"The Sound of Mucus"My wife had died a horrible and lingering death when my daughters were 14 and 10. Devastated the three of us sought solace, and to begin to recoup our lives we reinstated a group activity the three of us had enjoyed when they were considerably younger. We watched movies. Indeed, we would watch the same films over and over.
I have long been troubled by Henri Bergson’s notion that all of us have only one idea. In spite of our best efforts to constantly do new work, we keep returning to this one idea. For academics, Bergson’s is a depressing proposition because a career marked by repetition is, surely, a career lacking in originality. And who would want that?
The object of my reflection is a book: There are probably a lot of books among the “transformative works” you find here, but this book, known as the “Mynas Codex,” is a very different kind of object from most of them. When I say “book,” you probably think of a text that can be read in many different places at once, each reader experiencing a more or less identical object, like this one:
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.
Professor Geoffery Coates, Assistant Professor Yimon Aye and student Shivansh Chawla ’17, who works in Aye’s lab in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, were all recently honored by the American Chemical Society (ACS) with 2016 awards.
We are living in a prison industrial complex, according to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the City University of New York.Gilmore gave the American Studies Program’s annual Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture March 3 on “Organized Abandonment and Organized Violence: Devolution and the Police.”
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.
Prof. Beverly Gage, director of undergraduate studies in history at Yale University, shared insights into the life of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the Carl Becker lecture series last week sponsored by Cornell's Department of History. Gage focused on elements of Hoover’s character and accomplishments that she said are often overlooked.
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.
by :
Melanie Lefkowitz
,
Cornell University Library
Runaway slave advertisements – a common sight in North American newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries – are frankly disturbing. They describe people as property, listing their physical attributes and family connections in chilling terms.
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).
Resurrecting a 17th-century Italian opera whose sole musical source was incompletely notated was a challenge musicologist Neal Zaslaw and a group of students were happy to accept.What started as a spring 2015 seminar project was unveiled March 19-20 as an opera complete with Baroque instruments, Arcadian shepherds, hellish demons and classical statuary in the auditorium of Klarman Hall.
Students and faculty in the Cornell in Turin program were recognized recently for their work in Turin’s San Salvario neighborhood as part of their research studies of migration and services for immigrants in Italy.
Think “Game of Thrones” meets “Hunger Games.” For the annual Cornell Fashion Collective show on March 12, warriors, rangers and magicians – models draped in LED lights and electroluminescent tape – will role-play on the runway.
Like the gravitational forces that are responsible for the attraction between the Earth and the moon, as well as the dynamics of the entire solar system, there exist attractive forces between objects at the nanoscale.
Congratulations to Roberto Sierra, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities and professor of music, on the international release of his new CD “Boleros & Montunos” in Madrid, Spain.
Mohammad Hamidian, Ph.D. ’11, has been named the 2016 winner of the prestigious Lee-Osheroff-Richardson Prize for his discoveries of new forms of electronic matter at the nanoscale and at extreme low temperatures.
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.
Cuban poet and slave Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854) and his 1839 “Autobiografía de un esclavo,” the only slave narrative to surface in the Spanish-speaking world, are the starting point of an examination of 19th-century Cuban literature and social politics in Gerard Aching’s recent book, “Freedom from Liberation: Slavery, Sentiment, and Literature in Cuba.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
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?
In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies March 3, Jonathan Lunine, the David Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences, discussed the rationale for scientific, seafaring journeys to Jupiter’s moon Europa, and to Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan – trips that may take place in the 2020s.
After combing through Cornell-archived data, astronomers have discovered the pop-pop-pop of a mysterious, cosmic Gatling gun – 10 millisecond-long “fast radio bursts” – caught by the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, as reported in Nature, March 2.
In the shadow of Saturn’s hulking planetary mass, Titan’s liquid hydrocarbon seas seem a bit choppy, astronomers say.Two and a half years ago, surfing through Cassini mission radar images of Ligeia Mare, the second-largest sea on Saturn’s moon Titan, a team of Cornell astronomers found a bright, mysterious feature – a transient feature they dubbed “Magic Island.”
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.”
From Virginia Woolf to Debussy, faculty share the works that have impacted their careers and their lives during this series of lunchtime talks with students.
A tribute to Alice Colby-Hall, emeritus professor of Romance Studies, will be released this May and includes essays by colleagues, some of whom are also former students. The volume will be presented to her on May 14 at a banquet at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Richard Swedberg, professor of sociology recently received an honorary doctorate from the Social Science Faculty of Upsala University in Sweden for his contributions to economic sociology and sociological theory.
Just as the single-crystal silicon wafer forever changed the nature of electronics 60 years ago, a group of Cornell researchers is hoping its work with quantum dot solids – crystals made out of crystals – can help usher in a new era in electronics.
