Accelerator physics has revealed hidden universes, from the Higgs boson to what can be seen on a CT scan – and much of that progress is thanks to work done in an unassuming building tucked away on Cornell’s north campus: Newman Lab.
For 30 years, the Latina/o Studies Program (LSP) has been a hub for research and community. To celebrate the anniversary, the program has launched the “Let’s Dream Together” crowdfunding campaign to raise $20,000 in support of LSP students.
For more than 25 years, the Department of Mathematics has been engaged in outreach and building solid partnerships with local teachers and schools, such as the annual T-shirt design contest held at Ithaca High School in honor of April's Math Awareness Month.
Victor Nee, the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society, has been elected president of the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS).
David Orr, professor of the practice in the English Department, gives a literary critic’s perspective on the craft that is behind penning some of the best works in poetry.
Aoise Stratford, a visiting assistant professor in Performing and Media Arts, was named the 2017 Blaine Quarnstrom Guest Playwright at the University of Southern Mississippi in January. Stratford spent five days on the Southern Mississippi campus at the beginning of the year giving public talks, having her work read and teaching a series of intense hands-on playwriting workshops for students across the undergraduate and graduate programs in theatre and English.
In reaction to the current immigration ban, Hirokazu Miyazaki, professor of anthropology, writes this opinion piece in the Japan Times, telling the story of Sidney Gulick, who, frustrated with the immigration ban of 1924, decided to turn his attention to the next generation.
Two Arts & Sciences alumni were honored with reviews of their debut novels in the Jan. 29 New York Times Book Review.
The novels of Sana Krasikov ’01, winner of the 2009 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and Lydia Peelle ’00, author of the short story collection “Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing,” were both reviewed in the recent issue.
“The curriculum belongs to the faculty, 100 percent,” declared Interim President Hunter Rawlings at a faculty forum Jan. 23 in the Rhodes Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall.
Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana studies and English, will receive The Caribbean Philosophical Association’s 2017 Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award at the association’s international conference, June 22-24 in New York City.
Islam has been much in the American news lately, but Chiara Formichi says the stereotypes media reinforce do us a disservice. “It’s important that we as faculty help students to break up assumptions and see that Islam is not just what is portrayed in the media,” she says.
Nearly half a century ago, student protests led to the creation of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center. Since then, the Africana Center has trained generations of leaders in academia, the professions, business and public service.
“Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry,” a book in honor of Frederick Ahl edited by two of his former students, has just been released. The volume comes out of a conference titled “Speaking to Power in Latin and Greek Literature,” which was organized in honor of Ahl at Cornell University in September 2013.
In an op-ed in The Washington Post, anthropologist Adam Smith offers lessons from history on Donald Trump's proposed wall as a solution to border problems.
“In the last decade, political economy has moved from the margins to the mainstream of the historical conversation in the United States,” writes history postdoc Noam Maggor in his introduction to the special History of Capitalism issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, which he edited. “Galvanized under the banner of the ‘his
When Tracy McNulty read “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” at age ten, about a psychotic, the book had a profound impact: after college, McNulty went to France to study psychoanalysis and later trained with experts in psychosis treatment. With academic degrees in French and comparative literature and training in clinical psychoanalysis, McNulty has become known for combining these interests in her scholarship.
Adam Seth Levine, assistant professor of government, has won two awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA), the leading professional organization for the study of political science. The awards will be presented in Philadelphia at the beginning of September.
On July 12, a United Nations tribunal ruled on an arbitration case involving contested territory in the South China Sea. Government professors Allen Carlson and Jessica Chen Weiss, both on the faculty of the China-Asia Pacific Studies (CAPS) Program, reflected on the verdict.
Forty-one years after graduating, on May 22 Charles ("Chip") Aquadro was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University, his alma mater, in recognition of his achievements in science.
Stephanie Czech Rader '37, a chemistry graduate who became a U.S. spy in Europe at the end of World War II and died Jan. 21, was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit before her burial June 1 at Arlington National Cemetery.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame have announced Georgette Kelly as the winner of the new “Hope on Stage” international playwriting contest. Her play "I Carry Your Heart" was selected from among 800 submissions. Kelly will receive a $10,000 cash prize, and her play will be presented at both the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, N.Y. (April 27–30, 2017), and at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles (May 18–20, 2017).
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.
For decades, scientists have agreed that comets are mostly water ice, but what kind of ice -- amorphous or crystalline -- is still up for debate. Looking at data obtained by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft in the atmosphere, or coma, around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, scientists are seeing evidence of a crystalline form of ice called clathrates.
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.
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.
Three Cornell faculty have been awarded Simons Fellowships in Theoretical Physics for their research. Eun-Ah Kim, associate professor of physics, Dong Lai, professor of astronomy and Maxim Perelstein, professor of physics were honored with the 2016 award from the foundation, which supports scientific research related to mathematics and physical sciences, life sciences and autism, as well as education and outreach efforts.
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?
Dan Schwarz, the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, recently released a new book on undergraduate education, “How to Succeed in College and Beyond: The Art of Learning.”
Media studies research and teaching at Cornell elaborates on traditional techniques of scholarship, bringing in new objects of analysis and combining disciplines.
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.
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.
Cornell government professors commented on the market volatility in China and the Chinese government’s response.
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of government and faculty member of Cornell’s China and Asia Pacific Studies Program, is the author of “Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China.”
Wallace says:
“Don’t worry about the Chinese stock market collapse, worry about government incompetence.
The Brock Turner rape case at Stanford triggered a firestorm of criticism; an op-ed by assistant professor of philosophy Kate Manne in the Huffington Post helps to explain why.
The case, she wrote, “vividly illustrates…all of the ways we collectively ignore, deny, minimize, forgive, and forget the wrongdoing of men who conform to the norms of toxic masculinity, and behave in domineering ways towards their historical subordinates: women.”
