Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of Medieval Art History Erik Inglis published the article "Remembering and Forgetting Suger at Saint-Denis, 1151-1534: An abbot’s reputation between memory and history.” Download a PDF of the article on this webpage.

Ben Fitch-Fleischmann, assistant professor of economics and environmental studies, presented his paper “Extreme Heat and Early-Life Health: Evidence from Peru” at CANUSEE 2015, a joint conference presented by the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics and the United States Society for Ecological Economics, in Vancouver, Canada, on October 4. Information about his paper can be found on this webpage.

Rick Baldoz, associate professor of sociology, and Shelley Lee, associate professor of comparative American studies and history, delivered the joint keynote address “Pilipino American History: Between Empire and Diaspora” on October 6 at the University of San Francisco for Pilipino/a American History Month. The event was hosted by the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program and the University of San Francisco Kasamahan.

Professor of History and Director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence Steven Volk delivered the invited talk “Between Danger and Discomfort: Trigger Warnings, Academic Freedom, and How to Create Productive Spaces for Learning” on October 1 at the Center for Teaching Excellence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

The paper “On the Budyko-Sellers energy balance climate model with ice line coupling” by Professor of Mathematics Jim Walsh (lead author) and Christopher Rackauckas ’13 appeared in the September issue of Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems - Series B (DCDS-B). The paper presents an analysis of a mathematical model of an ice sheet-surface temperature coupled model. This work was carried out with Rackauckas.

Walsh was also invited to participate in a Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 workshop held September 30-October 2 at the National Institute of Mathematical and Biological Synthesis in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the workshop, Walsh spoke about the Mathematics and Climate Research Network, an organization funded by an award from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences of which he is a member.

Professor of Dance and Chair of the Dance Department Ann Cooper Albright guest edited a recent special issue of Choreographic Practices on dance and disability. “Entitled Dis/abilities: the politics of a prefix,” this international collection of essays was a collaboration with Gabriele Brandstetter, professor of theater and dance studies at the University of Berlin and 2013 Harold Jantz lecturer in German at Oberlin College.

Albright also recently published “Split Intimacies: Corporeality in Contemporary Theater and Dance” in the new Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater.

The book Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea by Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager has been selected by Ms. Magazine as a book for learning about American wars in the inaugural War Edition of its “What You Never Learned About American History series.” The purpose of the series is to recommend “books that cover topics in ‘hidden’ history.”

The paper “Panmictic and Clonal Evolution on a Single Patchy Resource Produces Polymorphic Foraging Guilds” by Wayne M. Getz, A. Starker Leopold professor of wildlife ecology at UC Berkeley; Richard Salter, professor of computer science; Andrew J. Lyons, vice provost for the office for undergraduate research at Stanford University; and Nicolas Sippl-Swezey ’11 was published August 14 in the prestigious online journal PLOS ONE.

The paper uses a model designed by Salter for his Nova modeling platform to study how genetic traits and experiential changes in the state of agents and available resources influence animal foraging and movement behaviors. These behaviors are manifest as decisions on when to stay and exploit a current resource patch or move to a particular neighboring patch, based on information of the resource qualities of the patches and the anticipated level of intraspecific competition within patches. It uses a genetic algorithm approach and an individual’s biomass as a fitness surrogate to explore the foraging strategy diversity of evolving guilds under clonal versus hermaphroditic sexual reproduction.

The focus of the paper's analysis is on the question of how the biomass production efficiency and the diversity of guilds of foraging strategy types, exploiting resources over a patchy landscape, evolve under clonal versus random hermaphroditic sexual reproduction. Results indicate greater biomass production efficiency under clonal reproduction only at higher population densities, and demonstrate that polymorphisms evolve and are maintained under random mating systems.

The paper is an outcome of the ongoing collaboration between Salter and Getz. Getz and Sippl-Swezey were most recently in Oberlin as instructors in last summer’s Nova Workshop, attended by 20 faculty and graduate students from Oberlin, The Ohio State University, Michigan State, and other institutions.

Two articles coauthored by Sebastiaan Faber, professor of Hispanic studies and chair of Latin American studies, and Bécquer Seguín were recently published in the Nation.

Read “The Spanish Media Are the Worst in Europe. These Upstarts Are Trying to Change That” and "Will Catalonia’s Regional Elections Lead to the Breakup of Spain?."

The article “The Historiography of Feminicide in Ciudad Juárez: Critical and Revisionist Approaches” by Steven Volk, professor of history and director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence, was published in the September issue of Forum for Inter-American Research, the journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS). See Volk’s article in a PDF of the complete issue on the IAS website.