MakingHistory

PaintingBorges

The Origin of a Species

A Poet Finds Her Voice

Reachingfor theStars

AMERICAN.EDU/CAS/CONNECTIONS | SPRING 2013

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IT’S NO ACCIDENT THAT, since its inception, the magazine devoted to the work of College of Arts and Sciences faculty and students has been called Connections. For connections are what draw us together as scholars, teachers, and students, and as members of the broader American University community.

In the College’s Department of History, it is the connections that faculty members have with one another, in some cases going back decades, that explain why no fewer than eight faculty books have come to fruition in the past year.

For Michael Brenner, founder of Germany’s only Jewish studies program to date, joining the College as the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies is an opportunity to help AU’s path-breaking Center for Israel Studies build bridges to the many similar programs that have been founded in its wake.

Sociology graduate student Erik Kojola, also profiled in this issue, keeps connected with his childhood and growing up in a union household through research linking the interactions of labor with the environmental movement. And thanks to Audio Technology Program faculty member Greg Smith’s connection with National Public Radio, AU students get invaluable broadcast experience through exclusive internship opportunities at NPR.

The arts, too, illustrate the vital role of connections. In a major exhibit at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, 16 Latin American artists enter into dialogue with the works of literary giant Jorge Luis Borges and with one another. Poet Valzhyna Mort—an alumna of the Department of Literature’s MFA program and the youngest person ever featured on the cover of Poets and Writers magazine—recalls the importance of the connections she made at AU with mentors like literature professor David Keplinger.

In the sciences, biology professor Chris Tudge owes his identification of a new crab species on a remote Belizean island in large part to his longtime friendship with a pair of world-renowned crustacean experts who invited him on a research trip. Environmental sciences professor Kiho Kim collaborates with his students on a study demonstrating that going trayless in dining halls significantly reduces food and energy waste. And physics student Terri Poxon-Pearson has had the extraordinary experience of connecting with three mentors at three separate research institutions.

Happy reading,

Letter fromthe Dean

On the Cover Laura Delgado // Detail from Funes, The Garbage Heap II, 2009 // Mixed media on canvas

Magazine ProductionPublisher: College of Arts and Sciences // Dean: Peter Starr // Managing Editor: Charles Spencer // Writers: Steven Dawson, Josh Halpren, Angela Modany, Mary Schellinger, Charles Spencer // Editor: Ali Kahn, UCM // Designer: Nicky Lehming // Webmaster: Thomas Meal // Senior Advisor: Mary Schellinger // Send news items and comments to Charles Spencer at casnews@american.edu.

Peter StarrDean, College of Arts and Sciences

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Appointments & HonorsEducation Portal named AU’s AUDIO TECHNOL-OGY PROGRAM as number one in the nation.

IVY BRODER (economics) received the 2012 Milton and Sonia Greenberg Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award for her online course, Economics of World Regions, and for her paper evaluating the experience, which she presented at the AEA’s National Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education.

A poem by KYLE DARGAN (literature) was featured February 28, 2012, on “Poem-A-Day” and February 18, 2013, on poets.org.

MARY GRAY (mathematics and statistics) is featured in Margaret W. Rossiter’s book Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World since 1972 (Johns Hopkins, 2012) as a founding member of the Association for Women in Mathematics and for her expert testimony for Senator Edward Kennedy’s bill establishing a National Science Foundation advisory committee on women and minorities.

GAIL HUMPHRIES MARDIROSIAN (performing arts) received a Likhachev Cultural Fellowship for her project “Theatre as a Conduit for Cross-Cultural Dialogue, the Cabaret Phenomena Revisited: A Convergence of Cabarets.”

DAN KALMAN (mathematics and statistics) and Nathan Carter received the Trevor Evans Award from the Mathematical Association of America at the MAA MathFest 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin, for their article “Harvey Plotter and the Circle of Irrationality.”

The History of Education Society gave Lessons from an Indian Day School: Negotiating Colo-nization in Northern New Mexico, 1902–1907 (University Press of Kansas, 2011) by ADREA LAWRENCE (education) an Outstanding Book Award honorable mention.

MARIANNE NOBLE (literature) was elected to the editorial board of the MLA journal American Literature.

JACK RASMUSSEN (American University Museum) received a Likhachev Cultural Fellow-ship, thanks to which he will meet with potential collaborators in Russia.

ANITA SHERMAN (literature) won the Open Paper Competition of the Shakespeare Associa-tion of America for her paper titled “Fantasies of Private Language in Shakespeare’s ‘Phoenix and Turtle.’” She will deliver the paper at the associa-tion’s annual meeting in Toronto in April.

TATE STRICKLAND (graphic design) received a 2013 IxDA Interaction Award for his work as lead designer on the mobile app and strategy for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Books & ProductionsZelenka: The Capriccios, the fifth commercial CD by DAN ABRAHAM (performing arts) with the Bach Sinfonia, was featured worldwide on the front page of iTunes Classical as “New and Noteworthy.”

LAURA BEERS (history) and Geraint Thomas coedited Brave New World: Imperial and Demo-cratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars (Institute of Historical Research, 2012). (See page 3.)

JULIET BELLOW (art history) is consulting scholar for the National Gallery of Art exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909 –1929: When Art Danced with Music, open-ing in May 2013. Her book, Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Ashgate), was released this year.

RICHARD BREITMAN AND ALLAN J. LICHTMAN (history) published FDR and the Jews (Belknap/Harvard, 2013). (See page 2.)

DAVID KEPLINGER (literature), published a new book of poetry, The Most Natural Thing (New Issues, 2013).

ALAN KRAUT (history) and David A. Gerber coedited Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping the Nation’s Immigration Story (Rutgers, forthcoming 2013). (See page 3.)

