities in my teaching,” said Melanie Savage, a math teacher at Chickahominy Middle School in Hanover County. “Kids want to know the ‘why’ behind the math, and being able to teach math and science together is truly engaging for middle school students.” Biology professor Malcolm Hill was one of the faculty members who spent a morning presenting to the middle school teachers.
ool eir me.
And as much as the middle school teachers have enjoyed working with the professors, Chip Hoke says faculty have been just as eager to work with them. “We really want to connect the sciences at the University of Richmond with the classrooms in the community. Our professors want them to know they’re here as a resource.” Participants will return for followup sessions in the winter and spring to discuss the successes and challenges they’ve had implementing the new activities in their classes. Hoke, along with co-instructor and education professor Tricia Stohr-Hunt, will take the participants’ feedback and incorporate it into next summer’s course. By establishing an annual teacher retreat, Hoke hopes that Richmond is able to support a future generation of science scholars. “We chose middle school because it’s the place where students seem to really get turned off or on to math or science or both. You don’t want to lose the interrelation and beauty of that support of math for science and science for math.” g
Biology professor Malcolm Hill gives tips on how mathematical concepts can be woven into a scientific exercise about the Chesapeake Bay.
A&S IN THE COMMUNITY
His activity, which he called ‘the crab game,’ illustrates the damaging effect pollution has had on the Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population. Students attempt to navigate a marble (the “crab”) around various obstacles representing pollution. The math component comes in when students are asked to calculate percentages of population decrease. “I’ve personally taken this game into elementary and middle school classrooms,” Hill told the group the morning of his presentation. “The science students really got excited about it. I imagine the same thing can happen with your math students.” The middle school teachers had the opportunity to run through the activity with Hill and ask him questions about his research in the Chesapeake Bay and the Florida Keys. “The science professors have given us excellent background material to increase our understanding of each lesson,” said Kathy Vaughan, another program participant. “We can then teach the math and feel confident about the science aspect.” “I have so enjoyed the guest speakers,” Savage added. “Before the daily activities, we’re blessed with this wealth of information coming from world-class experts.”
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A&S FEATURE
Arts & Sciences programs with global connections move in to Carole Weinstein International Center
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At Richmond, it’s rare to find a student with two feet squarely planted on one continent, let alone in one department or academic program. Many students opt to double-major and, with plenty of interdisciplinary majors, minors, and concentrations to choose from, most students spend their academic careers (when they’re not studying abroad) running from one end of the campus to the other, sampling a diverse menu of courses along the way. For many students, the common thread that connects their academic program is international in nature, and in those cases, students will find their academic experience forever changed this fall. With the opening of the new Carole Weinstein International Center, students with an internationally-oriented academic focus will find they’re spending a little less time running across campus and a lot more time in what’s become the university’s international hub. “Richmond has long been seen as a leader in international education,” said Andy Newcomb, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. “Majors that touch on global themes are some of our most popular. This new space, designed to foster the connections between those majors, provides the opportunity to further heighten student learning and
achievement in international contexts.” When the center is dedicated, it will become the new home of the Office of International Education; the Center for English as a Second Language; the departments of Modern Literatures and Cultures, Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Geography and the Environment; the International Studies and American Studies programs; the Global Studio; the spatial analysis lab; seven classrooms; two art galleries; a small theater; a café; and an outdoor classroom complete with amphitheatre seating and a slate chalkboard. The building will also be home to several faculty members in Richmond’s School of Law, all of whose work has an international focus. “I’m one of those professors with a joint appointment in international studies,” said Yvonne Howell, a Russian studies professor and chair of the Department of Modern Literatures and Cultures, “Having [the international studies program] in the same building will create all kinds of synergy because so many international studies majors double major in French or German studies. They’ve always done it but now they’ll physically be in the same space. It allows for much better communication. ”
A&S FEATURE
Geography professor Kim Klinker unpacks during move-in day at the International Center.
