Faculty News - Spring 2005



Derek Jones Publishes Article in Post-Communist Economies

April 28, 2005
Derek C. Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, recently published an article titled "Choice of Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from Estonia," with Panu Kalmi (Helsinki School of Economics) and Niels Mygind (Copenhagen Business School). It was published in Post-Communist Economies, Volume 17, Number 1 (March, 2005).  More ...

Pellman Leads Workshop on Music Technology

April 27, 2005
Professor of Music Samuel Pellman led a workshop on music technology at the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College on March 21-22. Workshop participants included instructional technologists and librarians from many of the 37 liberal arts colleges in the mid-Atlantic and New England region that are affiliated with the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education.

Wu Presents Papers at SUNY Binghamton, Syracuse University

April 25, 2005
Assistant Professor of Economics Stephen Wu recently presented papers at SUNY Binghamton and Syracuse University. His paper at Binghamton was "Fatalistic Tendencies: An Explanation of Why People Don't Save." At Syracuse he delivered the paper, "The Search for Research Talent: Information Networks and Admissions to Economics Ph.D. Programs."  More ...

Klinkner Participates in Yale Panel

April 25, 2005
James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government Philip Klinkner participated in a panel discussion titled "Democracy and Voice" at the Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the Future: Honoring the 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 conference held in April at Yale University. The conference goal was to make a critical assessment of the impact of the Voting Rights Act on both the study and practice of politics and to examine how it transformed the political landscape.

Pillow Presents Paper at Williams College

April 25, 2005
Kirk Pillow, associate dean of the faculty and associate professor of philosophy, presented an invited paper at Williams College in Massachusetts on April 22. Titled "Understanding Aestheticized," the paper attempts to turn 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant into a late 20th-century neo-Pragmatist.

Borton Publishes Article Co-Authored by Two Former Students

April 21, 2005
Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Borton published an article in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (March 2005) that she wrote with two former Hamilton students. The title is "Effects of suppressing negative self-referent thoughts on mood and self-esteem." The co-authors are Lee J. Markowitz '01 and John Dieterich '00.

Keating Presents Paper at Anthropology of Consciousness Conference

April 19, 2005
Neal Keating, visiting assistant professor of religious studies, presented a paper titled "Spirit and Information in Contemporary Haudenosaunee Art" last week at the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness Conference in Amherst, Mass. In his presentation, Keating explored an alternative vertical passage for the transmission of cultural information among the Haudenosaunee people that may help explain how and why cultural recovery is possible after multiple interruptions of transmissions of cultural information by more traditional pathways. The Haudenosaunee are comprised of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora Nations. Keating discussed several contemporary works by Haudenosaunee artists in his paper.

Shields Receives NSF Grant

April 19, 2005
Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research with Hamilton students. The proposal, titled "RUI: Calculating Acid Dissociation Constants in Aqueous Solution," brings $210,000 over the next three years to support research aimed at the accurate prediction of the protonation states of small peptides. Protonation refers to the addition or subtraction of a hydrogen ion to a molecule, and the extent of protonation determines the overall charge of a molecule. Small peptides are biological molecules that are an essential class of drugs that are being developed by pharmaceutical companies. Accurate calculation of protonation states of small peptides is essential for drug design, as the charge state of peptides affects their binding properties to protein targets.  More ...

Pandian Publishes Article in The Indian Economic and Social History Review

April 18, 2005
Anand Pandian, visiting assistant professor of history and anthropology, published an article, "Securing the Rural Citizen: The Anti-Kallar Movement of 1896," in The Indian Economic and Social History Review 42 (January-March 2005): 1-40. The article examines intersections between official racial sociology and popular peasant politics in colonial south India, focusing on a violent movement to drive members of a single caste out of hundreds of villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency.