PETER KUZNICK (history) and Oliver Stone coauthored and published The Untold History of the United States (Gallery Books, 2012). (See page 2.)

ERIC LOHR (history) published Russian Citizen-ship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard, 2012).(See page 3.)

PAMELA S. NADELL AND KATE HAULMAN (history) coedited and published Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives (NYU, 2013). (See page 3.)

DAVID PIKE (literature) published Canadian Cinema since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World (University of Toronto, 2012).

VIVIAN VASQUEZ (education) published her sixth book, Perspectives and Provocations in Early Childhood Education (Information Age Publishing, 2012). Her book Technology and Critical Literacy in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2012), coauthored with Carol Branigan Felderman, was published in Kindle format.

Grants & Research STEPHEN CASEY (mathematics and statis-tics) received $145,537 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a three-year study, “New Techniques in Time Frequency Analysis: Adaptive Band, Ultra Band and Multi-Rate Signal Processing.”

DANIEL FONG (biology) was awarded $10,000 by the Cave Conservancy Foundation to study “Analyses of the Melanin Pigment Synthesis Path-way in Subterranean Amphipods and Isopods.”

KATHLEEN FRANZ (history) was granted $18,710 from the Smithsonian Institution for her project “American Enterprise Exhibition.”

DAVID HAAGA (psychology) was the recipient of a $30,000 award from the Trichotillomania Learning Center for “Efficacy of COMB Model of Treating Trichotillomania.”

MARY HANSEN (economics) received $55,963 from the National Conference of Bank-ruptcy Judges to research “Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records.”

STEPHEN MACAVOY (environmental science) was awarded $15,000 from the University of the District of Columbia to study “Episodic Ion and Nu-trient Inputs to the Anacostia River: Constructing a Chemical Hydrograph of an Urban Streams Response to Periodic Rainfall.”

CHRISTOPHER K. MORGAN (performing arts), AU dance artist in residence, received a $20,000 unrestricted fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

MICHAEL ROBINSON (mathematics and statistics) transferred a $65,000 grant to AU from the University of Pennsylvania (funded by Princeton University/Air Force Office of Scientific Research) for “Sheaf Invariants for Information Systems.” He also received a $35,000 award from the Department of Defense through the University of Pennsylvania to study “Algebraic-Topological Sensor Data Exploitation.”

SUE ANN TAYLOR (anthropology) was the re-cipient of a $43,690 grant from the National Park Service for her “Washington, D.C., Civil War Contraband Ethnography Study (1861–1877).”

JONATHAN TUBMAN (psychology) received $2,486,981 from the National Institutes of Health to fund a five-year project, “Multisite School-Based Evaluation of a Brief Screener for Under-age Drinking.”

Letter from the Dean

Making HistoryHistory faculty publishing prolifically

Painting BorgesArgentine author’s work setting theme for Latin artists’ exhibition

A Champion for Israel StudiesMichael Brenner joining AU as Abensohn Endowed Chair in Israel Studies

The Origin of a SpeciesBiologist Chris Tudge honored with eponymous crab

Going TraylessEnvironmental scientist Kiho Kim supporting effort for sustainable practice

A Poet Finds Her VoiceValzhyna Mort, MFA ’11, proving her literary mettle

Linking Labor and the EnvironmentErik Kojola, MA sociology ’13, exploding myths about union attitudes

Tuning in to NPRAudio tech program offering exclusive internship with public broadcaster

Reaching for the StarsTerri Poxon-Pearson, BS ’13, going nuclear in pursuit of her research passion

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THE COLLEGE’S Depart-ment of History has just made some his-tory of its own.

During the past year, five faculty-authored and three faculty-coedited books have been pub-lished, an impressive feat considering that researching, writing, and publishing an academic book can take 10 years.

“It’s astonishing the number of people who have books out,” says Pamela Nadell, the department chair who herself coedited a book published this year. “I’ve been at AU for

over 30 years, but I don’t recall a year like this.”

How to explain it?“Some of it is about

the new faculty who have joined us, like Anton Fedyashin, who are remarkably pro-ductive,” Nadell says. “But there’s also an exciting synergy in the department. Richard and Allan’s book [Dis-tinguished Professors Breitman and Lichtman’s FDR and the Jews], for example, came out of a friendship of more than three decades.”

Here’s a brief run-down of the Department

of History’s crowded shelf of recently pub-lished books, starting with those authored by faculty members:

Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman: FDR and the Jews (Belknap/Harvard)

Discovering “a previ-ously unknown document reconstructing an April 1938 conversation in which FDR said he would like to get all the Jews out of Europe,” combined with other previously unavailable sources, says Breitman, “convinced me that one could now do a more nuanced and

ways. And I couldn’t have done it with-out my history depart-ment colleagues. It’s an enormous project.”

Eric Lohr: Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard)

“I entered Russian studies right when the Soviet Union collapsed and questions of citizen-ship and nationality were in the headlines every day, yet histor- ical study of the region was largely focused on other issues. No one had written a history of Russian citizenship. I was able to find sources that had not yet been studied. It proved to be a very complicated topic that required many subsequent trips to the Russian archives.”

Here are the depart-ment’s current faculty- coedited books:

Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas: Brave New World: Imperial and Demo-cratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars (Institute of Historical Research)

“Brave New World grew out of a conference which [we] organized at Newnham College, Cambridge, in April 2009 to encourage dialogue between young schol-ars based primarily in the U.S. and Britain. Sev-eral themes emerged, notably the changing role of national and imperial identity in post-WWI Britain. The book attempts to draw out this

theme and tell a broader story about the complex relationship between nationalism, communi-cation, and modernity.”