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Kim Klinker is a geography professor whose research interests and expertise in the Middle East frequently throw her together with scholars approaching the same topic from the departments of history, political science, and modern literatures and cultures. This past year, a team of them worked together to launch a new academic concentration in the Middle East for international studies majors. Unpacking her office in the new International Center, she said, “It’s nice to be in close proximity to the people with whom I serve on the Middle East Advisory Board. It’s easier for folks like them to see what geographers do and what our capabilities are in the lab.” Sharon Feldman, chair of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies, echoed Klinker’s sentiment. “We now have Latin Americanists from several disciplines housed under one roof, and this will likely generate original collaborations in terms of both teaching and research,” Feldman said. The Carole Weinstein International Center was certainly built with collaboration in mind. Not only are there collaborative spaces and common areas galore but the classrooms are equipped with technology that will allow any professor to initiate global conversation and collaboration with colleagues in classrooms
half a world away. Olivier Delers, a French professor in the Department of Modern Literatures and Cultures, is entering his fourth academic year at Richmond. “The offices and classrooms are really nicely laid out. It’ll be easy to work with students because everything can be moved around. The university announced that this building would be going up when I had just arrived on campus. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of the excitement surrounding the planning and construction of the center,” said Delers. The Weinstein family, longtime supporters of the university, has given the university yet another game-changing gift. The challenge now will be making the best possible use of it. “We are excited about the prospect of working with faculty in other units to organize lectures, symposia, seminars, and performing arts events under the banner of the new center and expect that these activities will stimulate what is already a rising interest on campus in all things international. Having the new space is a dream come true; now the exciting part will be working to fill it with intellectually intriguing events and activities,” said Feldman. g
A&S ALUMNI FOCUS
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Arts & Sciences grad turns liberal arts degree into culinary career When Martin Gravely, ’90, graduated from the University of Richmond with a degree in political science and rhetoric and communication studies, he wasn’t quite sure what he planned to do with it. He ended up waiting tables at area restaurants while he interviewed for positions with insurance companies and government agencies. Gravely had no idea that his side job would turn into his career and, 18 years later, lead him back to the University of Richmond as the director of the School of Continuing Studies’ Culinary Arts Program. “It’s all I’ve ever really done—working in the food service industry,” Gravely says.
“But if you told me the day I graduated that I was going to end up in food service, I would have told you that you were insane.” Gravely’s ties to the University of Richmond run deep. His mother was an employee at UR for more than 30 years, and he and both of his brothers attended the university. “I can remember going to work with my mother back in the early 80s,” Gravely said. “I would bring my fishing rod and go fish in Westhampton Lake while she worked. I’d go over and shoot hoops in the Robins Center and shoot pool in the commons. I spent a lot of my time here.” At Richmond Gravely was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity, served as an orientation counselor, and worked on set construction for several theater productions. After graduation Gravely says he worked in local restaurants for more than a year before he fell in love with the business and decided to enroll in Johnson and Wales’ Culinary Arts Program. “I decided that I wanted to open my own restaurant. I had already had some management experience by that point, but felt like I should learn to operate both the front and the back of the house in order to
2008, SCS opened a 2,150 square-foot facility at Gayton Crossing Shopping Center to provide more programming space. The Center for Culinary Arts now offers a culinary arts certificate and will begin offering a pastry arts certificate this winter. Gravely says they hope to have restaurant management and nutrition programs up and running by the fall of 2011. “We pride ourselves on doing a little bit of everything,” Gravely said. “What interests one person in the kitchen won’t necessarily interest another. We’re always expanding our offerings over here— and try to cover everything from sushi making to bread baking.” Gravely says that even though he never anticipated his career taking him “full circle back to UR,” he wouldn’t have it any other way. He says he plans to spend even more time on campus come fall. “I do still enjoy getting over there, especially seeing all of the exciting changes taking place on campus. I’m most thrilled that they’ve finally brought football on campus. It’s going to be so much better than it ever was before.” g
