May-June 2011 @Pomona Newsletter

News and Notes

• The next staff holiday will be Monday, July 4. The Claremont fireworks celebration will take place as usual on our own Strehle Track. Click for more information on the event.
• Speaking of the 4th of July, join the Staff Council in decorating our "float" for the Claremont 4th of July parade. Decorating will take place during the Staff Council ice cream social on Thursday, June 30, from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. Contact Holly Duncan if you wish to volunteer to be a scooper or to contribute ideas for the float beforehand.
• Based on Pomona's successful ReCoop program for students, Pomona's new ReCoopOFFICE program connects campus offices and departments with unwanted, reusable items on campus. Unlike the student ReCoop program, all items in this exchange are FREE! Office-related supplies, furniture, appliances, and other items can be added to the exchange, which is available online. Questions? Email sustainability@pomona.edu.
• Early summer release: We're all well aware that the summer early release time program is underway--can we get a "woo-hoo!"--but you may want to mark your calendar that the program ends on Friday, August 12.


Commencement 2011: View all the speeches, videos and images here

• Smith Campus Center summer hours: The Coop Fountain will be closed for the summer, but the Coop Store will be open Monday through Friday, 11 am to 2 pm, and Sagehen Café will be open from 7:30 am to 11 am for Coffee Service and 11 am to 2 pm for lunch. They are also offering $5 lunch specials on Wednesdays and are available for catering.
• Rains Center summer hours: Rains Center is open 11:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday through Friday only and closed weekends and holidays. You must enter through the east entrance.
• Duplicating Services will be down for printing and scanning Tuesday, June 21, through Friday, June 24. The office will be open and all other services will be available.

Retirements

Join us in another farewell for our beloved staff and faculty members who are retiring this year.

• Deanna Bos, housing director
• Toni Clark, associate professor of English
• Neil Gerard, associate dean of students, director of Smith Campus Center and student programs, and director of Bridges Auditorium
• Jerry Irish, John Knox McLean Professor of Religious Studies
• Monique Saigal-Escudero, professor of romance languages and literatures

To read more about their careers and post-retirement plans, please read our news article.

The Wig Awards

Congratulations to our 2011 Wig Award winners!

• Oona Eisenstadt, Fred Krinsky Professor of Jewish Studies and associate professor of religious studies
• Pierre Englebert, professor of politics
• Richard Hazlett, Stephen M. Pauley M.D. ’62 Professor of Environmental Science and professor of geology
• Richard Lewis, professor of psychology
• Nicole Weekes, professor of psychology
• Samuel Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History

The Wig Distinguished Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching is the highest honor bestowed on Pomona faculty and recognizes exceptional teaching, concern for students and service to the College and the community. Recipients are elected by the junior and senior classes and then confirmed by a committee of trustees, faculty and students. For more information on each professor and to read their students’ comments, read our news article .

Sustainability Tip

Editor's note: We’re adding a new section to the newsletter on sustainability tips from Bowen Close, the sustainability coordinator for the Sustainability Integration Office. You can always visit www.pomona.edu/sustainability for more tips and information.

Keep your computer's energy use on the down-low: Set your screen and computer to energy-saving modes, don't use screen savers, and make sure to turn off peripherals like printers and speakers when not in use. Want more info? See the Sustainable Pomona web page on computing and printing.

New Employees

• Santos Amabisca, groundskeeper, Groundskeeping
• Stephanie Liu, administrative assistant, College Writing
• Michael Ramsey, systems/programming specialist, ITS
• Gretchen Rognlien, associate director, Annual Giving
• Jason Wright, utility worker, Dining Services