Alan Kraut and David A. Gerber (SUNY–Buf-falo): Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping the Nation’s Immigration Story (Rut-gers University Press)

Eleven autobiographi-cal essays by histori-ans, including Kraut and National Jewish Book Award winner Deborah Dash Moore, explain how their authors’ ethnic backgrounds influenced their scholarly work.

Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman: Making Women’s His-tories: Beyond National Perspectives (NYU)

In their introduction, Nadell and Haulman write that the collected essays examine a world in which women and their ideas

were routinely ignored, a “world transformed by considering the intellec-tual and political produc-tion of women’s history across time and space. In 10 chapters, scholars, who have all published significant works in wom-en’s and gender history

in diverse national, impe-rial, and geographic contexts, stand atop his-toriographically defined vantage points, including Tsarist Russia, the British empire in Egypt and India, Qing dynasty China, and the U.S. roiling through the 1960s.”

“It’s astonishing the number of people who have books out. I’ve been at AU for over 30 years, but I don’t recall a year like this.”

—Pamela Nadell

by Charles SpencerHistory

Making

thorough study of Roo-sevelt, showing how his attitudes and policies evolved over time. When I decided that I had to do Roosevelt’s early life and politics in great depth, I went to the best Ameri-can political historian I know: my friend and col-league Allan Lichtman. Allan agreed to work with me, and FDR and the Jews is the product of an equal partnership.”

Anton Fedyashin: Liberals under Auto- cracy: Modernization and Civil Society in Russia, 1866–1904 (University of Wisconsin)

“I wanted to examine the vibrant liberal culture that flourished in the late imperial era, chroni-cling its contributions to Russia’s rich literary culture, political philoso-phy, and social trends. I also wanted to chal-lenge assumptions about Russia’s intellectual his-tory and cast the coun-try’s nascent liberalism as a distinctly Russian blend of self-governance, populism, and other cul-tural traditions. The book stands as a contribu-tion to the literature on imperial Russia’s non-revolutionary intellectual movements that empha-sized the role of local politics in modernization and the evolution of civil society in an extraparlia-mentary environment.”

Max Paul Friedman: Rethinking Anti-Ameri-canism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations (Cambridge)

Explaining the impetus

for writing his book, Friedman recalls Jacques Chirac’s attempt, based on the French president’s experience as a conscript in Algeria, to warn the United States against getting involved in a war in Iraq—and the subse-quent irrational American umbrage (freedom fries, calls to dig up fallen sol-diers from their graves in Normandy) which led him to French president Charles DeGaulle’s eerily similar warning in 1961 to President Kennedy about going into Vietnam.

“And you know what a lot of Americans did?” Friedman asks. “They burned French flags, they poured good wine down the drain. A member of Congress, I kid you not, gave a speech saying we should dig up our boys from Normandy and bring them home because French soil was no lon-ger a fit resting place for our American heroes.”

Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone (director): The Untold History of the United States (Gallery Books)

The collaboration between Kuznick and Academy Award–winning director Stone produced a companion volume for a 10-part Showtime documentary series.

“It’s been a great project,” Kuznick says. “Eight of my grad stu-dents have worked on it, mostly as paid research-ers, and I’ve had a lot of input from other gradu-ate students and some undergraduates who have assisted in other

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interpreters of literature. And Gracia was look-ing for artists who would truly and fully interpret Borges’s stories rather than simply represent a story or a theme.

He ultimately chose 16 visual artists—Argen-tines and Cubans and Cuban Americans “who were as American as Cuban”—to interpret the 12 stories. Some of the artists had had experience interpreting

Borges; others were undertaking the chal-lenge for the first time for the exhibition.

The 16 artists are Luis Cruz Azaceta, Alejendro Boim, Miguel Cámpora, Ricardo Celma, Laura Delgado, Héctor Destéfa-nis, Claudio D’Leo, Car-los Estevez, José Franco, Etienne Gontard, Mirta Kupferminc, Nicolás Menza, Mauricio Nizzero, Estela Pereda, Alberto Rey, and Paul Sierra.

Painting Borges: The

Exhibition runs April 6–

May 26 at the American

University Museum in

the Katzen Arts Center.

Jorge J. E. Gracia’s

book Painting Borges:

Philosophy Interpret-

ing Art Interpreting Lit-

erature (SUNY, 2012)

will be available for

purchase in the Kat-

zen Museum Store.

by Mary SchellingerPainting Borges

IN CONCEIVING Paint-ing Borges: The Exhibi-tion, opening April 6 at the American University Museum in the Katzen Arts Center, curator Jorge J. E. Gracia sought to look at the connec-tions between literature, art, and philosophy.

He began by select-ing a literary figure, which was easy for Gracia, who holds the Samuel P. Capen Chair in the Department of Philoso-phy and is a professor of comparative literature and Distinguished Profes-sor at SUNY–Buffalo.

He chose Argen-tine author Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most prominent and profoundly philosophical writers of the last century. Borges’s stories, says Gracia, are filled with conceptual puz-zles that provoke readers to reflect on the central issues of our existence.

Gracia selected a dozen of those stories and organized them by topic into three groups: identity and memory, freedom and destiny, and faith and divinity.

The next step was to find artists. While Bor-ges’s work has inspired many from Buenos Aires, Gracia wanted to include artists from other cul-tures. A culturally diverse group, he felt, would best illustrate the many different creative paths that artists take as visual

Laura Delgado. The Female Other—We Were So Similar and So Different, 2009. Mixed media on canvas

Nicolás Menza. The Garden of Forking Paths, 2000. Pastel on paper

Carlos Estevez. The Rose of Paracelsus, 2009. Pencil and gouache on paper

Etienne Gontard. The Interloper, 1991. Acrylic on canvas

Mauricio Nizzero. 2. The Other, 2009. Ink and coffee on paper

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MICHAEL BRENNER,

an internationally respected scholar who started Germany’s first Jewish history and culture program, is joining AU as the Sey-mour and Lillian Aben-sohn Endowed Chair in Israel Studies.

