Chad Orzel, associate professor of physics, presented a talk at the joint meeting of Chicago and Illinois sections of the American Association of Physics Teachers at Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Ill. His talk, “The Quantum Physics of an Ordinary Morning,” was based on his recent book, “Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Ordinary Objects.” He was also featured as a commentator on the physics of football in a video produced by Business Insider. Watch “How to Throw the Perfect Football Spiral” where he explains the key physics concepts.
Andrew Feffer, professor of history, appeared on the Pat Thurston Show on KGO radio in San Francisco to talk about the “new McCarthyism.” He also recently delivered the talk, “McCarthyism, Then and Now,” at the Institut Franco-Americain in Rennes, France.
David Gillikin, professor of geology, with Alan Wanamaker of Iowa State University and Fred Andrus of the University of Alabama, co-edited a special edition of Chemical Geology. The issue, “Chemical Sclerochronology,” has 16 peer-reviewed articles and stems from the 4th International Sclerochronology conference held in 2016 in Portland, Maine.
Students from “Economics and Natural Resource Economics,” taught by Therese McCarty, the John Prior Lewis '41 Professor of Economics, have published op-ed pieces advocating a wide range of environmental policy actions on Schaffer Library's Digital Works Platform. Colin Brownlee '22, Sajju Chalise, '19, Nicole Cornell '21, Kelci Gilot '22, Molly Goodman '20, Griffin Lamp '19, Tyler Mar '21, Billy Martin '22, Isabelle Riker '22 and Grace Snyder '22 developed policy positions to address environmental damage caused by economic production in places of personal interest. Gail Golderman, digital scholarship and services librarian emerita, along with Becky Fried, digital projects and metadata librarian, and Joanna DiPasquale, director of content and digital library systems, provided interested students in the course with a platform for public expression of their work via Schaffer Library's Digital Works Platform.
A paper by Marianna Ganapini, assistant professor of philosophy, was published in Philosophical Studies. “Belief's Minimal Rationality” explores humans' irrational actions and beliefs and explains that people preserve at least a minimal degree of rationality.
A poem by Kimmo Rosenthal, professor of mathematics, was accepted for publication in Indefinite Space. The works of American poet Wallace Stevens inspired “Seeing the Invisible.”
An interview with Christine Henseler, professor of Spanish, was featured in an article on 4Humanities, a humanities website that she co-leads. The piece talks about her approach to human-centered teaching. Read the article here.
A paper by Dong Cheng, assistant professor of economics, is forthcoming in Research in International Business and Finance. The piece, co-authored by several researchers in China, is titled “Is Heterogeneous Capital Depreciation Important for Estimating Firm-Level Productivity? Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms.”
A paper by Jeffrey Corbin, professor of biology, was published in Ecology Letters. The article used nearly 25,000 plots from U.S. national park sites to show that diverse plant communities are more resistant to invasion by exotic species. The work was a collaboration between Corbin, three colleagues from UMass-Amherst and former Union faculty member Valerie Barr, now at Mount Holyoke College. Rebecca Robinson ’12 was instrumental in some initial analysis of the dataset during her time at Union.
Andrew Burkett, associate professor of English, is organizing a panel, “New Romanticisms,” on behalf of the Keats-Shelley Association at this year’s Modern Languages Association Conference in Seattle this weekend. Burkett is Reviews co-editor for the Keats-Shelley Journal.
Jordan Smith, professor of English, has had numerous recent publications. They are:
- A guest editorial, “Interiors,” and five poems in “Live Encounters: Poetry and Writing”
- A story, “The President’s Garden” in the Write Launch
- Brief reviews of John Montague’s “Selected Poems” and Seamus Heaney’s “100 Poems” for the Antioch Review
- Full reviews of Tom Ewing’s “Bill Monroe: The Life and Musice of the Blue Grass Man” and Lewis M. Stern’s “Tommy Thompson: New-Timey String Band Musician” for the Old Time Herald
- “Hat & Key” series of broadsides with Walter Hatke – two poems are alongside Hatke’s show at Union’s Kelly Adirondack Center
