Fumiko Futamura, assistant professor of mathematics, has had an article titled “Frame Diagonalization of Matrices” accepted for publication in the journal Linear Algebra and Its Applications. In the article, she introduces a new way of diagonalizing matrices that cannot be diagonalized through traditional means.

Bob Bednar, associate professor and chair of communication studies, authored the lead article in the December 2011 issue of Memory Connection, a new international memory studies journal. His article is titled “Materializing Memory: The Public Lives of Roadside Crash Shrines.”

Francis Mathieu, assistant professor of French, had a chapter titled “Early Modern Women Writers in a History of Ideas Survey Course” published in a 2011 book titled Teaching Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers. The book was edited by Faith Beasley and published by the Modern Language Association of America. 

Maha Foote, associate professor of chemistry, and Fay Guarraci, associate professor of psychology, have an article titled “‘Nice guys finish last’: Influence of mate choice on reproductive success in Long–Evans rats” published in the Feb. 2012 issue of Physiology & Behavior. Five former Southwestern students are listed as contributors to the research – Jessica Bolton, Brittany Ford, Sumith Sampana, Jade Tinker and Carissa Winland. The article is available online here.

Alison Kafer, associate professor and chair of feminist studies, published an article called “Desire and Disgust: My Ambivalent Adventures in Devoteeism” in Sex and Disability, edited by Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow (Duke University Press, 2012).

Davi Johnson Thornton, assistant professor of communication studies, had two articles published in December. An article titled “Neuroscience, Affect and the Entrepreneurialization of Motherhood” was published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and an article titled “Psych’s Comedic Tale of Black-White Friendship and the Lighthearted Affect of ‘Post-Race’ America,” was published in Critical Studies in Media Communication.

English Professor Helene Meyers’ new book, Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness, is one of the featured titles on the bookshelf at the web magazine Secular Culture and Ideas.

Religion Professor Laura Hobgood-Oster’s recent book titled The Friends We Keep has been selected by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries for its 2011 list of Outstanding Academic Titles. Choice says its Outstanding Academic Titles are truly the “best of the best,” with the 2011 list comprising just over 9 percent of the titles they reviewed during the past year

Romi Burks, associate professor of biology, had a paper titled “One McBug Burger Please: Eating insects in ecology class to contextualize climate change discussion” accepted for inclusion in the EcoEd Digital Library sponsored by the Ecological Society of America. The article was based on a lab Burks developed for her Invertebrate Ecology class. Read the paper here.

Religion Professor Laura Hobgood-Oster’s recent book titled The Friends We Keep has been selected by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries for its 2011 list of Outstanding Academic Titles. Choice says its Outstanding Academic Titles are truly the “best of the best,” with the 2011 list comprising just over 9 percent of the titles they reviewed during the past year

Michael Saenger, associate professor of English, has had an article titled “The Limits of Translation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” accepted for publication in Shakespeare Survey, an annual publication of Cambridge University Press. The acknowledgments in the article name Southwestern graduate Sarah Gammill, who took an independent study class with Dr. Saenger on Lacanian approaches to the play.

Ken Roberts, professor of economics and holder of the Cullen Chair in Economics, was an invited participant in a seminar sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Dec. 6-8 in Beijing. The seminar was the first in a two-year project funded by the Ford Foundation on migration and social change. Roberts presented a paper titled “The Changing Dynamics of Labor Migration in Mexico and China.”

Lois Ferrari, professor of music and music director of the Austin Civic Orchestra, performed a sold-out holiday concert Dec. 11 in Bates Recital Hall on The University of Texas at Austin campus. The event included the presentation of an art work commissioned by Ferrari and the ACO and created by Star Varner, professor of art. A set of engravings created by Varner was presented to two long-time ACO supporters who lost their home in the Bastrop fire last summer. The ACO’s next concert will be performed in the Alma Thomas Theater on Saturday, Feb. 4. For more information, go here.

Stephen Marble, associate professor of education, and students Molly Deshaies and Julia Strange, recently had works published in the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s Black History Bulletin. Marble’s article described Shirley Chishom’s role as a catalyst for change in the political life of Americans and was accompanied by a lesson plan simulating the 1972 Democratic Presidential Convention.

SUNY Press has published a new book by Helene Meyers, professor of English and McManis University Chair. The book is titled Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness and focuses on narratives that portray Jewish regeneration through feminist Orthodoxy, queerness, off-whiteness and intermarriage. For more about the book and to read the first chapter, visit http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5279-identity-papers.aspx

Writer-in-Residence John Pipkin delivered a Plenary Lecture titled “Romanticisms: Understanding an Ambiguous Literary Movement” at Spalding University in Louisville, Ky., Nov. 12. Pipkin is a member of Spalding’s Low-Residency MFA Faculty. His 2009 novel Woodsburner was the featured fiction Book-in-Common for Spalding’s fall semester. Pipkin also has been named the fiction editor for the spring 2012 issue of The Louisville Review published by Fleur de Lis Press.

Eileen Meyer Russell, associate professor of music (low brass), and Delaine Fedson, part-time instructor of applied music (harp), presented a lecture recital at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Ill., and a recording session and recital at Vincennes University in Vincennes, Ind. Russell also presented a brass master class at VU. Russell and Fedson, who perform as the duo “Unique Conversations,” included many of their transcriptions on the recital.