The author of six books, coauthor of numerous journal

articles, and editor of a major Jewish studies book series, Brenner is taking an extended leave of absence from the University of Munich to assume the Abensohn Chair and advance AU’s Israel Studies program.

“Dr. Brenner is a world-renowned historian who brings an exceptional record of scholarship,”

says Peter Starr, dean of AU’s College of Arts and Sciences. “We are indebted to Lillian and Seymour Abensohn for having the vision to create a perma-nent chair in this field that American Univer-sity helped to create.”

Brenner comes to AU with an impressive academic background.

After studying in Heidel-berg and Jerusalem, he received his PhD in Jew-ish history from Colum-bia University. He has taught at Indiana Univer-sity, Brandeis, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, University of California–Berkeley, the University of Haifa, the Central European University of Budapest, and l’École des hautes études in Paris.

He was also the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memo-rial Museum, where he researched modern German-Jewish history. His current research “deals with the tension between the original Zionist vision to bring normalcy to the Jewish people by establishing a state of their own and the

challenges Israel faces today to be regarded as a ‘normal state,’” he says.

His goals at AU include bringing in visiting schol-ars from Israel to dem-onstrate the spectrum of opinions and research there. Two conferences are already planned. He also hopes to take stu-dents on regular trips to Israel to experience the country on a deeper level.

Brenner’s lifetime fascination with Jew-ish studies starts with a rich personal history.

“I grew up in a small town in Germany as the only Jewish kid of my age,” he says. “My par-ents were both Holo-caust survivors who actually had planned to go to the United States after the war but never did so. I learned from

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early on what it meant to be an outsider and was curious to further explore the history and fate of Jews in different parts of the world. After beginning to study Jew-ish history in Germany, I continued in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University and then did my gradu-ate work at Columbia University in New York. Having lived and studied in many diverse places, I feel that this history is so rich and diverse that you need a few life-times to fully understand it, and I am continu-ally fascinated by it.”

Brenner actually fol-lows his wife, Michelle Engert, in teaching at AU. While working as assistant federal public defender in Baltimore, she taught a class in AU’s American Studies Program. After taking a break from practic-ing law to teach in the Department of Ameri- can Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, she is return-ing to Washington to work with the Office of Defender Services and will teach as an adjunct on AU’s faculty.

“AU is a top-notch university, it is placed in the capital of the United States, and it was the first one to establish an Israel studies program,” Brenner says of his deci-sion to join American University. “I like the idea of working with Ameri-can students and think-ing and teaching about Israel through the prism of the United States.”

“Dr. Brenner is a world-renowned historian who brings an exceptional record of scholarship.”

—Dean Peter Starr

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AREOPAGURISTES TUDGEI.

That’s the name of a new species of hermit crab discov-ered by AU biology professor Christopher Tudge on the bar-rier reef off the coast of Belize.

After flying from Washing-ton, D.C., to Miami to Belize, and then taking an hour-long speedboat trip, Tudge finally stepped onto the coral sand of a one-acre island shaded by a few dozen coconut palms.

The Australian-born Tudge has been interested in biology his whole life, from boyhood trips to the beach collecting crustaceans to his undergradu-ate and PhD work in zoology and biology at the University of Queensland. He’s collected specimens all over the world, from Australia to Europe to North and South America. But he’s never had a species named after him. And as is standard practice following the highly formalized ritual of nam-ing a new species, he found out about the honor only after reading a published paper.

The two crustacean taxono-mists and authors of the paper who named the minute crab after Tudge—Rafael Lemaitre of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum

of Natural History and Darryl L. Felder of the University of Louisiana−Lafayette’s Depart-ment of Biology Laboratory for Crustacean Research—have known Tudge since he first came to Washington in 1995 as a postdoc research fellow at the Smithsonian.

They’ve been collecting specimens on the tiny Beliz-ean island for decades, and for more than 10 years they’ve asked Tudge, who specializes in the structures of crusta-cean reproduction and how they relate to the creatures’ evolutionary history, to join them on one of their semian-nual research outings. Finally, in February 2010, there he was with a pair of the world’s leading crustacean authori-ties on a tiny island covered with hundreds of species of their favorite fauna.

It was crab heaven for a bunch of crustacean guys.

“We would collect on the reef crest, go and turn over coral boulders on the reef flat, snorkel over the sea grass beds. We pumped sand and mud to get things out of the ground. We walked into the mangroves and collected crus-taceans from under the man-grove roots. We even snorkeled

in the channels in the man-grove islands,” Tudge recalls.

But discovering the new spe-cies was much simpler: Tudge turned over a coral boulder in an intertidal area, saw 50 or so tiny crabs scrambling around, and stuck a dozen or so speci-mens in a bottle before going on with his work. Only later in the lab, under the micro-scope, was it determined that this isolated little group of her-mit crabs might be unique.

So now Areopaguristes tudgei—a tiny hermit crab dif-ferentiated from others in its genus by such characteristics as the hairs growing on some of its appendages—has joined the list of about 3 million known species. Lemaitre emailed him a PDF of the finished article. A note said only, “Here’s a new species. What do you think?” The note had a smiley emoticon.

“You go through several emotions when a species has been named after you,” says Tudge’s AU colleague Daniel Fong. “It is truly an honor, in the most formal sense of the term, that your colleagues have thought of naming a species after you. It is a very special type of recognition of your contribution to your research field by your colleagues.”

