Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Allegra Hyde published a short story titled "The Future is a Click Away" in BOMB. The story imagines a powerful near future algorithm that takes targeted marketing to an extreme. The piece is available in the latest issue of BOMB, and will also be included in Hyde's forthcoming story collection, The Last Catastrophe.

Ana Cristina Perry, assistant professor of art history, had an interview published in The Brooklyn Rail with Raphael Montañez Ortiz, an internationally renowned Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican artist and educator who grew up in New York City and founder of El Museo del Barrio.

Drew Wilburn continued his work with the third grade classes at Oberlin Elementary School, sharing information about archaeology. For the past 5 years, with a small pandemic break, Professor Wilburn has worked with the third grade team as they explore the IB curriculum, "Who we are in Space and Time." Students participated in the analysis of a "Mystery Cemetery," which helps the third graders analyze a series of "graves" from a fictional culture, based in part on teaching tools from the Archaeological Institute of America.

Visiting Assistant Professor Kasia Ozga's solo exhibition OEKOUMENE in L’Angle, Espace d’art contemporain du Pays Rochois in La Roche Sur Foron, France, opens on September 30 and will be on view through November 19.

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Lisa Ryno was recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation, "Sugar-mediated remodeling of the E. coli transcriptome and its impact on biofilm growth and composition." This $534,002 grant will support student-faculty research on how monosaccharides influence both biofilm growth and composition. Because biofilms play a role in antibiotic resistance, better understanding of the biochemical pathways through which they form could have eventual applications in development of antibiotics or antibiofilm coatings.

Associate Professor of Music Theory Megan Kaes Long published an article, "Reassessing the Plagal Cadence in Byrd and Morley," in the most recent issue of Music Theory Online. The article unpacks the obscure history of the plagal cadence by looking at representative examples from Byrd's compositions and Morley's theory treatise.

Professor Milkova's book Storia delle prime volte is published this week in Italy by the Italian publisher Voland. Written in Italian, it is a book of ten short stories about characters who live between languages, continents, and cultures, negotiating their transnational and nomadic identities.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Allegra Hyde contributed to a panel on "Climate Fiction" at the Salem Literary Festival earlier in September. On the panel, she discussed the rise of environmentally conscious literature, the relationship between art and activism, as well as her own novel ELEUTHERIA.

Emily Barton publishes an essay, "Spaceship," in Mothers Unearthed: The Aster(ix) Climate Issue. The essay is only available in the print edition.

Associate Professor of Economics Evan Kresch publishes an article for VoxDev titled "Targeting relief aid after natural disasters: Should donors work through governments or NGOs?".