Erika Berroth, associate professor of German and chair of Chinese, French and German Programs, presented her research on transnational identity narratives at the annual conference of the Coalition of Women in German held in Augusta, Mich., Oct. 20-23. Berroth spoke about “Migration and Aging in Narratives of Gender and Generation” as part of a panel on “Gender and Aging in German Literature, Arts, Culture and Society.” Berroth also presented her research on theories of affect and cinema at the Midwest Modern Language Association conference in St. Louis, Mo., Nov. 3-6. Berroth spoke about “Docu-Fiction/Mockumentary and Werner Herzog’s Ecstatic Truth,” as part of a panel on “Playing with History in Contemporary Memoirs and Documentaries.”

Lois Ferrari, professor of music and music director of the Austin Civic Orchestra, presented the orchestra’s second concert of its 35th season Nov. 5 in the Rollins Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. Southwestern students Briana Garcia and Marie Smith performed with the orchestra, along with 2011 graduatesJennifer Coyle and Abbey Benold. The orchestra also performed a work written by 2007 graduate Travis Jeffords. The orchestra’s holiday concert is Dec. 11th at 3 p.m. in Bates Hall on the UT campus and will feature jazz singer Suzi Stern and composer/narrator Dan Welcher. For more information, visit http://www.austincivicorchestra.org.

Herbert Genzmer, visiting assistant professor of German and internationally recognized author of literary and scholarly works, was invited to read from his most recent novel Das perfekte Spiel (The Perfect Game) for students and faculty at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The book will be published by Berlin University Press in February 2012.

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, was invited to chair a panel at an interdisciplinary graduate student conference at the University of Chicago titled “Exile on Main Street: Fascism, Emigration, and the European Imagination in America,” which took place Nov. 10-11. She also presented a paper drawing from her new book titled “Adorno and Democracy in America: Countertendencies, Imminent Critique, and Democratic Pedagogy” at the university’s Social Theory Workshop Nov. 10. 

Hal Haskell, professor of classics and chair of the Classics Program, is principle author of the book Transport Stirrup Jars of the Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean (Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press), published in October. He headed up an international team of scholars from Glasgow, Sheffield and Cambridge Universities. This interdisciplinary study integrates archaeological, chemical, petrographic and epigraphic analyses to document the exchange of olive oil, a very important commodity in antiquity, throughout the eastern Mediterranean world during the period ca. 1400-1150 BCE.

Phil Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Philosophy Department, presented the Carol J. Worrell Lecture at St. John’s College Oct. 21. The lecture was titled “Lucky the One: Kierkegaard’s Search for Morality in the Stories We Tell” and was a presentation of some of the ideas about the relation of narrative and ethics from his current book project, Mass Moralizing. 

An interview with Kimberly Smith, associate professor of art history, appeared in the inaugural issue of Das Egon Schiele Jahrbuch, vol. 1 (September 2011). An international, academic journal, the Jahrbuch publishes current research on the artistic practice of Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918), and also features those aspects of the arts, philosophies and culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna that could contribute to an understanding of Schiele’s work.

Two teams from Southwestern will be competing in the 36^th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. Their first step will be a regional competition to be held at Baylor University Oct. 29. The “SU Root” team includes Erick Bauman, Ryan Washburn and Josh Wolfe, and the “SU Equipo” team includes Adam Scully, Jon Hieb and Taylor Elkins. The teams are coached by Barbara Anthony, assistant professor of computer science, and Rick Denman, professor of math and computer science.

Alison Kafer, associate professor and chair of feminist studies, published an article titled “Debating Feminist Futures: Slippery Slopes, Cultural Anxiety, and the Case of the Deaf Lesbians” in Feminist Disability Studies, edited by Kim Q. Hall (Indiana University Press, 2011).

Emily Northrop, associate professor of economics, presented a book chapter she has written at an Oct. 19-21 conference held at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Northrop’s chapter is titled “Our Food, Our Environment, Our Health.” It is for a book titled A Brighter Future: Improving the Standard of Living Now and for the Next Generation, to be published in 2012 by M.E. Sharpe.

Shana Bernstein, associate professor of history, gave an invited talk at UC Santa Cruz on Oct. 11 titled “From Civic Defense to Civil Rights: The Growth of Jewish-American Interracial Civil Rights Activism in Los Angeles.” She also was an invited visitor on Oct. 19 at an interdisciplinary faculty and graduate student seminar at Northwestern University, where her book, Bridges of Reform: Interracial Civil Rights Activism in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles, was discussed.

Michael Saenger, associate professor of English, has received a contract from McGill-Queen’s University Press to publish a collection of essays titled Interlinguicity, Internationality and Shakespeare. The volume will include 14 essays, including an introduction by Saenger, from internationally recognized scholars in the field of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies. The volume is part of a current re-evaluation of translated and multilingual texts, both in Shakespeare’s time and in our own.

Laura Senio-Blair, associate professor of Spanish, is giving a presentation at the XXI annual conference of the International Association of Hispanic Feminist Literature and Culture to be held at the Universitat de Barcelona next week. The title of her presentation is “New Road Signs for Emerging Identities: The Hispanic Road Movie by Women Directors.”

Dustin Tahmahkera, assistant professor of communication studies, has an article titled “‘An Indian in a White Man’s Camp’: Johnny Cash’s Indian Country Music” in the current special issue of American Quarterly titled “Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies.”

Bob Bednar, associate professor of communication studies, has a chapter in a book titled Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form that is scheduled to be published Oct. 18 by Routledge. His chapter is titled “Denying Denial: Trauma, Memory, and Automobility at Roadside Car Crash Shrines.”

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, will be presiding at “Religion, Nature and Art,” an international, interdisciplinary conference that will take place at the Vatican Museums in Rome Oct. 12-14. The conference is co-sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC) and the Vatican Museums. At the conference, Hobgood-Oster will be installed as president of the ISSRNC.  