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source. But the best translators are able to do just that—her poetry in English does.”

When Mort signed up for his course a few years later as a gradu-ate student, Keplinger says, it was odd hav-ing her in class. But for her it was a highlight. “It was like walking into Christmas for two and a half hours every week,” she says. “I would be on the subway on my way to translation class like a kid in that Coca-Cola commercial: ‘Translation class is coming! Transla-tion class is coming!’”

Mort says she chose AU because she wanted a creative writing program

that emphasized litera-ture courses and allowed her to experiment with other genres of writing. “I wanted to study literary translation.” She adds, “I wanted to have famous, good-looking professors, and a great library.”

Born in Minsk, Belarus, Mort writes and reads her poetry in English and Belarusian. Her recently published Col-lected Body is her first collection of poems writ-ten entirely in English. She says there was no singular inspiration or thought process behind the collection. But if there were, she says, she would not talk about it.

“Remember the ending

of Faulkner’s Light in August? ‘My, my. A body does get around.’ So, it’s a book about a body get-ting around,” says Mort.

Her reference to Faulkner is a nod to lit-erature professor Erik Dussere, with whom she took an independent study course on the author.

“Working with Val-zhyna, particularly on

the Faulkner project, was always more like having a conversation with a peer than [with] a student,” he says. “She was teaching writing herself at the time, and she would tell me how she had pulled something out of the latest Faulkner book we were work-ing on and used it as an exercise for her class.”

Still hard at work, Mort is busy with new poems and two antholo-gies, one of Russian modernist poetry and the other of contempo-rary European poetry.

“Valzhyna loves po-etry,” Keplinger says. “She is suspicious of accepted ideas, is vibrantly intelligent, and eternally witty.”

APoetFinds Her

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“Working with Valzhyna . . . was always more like having a conversation with a peer than [with] a student.”

—Erik Dussere

VALZHYNA MORT, MFA ’11, is the youngest person ever featured on the cover of Poets and Writ-ers magazine. But she says that means nothing about her—or her poetry.

“What does age have to do with writing?” asks the AU alumna and visit-ing assistant professor at Cornell University. “Mikhail Lermontov wrote his famous long poem, Demon; his canonical novel, A Hero of Our Time; [and] was exiled, served in a war, and was killed in his second duel, [all] before he turned 27. Arthur Rimbaud gave up writing by the time he was 25, while 81-year-old Toni Morri-son published her latest novel, Home, [last] year.”

While Mort downplays the importance of age, there is no denying her accomplishments.

“Valzhyna came to us fully formed,” says liter-ature professor David Keplinger of his former student. Before she came to AU to pursue an MFA in creative writ-ing, Mort had already published a collection of poetry, Factory of Tears, and had guest-lectured in Keplinger’s gradu-ate translation class.

“I learned from her,” says Keplinger, recalling her words to his gradu-ate students that day: “‘Poetry in translation is like a person; when it’s beautiful, it’s rarely faith-ful.’” What she meant, he says, was that it’s dif-ficult “to write a transla-tion that is completely true to the beauty of its

DINING HALL TRAYS at uni-versities across the coun-try are going the way of beanies and sock hops.

Area institutions such as Georgetown, Johns Hop-kins, James Madison, and the University of Virginia have all dispensed with using trays, according to the Washington Post. These institutions, follow-ing the same reasoning as AU since 2009, operated under the belief that going trayless would cut waste substantially and save energy by reducing clean-up.

Now, a new paper in the Jour-nal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, coauthored by environ-mental science professor Kiho Kim and Stevia Morawski, envi-ronmental studies ’12, provides the first hard evidence to back up those assumptions, based on an experiment in 2009.

A previous study conduct-ed by Kim and his class just prior showed similarly promis-ing results. But Kim decided they needed more methodologi-cal rigor. So the class redid the experiment more carefully to have a firmer basis for its results.

“Our concern was that all of these other institutions were jumping on the bandwagon in the absence of data,” Kim says of the trend of universities tossing out trays. “Really, the only sub-stantive study people were refer-ring to was an industry study. We made the argument that you can’t entirely trust the industry.”

Industry studies provided no information on methodol-ogy, Kim notes. “They simply said, ‘We surveyed a bunch of places and they show a 30 per-cent reduction in food waste.’ But how do we know it’s a

scientifically credible study?”So in 2009, Kim’s envi-

ronmental science class set out to rectify that problem.

Over six days in February through March 2009 at AU’s Terrace Dining Hall, Kim and his environmental science students made dining hall trays selec-tively and randomly available or unavailable during lunch and dinner. The students collect-ed dishes from the students and weighed food waste.

Results for the 360 diners surveyed showed that going trayless led to a 32 percent reduction in food waste and a 27 percent reduction in dish use. Those findings, Kim and his coauthor note, suggest that “removing trays is a simple way for universities and other dining facilities to reduce their environ-mental impact and save money.”

The study points out that each day AU’s dining halls serve about 3,200 meals, and that removing trays reduced food waste by 12,000 kilograms (26,455 pounds) per semes-ter. Perhaps just as important is the message that the real-world impact has on students.

“These opportunities really give them a sense of being able to think about solving problems based on a good set of facts—data that can be collected relatively easily and straightforwardly,” Kim says.

“A lot of students think of science as something a small group of people do,” Kim says. “But these are things we do, not just as scientists but as indi-viduals, where we try to under-stand how the world works. We employ the scientific method in our lives every single day.”

by Charles Spencer

“Removing trays is a simple way for universities and other dining facilities to reduce their environmental impact and save money.”

