"This is an exciting moment for Jewish studies,” said Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, in her introduction to a Reunion Weekend panel on “Jewish Studies at Cornell, Today and Tomorrow,” held June 10 in the Physical Sciences Building.The panel included Jonathan Boyarin, Jewish Studies Program director, and Kim Haines-Eitzen, incoming director of the Religious Studies Program.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Researchers from varied disciplines are tackling the topic of inequality — asking questions about its sources and its impacts, as well as the policies and movements under way to reduce it.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Math matters in important ways, and each year Cornell’s Department of Mathematics sponsors a public lecture to illustrate just how much. This lecture takes place during the national Mathematics Awareness Month, with the goal of increasing public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. This year’s lecture, held April 29 in Malott Hall, featured assistant math professor Lionel Levine on “The Future of Prediction.”
We are constantly bombarded with linguistic input, but our brains are unable to remember long strings of linguistic information. How does the brain make sense of this ongoing deluge of sound?
"Barbarians Rising,” a new History Channel series, dramatizes the stories of nine of history’s greatest warriors as they fight for freedom – and to ensure accuracy the filmmakers turned to Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
On May 22, Ithaca High School (IHS) seniors presented the mathematics research projects they did as part of the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all of the IHS math classes. The seminar meets at the high school and is taught by three graduate mathematics or applied mathematics students each year, to introduce high-school students to three mathematics topics they normally would not see until college.
College of Arts and Sciences faculty member Sarah Murray received the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, and Linda Nicholson received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at a May 28 trustee-faculty dinner which recognized universitywide teaching and advising and newly tenured faculty.
Two of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars – Michael Klarman and Michael Dorf – offered their thoughts on the history of the U.S. Constitution at a panel during the May 26 Klarman Hall dedication.Interim President Hunter Rawlings, Cornell president emeritus and professor emeritus of classics, opened the panel he moderated with reflections on James Madison, America’s “greatest scholar-president.”
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
A conference on the writing of Bolivian author Edmundo Paz-Soldán, professor of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies, was held at the University of Seville, Spain, on May 25. The conference explored Paz-Soldán’s “narrative path,” and featured speakers from Spain, France, Bolivia and Belgium.
“Me, my partner and [Flaubert’s] ‘Sentimental Education’ were on vacation in the south of France. And it wasn’t pretty,” said literary theorist Paul Fleming during the May 26 “Transformative Humanities: Faculty Reflections on Life-Changing Creative Works” panel celebrating the dedication of Klarman Hall.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Vikram Gadagkar MS ’10, PhD ‘13 was recently awarded a prestigious three-year, $234,150 Simons Foundation fellowship with the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB). SCGB seeks to expand understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Cornell's Topology Festival may be the longest running annual conference on a specific topic in math in the United States. The 52nd Topology Festival was held May 13-15 in Mallott Hall, with speakers from Israel, Germany, Sweden, and across the United States addressing topics in topological combinatorics.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
In government professor Jonathan Kirshner’s new novel Urban Flight, the Big Apple is in Big Trouble: New York City is on the edge of bankruptcy, crime is out of control, the streets are gridlocked, and the corruption is so thick protagonist Jason Sims, a traffic helicopter pilot, can see it from the sky.
Michael Lynch ‘70, professor of science & technology studies, has been awarded the 2016 J. D. Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for his “long-term and highly influential contribution to Science and Technology Studies and to the intellectual life of 4S.”
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Alex Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, will receive the 2016 Zeldovich Medal, in Commission B (planets) from COSPAR (Committee on Space Research for the International Council of Science) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The award is given to young scientists who have demonstrated excellence and achievement in their field of research.Hayes will be presented with the award at the inaugural ceremony of the 41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly on August 1 in Istanbul, Turkey.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Jonathan Boyarin, the Hendrix Director of Jewish Studies, the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of anthropology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR). The AAJR was founded in 1919 and includes about one hundred of the most eminent scholars of Jewish Studies in North America.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Identity goes far beyond belonging to a particular group according to race, religion or sexual orientation, faculty say, and it's more complicated today than ever before.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Migration is one of the major forces shaping the world today, with more than 60 million displaced people.“Never in history have we seen this many simultaneous displacements across the globe and these people are not going home any time soon,” says Mostafa Minawi, assistant professor of history and Himan Brown Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. “This is a global population redistribution and it will hit us whether we like it or not.”