Recent News

• 5-C Ultimate Frisbee Team, the Claremont Braineaters, Wins National Championships
• Tennis Championship Update: No Wins, But Many Honors
• Annie Lydens '13 Takes Second in 5000m at National Meet
• Pomona College Named to President's Community Service Honor Roll
• Pomona College Class of 2011 & Recent Alumni Awarded 22 Prestigious Fulbright Fellowship
• Research by Professor Deborah Burke Disproves Conventional Wisdom, Finding Older Adults Are Less Easily Distracted
• Video: Daring Minds Lectures From Pomona College's 2011 Alumni Weekend
• Seth Allen Named Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Pomona College
• Obituary: Emertius Professor of Chemistry Corwin Hansch
• Pomona College Ranked 3rd of the Top 10 Colleges With the Highest Four-Year Graduation Rates
• Professor Laura Mays Hoopes Documents Her Life as a Women in Science in a New Memoir
• Obituary: William Banks, Pomona's Edwin F. and Margaret Hahn Professor of Psychology
• Meet the 2011 Alumni Award Winners
• Professor Kathleen Fitzpatrick and MediaCommons Awarded Mellon Grant to Assess Peer-to-Peer Review
• Rose Hills Foundation Gives $200,000 Grant to Summer Undergraduate Research Program

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

In April, Mary Barr (Sociology and Africana Studies) presented a paper, "De Facto Segregation: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Term," at the National Association for Ethnic Studies conference held at Claremont Graduate University. In May, she participated in a symposium, "South Meets North: The Shaping of a New Narrative of the Civil Rights Movement," held at Northwestern University. In May, she attended the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary and Conference, where she interviewed civil rights activist Candie Carawan '61.

Colin Beck (Sociology) has an article, “The World Cultural Origins of Revolutionary Waves: Five Centuries of European Contention,” in Social Science History 32:2, pp. 167-207. 

Graydon Beeks (Music) presented a paper, "'Sweet Bird’: The Story of Dame Nellie Melba's 1907 Recording," at a conference sponsored by The American Handel Society, of which he is president, held in Seattle from 25-27 March 25-2. He also provided program notes for two of the concerts in the Handel in Seattle Festival, which took place during the same month. 

Joe Brennan (ITS -Media Services) was interviewed for the March 2011 issue of AV Technology Magazine about the ever-present challenges with changing technology as it applies to learning space design. 

Paul Cahill (Romance Languages & Literatures) presented a paper, "Poetic Vision and (In)visible Pain in Antonio Méndez Rubio's Trasluz," at the 64th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, held at the University of Kentucky, 14-16 April. The paper was part of a panel he organized and chaired, "Corrientes críticas en la poesía española.” 

José Cartagena-Calderón (Romance Languages & Literatures) gave a talk, "Masculinity, Sanctity, and Same-Sex Desire: Saint Sebastian and the Making of a Queer Saint in Early Modern Spain," at the conference "Beyond Don Juan: Rethinking Iberian Masculinities," organized by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Catalan Center at New York University, 31 March. 

Ludwig Chincarini (Economics) has recently given several invited lectures: "A Comparison of Quantitative and Qualitative Hedge Funds" at PIMCO, Newport Beach, on 16 February; "A Comparison of Quantitative and Qualitative Hedge Funds" and "Exchange Traded Funds: Some Insights from the Trenches" at the ISCTE Business School in Lisbon, Portugal, on 4 and 5 April; and "A Comparison of Quantitative and Qualitative Hedge Funds" at the Vlerick School of Management in Ghent, Belgium, on 11 April. 

Steve Comba (Museum of Art) has a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings at Bunny Gunner Gallery in Pomona, 9 April-10 May.

Michael Diercks (Linguistics & Cognitive Science) gave two presentations at the Rutgers African Anaphora project workshop in December: "DP Positions in African Languages" and "Properties of Subjects in Bantu Languages" (with co-authors). He gave an invited talk, "Indirect Agreement: How Complementizer Agreement in Lubukusu Shakes up Syntactic Theory,” at California State University, Fullerton, on 18 April.  He also gave two presentations at the 4th International Conference on Bantu Languages in Berlin in April: "Agreeing How?" (with Vicki Carstens) and "Object Marking as Pronominal Incorporation in Lubukusu" (with Justine Sikuku). Diercks is also the author of "The Morphosyntax of Lubukusu Locative Inversion and the Parameterization of Agree," in Lingua 121:5 (April 2011), pp. 702-20.