—Kiho Kim

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LinkingLabor

and theEnvironment

AU’S AUDIO Technology Pro-gram is the leader of the pack.

The burgeoning program, named by Education Portal as number one among top audio engineering and pro-duction schools in the coun-try—and which has close to 100 students, including 15 graduate students—offers students valuable internships at such marquee locales as Quad Recording Studios in New York, the Cutting Room, National Geographic, Capital Audio Post, and other record-ing studios and radio stations.

Now, add an exclusive intern-ship at National Public Radio headquarters to the mix.

Greg Smith, the newly hired professorial lecturer in the performing arts department’s audio tech program, worked with NPR and AU to set up the internship. Smith’s experience includes time at NPR on Morn-ing Edition, Lucasfilm, and Imax.

“This is completely something that Greg did,” says program director Paul Oehlers. “Greg has been great because he came from that public broad-cast background, and because of that experience he was able to make those connections eas-ily. He said he thought we could establish permanent internships at NPR, so he set up one for the School of Communication and journalism and one for our audio technology students. We are the only school in the country that

has a permanent internship with NPR, which is pretty exciting.”

The goal of the audio technol-ogy internship is to give students hands-on experience working with audio engineers at NPR, for which they can earn class credit. Interns help run the audio con-sole for NPR morning shows, working the mix levels, record-ing programs, and making sure everything conforms to formats.

“I’ve been observing the mas-ter control, which is the switch-ing and routing of all the different audio streams,” says spring intern and experienced first-year graduate student Brian Chew.

“I’ve learned a lot there, talk-ing with the guys about fault tolerance and the delicacy of everything. I have also sat in on the recording of Tell Me More. That was great, because I got to see them run the show and I got to do some pre-produc-tion on some audio bits. It was really dynamic and interesting. So I hope to be doing more with that, and possibly fixing up some audio clips for them.”

Chad Miller, the fall intern, saw the experience as an invaluable

asset to his education at AU. “I was constantly presented with opportunities to probe new areas and new ways of doing things,” he says. “I can already say with confidence that simply being there drastically shaped the trajectory of my education. Having been given the means to explore at NPR, I’ve shifted my academic focus and rejuve-nated my desire and ability to learn new concepts, new fields, and new ways of thinking.”

Students apply for the intern-ship through AU. Audio tech faculty interview the appli-cants and recommend three candidates to NPR for the final selection process.

Initial feedback from NPR has been positive.

“It is difficult to get in at NPR,” Oehlers says. “There is a very established hierarchy and process for getting hired there. It’s not conducive to just walking in the door and ask-ing for an internship; you have to lay the groundwork.”

ERIK KOJOLA’S passion for workers’ rights runs in his blood. The second-year sociology master’s student grew up in a union household. His fascination with unions and labor-related issues began during his under-graduate years at Oberlin College, where he orga-nized students in support of campus workers.

Working with sociol-ogy professor Chenyang

Xiao to study the interac-tions between labor and the environment, Kojola has managed to merge his passions. He pre-sented “Greening Labor Unions? Environmental Attitudes of Union Mem-bers” at the 2012 annual meeting of the Ameri-can Sociological Asso-ciation in Denver and at George Mason Univer-sity’s Public Sociology Graduate Conference.

“At their core,” says Kojola, “unions are meant to promote social and economic justice. They help workers to feel that they have power at work and that they are key parts of the economy.”

His research sheds light on the relationship between the environmen-tal and labor movements.

“Labor unions are increasingly collaborating with the environmental

movement, especially around green jobs,” says Kojola. “In many cases, the same corporations that are degrading the environment are also exploiting workers. Yet there has been no empir-ical research on the environmental attitudes of union members, which is important for under-standing perceptions of a ‘jobs versus the environment’ trade-off.”

Using data from the General Social Survey (1993, 2000, and 2010), Kojola looked at the strength of union members’ pro-environ-ment beliefs, members’ willingness to pay for environmental protec-tion, and specific issues that concerned them. He also sought to iden-tify any tension between

their environmental and economic concerns.

He found no signifi-cant difference between the attitudes of union and nonunion workers regarding the environ-ment. “There is no evidence that unions influenced their mem-bers to be more pro-environment or that the more liberal political beliefs of union mem-bers translates into more pro-environmental attitudes,” says Kojola. “But these results con-test the assumption that union workers are anti-environment. In fact, results show that union members share many values with the environ-mental movement.”

Kojola’s work earned him the Kianda Bell Scholarship. Established

by Josh Halpren

by Steven Dawson

Tuning in to

“Labor unions are increasingly collaborating with the environmental movement.”

—Erik Kojola

in memory of AU soci-ology doctoral student Kianda Bell, the award supports master’s can-didates in sociology who demonstrate excep-tional academic merit.

“In order to be suc-cessful, we have to push environmentalism beyond the corporate image it has taken on,” says Kojola, who hopes to pursue a doctorate in the field.

“True environmental-ism means taking care of the Earth, but it also means being safe at work, having access to ‘real food and real jobs,’ and eliminating much of the racial and class discrimina-tion that holds people back. We can’t address environmental issues without also address-ing social issues.”

“We are the only school in the country that has a permanent internship with NPR.”

—Paul OehlersNPR CMYK color logo for light background, coated stocks

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The NPR logo is a registered service mark of National Public Radio Inc. NPR has not sponsored this story.

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WHEN SHE WAS a junior in high school, Terri Poxon-Pearson, BS physics ’13, almost dropped her physics class. Twice.

“Things I thought were really basic were much more complicated, and I really like figuring out things that I can’t understand,” she says. “So I kept working at it, and at a certain point it just clicked. It didn’t get easier; I just found joy in figuring it out.”

