Academics Scholarly Achievements

Josef Trapani, assistant professor of biology, has been awarded a $10,000 grant to further his studies of the nervous system using zebrafish.

In recognition of his commitment to graduate students and the organization in general and “especially to honor the iconic place of his own scholarship and intellectual influence in our field,” The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) voted this past May to institute a new award named for Austin Sarat, Amherst’s William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and chair of the political science department.

Buddhist Religious Advisor Mark D. Hart has published his first book of poetry, Boy Singing to Cattle (Pearl, 2013). He will give a public reading, sponsored by Religious Life and the Department of English, on Thursday, March 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115).

Edward Melillo, assistant professor of history and environmental studies, has been awarded honors from the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) and the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) for academic literature he has published concerning, respectively, the historic Pacific fertilizer trade and the portrayals that Nantucket whaling crews left of their own journeys.

The government of Japan has selected Ray A. Moore, professor emeritus of history and Asian languages and civilizations, to be granted the Order of the Rising Sun, a prestigious medal the Japanese government has presented since 1875 to honor a variety of achievements and contributions.

The Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) has named David Hanneke, assistant professor of physics, winner of one of the organization’s Cottrell College Science Awards (CCSA). The prize, which began on July 1, provides $35,000 in support of the research of a junior faculty member in the physical sciences. 

On Nov. 12, 2012, at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, Dominic Poccia, the Rufus Tyler Lincoln Professor of Biology, delivered the keynote address for the 50th anniversary of the biochemistry department at the University of Oslo’s School of Medicine.

Hadley Arkes, the Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science), has been named the director of a new Washington, D.C.-based institute inspired by his writings and lectures. In addition, content from his lectures at Amherst is now commercially available as audio recordings.

On Sept. 25, Cuneiform Records will release Tiresian Symmetry, the latest album by Assistant Professor of Music Jason Robinson, featuring an expanded version of his Janus Ensemble. Robinson, who composed the eight interrelated songs and plays tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and alto flute, describes the album as “my most ambitious project to date.”

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has named David A. Cox, the William J. Walker of Mathematics at Amherst, one of this year’s winners of its Lester R. Ford Award honoring the author of an outstanding paper published in the previous year.

Karen Sánchez-Eppler, professor of American Studies and English, has been elected vice president of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Her vice presidential term began on July 1 and will continue for two years, after which she will serve for an additional two years as president of the society.

The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) recently announced its 2011 Awards for Excellence in museum catalogues, articles and exhibitions—“the only awards where curators honor their fellow curators.” AAMC members chose an essay by Randall R. Griffey, the Mead Art Museum’s curator of American art, to receive the award for Outstanding Catalogue Essay.

By Katherine Duke ’05

While still a junior here at Amherst, Zhuqing “Lester” Hu ’13 recently earned an honor that’s usually reserved for advanced graduate students and professors: He was invited to present an original research paper at the spring meeting of the New England chapter of the 3,600-member American Musicological Society (AMS-NE). The meeting took place on April 14 at Mount Holyoke College. Hu’s paper, titled “Towards Modal Coherence: ‘Modal Chromaticism’ in Gesualdo’s Two ‘O vos omnes’ Settings,” analyzes a pair of works by a mysterious and eccentric figure in Late Renaissance music.

A paper by Assistant Professor of Economics Katharine R. E. Sims and two coauthors has been selected as one of six publications from 2011 to receive the Cozzarelli Prize, an award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) chose the paper from more than 3,500 research articles that appeared in the journal last year.

Javier Corrales, Jonathan Friedman, and Lawrence Douglas

It’s been a banner couple of weeks for Amherst faculty authors. Political science’s Javier Corrales; law, jurisprudence and social thought’s Lawrence Douglas; and physics’ Jonathan Friedman have all been recognized for various pieces of writing.

Reviewers for Foreign Affairs magazine named Corrales’ book Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela one of the three Best Books of 2011 on the Western Hemisphere. “Easily the best scholarly treatment of Hugo Chávez’s hybrid electoral autocracy, Corrales and [co-author Michael] Penfold’s book courageously refutes orthodox explanations—from the right and the left—for this unique caudillo’s rise and resilience,” the Foreign Affairs write-up on Dragon reads. “This masterful monograph’s dissection of Chávez’s astoundingly shrewd political tactics will be carefully studied by both his well-wishers and his detractors.”