Kamiya Presents Papers at Chicago Linguistics Society and Syracuse University

April 12, 2005
Assistant Professor of Japanese Masaaki Kamiya presented a paper at the 41st Chicago Linguistics Society, held in April at the University of Chicago. The paper was titled "Nominalization and Case Marking in Japanese." In his talk Kamiya argued that the structural case in Japanese is marked in phonologica form, while the structural case in English is marked at narrow syntax. This is a one place where two languages are parameterized in principle and parameter framework, Kamiya said. He also gave a talk at a workshop on SOV variation held at Syracuse University on April 9 and 10. That talk was titled "Theta Marking, Syntactic Category, and Inherent Case in Japanese." Kamiya argued that there is no complementizer in Japanese, but the so-called complementizer in Japanese is actually an inherent case that is marked in narrow syntax. Thus, he claimed that there are two case marking place in syntactic derivations: one is at PF for structural case and the other is in narrow syntax for inherent case.

Omori Publishes Translation of "The Shanghaied Man"

April 12, 2005
Assistant Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori published a translation of "The Shanghaied Man," a short story by a Japanese novelist, Tani Joji, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945 (2005). The Japanese writer Tani Joji (1900-1935) produced a wide-ranging body of work in the early 20th-century. He wrote under three pseudonyms, Tani Joji (for a series of short stories based on his vagabond life in the U.S.), Maki Itsuma (for mystery fiction) and Hayashi Fubo (for samurai fiction with a famous anti-hero Tange Sazsen). This work stems from Omori's current project, Detecting Modanizumu: Shinseinen [New Youth] Magazine, Tantei Shôsestu [Detective Fiction], and the Culture of Japanese Vernacular Modernism, 1920-1950.

Cheng Li Named to Editorial Board of Journal of Public Management

April 12, 2005
Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, has been named to the editorial board of Journal of Public Management, a leading academic journal in the field of public administration in China. The journal is published by the Management School of Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious universities in the People's Republic of China. Li is among the five overseas board members of the journal.

Shields Named to Editorial Board of Computing Letters

April 11, 2005
Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields has been named to the editorial board of Computing Letters, a new electronic journal devoted to the rapid publication of new research results in any area of computing.  More ...

Li Interviewed by BBC About Demonstrations in Beijing

April 11, 2005
Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was interviewed by the BBC in a live broadcast on the demonstrations by tens of thousands of Chinese in Beijing in front of the Japanese embassy. Li discussed the origins of the protests. Japan's foreign minister demanded an apology from China after the violent anti-Japanese protests in Beijing and southern China. The protests followed plans to introduce textbooks in Japan that critics say whitewash Japanese militarism and its occupation of China during World War II.

Isserman Essay Included in Digital Library for Earth System Education

April 11, 2005
An essay by Professor of History Maurice Isserman about Ben Franklin's study of the gulf stream has been chosen to be included in the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). DLESE is a collaborative effort to provide support and leadership in addressing the national reform agenda for science education, scientific literacy and scientific discovery.  More ...

Krueger Appointed to Speculum Editorial Board

April 11, 2005
Professor of French Roberta Krueger has been appointed to a four-year term on the editorial board of Speculum, the oldest U.S. journal devoted exclusively to the Middle Ages, which is published by the Medieval Academy.  More ...

Larson Article Reprinted in Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader

April 8, 2005
Associate Professor of English Doran Larson's article, "Machine as Messiah: Cyborgs, Morphs and the American Body Politic," originally published in Cinema Journal, has been reprinted in Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader (Columbia University Press). He also delivered a paper, "Fantastic Realism: Film Adaptation's Challenge to Literary Realism," at the March 2005 International Association for the Study of the Fantastic in the Arts Conference.  More ...

Adair Honored by YWCA

April 8, 2005
Vivyan Adair, the Elihu Root Associate Professor of Women's Studies and director of the ACCESS Project at Hamilton College, was honored at the YWCA of the Mohawk Valley Salute to Outstanding Women on April 7. Adair was honored in the education category.  More ...

