Hadley Arkes, Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science), testified before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on July 12. He addressed the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001," the ideas in which, Arkes explained in a National Review commentary, originated in a proposal he suggested in 1988. Arkes is the author of "Joe Lieberman, Moralizer" in the August 21, 2000 Weekly Standard, criticizing the senator's claims of moral judgment.
Michele Barale, chair of the English department, was quoted in an April 8 New York Times Education Life article about a conservative movement to restore "classics" to college curricula; Barale explains her syllabus and the focus of her course "Textuality."
The keynote address of the 15th annual Women's Studies Conference, "Women around the World: Bringing the Global Home," at the University of Maine at Orono was given by Amrita Basu, professor of political science and women's and gender studies.
On April 29, C-Span 2 broadcast a reading and discussion by David W. Blight, Class of 1959 Professor History and Black Studies, on his new book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. The work received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and praise in the Washington Post's "Book World" and The New York Times; Blight gave radio interviews nationwide. The Times also published a January 29 op-ed article by Blight titled "A Confederacy of Denial" about ideologies inherent in the debates over the John Ashcroft and Gale Norton nominations.
Professor of Geology John T. Cheney presented a paper titled "Ion Microprobe Ages of Zircon from Blueschists, Syros, Greece" at the 112th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Reno, Nevada, attended by approximately 7,000 geoscientists.
Carol C. Clark, professor of fine arts and American studies, was named to the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professorship, established in 1969 to support a scholar-teacher of distinction whose enthusiasm for learning, commitment to teaching and interest in students will make a notable contribution to the undergraduate community.
Rhonda Cobham-Sander, associate professor of English, has contributed an essay to a recently published anthology examining the convergence of the studies of American and post-colonial literature, Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature.
Playwrightñin-Residence Constance Congdon's verse translation of Moliére's The Misanthrope had its world premiere at The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco in October 2000. The play is in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets and is based on a commissioned translation.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Javier Corrales published an op-ed article in the January 1 New York Times titled "A Stubborn Cuba and a Stubborn America." The piece, proposing a relaxation of the embargo, was syndicated and appeared in several papers around the country.
Frank Couvares has been named to the E. Dwight Salmon Professorship of History, established in 1989 by Thomas H. Wyman '51 to honor Prof. E. Dwight Salmon, who taught history at Amherst from 1929 to 1963.
Emeritus Professor of English Benjamin DeMott's new book Killer Woman Blues: Why Americans Can't Think Straight About Gender and Power was reviewed in the January 28 New York Times Book Review as well as the January 19 Entertainment Weekly.
Thomas L. Dumm, professor of political science, has been a awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship to support a two-part academic study: "a philosophical exploration of individuality from Descartes to the present" and a "genealogy of the modern self that focuses on how the self is constituted as lonely." In December Dumm finishes his term as founding editor of Theory & Event, an internationally juried journal of contemporary political theory. Dumm was mentioned in a front-page Wall Street Journal story on December 5 that described how political science professors seized the teaching opportunity of the 2000 election.
Newsweek featured Domenic J. Paino '55 Professor in Global Environmental Studies Paul Ewald in its November 20 issue. The story called Ewald a "bold-minded evolutionist" and highlighted his recent book, Plague Time, an examination of chronic "modern plagues" such as cancer and heart disease and their roots in viral and bacterial infection—rather than genetics and lifestyle. Plague Time was a science best seller on amazon.com. Ewald was highlighted in an Associated Press wire story in December and was interviewed about his book on radio stations around the country.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Alexander George was a guest on the January 10 broadcast of "The Connection," a nationally syndicated National Public Radio program based in Boston. The show was about the life and philosophy of the late Willard Van Orman Quine, a prominent Harvard philosopher.
Biology Prof. Stephen A. George has been named to the Manwell Family Professorship in Life Sciences, established in 2000 by Edward J. Man-well '25 to support a faculty member in biology, neuroscience, psychology or chemistry who has shown dedication to the life of the college and particular distinction in teaching.
The National Science Foundation awarded a grant to Richard A. Goldsby, professor of biology and John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer. Goldsby will receive more than $100,000 for continued work on a project determining the possibilities of antibody production in cows carrying human genes, called "Early Guest Ig Expression and Diversity in Cloned Transgenic Cattle."
Emily C. Jordan Folger Professor of English and American Studies Allen Guttmann was awarded the first annual Sport Science Award of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Council of Sport Studies and Physical Education. The award is given "in recognition of scientific work in the field of sport and physical education and of outstanding sport science accomplishments of great practical significance."
Lectures given by David Hall, assistant professor of physics, in October 1999 at the international school on quantum electronics in Erice, Sicily, were published in a volume of the proceedings, Bose-Einstein Condensation and Atom Lasers.
The ExxonMobil Foundation has awarded the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics $133,000 to support Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics (SPIN-UP). Robert C. Hilborn, Amanda and Lisa Cross Professor of Physics, is chair of the Task Force. The goal of SPIN-UP is the locally oriented revitalization of undergraduate physics programs, with attention to student recruitment and outreach to the professional and non-scientific community.
Physics Prof. Larry R. Hunter has been named to the Stone Professorship of Natural Science, established in 1880 by Valeria G. Stone in memory of her late husband Daniel T. Stone.
For the second year in a row, Professor of Music Jenny Kallick co-directed an opera with the students of Music 20, "Making Opera." The production was Mozart's 1775 opera La Finta Giardiniera, produced with singers from the New York City Opera and the Glimmerglass Opera Young American Artists Program.
Onawumi Jean Moss, associate dean of students, hosted and participated in the ninth annual Keepers of the Word Storytelling Festival last April. Moss is founder and director of the festival held at Amherst.