A&S ALUMNI FOCUS
understand every facet of the operation.” After graduating from Johnson and Wales, Gravely spent the next 10 years managing restaurants in central Virginia. Eventually, he started to feel burnt out, working 80-hour weeks and decided that he needed to try something new. “Of course what ended up happening after I had gotten into the business was that, as so many people do, I found out how rigorous and stressful it all is. I found out how many businesses fail and decided not to go that route.” Instead, Gravely opened a one-man catering business and began giving private cooking lessons on the side. “I continued teaching, and I guess I have the food network to thank for this, but more and more people wanted to learn how to cook. So slowly over time, I was doing less and less catering and more and more teaching. It evolved to the point where all I was doing was teaching.” Gravely says he began teaching at the School of Continuing Studies in the late 90s, and when the opportunity arose two years ago to direct the Culinary Arts Program, he jumped at the chance. And the program’s grown a great deal since Gravely came on board. In the fall of
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A&S IN THE WORLD
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Vietnam to Afghanistan, Hodierne goes the mile to tell the story “You know, I like to tell stories. That’s all it is,” journalism professor Robert Hodierne says a week before he’s set to depart for Kabul, Afghanistan to complete filming on a documentary he’s producing. “I like to go places that other people can’t go and come back and tell them what it was like. It’s storytelling. I’m a journalist. I like to go and find out what’s going on and tell people.” And it’s this desire to tell stories that’s pulling Hodierne back across land and sea to a remote combat outpost in Helmand Province. He’ll spend the next month following the Marines in the 2nd platoon, A Co., 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. Hodierne is producing “Combat Outpost: Afghanistan,” a two-hour PBS documentary detailing the daily lives of the platoon during its seven-month tour. “The guys in the unit are great,” Hodierne said. “Stories like this are dependent on good characters.
And there are wonderful characters in this unit.” Hodierne spent six weeks with the Marines in May and June, trekking through Afghan deserts where temperatures averaged in the low hundreds daily. Hodierne says the heat, compounded by the 25 pounds of body armor he wore, was nearly unbearable. Temperatures in August can reach 120 degrees, but Hodierne says he’s eager to return. “You spend a lot of time in that kind of environment with people, and you become very attached to them. And you feel guilty, or somehow incomplete, if you’re not there and they still are. So I worry about them every day.” And while he says things were relatively tame during his time there, his unit was attacked by mortar fire one evening. The Marines responded, and in the process, injured two young girls in a nearby village. Initially, there were concerns that the more seriously injured child, who lost an arm, might be rejected by her family. But Hodierne says he was
A&S IN THE WORLD
15 relieved to find her doing well when they returned to the city just a few days later. “She was up, walking around fully dressed and clean, less than a week after she got back from the hospital. Tough little girl. You cut my arm off, and I’m probably going to sit around and mope for a long time. One of the things I hope we’ll do on this trip is go to that village and see her again.” Hodierne is still in the process of obtaining funding for post-production. He’s personally fronted the majority of the production costs so far. “I knew that, if we waited until we gathered the money, the story would have passed,” he said. “We would have missed our chance. So rather than do that, I just jumped in and said, let’s just do it and get it over with.” And it isn’t the first time that he’s made a bold decision for the sake of the story. In the spring of 1966, when many young men were scrambling to obtain an educational deferment to avoid the draft, Hodierne dropped out of Grinnell College and bought himself a one-way ticket to Vietnam. He was the youngest fully accredited foreign journalist to cover the war, and his photographs appeared in major U.S. and European magazines and in the Time-Life series of books on Vietnam. He’s one of only a handful of journalists to cover both the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the course of his