Anne Dwyer (German & Russian) gave an invited lecture, "Imperiale Selbstinszenierung bei Viktor Sklovskij" (Viktor Shklovsky's Imperial Self-Fashioning), at the University of Salzburg on 29 March. 

Judson Emerick (Art & Art History) has an essay, “Building More Romano in Francia during the Third Quarter of the Eighth Century: The Abbey Church of Saint-Denis and Its Model,” in Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c. 500-1400, ed. C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick, and J. Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 127-50. 

Steve Erickson (Philosophy) delivered a paper entitled "Is Renewal of the Axial Age Possible?" at the Karl Jaspers Society of North America meetings, held in conjunction with the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, in San Diego in April.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Media Studies) published an essay, "Humanities, Done Digitally" in the Chronicle of Higher Education's special section on the Digital Campus on 8 May. She also gave a conference paper, "And I Feel Fine: Publishing and the End of the World As We Know It," and was a speaker on the opening conference plenary roundtable, “Unstable Platforms,” at Media in Transition 7, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 13-15 May. And she gave the keynote address at Fordham University's Faculty Technology Day, "Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy,” on 16 May.

Erica Flapan (Mathematics) gave an invited talk, "Topological Symmetry Groups," at the University of Toulouse on 27 April, and another talk, "When Topology Meets Chemistry," at Imperial College, London, on 5 May. 

Peter Flueckiger (Asian Languages & Literatures) gave a talk, "Kokugaku, Waka, and Confucianism in Eighteenth-Century Japan," at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Honolulu on 3 April.

Robert Gaines (Geology) received a National Science Foundation grant of $184,036 for a field-based research project in China, "RUI: The Chengjiang Scientific Drilling Project and an Integrated Model for Understanding Burgess Shale-Type Deposits.”

Stephan Ramon Garcia (Mathematics) gave a talk, “Hidden Symmetries in Everyday Operators,” at California State University, Dominguez Hills, on 21 April. He also presented a paper, "Real Complex Functions," at the Istanbul Analysis Seminar at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, on 3 April. 

On 20 May, Michael Green (Philosophy) delivered a paper, “Rights and Political Authority in Hobbes,” at the Workshop on Hobbes on Law held at the University of Western Ontario.

Eric Grosfils (Geology) is the first author, with co-authors Sylvan Long '07, Elizabeth Venechuk '06, Debra Hurwitz ‘07, Joseph Richards '05, Brian Kastl '07, Dorothy Drury '06, and colleague Johanna Hardin (Mathematics), of the "Geologic Map of the Ganiki Planitia Quadrange (V-14), Venus,” Map 3121 of the US Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Series.

Jonathan Hall (Media Studies) gave a paper entitled "The Abiding Desire: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Laboring Phantoms" at a conference, "Pain & Trauma in East Asian Cinema," sponsored by UC San Diego's Visual Arts Department on 14 May.  

Laura Hoopes (Biology), whose memoir, Breaking through the Spiral Ceiling: An American Woman Becomes a DNA Scientist, was just released on Amazon.com, discussed her book and Equal Pay Day with Bob McCormick on KFWB’s Money 101 on 12 April; read from her work at a book launch party here on campus on 2 May; and participated in a memoir workshop and book signing at Barnes and Noble, Montclair, on 14 May. As a warm-up act for novelist Brian Evenson, she read from her novel The Bad Project at San Diego State University on 11 April. Her short story “Things to Do to Softball Players,” appears in Mixed Blessings and Other Short Stories (San Diego: Phyllis Scott Enterprises, 2011), pp. 97-105, and the story won third prize inthe Phyllis Scott Publishing contest. Hoopes has also received a Norman Mailer Writers Colony scholarship to a narrative nonfiction workshop at Provincetown, MA.

