Spring Newsletter

It was a busy and productive Spring in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Bryn Mawr College. The term began with the first-ever "Graduate Student Mugging,” a graduate version of one of the College's longest-running traditions. The event, sponsored by the Alumnae Association, welcomed students into the Bryn Mawr community with a monogrammed mug and a chance to network with returning alums.

In April, Dean Burgmayer and the Graduate Student Association hosted their biennial Graduate Career Symposium on the theme of “balance.” Several GSAS alum came back to campus for the event, including Don Fahey (Ph.D. ’14, Physics), Evrydiki Tasopoulou (Ph.D. ’08, Archaeology), Chris Micklewright (Ph.D. ’12, Math) and Maria Winters (Ph.D. ’14, Chemistry). History of Art Professor Alicia Walker was also on the panel and the event was moderated by Bryn Mawr Professor of Political Science Marissa Golden.

In early May, students in the Graduate Group of Archaeology, Classics and History of Art celebrated the end-of-year with a Research Symposium featuring presentations by Alex Brey, Charlie Kuper, Holly Pritchett, and Michelle Smiley.

Keep reading to learn more about the individual and collaborative accomplishments of our faculty, students and alumnae. And be sure to follow the many links to read all of the details!

Congratulations!

Our newest Graduates:

And kudos to our three Graduate Faculty whose teaching and scholarship was awarded at the Spring 2016 Commencement Ceremonies:

Michelle Francl, Professor of Chemistry, received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Change Master Research Fund award, which  was established by Mrs. Kanter, Class of 1964, to support faculty research on innovation, social action or social and organizational change, or for demonstrated contributions to social betterment through scholarship and teaching.
Homay King, Professor of History of Art, has been named the Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities, which was established in 1998 with the bequest of Rachel C. Hale, mother of Mary Hale Chase, A.B. 1925, and grandmother of Mary Eugenia Chase Guild, A.B. 1952. The chair recognizes a full professor who has demonstrated excellence, in both her teaching and scholarship.
Alicia Walker, Associate Professor of History of Art, recieved the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, which is presented to a member of the faculty for exceptional teaching. 

Faculty News

Archaeology

In February, Peter Magee delivered the keynote address launching the Ancient World Studies Program at the conference “Adaptation, Technology, and Social Cohesion: The place of the UAE in Ancient World Studies,” sponsored by New York University, Abu Dhabi.

Chemistry

In the March issue of Nature Chemistry, Michelle Francl published an article “Changing Chemistry by Degrees,” which considered the often overlooked importance of thermometers in the development of chemical research. Professor Francl was also recently named an adjunct scholar of the Vatican Observatory, a post that will allow her to explore the observatory’s library on regular trips to Rome and research the early history of science in Europe.

Classics

Graduate Group Director and Professor Annette Baertschi presented a talk at the 2016 “Blended Learning Conference in the Liberal Arts,” hosted by Bryn Mawr, about a digital humanities course she offered last fall, “Using Omeka in a Course on Food and Drink in the Ancient World.” This summer, she will present a paper, "The Mechanisms of Trauma in Lucan's Bellum civile," at the international conference “Emotional Trauma in Greek and Roman Culture: Representations and Reactions,” hosted by the European Cultural Center of Delphi (ECCD) in Greece.

This summer will see the publication of a new book by Catherine Conybeare, The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine’s Confessions, which is part of the Routledge Guides to the Great Books series.

Radcliffe Edmonds published an essay, “When I walked the dark road of Hades: Orphic katabasis and the katabasis of Orpheus,” in Katábasis in Greek Literary Tradition and Religious Thought ed. Bonnechere & Cursaru. Les Études Classiques 83 (2015), pp. 261-279. In July, he will present a talk, “The Song of the Nightingale:  Word Play on the Road to Hades in Plato’s Phaedo,” at the International Plato Society Conference in Brasilia, Brazil.

History of Art

David Cast helped organize a two-day conference on the works of the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini and in celebration of Bryn Mawr alumna and Poggio scholar Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan. Ph.D. candidate Justine Lake-Jednizak also took part in the symposium, in a session with invited guest Massimo Zaggia.

In honor of Homay King’s recent book Virtual Memory: Time-Based Art and the Dream of Digitality (Duke, 2015), the ICA Philadelphia hosted a two-day event, beginning with a book launch celebration featuring a discussion between Professor King and the electronic music duo Matmos (Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt). The following day featured a series of artist presentations and discussions responding to the themes of King’s book. In April, Professor King programmed a screening of Restaurant and The Life of Juanita Castro for the event “Worldwide Warhol,” in conjunction with the International Pop exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She also delivered the keynote lecture at the “Radical Ephemeralities” conference at UC Santa Barbara, “Notes on Some Forms of Repetition,” and took part in “Another World is Virtual: A Discussion of Homay King’s Virtual Memory” at the University of Oregon, Eugene.

