In an article published by the Huffington Post, Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature Daniel R. Schwarz speaks to parents about what they need to know about the college experience. Here are a few highlights:
Edward E. Baptist, associate professor of history, discussed slavery’s continued legacy in American social and political structures at a Tuesday talk titled “Abolitionism, Modern ‘Anti-Slavery’ and #BlackLivesMatter,” and covered in this Cornell Daily Sun story.
To review current astrobiological knowledge and assess the prospects of life beyond Earth, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology heard testimony Sept. 29 in Washington, D.C., from Cornell’s Jonathan Lunine and three other space experts on the reasons, ways and means for space exploration’s next steps.
To feed the world’s burgeoning population, producers must grow crops in more challenging terrain – where plant roots must cope with barriers. To that end, Cornell University physicists and Boyce Thompson Institute plant biologists have uncovered a valuable plant root action, in that roots – when their downward path is blocked, as often occurs in rocky soil – display a “grow and switch” behavior, now reported in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When David S. Cohen ’85 was a student at Cornell, he was active in the Peace Studies Program as president of the Cornell Civil Liberties Union. He helped negotiate agreements between Cornell officials and apartheid protestors and stood on the steps of Willard Straight Hall to support ROTC members who had been kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation.
In light of Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United States, Vincent Ialenti, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow and a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, and Annelise Riles, a professor of anthropology, encouraged people in this NPR column to read the letter he wrote to all of us, Laudato Si.
In her new book, The Ethical Dimension of the Decameron, Marilyn Migiel, professor and chair of the Romance Studies department, examines the dialogue about ethical choices that Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron generates for readers.
Travis Gosa, an assistant professor of Africana Studies, and co-author Erik Nielson, an assistant professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond, explore the relationship between Obama and hip-hop in the Washington Post article, “Obama and hip-hop: a breakup song.”
Alejandro L. Madrid, associate professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Music, has released a new book, In search of Julian Carrillo and Sonido 13 (Oxford University Press). Madrid’s research on popular and art music, dance and expressive culture from Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the circum-Caribbean focuses on the intersection of modernity, tradition, globalization and identity.
Jessica Chen Weiss, associate professor of government, is interviewed in this New York Times Q&A about Chinese President Xi Jinping's brand of nationalism and how that has played out in China.
What began as a project for two Cornell students working on an event for Human Rights Month has transformed into a play that will be previewed this weekend in Ithaca before moving to an off-Broadway theatre.
When members from the Cornell Glee Club’s 1966 tour of Southeast Asia joined the current singers on stage Sept. 19 at Bailey Hall, passion poured through the music. The audience replied with a standing ovation, making it a Homecoming concert for the ages.
by :
Lori Sonken
,
Institute for the Social Sciences
An interdisciplinary team of Cornell scholars is collaborating on a new project, The Causes, Consequence and Future of Mass Incarceration in the United States, supported by the Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) and led by Peter Enns, associate professor of government.
Governments have been known to lie and while sometimes the lies are small, other times they can be large. As social scientists explore why governments lie, Andrew White, a professor of government, explains in this Boston Globe story that even when the government lies, a proportion of the population believes that information, putting pressure on others who don't.
On Monday, Oct. 5, leading human rights lawyers and prison ethnographers will gather for an international symposium to discuss “Carceral Worlds and Human Rights across the Americas” at the Africana Studies and Research Center, 310 Triphammer Road, from 10 a.m. to noon.
This story from The Space Reporter focuses on a team of scientists developing a mission to Saturn's moon Enceladus that would return samples from its flowing geysers.Those scientists include Jonathan Lunine, professor of astronomy, who is also principal investigator on another mission to Enceladus, which is searching for life in the geyser's plumes.
Joseph Margulies, professor of government and law, writes in this column in Verdict about the lack of alternatives to the criminal justice system in the U.S., which he says has gone "horribly awry."
A new lecture series at California State University Long Beach that brings ethnic U.S. writers to campus will be named after Helena Viramontes, professor and director of creative writing in Cornell’s Department of English.
Ithaca is dotted with buried Native American sites, according to Kurt Jordan, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts & Sciences, who also has an appointment with theAmerican Indian Program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.Yet these sites are incredibly difficult to comprehend because centuries of residential and commercial development has altered the landscape.
