A group of sleepy students tumbled out of bed early one Saturday morning in April 2015 to board a bus with me from Ithaca to New York City’s renowned Lincoln Center Theatre. There, thanks to funding from the Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) and the history department’s Polenberg fund, we attended a matinee performance of the famous Rogers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I. Afterwards, the…
Chiara Formichi, assistant professor of Asian studies, is celebrating the release of her new book, “Shi’ism in South East Asia” (Hurst & Co./Oxford University Press; co-edited with R. Michael Feener, 2015).
This edited volume is the first book available in any language that approaches Sunni and Shi’a Muslims’ devotion in Southeast Asia as forms of ‘Alid piety, discussing their modern…
Irving Goh PhD ’12, was recently awarded the named the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Literary from the Modern Language Association for his book, “The Reject: Community, Politics, And Religion After The Subject.”The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work in its field — a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a…
Hundreds of students, faculty and community members braved a foggy, rainy night Dec. 2 for a behind-the-scenes look at the New Horizons mission to Pluto, given by mission scientists Cathy Olkin and Ann Harch in the Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall.“New Horizons represents a particular milestone because it is the completion of mankind’s initial exploration of the solar system,” said Phil…
Patrick Braga ’17 spent a little more than a year working on his chamber opera, “La Tricotea (Opus 25),” which will premiere Dec. 3 with 16 student vocalists and instrumentalists.“This was a project out of my own passion for composition and to convince people that opera doesn’t have to be a boring ordeal,” said Braga, who was inspired by a music history course with Professor Judith Peraino and a…
“Why is your music important to you? How much time do you spend listening to music per day? How many songs per day do you listen to? How important is your music to you?”Ron Hoy, Mersamer Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior, quizzed a group of 35 students on those questions and more when they gathered Nov. 11 for a Bethe Ansatz after-dinner conversation, “Building a life worth living.” Hoy…
Wendy Leutert, a doctoral candidate in the field of government and international relations, has won a 2015-16 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. A total of 86 fellowships were awarded this year.The fellowship supports research in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six to 12 months. Priority is given to projects that deepen research knowledge on…
Scientific explanations can at times feel dull and impenetrable, a frustration shared by anyone who has sat through a high school science lecture. But a group of Cornell alumni thinks communicating the joys of science can be exciting, and they've launched a YouTube series with the conviction that science can be edgy, informative and far from boring.Created by Molly Edwards '12 (CALS), Silviana…
In the summer of 1998, Henry Korn '68 got a phone call from a young lawyer and fellow Cornellian that changed his life."You won't believe what I'm seeing here," Korn recalls being told by Jonathan Rauchway '94, an associate at Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, an old-line New York law firm founded in 1929. "I'm seeing an enormous collection of bound and unbound papers that were the late…
Say you’ve got some money to invest and you’re trying to figure out if the stock market will go up or down. Should you ask one expert’s advice? Or should you ask lots of people what they think?Although it may seem counterintuitive, you’ll likely get the best estimate of stock market volatility by asking many investors rather than one trusted financial adviser. Research shows that averaging the…
From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, a new book by anthropology professor Adam Smith sheds light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.In “The Political Machine” (Princeton University Press), Smith demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of…
Heroine, cold-blooded murderer or victim?About the year 1000, Norse explorers were the first Europeans to reach North America. Two versions of this Norse discovery were written down some 200-300 years later, with both sagas telling of a woman named Freydis – but the versions differ starkly.In “The Greenlanders’ Saga,” Freydis is a mass murderer, stirring up strife between two factions, then…
No matter how neglected the child, there’s still hope – at least for prairie voles.That’s the message of a new study from a Cornell psychologist that could have implications for human health and well-being. And the same researcher working with prairie voles, has shed light on why some animals behave differently from their peers in social contexts.In the first study, a lack of social interaction…
If your kids ever brought home some Oobleck from school, you had a glimpse of a long-standing scientific controversy. Next time, you can just have fun with it, knowing that the argument is over. Cornell physicists have finally explained what makes Oobleck so weird.Oobleck – named by the creators of the popular grade-school project for a gooey substance that fell from the sky in a Dr. Seuss story …
Griffin Smith-Nichols ’19 spent three nights last week cowering on a set of lounge chairs in the Schwartz Center’s Black Box Theatre. The Arts and Sciences student played the slightly mad, mostly murderous and often humorous Orestes in this semester’s Department of Classics production of the Euripides play.The play, filled with maniacal rants, lots of fake swords and sabers and a few Southern…