Lisa Saltzman was commissioned to write an essay in the catalogue for the retrospective exhibition Anselm Kiefer at the Centre Pompidou this spring in Paris. Her essay, “Next Year in Jerusalem, This Year in Paris: On Anselm Kiefer, Iconographic Imperatives and the Jews,” brings her back to the concerns of her first book, Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz (Cambridge, 1999). She also penned the essay, "You May Have the Body or You May Not: Habeas Corpus in the Museum,” for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art, held at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.

Math

After 25 years of teaching and advising graduate students, Professor Helen Grundman is retiring from Bryn Mawr to become the Director of Education and Diversity at the American Mathematical Society. We look forward to seeing what she accomplishes in her new post!

Leslie Cheng recently coauthored an article, “Logarithmic Bounds for Oscillatory Singular Integrals on Hardy Spaces,” in the Journal of Function Spaces (2016).

This March, Djordje Milicevic, with Valentin Blomer and Gergely Harcos, published an article in the Duke Mathematical Journal (Vol. 165, Issue 4, pp. 625–659).

Physics

Peter A. Beckmann coauthored an essay in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

In February, David Schaffner, attended the Energy Innovation Summit, which brings over 2000 attendees from science, industry and the government to discuss ideas and technologies associated with energy research. This year, the Summit’s guest speakers included former Vice-President Al Gore and current Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz. While there, Professor Schaffner presented a poster on the progress of the collaborative fusion energy project that he shares with Michael Brown at Swarthmore College. In May, he published his first publication with Bryn Mawr College as his affiliation, "Possible signatures of dissipation from time-series analysis techniques using a turbulent laboratory magnetohydrodynamic plasma" in the journal Physics of Plasmas (23, 055709, 2016). During the summer research period, he will give weekly talks on various plasma physics topics including single particle motion, waves in plasmas, instabilities, turbulence, fusion, and astrophysical plasmas.

Graduate Student News

Archaeology

Many archaeology graduate students have excavation plans this summer. Maggie Beeler will be trench supervisor at Lechaion Harbor and Settlement Project in Corinth, Greece. In June and July, Nickie Colosimo will be attending an excavation at Apollonia Pontica through the Balkan Heritage Foundation. Matthew Jameson will be excavating at the Bronze Age site of Gla in Greece. Kiersten King will serve as the assistant trench supervisor for the American Excavations at Morgantina, Contrada Agnese Project. And Emily Moore will be attending the excavation at Cosa, Italy.

In February, Rachel Starry attended a conference on Digital Pedagogy held at Duke University and presented a report on what she learned at a "Tech Talk" delivered to the Bryn Mawr community.

Chemistry

Having just earned his degree, Benjamin WIlliams has begun a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the University of New Mexico where he joined the laboratory of Professor Martin Kirk who applies physical inorganic spectroscopic approaches to problems in bioinorganic chemistry.

M.A. candidates Bridget Gavaghan and Monica Drummond accompanied Professor Yan Kung on a recent research trip to Argonne National Laboratory. They were there to study the structure of proteins using the lab’s powerful x-ray machine. On this trip, they collected X-ray data on a protein from cyanobacteria that is responsible for the biological production of fuel molecules. According to Professor Kung, the ultimate goal of this research is to discover how these proteins might eventually be re-engineered to provide alternative fuel sources. “If we can understand how the protein works by examining its structure using this technique, we may be able to re-design the protein to produce tailor-made biofuel compounds, which could be used as a more sustainable energy source.”

In March, Bridget also took home third place at the Philadelphia Young Chemist Committee’s poster session.

Classics

Charlie Kuper has signed the contract for his first book publication. The project, which involves a translation of the Byzantine hagiography of the Life of Martha as well as a lengthy introduction, will be published as part of the “Popular Patristics Series” produced by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Read an interview with Charlie about the project.

History of Art

Michelle Al-Ferzly recently attended a Digital Humanities workshop at Yale on Digital Manuscripts and Rolls, which taught her how to code medieval manuscripts. She has also been awarded a Eugene L. Cox Fellowship from Wellesley, which grants funds to alumna in medieval studies to pursue further research and will allow Michelle to conduct summer research in France, England, and Germany.

