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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
“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,…
“When you graduate college, you don’t have to know what you want to do, but you need to be willing to try a lot of things,” said Nancy Aronson Chilton ’82, chief communications officer at The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art.Chilton, a government major, visited with students Oct. 2 as a part of a Career Conversation event hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences Career Development…
As Patrick Braga ’17 stood waiting to perform at an outdoor concert last summer, he noticed a homeless woman talking to herself, so he started listening and taking notes.“I thought about how we decide what constitutes acceptable text to set to music,” said Braga, a double major in music and urban and regional studies. “In spite of efforts to resolve homelessness, this is still a voice that hasn’t…
Physics professor Peter Lepage has won the 2016 J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics. The $10,000 prize is awarded by the American Physical Society “to recognize outstanding achievement in particle theory” and will be presented at its annual meeting in April.The Sakurai Prize is the only award in Lepage’s subfield in the U.S. He received it “for inventive applications of quantum…
The College of Arts & Sciences is thrilled to announce that it has met its Cornell NOW goal of $225 million, which ends in December.Among the projects funded through this campaign is Klarman Hall, the college’s new humanities building slated to open in January. Other major campaign initiatives included:The Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellows program, which resulted in 125 new faculty hires…
As a graduate student Peter Wittich, associate professor of physics, worked at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located in an active nickel mine in Ontario, Canada. The observatory is deep underground to block out background radiation from other particles.To reach the clean room and the SNO instruments, Wittich descended 6,800 feet straight down through solid rock in a tiny elevator, then…
The College of Arts & Sciences has announced a new senior-level position to enhance and support its long-standing commitment to education innovation. Peter Lepage, professor of physics and former dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, will serve as the College’s first Director of Education Innovation.“Peter is a real leader in educational excellence both within the college and nationally…
James R. Houck, a noted astronomer in the field of infrared spectroscopy for astrophysics, died in Ithaca Sept. 18 at age 74 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.Houck received his Ph.D. from Cornell in condensed matter physics in 1967, then switched fields to astronomy. After post-doctorate work at the Naval Research Laboratory, he worked at Cornell until he retired as the Kenneth A…
Jennifer Hanley '06 just began a new position at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, shifting her attention from Mars to Pluto and a moon of Saturn, but she's still focused on one goal – the search for water.Hanley was one of eight authors of a paper, published in the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of Nature Geoscience, on the discovery that liquid water appears to exist on Mars.As a postdoc at Southwest…
Because of Rona and David Picket ’84, MFA student and poet Liza Flum wrote an entire manuscript this summer. Fellow student and novelist Mary-Margaret Stevens started and finished a novel.They had a summer free of bartending, waiting tables or other work thanks to the Pickets, whose gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English and its creative writing program fund summer…
In the last few years, Jaz Nsubuga ’11 has become an expert on the following:Men’s shaving habits, Digital and social marketing campaign strategies, Women’s facial cleaning products, Credit card habits of wealthy people, and Coca Cola, among other things.As manager of integrated marketing at MTV, Nsubuga knows that the best way to market a company or product is to understand it inside-out. And,…
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.Twenty years later, Cohen…
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.Throughout her book, Migiel keeps the focus on the experience of readers, on the meanings they find in the Decameron, and on the ideological assumptions they have about…
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.The Darfur Compromised by Trevor Stankewicz ’15 and directed by Rudy Gerson ’15 (an alum of our College Scholar program) was a keynote production of Cornell’s Caceres-Neuffer Genocide Action…
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.The symposium will provide a forum for participants to discuss novel mechanisms of human rights delivery for Latin American and…
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.Hess joined the Cornell…
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.Gold has received numerous accolades of late — including the Tony in June as best director for the…
Students, faculty and staff at the Africana Studies and Research Center have long worked to combine their research and scholarship with activism on issues facing the community, the nation and the world.But this year, the center is making more efforts than ever to offer students the opportunity to “make a difference,” said Gerard Aching, professor of Africana and Romance studies and director of…
In an effort to help students who can't afford the expenses of an unpaid internship, the College of Arts and Sciences’ Career Development Center partnered with the Student Assembly this summer to offer the Summer Experience Grant, which offered money for living expenses so that students who can’t afford to take an unpaid internship in another city can have that experience.This year $47,000 was…
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.In the vocal equivalent of sitting on the edge of your seat, speakers position their vocal organs (tongues, jaw, lips) for the sounds they’re planning to produce in the near…
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…
If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships…
Like many good mysteries, it began with innocent curiosity. Michael Fontaine was on paternity leave and, wanting “a small project” to occupy him between baby duties, thought he’d write about “Mater-Virgo,” a 17th-century play by Lutheran pastor Joannes Burmeister, based on a work by the Roman playwright Plautus.But the last known copy of the play was looted from the Berlin Library during World…
Some hidden Cornell treasures soon will be available to scholars around the world, thanks to the Cornell University Library and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Grants Program for Digital Collections, which this year awarded four grants.One such treasure is the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, which includes more than 10,000 items of apparel, flat textiles and accessories dating from the…
Following last year’s successful 150 Events series, the Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA) will continue its new tradition of student-led theater, film and dance performances in its 2015-16 season.The season begins with the traditional Festival24, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts' Flexible Theatre. Students will spend 24 hours (starting Aug. 28) writing…
To understand the past – and, often, the present – we group people together, attributing the same characteristics to individuals in a group as we do to the group as a whole, especially when it comes to religion.Éric Rebillard challenges this approach in a new book, co-edited with Jörg Rüpke, titled “Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity.”During late antiquity, some…
Ruby Rhoden ’17 expected her arrival at Cornell would be like landing on a new planet, with everything from the social environment to the academics substantially different from where she came from.Rhoden attended an impoverished high school in New York City, where she says the average grade at the school was “C.” Despite receiving a full scholarship to Cornell, she was nervous about how she would…
With doctorates in philosophy and literature under his belt, Laurent Dubreuil has added a new field to his lexicon: cognitive science. After embarking on an intensive study of the subject, fueled by a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, Dubreuil has written a book about the distinction between thinking and thought. Based on his research in experimental psychology, literature and…
Anjum Malik ’16, who hails from Pakistan, was concerned by people’s reactions to the destruction of museums and heritage sites by Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria.“Western colonial empires committed these same acts less than a century ago,” to destroy the cultures of those they were trying to overpower, Malik said, citing as examples the destruction and conversion of heritage sites in India by…
