Zachary Rodriguez, assistant professor of economics, and Lewis Davis, professor of economics, have published a paper in the Journal of Institutional Economics. "Do Religious Beliefs Matter for Economic Values" provides evidence on the relationship between religious beliefs and economic values across religious traditions. They find that religious beliefs are particularly important for values related to gender roles, lawful behavior, and institutional trust.
Stephanie Curley, Mary H. and Richard K. Templeton assistant professor, along with David Krimer '25, Bennett Beaulieu '25, Chau Tran Minh ’25, and Nolan Randall 25’ presented at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting October 23-26. Each student presented a poster on their research in the Curley lab, with Curley presenting a podium talk on “Evaluation of a Thin Film Formulated Outer Membrane Vesicle Vaccine”. The Curley lab was joined by Joshua Chuah, visiting assistant professor of biomedical engineering, Aarón Carretero Benites ’25, and Young Jun Chun ’25, who also presented posters on their research. Associate professor of biomedical engineering, Sudhir Khetan, also attended the conference.
The Pi Pi Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. raised just under 7,000 dollars for Breast
Cancer Awareness. This was able to be accomplished through students tabling on campus at
various supporting events and selling Breast Cancer Awareness t-shirts. This money will
contribute to ongoing research, treatment, prevention, education, and support groups.
The Union College Stable Isotope Laboratory recently participated in an international proficiency test for oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in water conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). We were one of more than 250 laboratories around the world participating in the test, each who received six unknown samples to analyze. We produced excellent results! For example, our oxygen isotope results were within 0.1 per mil of the correct value for all samples, and better than 0.04 per mil for five of the six test samples. The lab is managed by Anouk Verheyden, senior lecturer of geosciences, David Gillikin, the Williams D. Williams Professor and Chair of Geosciences, and Mason Stahl, the James M. Kenney Associate Professor of Geosciences and Director of the Environmental Science Policy and Engineering program, the lab also employs four work study students.
Faculty from the English department have many publications to share from this summer and fall. Find links to their recent works below.
Pattie Wareh, professor of English, published a monograph with Manchester University Press in summer of 2024. Called "Courteous Exchanges: Spenser's and Shakespeare's gentle dialogues with readers and audiences." The book is part of the "The Manchester Spenser" series, focused on Spenser and Renaissance studies. Complementing Wareh's courses on Shakespeare's plays and Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," Wareh's book situates the authors in relation to each other while examining issues of education, gender, religion, race, and aristocratic identity.
Bernhard Kuhn, associate professor of English, has had his article "Science, Michel Serres, and the Topological Poetics of A. R. Ammons" published in the Summer 2024 issue of the journal College Literature. A true interdisciplinary endeavor, the culmination of a shift from research on nineteenth-century autobiographers who practiced natural history (Goethe, Rousseau, Thoreau) to that of contemporary American poetry and mathematical concepts, the article underscores Kuhn's interests in literature and science.
BK Tuon, associate professor of English, has given several public readings of his new novel, "Koan Khmer," published this summer with Northwestern UP/ Curbstone Press, about surviving the Cambodian genocide to become a Cambodian-American child immigrant trying to "cope with the traumas of his past" along with those posed by his American peers. "Based loosely on Tuon’s life, the novel traces Samnang’s difficult journey toward an answer to the question, How does one rebuild a life after genocide and displacement and create a home?" Poems published by Professor Tuon this term include: "Absolute Zero" in The Braided Way; "A Hole in My Stomach" featured online on August 8, 2024 and in print in volume 13.1 (2024) of Ocean State Review; "Building a House," The Midwest Quarterly (Summer 2024, print); "My Children Teach Me How to Sing to the Moon" The Braided Way; and an ode to Professor Emeritus Harry Marten, "After the News of Your Passing" One Art, November 2024.
Shena McAuliffe, associate professor of English and Creative Writing, published the featured three-part short story tracing the "life" of a nonhuman object: "Tricycle" in the print and online journal Ocean State Review, 13.1 (2024).
Jordan Smith, Edward Everett Hale Jr., Professor of English and director of the new Creative Writing minor, published two groups of three poems in the online magazine Live Encounters, "Another Old Movie,"(Sept 2024) and "The Ghost in the Mix Tape," (Nov-Dec 2024).
Alumnus Jamalludin Aram '17 has an author/artist interview published in September in Artful (Un)belonging, a SSHRC-funded research project that explores how the visual arts are deployed in contemporary Canadian literature. Find the interview here.
English professor emeritus Jim McCord and his wife and collaborator, Carol McCord, read from and discussed photo-poems from their latest collaboration, Time and Place + West and East on November 6, 2024.
On November 7, 2024, alumnus poet Gary Glauber '80 read poetry and received the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, given each year through the generosity of Rosemarie Heinegg in memory of our colleague, Peter. The award goes to a Union graduate who has continued literary endeavors after graduation. Glauber received an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie-Mellon University, and is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022) and A Careful Contrition (Shantih Arts, 2021). His chapbook, The Covalence of Equanimity, received the 2019 James Tate poetry prize.
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