Alex Brey published a revised version of a conference paper that he presented on the use of digital methods to analyze ornamental elements of a Seljuq Qur'an manuscript in an edited volume entitled "The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies." This June, he will be participating in a research workshop in Minneapolis for Ph.D. candidates who have recently finished fieldwork abroad through the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship (which he completed in December 2015). For the 2016-2017 academic year, he has accepted a Garden and Landscape Studies Junior Residential Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. This fellowship will allow him to focus on early Islamic hunting parks and textual descriptions of the landscape in early Arabic poetry about hunting, as part of his dissertation on hunting in the visual cultures of the Umayyad Empire (660-750 CE).

Anna Moblard Meier helped Bryn Mawr Special Collections win a second Sumitomo Foundation Grant to finish restoring its Kano Genji screen, which will be unveiled by way of an exhibition she is co-curating in the Spring of 2017. Anna has also received a Vining Fellowship which will allow her to conduct dissertation research in Japan this summer.

For the coming academic year, Michelle Smiley has been awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in support of her dissertation on the early photographic experimentation in the United States.

Mechella Yezernitskaya has received a New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship in support of her dissertation research.

Math

This coming fall, Kathryn Bryant (Ph.D. 2016) will begin her post as visiting assistant professor in the math department at Colorado College.

This spring, Ziva Myer gave a talk at the Graduate Student Geometry and Topology Conference at University of Indiana. She will be attending a math workshop in Paris, France, this summer.

Along with Ziva, Samantha Pezzimenti and Hannah Schwartz will be attending the Topology Student’s Workshop at Georgia Tech this summer.

Physics

This summer, Alex Chartrand and his advisor Elizabeth McCormack will be presenting a poster at the Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP) titled, "Observations of the 4 ¹Σ_u⁺ state of H₂." They have also submitted a paper on this work to the Journal of Chemical Physics. This past January, that journal published the results from another of their research studies, “Observations of the high vibrational levels of the B''B̄  1Σ+u state of H2.”

Vincent Gregoric presented his research at Bryn Mawr's Graduate Research Symposium as a poster and a "lightning talk" in April and will be presenting his work at the 2016 meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics in Providence in late May.

Xiao Wang gave a presentation, "Magnetic exchange interactions between Fe3+ and R3+ ions in hexagonal RFeO3 [R=Yb,Ho] thin films," at Inter Mag|MMM joint conference and another presentation, "X-ray magnetic circular dichroism study of hexagonal YbFeO3 thin films," at the American Physical Society March Meeting. This summer she is going to present a poster, "Synchrotron X-ray study of Au nanoparticle synthesis," at Advanced Photon Source/Center for Nano Materials User meeting this May.

Alumnae News

Temple University honored Elizabeth Bolman (History of Art, Ph.D.  1997) with a Great Teacher Award.

Recent alum Sarah Burke (Chemistry, Ph.D. 2014) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Neumann University and will be starting in the fall of 2016.

Therese Dolan (History of Art, Ph.D. 1979) had the cover article in the December 2015 issue of The Art Bulletin.

Maeve Doyle (Ph.D.  2015) contributed a lesson on the destruction of ancient Assyrian art by ISIS for an online teaching resource for Art Historians.

Recent Physics alum Don Fahey (Ph.D. 2014) returned to campus this Spring for the Graduate Career Symposium and sat down to tell us about the cutting-edge research he is doing with Bose-Einstein Condensates, and why Bryn Mawr was instrumental to his current success.

Eva Goedhart (Ph.D. '15), who spent the last year teaching Calculus at Smith College as a Visiting Assistant Professor, has accepted a 3-year position at Lebanon Valley College to begin in the fall. She is also organizing a Special Session at the 2017 Joint Mathematics Meeting in Atlanta in honor or Professor Helen Grundman’s retirement. 

Johanna Gosse (Ph.D. ’14) has been awarded a Creative Capital writing grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for her new book project, On Site: Ray Johnson’s New York.

Kathryn Kleppinger (M.A. ‘04), assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at George Washington University, has published her first book, Branding the ‘Beur’ Author: Minority Writing and the Media in France, 1983-2013 (Liverpool University Press, 2015).

Barbara Miller Lane’s recent book, Houses for a New World (Princeton, 2016), has earned several awards, including the Athenaeum Literary Award (for art and architecture) and the 2016 PROSE award in architecture and urban planning.

Marjorie Caserio (M.A. ’51, Ph.D. ’56) achieved many firsts as a woman in the field of Chemistry. She is profiled in the Spring Alumnae Bulletin.

Did we miss anything?

We love to hear from you! Please keep us informed of your recent accomplishments. You can submit your news online or drop us an email: gsas@brynmawr.edu

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