Janet Simons and Patricia O'Neill Publish Article in Transformations

April 6, 2005
An article written by Instructional Technology Specialist Janet Simons and Professor of English Patricia O'Neill has been published in the online journal, Transformations: Liberal Arts in the Digital Age (vol. 2, issue 2, April, 2005). The article discusses the Art of Cinema course that O'Neill teaches at Hamilton. It describes the approaches taken to facilitate learning about film by use of film and media technology in the course, the effort necessary to design and structure course assignments targeted toward integrating content with appropriate technology, and the academic support structure Hamilton provides for students to accomplish these types of assignments. Transformations publishes articles on all aspects of technology in liberal arts education, including scholarly research, curricular resources, case studies, student writing and technical notes.  More ...

Omori Presents Paper at Association for Asian Studies

April 5, 2005
Assistant Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori presented a paper at the Association for Asian Studies held in Chicago on March 31-April 3. The title of her paper was "'We Japanese in Japan Should Find Our Own English': Migrancy, Identity and Language(s) in Itô Hiromi's Recent Prose."  More ...

Kamiya Presents Paper at Association of Teachers of Japanese

April 5, 2005
Masaaki Kamiya, assistant professor of Japanese, presented a paper at the Association of Teachers of Japanese seminar in conjunction with the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago. In his talk, Kamiya argued that the relation between syntactic category and theta-marking is crucial in interpretations and case marking in natural language.

Rowe Participates in Jazz Matters Forum

April 4, 2005
Monk Rowe, the Joe Williams Director of the Jazz Archive, participated in a Jazz Matters panel on "The Art of the Interview" on March 23. As director of the Jazz Archive, Rowe has conducted more than 200 interviews with renown jazz personalities. Established in 1995, the archive holds a collection of videotaped interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers and critics.

Ravven Writes Introduction for Spinoza Book

April 1, 2005
The Barnes and Noble edition of Spinoza's Ethics and The Improvement of the Understanding, with an introduction by Professor of Religious Studies Heidi M. Ravven, has been published. Ravven's Ford Foundation funded project on Rethinking Ethics and Civil Society via Spinoza, Buddhists, Navajos and Moslems will take her to southern California to interview experts and members of the Japanese Buddhist community, immigrant Moslems, Spinoza scholars and philosophers on non-mainstream ideas of freedom. Ravven is completing the planning year of her Ford Foundation project.

Cannavo Chairs Section at Western Political Science Association Meeting

March 29, 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo attended the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in Oakland, Calif., from March 16-19. He chaired the environmental political theory section, which entailed selecting paper and panel proposals and organizing the section's seven panels. At the conference, he participated in an annual workshop on Environmental Political Theory. He also presented a paper titled, "Virtu-Based Politics and Environmental Values: Contemporary Political Thought Confronts Stability, Place, and ... Ruddy Ducks."  More ...

Tewksbury to Lecture on Mars Exploration Rover Program

March 28, 2005
Barbara Tewksbury, the William R. Kenan Professor of Geosciences,will give a free public lecture, "Field Work on an Alien Planet: the Stunning Success of the Mars Exploration Rover Program," on Friday, April 1, at 4:10 p.m. in the Red Pit, Kirner-Johnson building at Hamilton.  More ...

Romaniello Gives Lecture at Harvard

March 27, 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor of History Matt Romaniello gave an invited lecture, "The Muscovite Empire: From Composite Monarchy to Unitary State," at the Davis Center for Eurasian Studies at Harvard University on March 11.

Woods to Premiere Composition With Albany Symphony Orchestra

March 23, 2005
"Cultured Wrinkles," a composition by Associate Professor of Music Michael "Doc" Woods, will be premiered by the Albany Symphony Orchestra's (ASO) ensemble, the Dogs of Desire, on Thursday, March 31, at 8 p.m. The concert will take place in Revolution Hall in Troy, N.Y. This is the second of three pieces that Woods will debut for the ASO in two years. In 2004 he premiered a musical update of the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" for the orchestra. His third piece will debut in December.  More ...

Yao Awarded ACLS Fellowship

March 17, 2005
Assistant Professor of English Steven Yao has been awarded an American Council on Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship. It was awarded for Yao's project, Foreign Accents: From the Language of Race to the Poetics of Ethnicity in Chinese American Verse, 1910-Present. Yao says, "This study analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which various Chinese American writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity. Combining such analysis with extensive social contextualization, Foreign Accents thus delineates an historical poetics of Chinese American verse from its beginnings in the early 20th century to our contemporary moment."  More ...