Barry O'Connell, professor of English, gave a talk titled "On Our Own Ground: Indians and the Making of New England Literature" at the August 2000 Paul Revere Memorial Lectures in Boston, based on O'Connell's book on William Apess, the first American Indian to publish an autobiography (1829).
Rose Olver, L. Stanton Williams '41 Professor of Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies, and Associate Professor of English and Women's and Gender studies Michele Barale will direct Amherst's Faculty Career Enhancement Project. The $91,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will be used in collaboration with Williams College to address faculty career needs.
Emeritus Anthropology Prof. Donald S. Pitkin was honored at the 2000 meeting of the American Anthropological Association with the presentation of a number of papers on the theme "An Anthropologist in the Family." The papers drew from Pitkin's own work as a long-time ethnographer of families in the Italian village of Sermoneta.
Dominic L. Poccia has been named to the Rufus Tyler Lincoln Professorship of Biology, established in 1916 by Caroline T. Lincoln, wife of the late Dr. Rufus Lincoln of New York City, in memory of their son who died in 1890 at the age of 16. Poccia will spend three months this fall at the Gulbenkian Scientific Institute in Oeiras, Portugal, on a Fulbright Scholar Award. He will study the regulation of nuclear membrane fusion by a membrane vesicle fraction enriched in phosphatidylinositol.
Henry Clay Folger Professor of English William Pritchard authored a front page review of James Atlas's biography of Saul Bellow in the Sunday, October 15, 2000 Boston Globe. A week later, October 22, The New York Times Book Review published Pritchard's review of William Trevor's latest short story collection. On November 26 Pritchard contributed to the Boston Globe a review of Denis Donoghue's biography of T.S. Eliot, Words Alone, and on January 14 he reviewed Thomas Mallon's In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing for The New York Times Book Review. Pritchard's own book, Updike: America's Man of Letters, received widespread attention, reviewed, among other places, in the November 3 Chronicle of Higher Education and October 22 in Washington Post Book World.
At the February Five College Composer's Festival, musicians, including Assistant Professor of Music David Schneider, performed the world premiere of two songs by David Reck, professor of music and Asian languages and civilizations: "Autumn Thoughts" by Chinese poet Ma Zhiyan, translated into English by Hua R. Lan, senior lecturer in Asian languages and civilizations; and "Pi" by Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska.
Steven Rivkin, associate professor of economics, was quoted prominently in a January 12 New York Times article on increased funding for education reform.
Christian Rogowski, professor of German, participated in an international symposium at the University of Leipzig, Germany, last December. The event was organized by the "Institut für höhere Studien"; Rogowski's talk, titled "From the Stylized Century," addressed Austrian fin-de-siécle modernism.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson was the focus of an October 15, 2000, Boston Globe piece discussing Sanderson's study of the effectiveness of AIDS education.
As author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat participated in a panel discussion on PBS television's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 11. Panelists discussed the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. An op-ed article by Sarat on this issue, published in the January 3 Los Angeles Times, was syndicated and distributed nationwide. Sarat's piece called "The Micropolitics of Identity/Difference: Recognition and Accommodation in Everyday Life" was published in the Fall 2000 issue of Daedalus. It discusses two local incidents to examine how institutions change to accommodate difference. Last January, Sarat was selected president of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities; his three-year term began in March.
Assistant Professor of Music David Schneider presented a paper titled "Nocturne, Nature and Nation: Bartók's 'Night Music' and the Nineteenth Century" at a February meeting of the American Musicological Society. The paper traces roots of Bartók's modernist style.
John W. Servos has been named to the Anson D. Morse Professorship of History, established in 1928 by Dwight W. Morrow, Class of 1895, for a professorship in history.
Three Amherst faculty members participated in an April 12 celebration of the life of poet James Merrill '47. David Sofield, Samuel Williston Professor of English, Susan Snively, associate dean of students and writing counselor, and visiting writer Daniel Hall read and discussed Merrill's work.
Ilan Stavans has been named to the Lewis-Sebring Professorship in Latin American and Latino Culture, established in 2001 by the Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation on behalf of Charles A. Lewis '64 and Penny Bender Sebring to promote the study of the culture, language, politics, history or art of Latin or Latino America. This fall, Stavans will host Conversations with Ilan Stavans, an intellectual talk show discussing Latino art, culture and politics. Stavans was interviewed about Spanglish, and his course "The Poetry of Spanglish," for the September 26 broadcast of All Things Considered on National Public Radio and for a February Boston Globe piece.
The November/December issue of Film Comment featured Elisabeth Subrin, Five College film and video assistant professor, and her work, praising her "acute, highly imaginative excursions" into the biography of marginal figures and for "devising a whole new approach to documentary in the process."
Robert T. Sweeney, William R. Mead Professor of Fine Arts, last March exhibited a collection of landscape paintings—depicting primarily local western Massachusetts settings—at the William Baczek Gallery in Northampton.
Frank H. Westhoff has been reappointed to the James E. Ostendarp Professorship, established in 1989 by former students, friends and colleagues to honor Coach Ostendarp on the occasion of his retirement from the college and to show their appreciation for his keen interest in all aspects of the Amherst experience.
Patrick Williamson, professor of biology, has been named to the Edward H. Harkness Professorship, established in 1929 by Edward H. Harkness.
Willard Long Thorp Professor of Economics Beth V. Yarbrough has been named associate editor of International Organization, the world's leading scholarly journal of international relations. The scope of the journal includes theoretical and empirical work in international political economy and international security. Yarbrough has served four terms on the journal's editorial board previously, and will serve her five-year editorship beginning in January 2002.