Kimberly Smith, associate professor of art history, presented a paper at the 35th annual German Studies Association conference in Louisville, Ky., Sept. 25. The paper was titled “Ekphrasis, Empathy, and the Critical Imagination in Art History,” and was included on a panel titled “Einfühlung and the Modern Aesthetic.” Smith also moderated a related panel on the topic of “Einfühlung after 1900.”

Fay Guarraci, associate professor of psychology, had an article published in a recent issue of Physiology & Behavior (105: 264-268). The article was titled “An intact medial preoptic area is necessary for zaprinast to modulate paced mating behavior in female rats” and was based on research conducted in collaboration with a professor and graduate student at Dartmouth College.

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, will be a keynote speaker, workshop leader and discussant at the 11th Transdicsiplinary Theological Colloquium sponsored by Drew Theological School in Madison, New Jersey, Sept. 29-Oct. 2. The colloquium is titled “Divinanimality: Creaturely Theology.”

Professor of Political Science and University Scholar Eric Selbin’s book Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story has been published in India by Books for Change.

Phil Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy, has a chapter on Empedocles and Anaxagoras and the Greek conception of Kosmos accepted for a forthcoming new Companion to Ancient Philosophy from Northwestern. He also has a chapter titled Mass Moralizing, which deals with the relation of advertising discourse and moral heuristics, accepted for a forthcoming book from Continuum titled Advertising and Reality. 

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, and Michael Bray, associate professor of philosophy, organized a panel on their current research for the recent Western Political Science Association conference in San Antonio April 21-23. The panel explored Theodor Adorno’s thoughts on democracy. Mariotti presented a paper titled “Adorno on the Radio: The Countertendencies of Democracy in America” and Bray presented a paper titled “The Revolt of Ignoble Savages?: On Adorno and Populism.”

A sweater designed by Elizabeth Green Musselman, professor of history, is on the cover of the inaugural issue of UK-based Knit magazine. See a photo of it here.

Laura Senio Blair, associate professor and chair of Spanish, presented a paper titled “Forking Paths: Roadside Scenery and Emergent Identities in the Hispanic Road Movie” at the Popular Culture Association Conference in San Antonio April 21-23.

David Asbury, assistant professor of music, recently went on a tour of the Ukraine, where he played six solo recitals in various cities, appeared as a soloist with the Dnipropetrovsk Philharmonic Orchestra, and gave master classes at the Kiev International Music School and Dnipropetrovsk Conservatory.

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, served as chair and discussant on a featured social science panel titled “How is the DPJ Changing Japan? Women, Denizens and the Poor” at the Association of Asian Studies Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, March 31-April 4.

Molly Jensen, assistant professor of religion, has received a $20,000 grant from the Wabash Center for the Study of Religion. She plans to use the grant to help faculty members in the Department of Religion learn how to better incorporate ecological learning into their classes. The grant also will enable Southwestern to develop its community garden into a learning garden. The grant will enable Jensen to visit to several colleges that have developed effective models of place-based ecological learning such as the Piedmont Project at Emory University, the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona, and the Learning Garden at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. Jensen and student field assistant Andrea Gannon also will attend an ecological learning workshop at the Occidental College of Arts and Ecology this summer. Jenson hopes faculty members can work new material into their courses by the spring 2012 semester.

Dustin Tahmahkera, assistant professor of communication studies, has an article titled “‘An Indian in a White Man’s Camp’: Johnny Cash’s Indian Country Music” forthcoming in a special American Quarterly issue on “Sound.”

A new book by Davi Thornton, assistant professor of communication studies, will be published next month by Rutgers University Press. The book is titled Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media.

Kinesiology Professors Scott McLean and Jimmy Smith published an article titled “Oxygen Uptake Response to Stroke Rate Manipulation in Freestyle Swimming” in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Former student Graham Ice also was a co-author on the paper. 

Theatre Professor Rick Roemer is starring in the Austin Playhouse production of “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off,” which runs April 22-May 22. Music Professor Oliver Worthington is musical director for the play and musical theatre student Hannah Rose has a role in the play, along with 2009 graduate Emily Everidge. For more information, visit the Austin Playhouse website.

Abby Dings, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper titled “Getting Help: A Longitudinal Analysis of Patterns of Repair in NS/NNS Interactions” at the 2011 American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference in Chicago March 26-29.

Emily Niemeyer, professor of chemistry, gave an invited lecture at the American Chemical Society meeting held in Anaheim, Calif., March 27-31, titled “Effect of cultivar on the phenolic composition and antioxidant properties of basil (Ocimum basilicum L.).” The abstract included Southwestern graduate Eileen Kwee.

Tim O’Neill, professor of political science, has four articles coming out in The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America, edited by Wilbur R. Miller (SAGE, in press).  The articles discuss the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, United States v. Ballard, and Reynolds v. United States.

An essay by Shana Bernstein, associate professor of history, was published in Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region (University of Pennsylvania Press). The essay is titled “From the Southwest to the Nation: Interracial Civil Rights Activism in Postwar Los Angeles.” 

Research published by Reggie Byron, assistant professor of sociology, was cited in the amicus brief filed in support of the respondents on the highly publicized Wal-Mart gender discrimination case. The brief was presented to the Supreme Court by the American Sociological Association and the Law and Society Association. Byron’s research is cited on p. 41 of the document posted here.