“Fiction can transform a particular history into art of universal significance,” author and Kappa Alpha Professor of English Robert Morgan said Nov. 19 in “History and Fiction: The Growth of an Artist – Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set A Watchman’,” a talk in Goldwin Smith Hall.Prior to its publication this year, “Go Set a Watchman,” written in 1957, was promoted as a sequel to Lee’s beloved “To Kill a…
More than 125 students spent last weekend in Sage and Olin Halls, brainstorming, coding and meeting with community nonprofits as they sought solutions to problems as part of the Random Hacks of Kindness event Nov. 13.Sponsored byEntrepreneurship at Cornell and Accenture, the event included 10 nonprofit partners who pitched problems to students, kicking off two days of hacking that ended in final…
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Tanzania, Honduras, Thailand…Cornell students span the globe in public engagement projects and study abroad. Last year, students working overseas to provide safe drinking water, manage flooding, and provide support in hospitals had an extra boost from Jumpstart courses, a new kind of language program designed just for them.The one-credit, one-hour-a-week Jumpstart courses enable students going…
On her debut solo album, “Routes of Evanescence,” violinist Ariana Kim showcases six works by pioneering American women composers spanning three generations. Kim and guests Ieva Jokubaviciute (piano, harpsichord) and Jennifer Curtis (mandolin, violin) will perform live excerpts from the album and offer commentary on the pieces at a pre-release concert Sunday, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. at the Carriage…
Alice in Wonderland is 150 years old this year but the ever-young adventurer recently led Cornell researchers to a part of the brain that helps listeners understand her story.Cornell faculty member John Hale’s study, “Modeling fMRI time courses with linguistic structure at various grain sizes,” published in Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics,…
With a residency from Chinese artists and visitors offering lectures and workshops on global performance traditions, the Department of Performing and Media Arts has expanded its international learning opportunities this fall.The next visitor to the Schwartz Center will be Diana Looser PhD ‘09, who specializes in theatre of the Pacific islands. Looser will visit Nov. 23 to deliver a public lecture…
When Karen Jaime graduated from Cornell in 1997, she never thought she’d be back. But now she’s an assistant professor with a joint appointment in performing and media arts and Latino studies, and her former adviser and mentors are colleagues and friends.“It’s been an incredible bonus for me to be an alum,” says Jaime. “I understand worrying about a prelim; I understand thinking about fall break…
One of the pressures college students face daily is what to do after graduation, especially with the amount of options available today. The physics department hosted a Physics Career Day on October 24, which brought together successful physics alumni, graduate and undergraduate students to explore what paths are available for students with a physics degree."This program is really to stimulate…
While studies have shown that humans may have an innate fear of snakes, such trepidation appears to have eluded Joe Fetcho, a Cornell neurobiologist.Fetcho’s childhood fascination for understanding snake locomotion eventually led him to his calling: using zebrafish to answer questions of how neuronal circuits in vertebrate brains produce behaviors.Though Fetcho began graduate school intent on…
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Visiting Professor of Anthropology Terence Sheldon Turner, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, died Nov. 7 at Cayuga Medical Center of a brain hemorrhage. He was 79.“Terry was a truly eminent anthropologist and one of the most insightful thinkers of his generation,” said Adam Smith, chair and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts & Sciences. “Terry’s…
Just because Cornell University is nonsectarian doesn’t mean its founders objected to the discussion, practice or study of religion.In fact, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White both recognized religion’s importance, and White was an avid collector of religious texts, from 15th-century prayer books to a first edition of the Book of Mormon. Their once-controversial views inspired the latest…
Liliana Colanzi, a Ph.D. candidate in the field of comparative literature, received the Premio Aura Estrada de Literatura during the Oaxaca Book Fair on October 30, an award given to Spanish-language authors under 35 who live in Mexico and the United States. The prize includes an award of $10,000, publication of an article by Colanzi in Granta Magazine, and two months in each of four writers…
Anthropology professor P. Steven Sangren has been awarded the Boyer Prize from the Society for Psychological Anthropology (SPA). The award, which includes a $500 cash prize, will be announced at the AAA’s Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, on November 20.The SPA is one of the largest sections of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the primary professional organization for…
N'Dri T. Assié-Lumumba, professor of Africana Studies, together with Nathan Andrews (University of Alberta, Canada) and Nene Ernest Khalema (Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa), has released the edited volume "Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Retrospect: Africa's Development Beyond 2015" (Springer, 2015).
