Academic Update
Stephen Boughn, the John Farnum Professor of Astronomy, received a two-year $55,000 grant from NASA for research entitled "Investigations of Large-Scale Structure in the X-ray Background and Limits on Cosmological Parameters from the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect." Boughn was also reappointed for another three-year term as divisional associate editor of Physical Review Letters.
Julio de Paula, associate professor of chemistry, was appointed by the president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry to the organization's Education Strategy Development Committee (ESDC). De Paula was one of twelve chemists from around the world to be nominated for this position. The committee will seek ways to contribute to the enhancement of education in chemistry and to advance the public understanding of chemistry and the scientific method around the world.
Robert Fairman, assistant professor of biology helped write a $1,000,000 grant proposal to support a "specific research problem" and also contributed to three recent publications: "Rational Modification of Protein Stability by the Mutation of Charged Surface Residues," with Shari Spector, Minghui Wang, Stefan Carp, James Robblee, Bruce Tidor and Daniel P. Raleigh, in Biochemistry (2000); "Local Interactions and the Role of the 6-120 Disulfide Bond in Alpha-lactalbumin: Implications for Formation of the Molten Globule State," with Daniel F. Moriarty, Stephen J. Demarest, James Robblee and Daniel P. Raleigh, in Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 1476:9; and "Defining the Core Structure of the Alpha-lactalbumin Molten Globule State," with Stephen J. Demarest, Judith A. Boice and Daniel P. Raleigh, in the Journal of Molecular Biology, 294:213 (1999).
Robert Kieft, librarian of the college, was elected vice chair/chair elect of the Collection Development and Evaluation Section of the American Library Association's Reference and User Services Association. He will serve on the Section's executive board for a three-year term. Kieft was appointed general editor of the twelfth edition of the Guide to Reference Books, a publication of the American Library Association. Its anticipated publication date is 2004-2005. The Guide is the standard internationally comprehensive, annotated reference work on reference works for academic and large public libraries in the United States, and is sold throughout the world. The Guide is now approaching its 100th anniversary; the twelfth edition will be the first to appear electronically as well as in print. Finally, the three tri-college libraries have received a three-year, $211,500 grant from the Mellon Foundation for exploring means for greater cooperation.
Thomas Lloyd, assistant professor of music and director of choral activities for Haverford and Bryn Mawr, published an article entitled "When the Orchestra Arrives" in the Choral Journal, December 1999. Choral Journal is the monthly journal of the American Choral Directors Association. The article is oriented toward helping choral conductors with little prior orchestral experience prepare to conduct a choir and orchestra together in only a few rehearsals. Last year, Lloyd also served as interim director of the Abington Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted performances of a wide range of repertoire, from Beethoven's 9th Symphony to Shostakovich's 9th, William Bolcom's "Ragomania" to the Bach "Mass in B Minor", and Mozart's 40th to Dvorak's 8th Symphony.
Robert Mortimer, professor of political science, published an article, "Bouteflika and Algeria's Path from Revolt to Reconciliation" in Current History, January 2000; a chapter, "From ECOMOG to ECOMOG II: Intervention in Sierra Leone," in John Harbeson and Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in World Politics (3rd edition); and a book review of Reza Shah-Kazemi, ed., Algeria: Revolution Revisited in the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, Autumn 1999.
James Ransom, associate professor of English, gave a paper in October 1999 entitled "Folklore, History, and Memory: Narrative Time in N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in Memphis, TN.
Joseph Russo, professor of classics, published two papers: "Stesichorus, Homer, and the Forms of Early Greek Epic" in Euphrosyne: Studies in Ancient Epic and Its Legacy in Honor of D. M. Maronitis, ed. Kazizis and Rengakos (1999); and "Sicilian Folktales, Cognitive Psychology, and Oral Theory," in Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue, ed. Felson Falkner and Konstan (1999). Russo also gave a lecture in French, "Les Portes de Corne et d'Ivoire," at a conference called "La Mythologie et l'Odyssee" at the University of Grenoble, May 20-22, 1999, to be published in the proceedings of the conference.
Beatriz Urraca, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, published her first cyber-article, " 'Quien a Yankeeland se encamina...': The United States and Nineteenth-Century Argentine Imagination" in Ciberletras 1:2 (Feb. 2000). It will be available at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras. Urraca also announced that her Web site translation business, PageSpan.com, has taken on Haverford College as its first client.
William Williams, professor and chair of fine arts and curator of photography, was a member of the Visual Arts Creation and Presentation Grants and Policy Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC, from August 3-6, 1999. He gave a one-person exhibition of Civil War photographs of Gettysburg 1986-1999 from November 14 to December 11, 1999, at the Chester Springs Studio Center for the Visual Arts in Chester Springs, PA, and gave a gallery talk at the opening. Williams joined the panel on the Politics of Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, held at the New School on December 1, 1999, in New York City. He is participating in a group exhibition, "Reflections In Black: African American Photography 1840 to the Present," at the Smithsonian from February 3 to June 30, 2000. The show will then tour nationally for three years. Finally, in June 2000 Williams will give a one-person exhibition at the Chester Springs Studio of photographs of sites on the Underground Railroad in Chester County, a commission funded by the Pew Exhibtion Initiative Grants.