Poxon-Pearson is currently working on her AU capstone in nuclear physics at the University of Maryland, following an intensive summer research project through a National Science Foun-dation program at the

University of Notre Dame. For 10 weeks, she

worked closely with an advisor, a nuclear astrophysicist, studying a certain kind of nucle-ar reaction that occurs inside stars. “In order for atoms to fuse, they have to get really close together,” she explains. “Because all the pro-tons repel each other, you have to smash them together really fast. This [creates] a lot of energy. Although stars are really hot, these reactions don’t actually happen that often. It’s really hard to measure how often it happens because it’s so rare.”

The research focused on this type of carbon

fusion because it could be the reaction that fuels the weak s-process, a nuclear process in stars responsible for creating many heavy elements.

Among the many learn-ing experiences afforded her through the program, Poxon-Pearson had the opportunity to run the par-ticle accelerator at Notre Dame to measure the rate of this carbon reaction.

She presented her research at the fall 2012 meeting of the Ameri-can Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics in California.

At the University of Maryland, Poxon-Pearson is working with physics professor Carter Hall to identify a rare nuclear reaction, which, if found, would challenge the current understanding of particle physics. (The reaction is so rare that there can be almost no radioactive back-ground in the detector.)

She is conducting research to determine whether Cobalt-60 is a significant possible

source of background radioactivity. Materials in these experiments are selected for their natural low radioactiv-ity. The detector she worked with was mostly made of copper.

“The particular copper was extracted and then machined in France,” she says. “The copper spent 20 days at sea level while it was rolled and processed and then 45 days at sea level while it traveled by boat between France and the U.S.

In that time, something remarkable happens: the low background material that left France is now more radioactive. This is because at sea level, without hundreds of feet of shielding, cos-mic rays are constantly bombarding the material. Some of these rays react with the copper, and Cobalt-60, a radioac-tive material, is formed.”

Poxon-Pearson says her research experience has taught her that “you learn as you go. You don’t necessarily

know what you’re doing all the time, but there are people there to help you learn as you’re doing it.”

It’s also given her a direction and defined her passion for particle physics. She would like to land a job with a large research component. “I have caught the re-search bug,” she admits.

What she loves most about research is when all of the hard work comes together. A researcher can do a lot of work, she says, before really under-standing what the work means. “At a certain point, it all begins to fit together and you can really understand why you are doing whatever it is you are doing,” she says. “It is a rewarding feeling.”

AU physics profes-sor Ulysses J. Sofia, who mentored Poxon-Pearson in the past, also sees research in her future. “I would be surprised if Terri didn’t end up in a job where research plays a significant role,” he says. “She’s a natural.”

The two worked to-gether on a project to cal-ibrate data for a French satellite that observes the sun to study its effects on global climate change.

“The breadth of Terri’s research experi-ences to date is excep-tional,” Sofia says. “It’s extremely rare in physics for an undergraduate student to work on three different projects with three different mentors who are at three differ-ent universities.”

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“I would be surprised if Terri didn’t end up in a job where research plays a significant role. She’s a natural.”

—Ulysses J. Sofia

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IT’S NO ACCIDENT THAT, since its inception, the magazine devoted to the work of College of Arts and Sciences faculty and students has been called Connections. For connections are what draw us together as scholars, teachers, and students, and as members of the broader American University community.

In the College’s Department of History, it is the connections that faculty members have with one another, in some cases going back decades, that explain why no fewer than eight faculty books have come to fruition in the past year.

For Michael Brenner, founder of Germany’s only Jewish studies program to date, joining the College as the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies is an opportunity to help AU’s path-breaking Center for Israel Studies build bridges to the many similar programs that have been founded in its wake.

Sociology graduate student Erik Kojola, also profiled in this issue, keeps connected with his childhood and growing up in a union household through research linking the interactions of labor with the environmental movement. And thanks to Audio Technology Program faculty member Greg Smith’s connection with National Public Radio, AU students get invaluable broadcast experience through exclusive internship opportunities at NPR.

The arts, too, illustrate the vital role of connections. In a major exhibit at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, 16 Latin American artists enter into dialogue with the works of literary giant Jorge Luis Borges and with one another. Poet Valzhyna Mort—an alumna of the Department of Literature’s MFA program and the youngest person ever featured on the cover of Poets and Writers magazine—recalls the importance of the connections she made at AU with mentors like literature professor David Keplinger.

In the sciences, biology professor Chris Tudge owes his identification of a new crab species on a remote Belizean island in large part to his longtime friendship with a pair of world-renowned crustacean experts who invited him on a research trip. Environmental sciences professor Kiho Kim collaborates with his students on a study demonstrating that going trayless in dining halls significantly reduces food and energy waste. And physics student Terri Poxon-Pearson has had the extraordinary experience of connecting with three mentors at three separate research institutions.

Happy reading,

Letter fromthe Dean

On the Cover Laura Delgado // Detail from Funes, The Garbage Heap II, 2009 // Mixed media on canvas

Magazine ProductionPublisher: College of Arts and Sciences // Dean: Peter Starr // Managing Editor: Charles Spencer // Writers: Steven Dawson, Josh Halpren, Angela Modany, Mary Schellinger, Charles Spencer // Editor: Ali Kahn, UCM // Designer: Nicky Lehming // Webmaster: Thomas Meal // Senior Advisor: Mary Schellinger // Send news items and comments to Charles Spencer at casnews@american.edu.

Peter StarrDean, College of Arts and Sciences

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Appointments & HonorsEducation Portal named AU’s AUDIO TECHNOL-OGY PROGRAM as number one in the nation.