career, Hodierne’s been a photographer, writer, editor, worked in both radio and broadcast news, and spent seven years as the senior managing editor of Military Times. He says he’s eager to tell this story on film. “I’ve discovered video editing. And it’s just as much fun as going into the darkroom was. It’s hypnotic even, you get drawn into it. And you look up at the clock and go ‘My God, I’ve been doing this for 12 hours—maybe I ought to go to the bathroom.’ ” And he’s hoping to capture a lot of action. “I’ve been giving them a hard time, because they hadn’t gotten into a firefight while I was there,” he said. “They promised me when we get back, they’ll get me into a firefight. So we’ll see.” After filming wraps, Hodierne says it will take him a week and two six-hour flights to make it back to the United States, traveling by helicopter, C-130 cargo plane, Afghan airline Safi Air, and finally United Airlines. He’ll arrive back on campus just two days before classes start. “I think most of the students in my first class are freshmen. So I should be a pretty scary vision for them. I’ll still be wound up and more foul-mouthed than usual.” g
A&S IN THE WORKS
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Accomplishments Faculty & Staff Jan Hoffman French’s [anthropology] book “Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s Northeast” received honorable mention from the Brazilian Studies Association at its 10th Conference in Brasilia on July 24, 2010. A paperback edition of Joanna Drell’s [history] book, Medieval Italy, has just been released by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Jim Rettig [library] presented “The Google Books Project and its Lessons for Future Mass Digitization Projects” at Biblio 2010: The International Conference on Library and Information Science at the Univesitatii Transilvania din Brasov in Romania. Kelling Donald [chemistry] published a paper, “Tuning sigma-holes: charge redistribution in the heavy (group 14) analogues of simple and mixed halomethanes can impose strong propensities for halogen bonding,” with Bernard Wittmaack, ’11, and Chad Crigger, ’11, in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. Monti Narayan Datta [political science] had an article, “The Decline of America’s Soft Power in the United Nations” published in International Studies Perspectives.
Yvonne Howell [MLC] published a paper, “The Liberal Gene: Sociobiology as Emancipatory Discourse in the late Soviet Union,” in the Slavic Review. Gene Anderson [music] presented a paper, “Jimmie Cooper and the Integration of Show Business,” at the International Conference on Arts and Humanities in Honolulu. Laura Runyen-Janecky [biology], published a paper, “Regulation of highaffinity iron acquisition homologues in the tsetse fly symbiont Sodalis glossinidius,” with Alexandria Brown, ’10, and Haddis Tujuba, ’11, in the Journal of Bacteriology. Johann Stagmeir [theatre and dance] is designing costumes for a major motion picture. The film, “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding” is directed by Bruce Beresford and stars Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener, and Jeffery Dean Morgan. Scott Allison’s [psychology] book, Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them, that he co-authored with leadership studies professor George R. Goethals will be released in October. N. Elizabeth Schlatter [museums] presented a paper titled “You, Yes YOU Can Be a Curator Too!* (*Not Really)” at the National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik. Katherin Bower [MLC] had an article, “Minority Identity as German Identity in Conscious Rap and Gangsta Rap: Pushing the Margins, Redefining the Center,” accepted for publication in the German Studies Review.
Joe Essid [English, rhetoric & communication studies] led a team of faculty and developers to create an interactive 3D simulation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The project, online in Richmond’s campus region of the virtual world Second Life, included student actors and visiting guests in the roles of Poe’s characters. The simulation ran both semesters of the 2009-2010 academic year and will be used by a class in Spring 2011. Carol Parish [chemistry], with Evan Wang, ’09, published “Conformational Analysis of a Model for the trans-fused FGH Ether Rings in Brevetoxin A” in the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Abigail Cheever’s [English] book, Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in PostWorld War II America, was published by the University of Georgia Press. Malcolm Hill [biology] and Jonathan Dattelbaum [chemistry], with Drew Sieg, ’08, Giles Thomson, ’09, and Chris Manieri, ’10, had a paper, “Plasticity of acquired secondary metabolites in Clathria prolifera: Photoprotective role of carotenoids in a temperate intertidal
sponge,” published in The Open Marine Biology Journal.