Isserman Writes, Edits Textbook Exploring North America, 1800-1900

March 16, 2005
Professor of History Maurice Isserman is the author and an editor of a new textbook, Exploring North America, 1800-1900 (Facts on File, 3/05). According to the publisher, the book traces the history of the exploration of western North America during the 19th century, an immensely complicated story involving thousands of individuals over a territory of millions of square miles, and the impact of that exploration on the national histories of both the United States and Canada.  More ...

Terrell Gives Paper at American Comparative Literature Association

March 15, 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Katherine Terrell participated in a panel on "Medieval Canonicity" at the American Comparative Literature Association conference at Pennsylvania State University, March 11-13. She presented a paper titled "Literary Genealogy and Poetic Authority in Dunbar's Verse."

Wheatley to Lecture at Cornell

March 14, 2005
Professor of English Edward Wheatley will give a lecture drawn from his book project, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability, for Quodlibet, the student medieval studies group at Cornell University, on Thursday, March 17 at 4:30 p.m. He is also a visiting scholar at Cornell this year.

Aronoff Presents at International Studies Association Conference

March 14, 2005
Assistant Professor of Government Yael Aronoff recently participated in two panels at the International Studies Association Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, March 1-5. She presented a paper titled "Leadership and Foreign Policy Change: The Enigma of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon" on the panel, Leaders and Leadership in Foreign Policy Decision Making. Aronoff also chaired and acted as a discussant on another panel, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Foreign Policy Decision Making.

Students, Professor Present Atmospheric Chemistry, Cancer Research

March 11, 2005
Winslow Professor and Chair of Chemistry George Shields and Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Karl Kirschner attended the 45th Sanibel Symposium on Atomic, Molecular, Biophysical, and Condensed Matter Theory, March 5-10, at St. Simons Island, Ga. They were accompanied by their research students, Tim Evans '05, Katrina Lexa '05, Frank Pickard '05 and Meghan Dunn '06. Lexa won the award for top undergraduate student poster at the conference.  More ...

Cheng Li Publishes Book, Bridging Minds Across the Pacific

March 10, 2005
Bridging Minds Across the Pacific, a new book edited by Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, offers an examination of Chinese students who have studied in the U.S. since the late 1970s and have returned to China. This volume of essays focuses on how these students have contributed to shaping their home country, especially in social science curricular development, program-building, research and public policy formation.

Kodat Teaching in Budapest as Fulbright Lecturer

March 7, 2005
Associate Professor of English Catherine Gunther Kodat has begun a one-semester grant as a Fulbright lecturer in the department of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem in Budapest, Hungary (ELTE). Kodat also had an essay published recently in the UK. "Disney's Song of the South and the Birth of the White Negro" appears in the collection American Cold War Culture.  More ...

Krueger Presents Keynote Address at Illinois Medieval Association

March 7, 2005
Professor of French Roberta Krueger, current director of the Hamilton Junior Year in France, presented a keynote address at the 22nd annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association titled "Identity Begins at Home: Female Conduct and the Failure of Counsel in Late Medieval France." During the December break, she served as chair of the delegate assembly organizing committee at the Modern Language Association's meeting in Philadelphia.  More ...

House Presents Research, Wins Best Undergraduate Paper Award at Society for Cross-Cultural Research

March 7, 2005
Christy House '06 attended the 34th annual meeting for the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, along with her advisor, Professor of Anthropology Doug Raybeck, in Santa Fe, N.M., Feb. 23-27. She presented her research paper, "A Study Using Levels of Analysis to Interpret Women's Possession Cases," and received the award for the best undergraduate student paper.  More ...

Rabinowitz Gives Two Talks at Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics

March 7, 2005
Professor of Comparative Literature Peter Rabinowitz gave talks at the STAR conference ("Science, Theater, Audience, Reader") held at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on March 3 and 4. The event was intended to foster exchange among the sciences, the arts and the humanities.  More ...