Arthur Horowitz (Theatre & Dance) was selected to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global,” at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. His article, “The Verges Dance of Death Procession: Twenty-First Century Catalonia Re-Enacts Golden Age Religious Performance,” appeared in Gestos: Revista de teoría y práctica de teatro hispánico 51 (April 2011), pp. 63-74.

Mal Johal (Chemistry) published a textbook, Understanding Nanomaterials (Taylor & Frances, 2011). 

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics) ran a workshop for local high school students in the Gateway to Exploring the Mathematical Sciences Program; her presentation was titled “How HOT Is Your Geometry?  A Tropical Excursion.” She also gave a presentation, "Bloom Takes Calculus: Higher Level Tasks for Your Calculus Courses," to a group of over 100 calculus teachers at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 2011 Annual Meeting and Exposition, held in Indianapolis, 13-16 April; and gave a talk, “Quantization and Superization,” at California State University, Dominguez Hills, on 21 April.

With colleague Mark Huber of Claremont McKenna College, Karaali was interviewed by Maria Droujkova of Math 2.0 Special Interest Group (an international network of researchers, educators, families, community leaders and technology enablers) about the new online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, which the two Claremont faculty are co-editing.

Nina Karnovsky (Biology) is a co-author of “Body Size Variation of a High-Arctic Seabird: The Dovekie (Alle alle),” published in Polar Biology 34 (2011), pp. 847-54. She also gave a public lecture, "Murrelets on the Move: Adventures in Understanding the At-Sea Behavior of Xantus' Murrelets,” to the Pomona Valley Audubon Society.

Margaret Laurena Kemp (Theatre & Dance) recently performed her new play, A Negro Speaks of Rivers, in Venice, CA. She stars as Lena in the Kareem Mortimer film Children of God, which opened in cinemas last month.  

Jade Star Lackey (Geology) authored "Tracing Garnet Origins in Granitoid Rocks by Oxygen Isotope Analysis: Examples from the South Mountain Batholith, Nova Scotia," in The Canadian Mineralogist 49:2, pp. 417-40.

Pardis Mahdavi’s (Anthropology) new book, Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai, was released by Stanford University Press in May. She gave a lecture, "From Braceros to Guest Workers, Trafficked Persons and Forced Laborers in the Persian Gulf," at the "Guest Workers: Western Origins, Global Future" conference held at the Huntington Library, San Marino, on 16 April. She gave a talk on "Gendered Migration and Labor in the United Arab Emirates" at the Pomona College Women's Union on 21 April. 

The National Theatre Company of Mexico toured Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit to cities in Zacatecas, Chihuahua and Guanajuato during April and May. The play and production were the Steele Leave project of Alma Martinez (Theatre & Dance), who also created and administers the production’s Facebook page. She presented a paper, “Zoot Suit and the National Theatre Company of Mexico: Chicana Strategies for Producing in Mexico,” at the 38th National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies Conference in Pasadena on 31 March.  She participated in the panel “Civil Rights & Go Go Boots,” an event produced by About Productions and podcast from KPCC 89.3, in Pasadena on 13 April.

Additionally, Martinez gave a talk, “New Latino Cinema and Neo-Normative Representations,” at the University of California, Riverside, on 5 May, and was cast in an independent dramatic short, “Loncheros,” written and directed by Gary Alvarez for Chapman Productions.

Susan McWilliams (Politics) is co-editor, with Patrick J. Deneen, of Wilson Carey McWilliams’s Redeeming Democracy in America (University of Kansas Press, 2011) and The Democratic Soul: A Wilson Carey McWilliams Reader (University Press of Kentucky, 2011).  She published an opinion piece, “Celebration,” in the April issue of Front Porch Monthly. She also received a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her project “The Foundations of the Founders.” 

Translations by Robert Mezey (English, Emeritus) and the late Richard Barnes (English) of Jorge Luis Borges’ work appeared in the Alabama Literary Review 19:1 (Fall 2010), pp. 105-14.