The book examines the impact that the Millennium Development Goals …
More than 180 middle school and high school students gathered at Cornell on Saturday, October 24 to attend classes taught by the university’s undergraduate and graduate students for Splash! at Cornell.Splash! at Cornell invites youth to the Ithaca campus to learn about virtually any field, from the social sciences and arts/humanities, to engineering, math, computer science and the physical…
Freshmen:Every student in Arts & Sciences is assigned a faculty advisor and advising dean. Take advantage of the resources around you! If you’re unsure about what classes to enroll in or have a tentative schedule that you’d like someone to look over, schedule an appointment with your advising dean or contact your faculty advisor (available on Student Center under “program advisor”). Every…
In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, neighbors killed lifelong neighbors, husbands killed wives and parents killed children. It was an intimate conflict, according to Philip Gourevitch ’86, staff writer for The New Yorker and an experienced reporter on the Rwandan genocide.Before the conflict, members of the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority lived as neighbors and intermarried. When the national…
As friends and scholars, doctoral students Elizabeth (Liz) Wayne and Christine (Xine) Yao found common ground amid their academic and cultural differences through a mutual fascination with myriad topics, from pop culture to how to survive in academia. And now, they discuss them for a worldwide audience every week.The African-American cancer scientist from Mississippi and the Chinese-Canadian…
Kenneth A. McClane ’73, quoting Montaigne’s essay on friendship, spoke of how “in a child’s self-involvement, he or she remembers whether someone was generous, kind or mean-spirited” in his Phi Beta Kappa lecture Oct. 28, and recounted his family’s role in the Civil Rights movement and how Duke Ellington often let him sit on his knee while playing the piano.McClane, the W.E.B. DuBois Professor…
“India has 26 official languages, but when I teach Indian literature, students can only access a very few works in English translation,” laments Anindita Banerjee, associate professor of comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences. “There are reams of other excellent literature I haven’t been able to teach because it’s not translated. Translation is critical to the transmission of…
Travis Gosa, assistant professor of Africana Studies, together with Erik Nielson (University of Richmond) will release their new edited volume “The Hip Hop & Obama Reader” (Oxford University Press), this November.“The Hip Hop & Obama Reader” is the first hip hop anthology to center on contemporary politics, activism, and social change. The volume includes a range of new perspectives from…
Cornell Neurotech, a collaboration between the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, will launch thanks to a multimillion dollar seed grant from the Mong Family Foundation, through Stephen Mong ’92, MEN ’93, MBA ’02. The goal of Cornell Neurotech is to develop technologies and powerful new tools needed to reveal the inner workings of the human brain, with a particular focus on how…
When Samantha Sheppard, assistant professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, contemplated the movies she would include in a fall film and speaker series on Black cinema, she had a tough time choosing only five.“When we think about American cinema, we often push African American cinema out of that frame,” she said. “But African Americans have been in this game for a long time. If…
When Marilyn Jacox, Ph.D. ’56, applied for tenure-track positions at 75 universities in the late 1950s, she could only get interest from women’s schools.“Even a Ph.D. at Cornell didn’t open the doors at any of those universities,” said Anneke Sengers, an emeritus fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where Jacox spent most of her career as a pioneer and driving force in…
On a recent trip to Budapest, Malcolm Bilson, the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music Emeritus, received The Order of the Hungarian Gold Cross, an award given each year to seven or eight foreigners who are distinguished artists, scientists, writers and others for their contribution to Hungarian intellectual and cultural life.According to the citation letter, signed by the President of the…
With tens of thousands of migrants entering Slovenia this last week, Europe is scrambling for a solution. The European Commission called for a mini-summit on Sunday, but Cornell University sociologist Mabel Berezin says that despite the effort to bring states together, the crisis might be the last nail in the European Union’s coffin. “No matter what the European Union emergency summit on…
Andrew Willford, associate professor of anthropology, is a faculty member who led a group of seven Cornell students who studied and worked at the Nilgiris Field Learning Center in Tamil Nadu in southern India as part of a brand-new semester abroad program, which includes indigenous communities in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Read more about the project in this Ezra Magazine article.
Travis Gosa is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, and is affiliated with the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality. Gosa says that the study, “Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes” that shows boys from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer more than girls from the same backgrounds is most important for its focus on how poor…
During his time at Cornell, Udai Tambar '97 conducted research on nutritional science, played intramural sports and majored in both chemistry and Asian studies. Today, he plays an instrumental role in shaping New York City’s public policies as chief of staff to the deputy mayor for health and human services.To say that his path has been unpredictable would be an understatement, but Tambar…
Arvind Manocha '94, leads the Wolf Trap Foundation, a D.C. hub of music, theater and education, and lives in Virginia.Why D.C? The opportunity to run one our country's most unique arts organizations. Wolf Trap Foundation is many things – a partner in America's only National Park devoted to the performing arts, a provider of early childhood arts education across the country and a fabulous training…
Professor Emeritus of Music Marice Wilbur Stith, who as director of bands conducted the Cornell University Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band over his 23-year Cornell career, died Oct. 7 at Cayuga Medical Center after a long illness. He was 89.A member of the Department of Music faculty as a professor of performance from 1966 to 1989, Stith also directed the Big Red Marching Band and taught brass…
“Time,” this year’s theme for the Society for the Humanities, was chosen to mark both Cornell’s sesquicentennial and the society’s 50th anniversary. The society’s annual theme conference, Oct. 23-24 in the A.D. White House, was titled “Celebrating Society@50: Time, on the Critical Edge,” and featured international speakers as well as Cornell faculty.“The humanities are a transformational force,…
Back in 1972, Benjamin Franco Suarez was diligently working toward his doctorate in sociology at Cornell, studying the fertility behavior of Bolivian women as part of his work on demography, economic development in developing countries and Latin American studies.He passed his B exams, but needed money and a job, so he took what he thought would be a short leave of absence to earn some money,…
Three young Cornell researchers have won National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Awards. Part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, the awards provide up to $1.5 million over five years for innovative, high-impact projects.Melissa Warden in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Jesse Goldberg in the College of Arts and Sciences, both assistant…
From last Wednesday to Dec. 8, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), also known affectionately as the “world’s coolest microscope” by CHESS Director Prof. Joel Brock, applied and engineering physics, will be holding a scheduled x-ray run for users around the nation. CHESS is a high-intensity x-ray source funded by the National Science Foundation that is operated and managed by the…
