Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor Christopher Trinacty presented the paper, "Seneca's Natural Questions: Three Perspectives" at the University of Athens. This paper offers a reading of Seneca's work that stresses its rhetorical, literary, and philosophical sophistication. In addition, Trinacty was a featured panelist at the University of Cincinnati's "An Evening with Seneca," where he discussed Seneca's tragedies and philosophical works as well as his complicated relationship with Nero.

Hal Sundt appeared on the podcast "The Greg Krino Show" to talk about his new book, Warplane: How the Military Reformers Birthed the A-10 Warthog.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jillian Scudder published an article in Nautilus, explaining the recent discovery inferring the first observational evidence of a spinning black hole.

On October 19, Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey delivered his paper "Renaming the Fetish: Assembling Bolsas de Mandinga" at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Rarey's invited talk was part of the Clark's 2023 conference, "The Fetish A(r)t Work: African Objects in the Making of European Art History, 1500-1900," which examined the making and “invention” of African art in European discourse.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Pallavi Wakharkar published a new short story, entitled "On Live," in the autumn 2023 issue of The Southern Review.

Wakharkar's short story "Simple Animal," published in December 2023 in The Iowa Review, was recently noted as a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2023, edited by Min Jin Lee.

Cortney Smith's essay "The Suspense Novel as Persuasion: Survivance and Subversion in Louise Erdrich's The Round House" was recently published in Studies in American Indian Literatures.

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jillian Scudder gave the University of Louisville's annual Bullitt Lecture on October 12. The Bullitt Lecture is an invited speaker series aimed at engaging the general public in astronomy. Professor Scudder spoke about her new book, The Milky Way Smells of Rum & Raspberries.

Lecturer in German and Russian Olesya Ivantsova organized a panel called “Reproductive Tales” at the German Studies Association Annual Conference in Montréal (October 5-8, 2023) and presented her paper “Narrating the Pain: Stories of Childbirth and Abortion in East Germany” discussing works of GDR writers Irmtraud Morgner and Maja Wiens.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Rachel Saylor has published an article, "To Fluoresce or Not to Fluoresce: Investigation of Structural and Fluorescence Characteristics of CBI-Dopamine, CBI-Serotonin, and Their Structural Analogs" in Analytical Chemistry. Her coauthor is Elizabeth Rigby ’22.

Emeritus Professor of English Robert Pierce's article "Does Shakespeare Believe in Sudden Conversion for his Villains?" published in Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, Vol. 13, Article 6.