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Artists today engage with a world very different from that of their predecessors: globally connected, technologically advanced and highly diverse. In the last fifty years the Western canon has been displaced as the benchmark for “good” and worthwhile art, opening the door to works intended to challenge viewers, rather than simply to aesthetically please.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
N’Dri Assié-Lumumba, professor of Africana, recently co-edited a special issue of the International Review of Education-Journal of Lifelong Learning (IRE) titled, “Rediscovering the Ubuntu Paradigm in Education," Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) and Dr. joan.Osa Oviawe (visiting scholar at Cornell) were co–editors.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Isabel Hull has received a Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law for her book, “A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War” (Cornell, 2014). The award, for “a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship,” was presented at the ASIL’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in March.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Jennifer Maclaughlin has been named the new Assistant Dean and Director of Arts & Sciences Career Development. In her role, she will design and implement strategies to support the career development of A&S undergraduates at all stages in their education: as they engage in career planning, obtain experiential learning, consider and pursue graduate school options, and conduct job searches.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Historian Mary Beth Norton has been nominated for president-elect of the American Historical Association, the principal umbrella organization for the profession. If elected, she would serve as president beginning in January 2018, for one year. The results of the on-line election are expected in July.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Is language innate? How did we get language? While researchers continue to debate, a new book offers a revolutionary, unifying framework for understanding the processing, acquisition and evolution of language. The book, “Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing” by Cornell Professor of Psychology Morten H.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Hear faculty explain gravitational waves and ponder this year's election mayhem — while connecting with old friends and making new Cornell memories — at Reunion 2016.
Technology has changed all aspects of our lives, even ancient fields of study in the humanities. The College of Arts and Sciences’ fourth Big Ideas Panel, part of its New Century for the Humanities celebration, explored technology in the humanities March 15 in Klarman Hall’s Groos Family Atrium.
Science Foundation Ireland presented its prestigious St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal March 16 to Séamus Davis, Cornell’s James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences. The presentation was made by Charles Flanagan, Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, as part of St. Patricks’ Day celebrations in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other country in the world, with dire social and economic consequences for the incarcerated, their children and those who work in the criminal justice system. In his new book, “Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World” (Cambridge University Press), Peter Enns sheds new light on why.
Lucinda Ramberg has been awarded the first Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize by the Association for Feminist Anthropology (AFA) for her book Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion (Duke University Press).
Gerard Aching, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, sees connections between the messages in two popular books and the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
The mind that thinks our thoughts is a pretty special place. But is it distinct from the brain? Is there, in fact, a soul directing our thoughts or are they determined entirely by the output of our biology? Could that mouse scampering through your garden be thinking deep thoughts, or are humans really special?
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Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
Media studies research and teaching at Cornell elaborates on traditional techniques of scholarship, bringing in new objects of analysis and combining disciplines.
William D. Adams, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will deliver the Society for the Humanities’ annual Future of the Humanities Lecture Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 5 p.m. in Klarman Hall Auditorium. His topic: “The Common Good and the NEH at 50.”
Once, she soared above the heads of Cornell greats like A.A. Ammons and Roald Hoffmann as they debated the great questions of their time in the Cast Gallery of Goldwin Smith, later turned into the Temple of Zeus café. Then for years she lay forgotten, abandoned to dust and mold and neglect.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
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Arts & Sciences Communications
For 50 years, the Society for the Humanities has fostered path-breaking scholarship in the humanities. It has sponsored numerous internal grants, workshops and funding opportunities for Cornell faculty and graduate students in the humanities, as well as hosting over 100 annual lectures, workshops, colloquia and conferences organized by Cornell’s distinguished humanities faculty.
Oil shapes human life and affects human values in profoundly connected ways across the planet. Yet rarely is oil – or other forms of energy – considered beyond technology and policy. A Feb. 26 symposium, “Oil and the Human: Views From the East and South,” will consider the relationship of oil with everyday life, human choices, politics and art across Africa, Latin America, Russia and East Asia. The event will be held in the A.D. White House from 1-4 p.m.
The College, the ILR school and other partners at Cornell will examine the nature of capitalism through conferences, digital archives, a proposed minor and other new initiatives.