Char Miller (Environmental Analysis) and Bowen Close ’06 (Sustainability Integration Office) published an article, “Trash Talk: A Case Study of Waste Analysis at Pomona College,” in the Journal of Sustainability Education on 28 March. Professor Miller also published "The Weeks Act: A Centennial Retrospective," in the Journal of Forestry 109:2 (March 2011), pp. 120-21; "Boom and Bust of the Modern West," in New West.net, 3 January;  "Urban Scrawl,” a review of William Scott Swearingen, Jr’s Environmental City, in Texas Observer, 22 March; and a review of Anna Sklar’s Brown Acres: An Intimate History of the Los Angeles Sewers in Southern California Quarterly 92:4 (Winter 2010/2011), pp. 431-33.  

He served as a historical consultant for and appeared on camera in John Muir in the New World, which premiered on PBS’s The American Experience on 18 April, and he narrated a DVD, The Legacy of the Weeks Act: 100 Years of Restoring America's Forests (Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service, 2011), that was distributed throughout the U.S. Forest Service. 

Nivia Montenegro (Romance Languages & Literatures) gave a talk, "Shades of the Hyphen: Exilic Visions in Cristina Garcia and Zoe Valdes," as part of a panel, "Dispersions, Returns, and Future Reunification: Framing the Cuban Diaspora through Cultural Texts," at the conference “Cuba’s Futures, Past and Present” held in New York City, 30 March-2 April. 

Daniel O’Leary (Chemistry) gave an invited lecture, "Deuterium and Tritium NMR Equilibrium Isotope Effects Involving OH/OH and CH/N Hydrogen Bonds: Stereochemical Applications," at the 2011 Southern California Users of Magnets Conference, held at the University of California, Irvine, on 16 April.

Beverly Palmer (Writing Program, retired) presented a paper, “Stevens, Sumner, and the Journey to Full Emancipation,” at a symposium, “Emancipation during the Civil War,” sponsored by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and held at the U.S. Capitol on 5 May.

Anthony Perman (Music) has an article, "Awakening Spirit: The Ontology of Spirit, Self, and Society in Ndau Spirit Possession Practices in Zimbabwe," in the Journal of Religion in Africa 41:1, pp. 59-92.

Jennifer Perry (Anthropology) co-organized two symposia, "California: A Land of Diversity" and "Small Islands, Big Implications: The California Channel Islands and Their Archaeological Contributions," for the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held in Sacramento from 30 March to 3 April. Her co-organizers for the latter symposium were Chris Jazwa HMC '05 and Kristin Hoppa PZ '06. She also gave a public lecture and led a discussion on the "Peoples of the California Channel Islands" at the History Forum, Mission San Gabriel, on 16 April. Additionally, she served as Program Chair for the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held in Sacramento from 30 March to 3 April.

William Peterson (Music) played the organ in a concert, “Dedication of the David and Sigrid Boe Organ,” at Peace Community Church in Oberlin, Ohio, on 11 March.  His performance of three works from Bach’s Clavierübung III (1739) concluded the concert.

Virginie Pouzet-Duzer (Romance Languages & Literatures) presented a paper, "Rire de Salomé," at the Seventh Cultural Production in the 19th Century Workshop, "Humeurs (Humors)," which took place at the University of Florida Paris Research Center on 26 May.

Leonard Pronko (Theatre & Dance) presented a lecture on kabuki at the San Diego Museum of Art on 6 May as part of an exhibit of Japanese color prints from the Museum's collection. Pronko was one of several people to make remarks about Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei '70 at her retirement party, 15 May, which celebrated her 31-year career at UCLA. The program also included clips from many of Sorgenfrei's plays, including Fireplay, commissioned by Pomona College as part of the centennial celebration in 1987 and directed by Pronko.

William Ransom (Art & Art History) has a sculpture in the group show “Telephone,” running from 28 May until 25 June at the Torrance Art Museum.