The Austin Civic Orchestra, conducted by Lois Ferrari, professor of music, presented the 25th anniversary concert of the Pearl Amster Youth Concerto Competition and Festival on March 26. Three Austin area young musicians were featured in this concert, two of whom are cello students of Hai Zheng, assistant professor of music. Every year, this contest attracts more than 100 applicants from the greater Austin area. Three or four winners are then chosen by audition from this talented pool. 

Eric Selbin, professor of political science and University Scholar, co-chaired and participated in a roundtable on “Decentering International Relations” at the 2011 International Studies Association meeting which focused on the book of the same name he recently published with Southwestern graduate and professor Meghana Nayak. Selbin also chaired the annual meeting of the series he co-edits, New Millennium Books in International Studies.  

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, recently had an edited volume titled The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Politics published. In addition to editing the volume, she contributed the introductory chapter titled “The institutional landscape of Japanese politics.”  The edited volume offers an overview of the full spectrum of Japanese politics with 32 chapters in the areas of domestic politics, civil society, social policy, political economy and international relations.

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, gave a lecture at Middlebury College March 3 titled “Who Do We Think We Are: Animals and Christianity.”

Fay A. Guarraci, associate professor psychology, has had a paper titled “Methamphetamine Enhances Sexual Behavior in Female Rats” accepted for publication in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.

Reginald Byron, assistant professor of sociology, delivered Huston-Tillotson’s annual W.E.B. DuBois Lecture Feb. 24. His lecture was titled “From DuBois to Obama: Progress and Challenges on the Problem of the Color Line.”

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, recently had her article titled “WIN WIN’s Struggles with the Institutional Transfer of the EMILY’s List Model to Japan: The Role of Accountability and Policy” published in the Japanese Journal of Political Science.

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, associate professor of English, delivered the keynote address at the Southeastern Writing Centers Association conference at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa Feb. 17-19. Her talk was called “Shape or Be Shaped: Outcomes Assessment as a Defining Moment for Writing Centers.”

Melissa Byrnes, assistant professor of history, presented a paper at the Society for French Historical Studies Annual Conference in Charleston, S.C., Feb. 11. The paper was titled “From Comrades-in-Arms to Community Burden: How Decolonization Reshaped Municipal Migration Policies in Saint-Denis”.

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, was an invited participant to The Stanford University Workshop “Political Change in Japan II:  One Step Forward, One Step Back?” on Feb. 4-5, 2011.  She gave a paper titled “Women in Politics in Japan:  Is there an Impact on Governance and Policy?”

Fay Guarraci, associate professor of psychology, had an article titled “Sex, Drugs and the Brain: The Interaction Between Drugs of Abuse and Sexual Behavior in the Female Rat” published in Hormones and Behavior.

Barbara Anthony, assistant professor of computer science, presented a poster at the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Annual Conference in Austin Nov. 8 titled “Operations Research in a Liberal Arts College.”

Daniel Castro, professor of history, has been invited to serve on the National Screening Committee that will select graduate students to train abroad during the 2011-2012 academic year under the Fulbright-Hays Program sponsored by the United States Department of State. Castro will serve on the committee that nominates candidates for study in South America. The committee is meeting in Houston next week.

Richard Denman, professor of mathematics and computer science, had an article published in the November 2010 issue of the College Journal of Mathematics, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America. The article, titled “The Tower and Glass Marbles Problem,” was co-authored by Michael Rothenberg and Southwestern alumnus David Hailey.

Melissa Johnson, associate professor of anthropology, presented a paper titled “Circulating Nature, Producing Identity: Rural Belize in Motion” at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans last month.

Willis Weigand, associate professor of chemistry, had an article titled “Synthesis and Crystal Structure of Bis-(N,N’-dibenzylethane-1,2-diamine) cobalt(II) acetate” published in the Journal of Chemical Crystallography. The paper was co-authored by former student Tiffany Salazar.

Max Taub, associate professor of biology, had a paper titled “Effects of Rising Atmospheric Concentrations of Carbon Dioxide on Plants” published by the Knowledge Project, an online library of peer-reviewed science articles for college and high school students. Read the article here.

Ken Roberts, professor of economics, has a paper titled “The Role of Children on Migration Decisions of Rural Chinese Women” forthcoming in The Journal of Contemporary China. The paper is the third in a series of four papers he is writing about migration in China.

Suzanne Buchele, associate professor of computer science, is serving on the Peer Review Committee for Fulbright Scholar grants to West and Central Africa Nov. 4-5 in Washington, D.C. This is the last of a three-year appointment on the committee, which is administered by the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES).

Kim Smith, associate professor of art history, presented a paper titled “Vision and Primitivism in Franz Marc’s Slow Paintings” at the Southeastern College Art / Mid-America College Art Association joint conference held in Richmond, Va., Oct. 21-23.

Ken Mello, assistant professor of religion, is participating in a panel discussion at the American Academy of Religion meeting in Atlanta this weekend. The panel is titled “Defining Religious Freedom: Reading Tisa Wenger’s We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedo

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, is one of four people representing the Humane Society’s faith-based initiative who will meet at the White House Nov. 4 with Joshua Dubois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Carlos D’Oro, assistant professor of Spanish, participated in a panel about Latin American film at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque Oct. 14-16. D’Oro presented a paper titled “Film, Nation, and Gender Representation in the Colombian Caribbean.”

Mary Visser, professor of art, is giving a presentation at the INTERSCULPT 2010 symposium to be held in Paris Oct. 23-31. The conference selected one of Visser’s works to incorporate into the logo for the conference.

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, associate professor of English, spoke at the plenary session of the North Texas Writing Centers Association conference held in Fort Worth last week.

