First-person essay from the spring 2021 undergraduate teaching assistant for course “The First American University” (AMST 2001) about how the class has allowed her to see Cornell as more than merely an institution.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Corey Ryan Earle ’07 began teaching the Cornell history course The First American University (AMST 2001) in spring 2011.
When Corey Ryan Earle ’07 began teaching the Cornell history course The First American University, he had several goals, including giving students a deep understanding and shared appreciation for Cornell’s uniqueness and many pioneering “firsts.” But he didn’t anticipate that 10 years later, the course would create a multigenerational, international community, thousands strong, connected by their ties to the university.
by :
Katya Hrichak
,
Cornell University Graduate School
Charlotte Logan, a doctoral student in linguistics, was recently selected as a Cobell Graduate Summer Research Fellow. Administered on behalf of the Cobell Board of Trustees by Indigenous Education, Inc., Logan is one of six fellows for 2021.
A Cornell-led collaboration identified an unusual behavior of superfluid helium-3 when it undergoes a phase transition between two different superfluid states – a transition that theoretically shouldn’t happen reliably.
Charlotte Logan is a doctoral student in linguistics from Syracuse, New York. She chose to pursue further study at Cornell due to its location in the Haudenosaunee homelands and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program.
Stella Ocker, a doctoral candidate in astronomy and space sciences, chose to pursue further study at Cornell due to the intellectually rigorous research and supportive environment.
An interdisciplinary team of Cornell researchers has created a cohort of new quantum metamaterials that can achieve superconductivity at temperatures competitive with state-of-the-art solid-state materials synthesis.
Faculty, staff and students awoke to an outsized display of positivity on May 14, finding the Arts Quad filled with more than 500 balloons anchored to messages of gratitude from Cornellians to each other.
The university’s acknowledgment states that the Ithaca campus is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ, also known as the Cayuga Nation.
“Regio (Royal),” a new theatre production that uses contemporary dance and puppetry to share stories about Latinx immigrant workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, premiers online May 21 and 23, produced by the Department of Performing and Media Arts, College of Arts and Sciences.
“Trap Door,” a “headphone walking play” open May 20-30 in downtown Ithaca, invites audiences to notice the streets they travel, says lead writer Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.
Valzhyna Mort, assistant professor of literatures in English, received the Rome Prize in Literature for 2021-2022. Mary Jane Dempsey, graduate student in the Department of Romance Studies, received the Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies.
The National Endowment for the Arts has approved a $30,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to the Department of Music to support a musical response to Freedom on the Move (FOTM), a database housing digitized, searchable fugitive slave advertisements.
CCAT Observatory, Inc.
Mod-Cam receiver for the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope.
More than a hundred people gathered virtually at the end of April for the 2021 annual conference on the CCAT-prime project, which is building the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) in Chile. “First light” is scheduled for 2023.
"Home may have become a dangerous place for democracy to flourish now," said Nobel prize–winning economist Amartya Sen, this year’s Bartels World Affairs Fellow. His May 5 lecture was hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians are likely to continue this week, as the Israeli military deploys additional forces near the Gaza Strip. Uriel Abulof, a visiting professor in Cornell University’s government department and professor at Tel-Aviv University, gives perspective.
Participants in a new class – designed to bring together formerly incarcerated and traditional Cornell students – have written, workshopped and performed an ensemble theatrical piece that will premiere online May 16.
NASA/JPL/Provided
In an artist's depiction, the Voyager 1 craft continues to cruise through interstellar space.
The May 4 episode of All Things Equal featured Derek Chang, Cornell Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies. Chang discussed the context and history of the rise in anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias during the past year.
Facebook’s Oversight Board voted to uphold the social media company’s suspension of former President Donald Trump on its platforms but insisted the company must review the suspension to determine an appropriate length of time and develop clearer policies to balance freedom of expression and public safety. Professor of government Sarah Kreps says that Facebook’s Oversight Board acts like a private firm without real accountability of its own and that its consequential decision making over Facebook’s policies require additional independent oversight.
On Monday, the Biden administration announced a significant increase in the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States. The announcement comes as the administration also begins to reunite parents separated from their children under the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Maria Cristina Garcia, professor of history and Latino studies, and Chiara Galli, sociologist and Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow, comment.
The April 28 event was part of the College's Distinguished Visiting Journalist Program, featuring journalists from the New York Times, Bloomberg, NPR and Science.
Four Commencement ceremonies were held May 29-30, spaced out to meet health guidelines. Though campus was less crowded, the campus mood was warm and celebratory.
The archives of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order (JPFO), which flourished for two decades before the Cold War, are now housed at Cornell’s Kheel Center, Catherwood Library. Videos from a December 2020 conference focused on the archives are now available online.
More than 30 students who have conducted research will present their work in a virtual conference May 6-7. One panel investigates the ideas of Goldwin Smith, while other presentations focus on migrant workers in Singapore, political violence in Africa and other topics.
In a Scientific American op-ed, sociologist Landon Schnabel reports that during the COVID-19 pandemic religion was good, on balance, for people’s mental health—but not so good for physical health.
Klarman Fellow Vijay Varma applied a new method of studying binary black holes to analyze data gathered by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors.
The Cornell Center for Social Sciences has awarded spring grants supporting research and conferences involving more than 30 faculty and researchers across campus, including collaborations within new and expanded superdepartments.
Ursa Space/provided
Dozens of oil tankers and commercial cargo ships line up at Great Bitter Lake to enter the Suez Canal in this early April satellite image
More than a dozen space industry leaders, capital investors, startup entrepreneurs, a Jet Propulsions Lab manager and Cornell professors gathered virtually for Cornell’s first Space Tech Industry Day/K.K. Wang Day symposium on April 23 – featuring this year’s event theme, “New Opportunities in Space Technology.”
Amartya Sen, professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, will give the annual Bartels World Affairs Lecture on May 5. His talk, “Attacks on Democracy,” is Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies; this year’s virtual lecture is part of the center’s democratic resilience global research priority.
by :
Peter K. Enns
Katherine Zaslavsky
,
Washington Post
Peter K. Enns, professor of government, and Katherine Zaslavsky, graduate student in sociology, write in the Washington Post that since the coronoavirus pandemic began, Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities have endured a spike in hate crimes, with elderly people attacked on the street and an Atlanta gunman killing eight people, six of them women of Asian descent. Are Americans aware of the trend? they ask.
Philosophy professor Shaun Nichols argues that we can explain many of the features of moral systems and how humans form them in terms of rational learning from evidence.
This fall, Cornell's new Yiddish program is setting its sights higher, riding a generational trend in interest and changing attitudes towards the language.