When director Sam Gold ’00 thinks about whether he wants to take on a new project, it’s all about the challenge of creating something meaningful.“I want to start with what I believe in and care about, a subject matter that speaks to me or a formal challenge that pushes me as an artist,” he says.
Allen Carlson, associate professor of government, writes in The National Interest that China's major problem is how its government handles its own citizens, not how is handles neighboring countries.
Assistant Professor Kyle Lancaster of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology was recently granted an award from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program.
George Paul Hess, professor emeritus of biochemistry in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, College of Arts & Sciences, died on September 9 at home in Ithaca. Friends and colleagues are invited to a memorial service at 2 pm on Saturday, November 7 in the chapel of Annabel Taylor Hall. A reception will follow at 3 pm in the adjoining Founders Lounge.
Lecturer Katherine Howe of the American Studies Program released her YA novel "The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen" Sept. 15.This novel follows her New York Times bestseller novel "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane," and her YA debut novel "Conversion," which has been published in 25 languages.
Kate Manne, assistant professor of philosophy, writes in this New York Times piece about why she uses "trigger warnings" to let her students know when she's about to use content that might be troubling or disturbing for them.
Grant Farred, professor of English and Africana Studies, writes about the motivations for writing his latest book, Martin Heidegger Saved My Life (2015), in this piece on the University of Minnesota Press blog.
The National Science Foundation has selected the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) to be part of the newly established National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). Cornell will receive $8 million from the federal agency over five years.
Listen in as Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize winner and emeritus professor of chemistry, joins with other professors and students to discuss the intersection and integration of cross-disciplinary approaches to the subject of water, through community engagement in Greece, and a collaboration between Cornell and Oxford, in this video from Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.
Gretchen Ritter ’83, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, writes about democracy and inequality in this piece in The Cornell Daily Sun.
A memorial celebration Sept. 12 in Statler Auditorium brought together much of what M.H. “Mike” Abrams cherished – poetry, Elizabethan music, family, friends and colleagues.
Someone’s asked you a question, and halfway through it, you already know the answer. While you think you’re politely waiting for your chance to respond, new research shows that you’re actually more impatient than you realize.
As Prof. Derek Chang, history and Asian American studies, sees it, race is at the heart of American society. For Chang, racial tensions underlie problems throughout American history.Focusing on black-white relations in the American south and Chinese-white relations on the West Coast, Chang said he looks for similarities and differences in the way different regions treat race.Read more about his work in this Cornell Daily Sun piece.
Edward Baptist, associate professor of history, writes about his experience teaching college students about slavery, in this piece in the New York Times magazine.
Cornell Cinema's fall season includes a diverse array of special events and showings for movie fans of all genres.Cornell Cinema offers a classic movie going experience in the vintage Willard Straight Theatre and is considered one of the best campus film exhibition programs in the country, showing a wide variety of films every month, including recent hits, cult favorites, classics, world cinema and more. The cinema also hosts visiting filmmakers and live music/film events.
Mostafa Minawi,Cornell University assistant professor of history and director of the university’s Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative, says sending Syrian refugees to other Gulf countries because it is where they’d have a more ‘natural’ home makes the false assumption that race or ethnicity is more important than nationalisms.
William Provine, the Andrew H. and James L. Tisch Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Cornell, died Sept. 1 due to complications from a brain tumor at his home in Horseheads, New York. He was 73.Provine, a professor of the history of biology in the departments of History and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was born Feb. 19, 1942, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Michael Disare ’17 spent the summer as one of five undergrad researchers in Cornell’s Aye Lab, working with methods that are completely novel.Disare and his colleagues at the lab work on studying signaling pathways in cells, and how specific molecules, like oxidants, affect those pathways. “It’s the crossroads between chemistry and biology,” he says. “It’s almost like using chemistry as a tool for studying biology.”
This National Geographic story about how mate selection changes the brains of male prairie voles features research by Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexander Ophir. He discovered that while single male prairie voles could recognize other males, all single females seemed to look and smell alike to them.
Engaged Cornell has awarded its inaugural Engaged Curriculum Grants to 18 projects initiated by faculty across the university. The grants, totaling $930,299, support work that places community-engaged learning at the heart of the Cornell student experience.