Davi Johnson Thornton, assistant professor of communication studies, has the lead article in the October issue of the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication. Her article is titled: “Race, Risk, and Pathology in Psychiatric Culture: Disease Awareness Campaigns as Governmental Rhetoric.”

Maria Lowe, professor of sociology, had an article titled “Sowing the Seeds of Discontent: Tougaloo College’s Social Science Forums as a Prefigurative Movement Free Space, 1952-1964” published in the Journal of Black Studies.

Lynn Guziec, assistant professor of chemistry, received the second “Inspiring Hope” award presented by the Breast Cancer Resource Centers of Texas, a nonprofit organization created by breast cancer survivors to support women who are newly diagnosed with the disease. The award was announced Oct. 13 during a stop of the national “Pink Heals Tour” in Georgetown. Read more here.

Romi Burks, associate professor of biology, was the invited speaker for the opening session of the Association of College and University Biology Educators annual meeting held at Lourdes College in Sylvania, Ohio, Oct. 8-9.

Mary Hale Visser, professor of art, is the featured artist in the Art Hop presented by Georgetown Arts Works this month. Her piece titled “Hera’s Woman” is on display at the Georgetown Library.

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, participated on a roundtable titled “Evaluating the DPJ Administration One Year Later” at the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies at Texas Christian University Sept. 25.  Roundtable participants included professors from UT Austin, SMU, University of North Texas, TCU and Southwestern.

Reginald Byron, assistant professor of sociology, co-authored a study that is published in the current issue of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. The study is titled “Commercial Density, Residential Concentration, and Crime: Land Use Patterns and Violence in Neighborhood Context.” Read an article about the study here.

Paula Desmond, assistant professor of psychology, is presenting a paper titled “Emotional Intelligence and Driver Stress” at the 54th meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in San Francisco Sept. 28. The paper was written with students Alexandra Burbey, Addison English and Lauren Margulieux. Burbey and English will be presenting the paper with Desmond. English and Margulieux are applying to doctoral programs in human factors research this year.

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, reviewed Gerhard Schweppenhäuser’s new book on Theodor W. Adorno in an essay titled “Communicating to the Demos,” published in the September 2010 issue of the Review of Politics.

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, presented a paper on Emerson and experiences of political conversion at the American Political Science Association convention in Washington, D.C., Sept. 1-5.  She also chaired a panel titled “The Problem of ‘The People’ in American Political Thought.”

A new book by Thomas McClendon, professor of history, has been published by the University of Rochester Press in its series Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora. The book is titled White Chief, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845-1878.

Melissa Byrnes, assistant professor of history, had an article titled “Teaching the French Revolution from the Inside Out: Views from Egypt and the Caribbean” published in the spring 2010 issue of the World History Bulletin. The article is based on a course she taught at Southwestern in spring 2009. Read the article here.

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, presented a paper titled “The Problems with and Potential for Institutional Transfer from the U.S. to Japan:  The Case of EMILY’s List and WIN WIN” at the Japan America Women’s Symposium in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 1. This meeting was held in conjunction with the American Political Science Association.

Artwork by Professor Mary Hale Visser has been selected for the International Conference on Information Visualisation to be held in London and the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation to be held in Sydney, Australia. Visser’s gallery of artwork can be found here.

Helene Meyers, professor of English and holder of the McManis University Chair, had an article titled “On Homelands and Home-Making: Rebecca Goldstein’s Mazel,” published in the most recent issue of Journal of Modern Literature.

Work by Mary Visser, professor of art, will be permanently exhibited at the Beijing Tomorrow Art Gallery in China. The gallery is devoted to the works of digital sculptors from around the world.

Abby Dings, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper titled “The Role of Alignment Activity in Interactional Competence” at the Texas Foreign Language Education Conference in Austin April 24th.  She and Ted Jobe, assistant professor of Spanish, also presented a paper titled “What’s on the Tele?:  The Use of Target-language Television Series for Teaching Reading, Listening Comprehension, and Cultural Literacy.”

Emily Niemeyer, professor of chemistry, has been awarded the first place 2010 Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh Undergraduate Analytical Research Program  grant. The one-year, $10,000 grant will support her research on the analysis of polyphenolic compounds in basil.

Helene Meyers, professor of English and holder of the McManis University Chair, spoke on feminist mentoring and teaching at Celebrating Susan Gubar, Teacher and Writer, a symposium held at Indiana University.

Mary Grace Neville, associate professor of business, had a chapter published in a new book titled Mending the World: Social Healing Interventions by Gestalt Practitioners Worldwide. Her chapter is titled “When Poor is Rich: Transformative Power of I-Thou Relationships in a Brazilian Favela.” It is based on her experience living in a poor Brazilian community in 2001.

Several works by Mary Visser, professor of art, will be featured in an exhibition titled “Drawing On Sculpture,” which will be on display in the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery at the University of Dallas in Irving through May 2.

Eileen Cleere, associate professor of English, is a featured speaker at the 18th and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference at Texas A& M University April 8-10. Her paper, “Aesthetic Anachronism: Mary Ward’s 1913 The Mating of Lydia and the Persistent Plot of Sanitary Fiction,” is part of the last chapter of her book manuscript, The Sanitary Arts: Aesthetic Culture and the Victorian Cleanliness Campaigns.

Florence Gould, professor emeritus of political science, was invited to comment on two papers that were presented at the Texas State Historical Association meeting March 3-5 in El Paso. Both papers discussed the remarkable career of Oveta Culp Hobby (1905-1995), who served as parliamentarian of the Texas Legislature in the 1920s and married former Texas Governor Will Hobby.

