Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Professor of Classics Christopher Trinacty published an article in the latest issue of Greece & Rome. The article, "Fear and Healing: Seneca, Caecilius Iucundus, and the Campanian Earthquake of 62/63 CE", investigates strategies of coping with trauma in the ancient world. Trinacty also recently gave a lecture and workshop of his current research at Notre Dame University. The lecture, "The Beginning of the End: The Flood of Seneca's Natural Questions 3", analyzed the literary tropes that Seneca employs to express larger Stoic ideas, such as eternal recurrence.

Daniel Schultz, visiting assistant professor of religion, published an article, "Elephants, Dreams, and Sex: Reading Religion in Foucault’s Ethics," in The Journal of Religion.

Margaret Kamitsuka, Francis W. and Lydia L. Davis Professor of Religion, has been selected to be a Coolidge Fellow in the Cross Currents Research Colloquium at Auburn Seminary in New York City this summer, focused on the theme of reproductive justice. 

The Cross Currents Research Colloquium brings together fellows (religious scholars, sociologists, clergy, activists, artists and others) to pursue individual and group research for focused and facilitated discussions and seminars pertaining to faith-based social and religious justice. Cross Currents is a magazine published four times a year by the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.

Associate Professor of Psychology Travis Wilson in March received the 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education at the University of Illinois. The five other recipients of the 2019 award were Ann Larson, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville; Elegwa Mukulu, professor of entrepreneurship at Jomo Kenyatta University, Republic of Kenya; Patricia Clark, chair of the Department of Elementary Education at Ball State University; Jennifer Dillavou, president of the University of Illinois Alumni Alliance; and Margaret Kobia, cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs, Republic of Kenya.

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón gaves a book talk in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

Professor of Physics Yumi Ijiri recently published an article in Physical Review B titled "Correlated spin canting in ordered core-shell Fe3O4/MnxFe3-xO4 nanoparticle assemblies." The paper was co-authored with Oberlin students Ian Hunt-Isaak '17, Hillary Pan '17, and Jane Hsieh '20 and with other scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Assistant Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder was invited to present her research for the Galaxies and Cosmology Seminar series on March 19, 2019 at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics.

Assistant Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Paul Brehm participated in the Midwest Economics Association (MEA) conference March 15-17, 2019 in St. Louis. Brehm presented a paper and served as a discussant at the conference.

Wendy Beth Hyman, associate professor of English and comparative literature, has published a monograph, Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry (Oxford UP, 2019) and an article, “Seeing the Invisible Under the Microscope: Natural Philosophy and John Donne’s Flea” in Philological Quarterly 98.1-2 (Spring/Winter 2019): 157-180.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Cal Biruk gave an invited book talk on March 13, 2019 at University of Washington's eScience Institute's "Data Then and Now" seminar.