The Sept. 14 New York Times includes a book review by Neil Gross, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology. Gross reviewed Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World by psychologist Michele Gelfand. “Her aim isn’t to guide readers through all the complex elements that make up a culture, but to draw attention to...
Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, was quoted in a Sept. 13 Popular Science article titled “Our seasons are out of whack, which is really bad for migratory birds.” Wilson was asked to respond to a recent study in PLOS One on an unevenness in spring’s early arrival across North America and the consequences for migratory...
Margaret Ericson, arts librarian, is a featured guest singer at the Frank Harte Festival of Traditional Singing in Dublin, Ireland, Sept. 21-23, representing “old style” North American ballad traditions alongside other singers from Donegal, Dublin, Cork, and Mayo. Ericson is an accomplished singer and will bring ballads from the Irish tradition found throughout Appalachia, Maine, and the Canadian Maritimes....
Jim Siodla, assistant professor of economics, won the 2018 Larry Neal Prize for his article “Clean slate: Land-use changes in San Francisco after the 1906 disaster,” which was published in the July 2017 issue of the journal Explorations in Economic History. The $1,000 prize, awarded by the editors and editorial board of the journal, was presented during the...
James Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, was a panelist at the “Right Use of the Earth: Knowledge, Power, and Duties in a Finite Planet” conference in Paris in May chaired by Bruno Latour, a leading sociologist of science, famous for his book Laboratory Life. Latour’s co-worker, Alexandra Arènes, talked of “critical zones” and...
A $231,571 National Science Foundation grant was awarded to Robert Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, and Ian Glasspool, research scientist in geology, for their project titled “RUI: The Timing and Evolution of Devonian Fire Systems and Their Implications for Atmospheric Oxygen Concentration.” This marks the 10th NSF grant Gastaldo has received since he began at the...
Lydia Moland, associate professor of philosophy, has edited a book just out—All Too Human: Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (Springer). The book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th century, traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category, and suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies...
Sarah Emily Duff, visiting assistant professor in history, wrote a guest post titled “Dried Fruit and the Cocktail Menace: Race, Food, and Purity in Interwar South Africa” for The Historical Cooking Project. Drawing upon her research, Duff discusses the South African Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and how the “preoccupation with clean eating is part...
Sonja Thomas, assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, published an article titled “‘This is America’ and the Global Erasure of Black Vernacular Traditions” in ASAP/J, where she compares the song and the video with imitations, including the cartoon “This is South India,” which, she writes, “flips the entire narrative of ‘This is America.’” Thomas also points...
Five new poems from Adrian Blevins, associate professor of English, have been published this summer. Click through to read her poems at Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, “Love Poem for Leonardo da Vinci” and “Status, Alas;” diode, “Cult Status” and “Social Status;” and Storyscape Literary Journal, “Southern Status Anxiety.” These poems come from a new manuscript-in-progress by Blevins. Watch...
A new book by Britt Halvorson, faculty fellow in anthropology, has been released. Conversionary Sites: Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota (University of Chicago Press, June 2018) draws on more than two years of participant observation in the American Midwest and in Madagascar among Lutheran clinicians, volunteer laborers, healers, evangelists, and former missionaries,...
Véronique Plesch was invited to contribute an essay in a volume published by the French Center of National Monuments: “Espace et temps, individu et communauté: Le Graffiti comme parole collective.” In Sur les murs: Histoire(s) de Graffitis. Ed. Laure Pressac. Paris: Éditions du Patrimoine/Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2018, 74–78. There was a book launch June 6 at the Château de Vincennes in Paris. The...
Michael Burke, professor of English, has won a Maine Literary Award in the drama category for his script of the play The Town Meets. The award, presented by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, recognized Burke’s script based on the phenomenon of a small New England town’s town meeting.
Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Associate Professor of Art, has edited a new collection of essays that thinks through photography’s long and complex relationship to human migration in the context of unprecedented dislocation and a global refugee crisis. Published by Routledge, Photography and Migration places into conversation media images and other photographs from diverse national, regional, and...
A poem by Adrian Blevins, associate professor English, was featured on Verse Daily June 5. “Was Losing My Joie De Vivre Really Like” comes from Blevins’s newest book, Appalachians Run Amok, winner of the Wilder Series Book Prize.
Loren McClenachan, assistant professor of environmental studies, coauthored a paper recently published in the Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics (Vol. 5: Iss. 1, Article 2). “Missing the Boat? Measuring and Evaluating Local Groundfish Purchases by New England Institutions” reports on a case study that evaluated purchases of local groundfish by schools and colleges in New England, and finds,...
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Justin Becknell coauthored a paper recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Titled “Abundance of Neotropical legumes during secondary succession across a rainfall gradient. Nature Ecology & Evolution,” this work examines the poorly understood role of nitrogen-fixing legumes trees in replenishing the nutrient supply of tropical forests recovering from deforestation. By combining...
Nadia El-Shaarawi, assistant professor of global studies, was a guest on “Maine Calling” explaining the relevance of anthropology to our everyday lives. El-Shaarawi was one of four panels discussing topics such as the difference in anthropological research, why human separate into different groups, the human dimensions of climate change, and the anthropology of war. Listen here.
An essay by Elisabeth Stokes, visiting assistant professor of English, is included in Not That Bad, a collection of essays that debuted this week as a New York Times bestseller. The book, edited by Roxane Gay, focuses on the violence and harassment that women worldwide face. Stokes is originally from Alaska. Her writing has appeared in numerous national and international...
Assistant Professor of Geology Bess Koffman coauthored a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Titled “Denali ice core methanesulfonic acid records North Pacific marine primary production,” the paper focuses on developing a tool for assessing past changes in primary production in the North Pacific, i.e., the base of the marine food web. The paper developed...