A book by Helene Meyers, professor of English and holder of the McManis University Chair, has just been published by Greenwood Press. Reading Michael Chabon is designed for general readers and is the first book devoted to the Pulitzer-Prize winning author who bridges the gap between literary and popular culture. For more information, go here.

Portions of a concert conducted by Kenny Sheppard, professor of music, are included in a new DVD titled “Mendelssohn, The Nazis and Me.” The DVD, which was originally made for a BBC broadcast, includes the chorus and orchestra Sheppard directed for the 2009 Festival of the Arts in Georgetown performing a chorus from Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul” oratorio.

Sandi Nenga, assistant professor of sociology, had an article titled “The Value of Volunteering: Comparing Youths’ Experiences to Popular Claims” published in a special issue of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (Bingley, UK:  Emerald Publishing Group). The 2010 special issue theme was “Children and Youth Speak for Themselves.”

Eric Selbin, professor of political science and University Scholar, has been invited to participate in the 62nd annual Conference on World Affairs to be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder April 5-9. Selbin has been invited to speak on seven panels, including ones titled “Youth: Revolution, Resistance and Rebellion,” “Latin America and Its Discontents,” “My Terrorist, Your Freedom Fighter,” “Time, Memory and Landscape,” “Pirates!,” “A Lower Priority on Higher Education” and “I Never Let My Schooling Interfere With My Education.”

Tim O’Neill, professor of political science, had his essay titled “Through a Glass Darkly: Western Tort Law from a South and East Asian Perspective” published as the lead article in the winter issue of the Rutgers Race & Law Review. Stephen Higdon, a 2008 graduate, helped revise and update the article.

Professor Emeritus Walter Herbert is participating in a March 27 and 28 symposium being held in conjunction with the Dallas Opera’s world premiere of the Gene Scheer-Jake Heggie opera Moby-Dick. Herbert is speaking at a session on “Melville, the Man.” That will also include Duncan E. Osborne, Melville’s great-grandson.

Romi Burks, associate professor of biology, recently had a paper titled “Pink Eggs and Snails: Field oviposition patterns of an invasive snail, Pomacea insularum, indicate a preference for an invasive macrophyte” published in the Shallow Lakes volume of the peer-reviewed journal Hydrobiologia.

Barbara Anthony, assistant professor of computer science, together with three co-authors (Vineet Goyal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Anupam Gupta from Carnegie Mellon University and Viswanath Nagarajan from the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center), had a paper published in the February 2010 issue of Mathematics of Operations Research. The paper is titled “A Plant Location Guide for the Unsure: Approximation Algorithms for Min-Max Location Problems” and can be read here.

Ed Kain, professor of sociology and University Scholar, is presenting the inaugural Luster Lecture at Michigan State University March 15.  The title of his lecture is “Pathways for Navigating the Changing Landscape of Higher Education.” Part of the lecture will focus on the contributions and legacy of Tom Luster, who was a faculty member in the Department of Family and Child Ecology at Michigan State. The lecture is being held in conjunction with the awarding of the first Tom Luster graduate scholarship in the department.

Ben Pierce, professor of biology, served as president-elect and program chair for the meeting and Romi Burks, associate professor of biology, served as awards chair and vice president. Pierce assumed the TAS presidency at the end of the meeting and Burks will be responsible for the 114th meeting at St. Edwards in March 2011 as program chair and president-elect.

Bob Bednar, associate professor of communication studies, presented a paper titled “Roadside Heterotopias: Space, Time, and Cultural Simultaneity at Car Crash Shrines in the American Southwest” at the annual Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Feb. 13.

Lois Ferrari, associate professor of music, gave a lecture titled “Creating from the Void” on Feb. 24 at Grace Episcopal Church. Ferrari spoke about the relationship of conductor to composer and the process of how a new work is first imagined by a composer and then comes to life via a conductor.

Carl Robertson, associate professor of Chinese, gave a lecture to alumni living in the Washington, D.C., area last weekend in conjunction with the exhibit on terra cotta warriors that is on display through March 31 at the National Geographic Museum. His lecture was titled “Terra Cotta Warriors and Ink-Brush Poets: Figures of Service.”

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, was interviewed by the journal TELOS about her recent article on Theodor Adorno, psychoanalysis and alienation in post-WWII America. The article is available at  http://www.telospress.com

Lois Ferrari, associate professor of music, conducted the Washington All-State Wind Ensemble at the Washington Music Educators Association Conference in Yakima, Wash., Feb. 12-15. The Wind Ensemble was comprised of the best wind and percussion students in the state of Washington and rehearsed for six hours a day before performing a culminating concert Feb. 15. The concert included the world premiere of a work titled “He With Reel” by Lewis Norfleet that was commissioned for the event. 

Lois Ferrari, associate professor of music, led the Austin Civic Orchestra in two concerts for the entire Pflugerville ISD 5th grade at Connally High School on Monday, Jan. 25.  Ferrari led a question-and-answer session in order to bring students up on stage to sit within the orchestra as it performed symphonic arrangements of popular film music.

David Asbury, assistant professor of music, performed a guest recital this week at The Baptist College of Florida.

Eric Selbin, professor of political science, chaired an emergency Plenary Session Roundtable titled “Haiti: International Aid or U.S. Military Occupation?” last week at The Pink Tide: Reconfiguring politics, power and political economy in the Americas Conference of activists and activist academics from Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and North America in Nottingham, England.