IVY BRODER (economics) received the 2012 Milton and Sonia Greenberg Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award for her online course, Economics of World Regions, and for her paper evaluating the experience, which she presented at the AEA’s National Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education.

A poem by KYLE DARGAN (literature) was featured February 28, 2012, on “Poem-A-Day” and February 18, 2013, on poets.org.

MARY GRAY (mathematics and statistics) is featured in Margaret W. Rossiter’s book Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World since 1972 (Johns Hopkins, 2012) as a founding member of the Association for Women in Mathematics and for her expert testimony for Senator Edward Kennedy’s bill establishing a National Science Foundation advisory committee on women and minorities.

GAIL HUMPHRIES MARDIROSIAN (performing arts) received a Likhachev Cultural Fellowship for her project “Theatre as a Conduit for Cross-Cultural Dialogue, the Cabaret Phenomena Revisited: A Convergence of Cabarets.”

DAN KALMAN (mathematics and statistics) and Nathan Carter received the Trevor Evans Award from the Mathematical Association of America at the MAA MathFest 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin, for their article “Harvey Plotter and the Circle of Irrationality.”

The History of Education Society gave Lessons from an Indian Day School: Negotiating Colo-nization in Northern New Mexico, 1902–1907 (University Press of Kansas, 2011) by ADREA LAWRENCE (education) an Outstanding Book Award honorable mention.

MARIANNE NOBLE (literature) was elected to the editorial board of the MLA journal American Literature.

JACK RASMUSSEN (American University Museum) received a Likhachev Cultural Fellow-ship, thanks to which he will meet with potential collaborators in Russia.

ANITA SHERMAN (literature) won the Open Paper Competition of the Shakespeare Associa-tion of America for her paper titled “Fantasies of Private Language in Shakespeare’s ‘Phoenix and Turtle.’” She will deliver the paper at the associa-tion’s annual meeting in Toronto in April.

TATE STRICKLAND (graphic design) received a 2013 IxDA Interaction Award for his work as lead designer on the mobile app and strategy for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Books & ProductionsZelenka: The Capriccios, the fifth commercial CD by DAN ABRAHAM (performing arts) with the Bach Sinfonia, was featured worldwide on the front page of iTunes Classical as “New and Noteworthy.”

LAURA BEERS (history) and Geraint Thomas coedited Brave New World: Imperial and Demo-cratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars (Institute of Historical Research, 2012). (See page 3.)

JULIET BELLOW (art history) is consulting scholar for the National Gallery of Art exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909 –1929: When Art Danced with Music, open-ing in May 2013. Her book, Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Ashgate), was released this year.

RICHARD BREITMAN AND ALLAN J. LICHTMAN (history) published FDR and the Jews (Belknap/Harvard, 2013). (See page 2.)

DAVID KEPLINGER (literature), published a new book of poetry, The Most Natural Thing (New Issues, 2013).

ALAN KRAUT (history) and David A. Gerber coedited Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping the Nation’s Immigration Story (Rutgers, forthcoming 2013). (See page 3.)

PETER KUZNICK (history) and Oliver Stone coauthored and published The Untold History of the United States (Gallery Books, 2012). (See page 2.)

ERIC LOHR (history) published Russian Citizen-ship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard, 2012).(See page 3.)

PAMELA S. NADELL AND KATE HAULMAN (history) coedited and published Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives (NYU, 2013). (See page 3.)

DAVID PIKE (literature) published Canadian Cinema since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World (University of Toronto, 2012).

VIVIAN VASQUEZ (education) published her sixth book, Perspectives and Provocations in Early Childhood Education (Information Age Publishing, 2012). Her book Technology and Critical Literacy in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2012), coauthored with Carol Branigan Felderman, was published in Kindle format.

Grants & Research STEPHEN CASEY (mathematics and statis-tics) received $145,537 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a three-year study, “New Techniques in Time Frequency Analysis: Adaptive Band, Ultra Band and Multi-Rate Signal Processing.”

DANIEL FONG (biology) was awarded $10,000 by the Cave Conservancy Foundation to study “Analyses of the Melanin Pigment Synthesis Path-way in Subterranean Amphipods and Isopods.”

KATHLEEN FRANZ (history) was granted $18,710 from the Smithsonian Institution for her project “American Enterprise Exhibition.”

DAVID HAAGA (psychology) was the recipient of a $30,000 award from the Trichotillomania Learning Center for “Efficacy of COMB Model of Treating Trichotillomania.”

MARY HANSEN (economics) received $55,963 from the National Conference of Bank-ruptcy Judges to research “Opening New Views into Bankruptcy and Credit Markets Using Court Records.”

STEPHEN MACAVOY (environmental science) was awarded $15,000 from the University of the District of Columbia to study “Episodic Ion and Nu-trient Inputs to the Anacostia River: Constructing a Chemical Hydrograph of an Urban Streams Response to Periodic Rainfall.”

CHRISTOPHER K. MORGAN (performing arts), AU dance artist in residence, received a $20,000 unrestricted fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

MICHAEL ROBINSON (mathematics and statistics) transferred a $65,000 grant to AU from the University of Pennsylvania (funded by Princeton University/Air Force Office of Scientific Research) for “Sheaf Invariants for Information Systems.” He also received a $35,000 award from the Department of Defense through the University of Pennsylvania to study “Algebraic-Topological Sensor Data Exploitation.”

SUE ANN TAYLOR (anthropology) was the re-cipient of a $43,690 grant from the National Park Service for her “Washington, D.C., Civil War Contraband Ethnography Study (1861–1877).”

JONATHAN TUBMAN (psychology) received $2,486,981 from the National Institutes of Health to fund a five-year project, “Multisite School-Based Evaluation of a Brief Screener for Under-age Drinking.”

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