Students Fred Shaia, ’11, was awarded a $2,000 Virginia Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi scholarship. Shaia is pursuing a major in political science and minors in journalism and Latin American and Iberian studies. He also serves as the online managing editor of The Collegian. Andrew Massaro, ’11, and Sally Fisher, ’11, have been awarded 2010 Beckman Scholar Fellowships. The fellowship covers their costs and supplies for two summers and one academic year of research on campus, plus travel to an academic conference in California both summers. Robby Heler, ’12, won a summer research fellowship from the American Physiological Association to complete a research project and attend the organization’s national conference. The biochemistry and molecular biology major was one of only 24 students selected as a summer fellow. Zhivko Illeieff, ’11, and Charles Mike III, ’11, were awarded a $10,000 grant from The Davis Projects for Peace to produce a documentary about Bulgaria’s communist history. Have some good news to share in the next issue of Artes Liberales? Send your professional achievements to rbeanlan@richmond.edu.
A&S IN THE WORKS
Amy Treonis [Biology], with Harlan Michelle, ’08, Cecilia O’Leary, ’10, and Erin Austin, ’08, had a paper, “Identification and localization of food source microbial nucleic acids inside soil nematodes,” accepted for publication in Soil Biology & Biochemistry.
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CONNECT
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connect Attend SEPTEMBER September 14 @ 7:30 p.m. Brown-Alley, Weinstein Hall Vietnamese writer Linh Dinh and poet Sabrina Orah Mark read from their work. Part of the Department of English’s Writers Series. September 15 @ 5:30 p.m. Jepson Hall, Room 120 Dr. Persis Drell, director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, presents a talk entitled “What We Know (And What We Don’t Know!) About the Night Sky.” September 20 @ 7:30 p.m. Camp Concert Hall, Booker Hall of Music An Evening of Latin American song presented by the Department of Music.
talk, “Coming Out as West Indian in the Twenty-First Century,” as part of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology’s series, “Racial and Ethnic Identity in the Year of the Census.” October 20 @ 1 p.m. Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall Anthropology professor Jan French gives a talk, “Race and Color in Brazil and the U.S.,” as part of the sociology & anthropology department’s series. October 22 @ 7:30 p.m. Camp Concert Hall, Booker Hall of Music The Richmond Symphony featuring music professor Joanne Kong on piano. October 28 @ 7:30 p.m. Location TBA The 2010 Douglas Southall Freeman Visiting Professor, Dr. Alan Taylor will give a lecture entitled “Constitutions for a Continent: 1783-1790.”
NOVEMBER
September 30 @ 4:30 p.m. Westhampton Center The English department presents “The Rise of Ethnic Modernism in the U.S., 1910-1950” by Harvard professor Werner Sollors.
November 4 @ 7:30 p.m. Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall Deborah Eisenberg, American short story writer, appears as part of the Department of English’s Writers Series.
OCTOBER
November 18 @ 7:30 p.m. November 19 @ 7:30 p.m. November 20 @ 7:30 p.m. November 21 @ 2 p.m. Alice Jepson Theatre, Modlin Center for the Arts The Deparment of Theatre and Dance presents RENT, directed by Dorothy Holland.
September 30 @ 7:30 p.m. October 1 @ 7:30 p.m. October 2 @ 7:30 p.m. October 3 @ 2 p.m. Cousins Studio Theatre, Modlin Center The Department of Theatre and Dance presents Julius Caesar, directed by Walter Schoen. October 5 @ 7:30 p.m. Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall Poets Julie Carr and G.C. Waldrep read from their work. Part of the Department of English’s Writers Series. October 6 @ 3 p.m. Room 314, Weinstein Hall Sociology professor Bedelia Richards gives a
School of Arts & Sciences Calendar at as.richmond.edu Modlin Center for the Arts Calendar at modlin.richmond.edu University Museums Calendar at museums.richmond.edu
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Spencer Bates, ’12, spent the summer working in chemistry professor John Gupton’s lab.
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University of Richmond, Virginia 23173
Bertrand Morin, ’11 “The Differences Between Chaos and Order are Acknowledgement and Ignorance”