Adair and ACCESS Students Present at Sarah Lawrence Conference

March 7, 2005
Vivyan Adair, the Elihu Root Associate Professor of Women's Studies and director of the ACCESS project, and four ACCESS students comprised the plenary panel at Women's Stories, Women's Lives: Making Sense of Experience, a conference held March 4-5 at Sarah Lawrence College. Their panel was titled "The Missing Story of Ourselves." The students on the panel were Paulette Brown, Nolita Clark, Rose Cotrich Perez and Shannon Stanfield. The purpose of the conference was to seek to understand women's lives by examining the stories they tell about themselves and others.

Martin Publishes Article in The Journal of the Early Republic

March 7, 2005
Assistant Professor of Government Rob Martin published an article, "Reforming Republicanism: Alexander Hamilton's Theory of Republican Citizenship and Press Liberty," in The Journal of the Early Republic 25 (Spring 2005): 21-46.

Erdinc Awarded Syracuse University Maxwell School Grant to Develop Course

March 4, 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Didar Erdinc has been awarded a curriculum development grant from the Syracuse University Maxwell School European Union Center. Erdinc will use the grant to develop a new course on "Law and Economics in the EU," with a specific emphasis on the anti-trust legislation in the EU and its competition policy.  More ...

Hamilton Orchestra Presents Third Annual Brainstorm! Concert on March 6

March 3, 2005
The Hamilton College Orchestra will present the third annual Brainstorm! concert on Sunday, March 6 at 3 p.m. at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts. Conducted by Heather Buchman, this narrated concert, titled Brainstorm! An Exploration of Music and Nature, will focus on how composers are influenced by the environment. The program for this concert will include Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral," Mahler's Blumine, and Aaron Copland's Down a Country Lane. This concert is free and open to the public.  More ...

Shields and Kirschner Publish Article in Journal of Quantum Chemistry

March 2, 2005
Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields and Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Karl Kirschner published an article in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry titled "Pople's Gaussian-3 model chemistry applied to an investigation of (H2O)8 water clusters." This work was co-authored by Mary Beth Day '07. Day worked on this project during the summers of 2003 and 2004, and during her freshman year. The research in this eight-page article describes a water cube and other isomers of eight waters, and demonstrates that the G3 model chemistry method developed by Nobel Laureate John Pople yields accurate structures and energies for this hydrogen-bonded system. Water clusters are of great interest to atmospheric chemists. The paper was published in a special memorial issue dedicated to John Pople.

Wheatley Lectures on Blindness in Medieval France and England at Ohio State

March 2, 2005
Professor of English Edward Wheatley visited a graduate seminar, "Women and Disability," and gave an invited lecture on his work on blindness at the Humanities Institute at Ohio State University on February 24. The lecture was taken from the research for his current book project, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability, which has won fellowships for 2004-05 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.  More ...

Cheng Li Participates in Panel Discussion at Harvard

March 2, 2005
Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, participated in the panel discussion "Look Hu's in Charge Now: Leadership in China," at Harvard University, Feb. 25. Joseph Fewsmith, professor of international relations and political science at Boston University, was also a panelist. The discussion was sponsored by the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.

Gane Presents Paper at British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference

March 1, 2005
Assistant Professor of English Gillian Gane presented a paper titled "Indianizing Devonshire: Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen's Plagiarized Novel" at the 14th annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference in Savannah, Ga., in February.

Yao Selected as Stanford Humanities Center Junior Faculty Fellow

March 1, 2005
Assistant Professor of English Steven Yao has been selected as a Stanford Humanities Center External Junior Faculty Fellow for 2005-06. The award involves a 10-month residency, from September to June, at the Stanford Humanities Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Yao was chosen as one of eight fellows from more than 250 applicants. During his fellowship, he will be completing a book, which is tentatively titled Foreign Accents: From the Language of Race to the Poetics of Ethnicity in Chinese American Verse, 1910-Present.  More ...