Eric Selbin, professor of political science and University Scholar, gave two talks in England this week about his new book titled Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story. The book examines the role of myth and storytelling in lighting the fires of revolutions and political struggles. More information on the book, visit

Eileen Cleere, associate professor of English, will introduce and edit the final installment of a six-part collection of archival materials on 19th-century sanitary reform for Pickering & Chatto.  Her volume is provisionally titled “End-of-Century Assessments and New Directions,” and will be comprised of rare and undercirculated materials on sanitary architecture, health and hygiene, and eugenics. She hopes the entire series will be available by 2012. 

Patrick Hajovsky, assistant professor of art history, had an article titled “Andre Thevet’s ‘true’ portrait of Moctezuma and its European legacy” published in the fall 2009 issue of the journal Word & Image. Hajovsky also contributed several entries for a catalog that was published in conjunction with an exhibit titled Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, which is on display at the British Museum through Jan. 24.

Sandi Kawecka Nenga, assistant professor of sociology, and 2009 graduate Tristine Baccam had their article titled “Stealing Peanuts and Coercing Monsters: The Underground Economy of a Middle School Summer Camp,” accepted for publication in Qualitative Sociology Review.

Eileen Meyer Russell, associate professor of music, was a featured clinician at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Conference held in Chicago Dec. 14-19.

Computer science professors Suzanne Buchele and Barbara Boucher Owens visited local middle schools this week to encourage students to pursue careers in computer science.

Michael Cooper, professor of music, was interviewed this week for the show “Classical Variations,” which airs on radio station WXEL in West Palm Beach, Fla. The interview was done in conjunction of the Dec. 8 Florida premier of the new edition of Mendelssohn’s Fantasy and Variations on the “Gypsy March” from Carl Maria von Weber’s La Preziosa which Cooper wrote.

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, was quoted in an NPR story about a church in California where parishioners can bring their dogs to services with them. Read and listen to the story here.

Ben Pierce, professor of biology, was quoted in a story about the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s birth that was picked up by several media outlets. Read the story here.

Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez Cadena, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper titled “El pasado nacional como narrativa de ficcion, o la historia es una telenovela” at the Interdisciplinary Conference on History and Fiction at the University of West Georgia Nov. 12-14. She also had an article titled “Relajo and melodrama in the fictional portrayal of the Mexican Independence of 1810” published as a chapter in a new book titled (Re) Collecting the Past.

Suzanne Buchele, associate professor of computer science, served on the West and Central/Southern Africa Review Committee for the 2010-2011 Fulbright Scholar Program, which met Nov. 5-6 in Washington, D.C.  This committee evaluates applications and specialist reviews, and makes recommendations to U.S. embassies in 13 African countries and to the Presidentially appointed William J. Fulbright Committee regarding Fulbright Scholar Fellowships.

Fumiko Futamura, assistant professor of mathematics, recently gave an invited talk at the American Mathematical Society Southeastern Meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., titled “Approximate Joint Diagonalization of Matrices.”

The University of Wisconsin Press has published a new book by Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science. The book is titled Thoreau’s Democratic Withdrawal: Alienation, Participation, and Modernity. It explores Thoreau’s nature writings to offer a new way of understanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden Pond. For more information, click here.

Kimberly Smith, associate professor of art history, attended the German Studies Association annual conference in early October, where she organized and chaired two panels titled “Munich’s Modernism: Visual Culture at the Turn of the 20th Century.” The paired panel sessions ended with a commentary delivered by Smith.

Lois Ferrari, associate professor of music, conducted the Austin Civic Orchestra in concert at the Pflugerville Performing Arts Center Nov. 7th. The program featured clarinet soloist Kathleen Bohn and featured two pillars of the orchestral repertoire: “Scheherazade” by Rimsky-Korsakov and Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero.”

David Gaines, professor of English, gave an invited lecture last month at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. His lecture was titled “Bob Dylan’s Senses of Humor.”

Laura Hobgood-Oster, professor of religion, attended the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, Canada, last week, where she chaired all the panels on animals and religion.

Julia Johnson, assistant professor of communication studies, presented a paper titled “Qwe’reing/Queering Alliances through Silence: An Autoethnographic Exploration of ‘Living out Loud’” at the annual convention of the National Communication Association in Chicago this week.

Shannon Mariotti, assistant professor of political science, was recently asked to review Gerhard Schweppenhaueser’s new book, Theodor W. Adorno: An Introduction, for the Review of Politics. Her piece will come out in the journal’s next issue.

Laura Senio Blair, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper titled “Driving Class Conflict: Taxis and Taxistas in Contemporary Chilean Cinema” at the Geographical Imaginaries and Hispanic Film conference in New Orleans Nov. 4-6.

Lynn Guziec, assistant professor of chemistry, and Frank Guziec, professor of chemistry, recently published a paper in The Analyst titled “Interactions of sulfur-containing acridine ligands with DNA by ESI-MS.” The paper was co-authored by Jennifer Brodbelt, professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, and 2001 Southwestern graduate Suncerae Smith.

Professor emeritus Walter Herbert has published a new book titled Faith-Based War: From 9/11 to Catastrophic Success in Iraq.

Romi Burks, associate professor of biology, recently published an article in the teaching resource section of Science Signaling about co-authoring papers with undergraduates. The paper was co-authored by 2001 graduate Matt Chumchal, who is now an assistant professor of biology at TCU.

Ben Pierce, professor of biology, is the author of a new genetics textbook published by WH Freeman titled Genetics Essentials: Concepts and Connections. Pierce is author of several additional genetics textbooks used by colleges and universities across the country.