Linda Reinen (Geology) gave a talk titled “The Great 2011 Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami: Could They Happen Here?” at ADP, Inc. in April, for earthquake awareness month.

Kirk Reynolds (Physical Education) published an article titled “Should Coaches Alter Running Form in Distance Runners?” in Track Coach 195, pp. 6217-24.

Erin Runions (Religious Studies) is the author of “Tolerating Babel: The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Biopolitics,” in Religious Studies and Theology 29:2 (2010), pp. 143-69.

Monique Saigal (Romance Languages & Literatures) gave presentations about women in the French Resistance to graduate students at the Middlebury Center, Paris, on 29 March; to members of the Legion of Honor in Pau, France, on 7 April; and to l’Alliance française and the Jewish Community Center in Memphis, TN, on 14 May.

Jack Sanders (Music) performed more than 30 concerts on classical and baroque guitars in Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma under the auspices of the Piatigorsky Foundation of New York from September 2010 to April 2011. He collaborated with Eric Lindholm and the Pomona College Orchestra in performances of Joaquin Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" in October 2010.  He also has several recent essays in Soundboard Magazine: "String Quartet Blues," in 36:2; "Molasses," in 36:4; and "The One-Percent Solution," in 37:1. Additionally, he completed a copy of a Johann Stauffer guitar, circa 1830, for the Yale Historical Musical Instrument Collection.

John Seery (Politics) delivered a paper, “Stumbling toward a Democratic Theory of Incest,” at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values on 18 April, and his recent work on incest was the subject of a political theory workshop held at the State University of New York, Albany, on 29 April.  He attended the workshop and fielded questions. He also gave a lecture at Williams College about his forthcoming book on the constitutional age requirements.

Patricia Smiley (Psychology) and colleagues published “Can Toddy Give Me an Orange? Parent Input and Young Children’s Production of I and You,” in Language Learning and Development 7:2, pp. 77-106.

Herbert Smith (History, Emeritus) was named the first Poet Laureate of the Mt. San Antonio Gardens retirement community. 

Michael Steinberger (Economics) gave a seminar talk entitled “Is the Motherhood Wage Penalty a Heterosexual Phenomenon?” at the University of California, Riverside, on 18 May.

Julie Tannenbaum (Philosophy) gave a talk, “The Promise and Peril of the Pharmacological Enhancer Modafinil,” at the Center for Applied Ethics at California State University, Long Beach, on 14 April. 

James Taylor (Theatre & Dance) designed the lighting for a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Eccentricities of a Nightingale at A Noise Within Theatre in Glendale in March. The Los Angeles Times placed the production in its “Critic’s Choice” column.

Maria Tucker (Draper Center for Community Partnerships) facilitated a discussion on “Improving College Access & Success and Closing the Achievement Gap” at the 14th Annual Continuums of Service Conference in San Diego in April. She was also recognized by the Pomona Unified School District in a community service awards ceremony on 18 May 18.  

Jonathan Wright (Biology) and Huishan Koh '06 published a paper, “Cation Regulation by the Terrestrial Isopod Armadillidium vulgare (Crustacea: Isopoda: Oniscidea) during Dehydration in Air,” in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A 159, pp. 134-40.

Samuel Yamashita (History) was the discussant for a panel, “Textbook Dialogue in East Asia: The Experiences and Lessons of the History to Open the Future Project,” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, held in Honolulu in April. He also delivered a paper, “The Significance of Hawai'i Regional Cuisine in Postcolonial Hawai'i,” as part of a panel entitled “Food on the Move: Manipulations of Cuisines and Culinary Practices” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies, held in New Orleans in May. 

Anne Yu (Chemistry) is co-author with Nathan Bower of "Exploiting Mass Measurements in Different Environments: Density, Magnetic Susceptibility, and Thermogravimetry," in Journal of Chemical Education 2011, 88, pp. 536-39.