Alisa Gaunder, associate professor of political science, presented a paper titled “From Madonnas to Assassins – The Changing Image of Female Politicians in Japan” at the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies held at UT-Austin Oct. 16-17. Gaunder also was a panelist on a roundtable discussion that analyzed the 2009 Lower House election in Japan.

Eric Selbin, professor of political science, chaired panels on “International Relations Theory” and “Sovereignty, Culture, and the Global Pluralist Society,” and participated in a panel on “Structural-Political Change in Latin America” at the International Studies Association-South Region meeting held last week in Nashville, Tenn.

Eileen Cleere, associate professor of English, was invited by the Victorian Studies Seminar at Rice University to pre-circulate and present the final chapter of her book manuscript, “The Sanitary Arts: Aesthetic Culture and the Victorian Cleanliness Campaigns,” as a work-in-progress. Her seminar on Sept. 26 is titled “Intensive Culture: John Ruskin, Sarah Grand, and the Aesthetics of Eugenics.”

Lois Ferrari, associate professor of music, will conduct the Washington All-State Wind Ensemble at the Washington Music Educators Association conference in February 2010. This ensemble is the premier group in Washington state and WMEA is its premier music education organization.

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, associate professor of English, contributed a chapter to a new book titled Thirty Years After: New Essays on Vietnam War Literature, Film, and Art. The chapter Piedmont-Marton contributed is titled “‘I’m not trying to compete with you’: Gulf War Fiction and Discursive Space.”

Ed Kain, professor of sociology and University Scholar, has been named the 2010 recipient of the Southern Sociological Society’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. The award will be presented at the organization’s spring meeting in Atlanta. To read about Kain’s contributions to the teaching of sociology, go here.

Patricia Schiaffini, part-time assistant professor of Chinese, just returned from Tibet, where she conducted two workshops for early-childhood education, and distributed two new children books in Tibetan that have been published by her non-profit organization, the Tibetan Arts and Literature Initiative. She hopes to conduct similar workshops for Tibetan teachers next summer as well.

Suzanne Fox Buchele, associate professor of computer science, presented a paper titled “Using OLPC Laptop Technology as a Computer Science Case Study Learning Tool” at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges South Central Conference April 25 in Hammond, La.

Bill O’Brien, associate professor of physics, had a paper titled “Measuring Magnetic Declination with Virtual Globes, Compass and GPS” published in the March issue of the International Journal of Digital Earth. The paper reports a novel procedure using virtual globe software such as Google Earth or NASA’s World Wind for measuring the discrepancy (the local magnetic declination) between geographic (or true) north and magnetic north as measured with a compass.

Mary Young, professor of economics, and economics students Eric Franco and Wes Rivers, presented their paper titled “The Effect of Social Networks and Health Care Interventions on Tobacco Use outcomes” at the annual meeting of the Western Economic Association held in Vancouver, British Columbia, June 29-July 3, 2009.

Eric Selbin, professor of political science, was interviewed for a book on Che Guevera that was released in April 2009. Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image was written by Michael Casey, the Buenos Aires bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires. Read a review of the book in The New York Times here.

Laura Senio Blair, assistant professor of Spanish, wrote the program notes for “Chilean Cinema of the Post-Dictatorship Era: A Retrospective in Film (1994-2004),” which is part of the Cine las Americas Latin American Film Festival being held in Austin this week. To read her notes, go here. Senio Blair and student Francisca Lopez are interviewing Chilean directors who are in town for the festival this week as a collaborative student-faculty project. They plan to use the interviews to write an article about trends in Chilean cinema. For more information on the festival, visit www.cinelasamericas.org. Chile is the invited country for this year’s festival.

Mary Grace Neville, associate professor of business, has been selected to receive the Journal of Management Education’s 2009 Fritz Roethlisberger Award for the best article published in the journal in 2008. Neville was selected to receive the award for her article titled “Using Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogical Learning to Explore Dominant Paradigms.”

If you missed the Austin Civic Orchestra’s Feb. 21 world premier at Southwestern of Professor Michael Cooper’s edition of Mendelsson’s Fantaisie und Variations uber den Zigeunermarsch aus Weber’s “Preziosa,” you can watch the performance online here.

Michael Cooper, associate professor of music, published an article dealing with Mendelssohn’s final choral compositions, the three choruses informally known as his Op. 69, in the April issue of The Choral Journal. Cooper also gave two lectures on the campus of Montana State University (Bozeman) during the week of March 26-30. The first was titled “‘Childhood Recaptured at Will’: Thoughts on Mozart, Mendelssohn, and the Nature of Musical Genius,” and was given on March 26 as part of the MSU President’s Fine Arts Series. The second was titled “Dangerous Youth: Mozart, Mendelssohn, and the Myth of the Eternal Child,” and was given as part of a three-day Mendelssohn symposium titled Mendelssohn in Montana.

Helene Meyers, professor of English, has had a chapter of her book Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience (2001) reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 202 (2008).

Mary Young, professor of economics, and economics students Wes Rivers and Eric Franco, will presented a posterabout their research on smoking for the Williamson County and Cities Health District (WCCHD) at a meeting of the Texas Public Health Association in Austin. David Bastis, an epidemiologist from WCCHD, also participated in the presentation.

Aaron Prevots, assistant professor of French, was selected as a finalist for the 2008 Texas Institute of Letters’ Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. The nomination was made for Return to Calm by Jacques Réda, a bilingual French-English poetry volume published in 2007 by Host Publications. Return to Calm features seven sections and uses verse to depict growing up, past loves, travel, seascapes, seasons and places in and around Paris.