Around the College: October 2004
This article was originally published in the October 2004 issue of CLASnotes
Moseley Named Interim Chair of Anthropology
Michael Moseley is the new interim chair of the Department
of Anthropology, succeeding Allan Burns who left this fall, after six
years, to become associate dean of faculty affairs for the college.
A distinguished professor, Moseley has been at UF since 1984 and has served as associate chair of anthropology for five years. He earned his PhD in anthropology from Harvard University in 1968 and his research focuses on human evolution in the Andes Mountains. He has gained worldwide recognition in his field for his current project studying ceremonial beer libation halls in the region. In 2000, Moseley was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
CLAS
Dean’s Office
Welcomes New Webmaster
Jeff Stevens has joined the CLAS News and Publications Office as the college’s official Web master. He will be responsible for designing and maintaining the CLAS Web pages and assisting departments and centers with their Web sites.
Stevens previously served as a senior computer support specialist for UF’s Student Financial Affairs office. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and mass communication from Florida State University in 1996 and a master’s degree in mass communication from UF in 1998.
UF Ecologists Find Frozen North May Accelerate Global Warming
An article about assistant professors Michelle Mack and Ted Schuur’s research findings appeared in the journal Nature on September 23. The two found that ecosystems of the frozen north may act to accelerate global warming by releasing carbon—a primary culprit in the atmospheric greenhouse effect—from the arctic tundra.
The three to seven degree rise in temperature predicted by global climate models could cause the breakdown of the arctic tundra’s vast store of soil carbon, releasing more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the air than plants are capable of taking in, says Mack. “Our results suggest that climate warming in the arctic tundra may cause the release of much more carbon dioxide than previously expected, which has the effect of further increasing global warming,” Mack says. “This type of positive feedback will make the Earth’s climate change even more rapidly.”
The findings were collected in a 20-year experiment on the effects of fertilization on the arctic tundra at the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research site near Toolik Lake, Alaska. The National Science Foundation and NASA provided funding for the research.
Mack and Schuur joined the botany department in 2002.
Department New
Anthropology
Anthony Oliver-Smith gave a presentation titled “Social Science Disaster Research in International Contexts: Disaster Mitigation and Sustainable Development” to the Committee on Disaster Research of the National Academies during August in Washington, DC.
Classics
David C. Young gave a lecture at the Zappeion Press Center in Athens, Greece in August at the invitation of the Greek Ministry of Culture titled “The Modern Greek Origins of the Modern Olympics.” In May, he lectured on “How Athens 1859 Led to Athens 2004” at a conference, Olympic Games: Past and Present, held by the Center for International Studies at Yale University.
Criminology, Law and Society
Paul Magnarella contributed a chapter titled “The Consequences of the War Crimes Tribunals and an International Criminal Court for Human Rights in Transitioning Societies” to the book Human Rights and Societies in Transition.
Germanic and Slavic Studies
Hal H. Rennert (German) recently presented a paper on “Mörike-Reception, Renaissance and Translation 1950–1959,” at the International Eduard Mörike Convention in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
History
Jessica Harland-Jacobs has received the 2004 Walter D. Love Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies for her article “All in the Family: Freemasonry and the British Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” which appeared in the Journal of British Studies. The prize is awarded annually for the best article written on British history by a North American scholar.
Linguistics
Diana Boxer was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow during July and August at the Bellagio Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. The collaborative research residency was with Russian linguist Elena Gritsenko, and the two completed a manuscript titled “What’s in a (Sur)name? Women, Marriage, Identity and Power Across Cultures.”
Political Science
Ken Wald, graduate student Kevin Fridy, and Adam Silverman, who earned his PhD in political science in 2002, were authors of a paper that recently received a best paper award from the American Political Science Association (APSA), sponsored by the religion and politics section. The paper, “Making Sense of Religion in Political Life,” was presented at the organization’s 2003 meeting.
Peggy Kohn’s book Radical Space received an honorable mention from the Best Book Award Committee of the APSA’s section on European politics and society. It was published by Cornell University Press in 2003.
Graduate student Emilia Gioreva won the Best Dissertation Fieldwork Award for her research comparing local-level economic development and democratization in Peru and Bulgaria. The selection was made by the comparative democratization section of the APSA. Leslie Anderson chairs Gioreva’s dissertation committee.
Philosophy
David Copp’s address, “Moral Naturalism and Three Grades of Normativity,” given to the recent Ethic-Zentrum conference in Zurich, has been published in Normativity and Naturalism. His co-authored paper, “Morality and Virtue,” recently appeared in the premier journal Ethics.
Robert D’Amico presented the paper “Quine’s Inscrutable Natives” at the 27th annual IMISE Conference in Stra, Italy in July. IMISE Conference is an annual event bringing together social science, literature and humanities faculty from Europe and the US. He also presented “Spreading Disease: How to Resolve a Dispute about the Reality of Disease” at a conference on philosophical issues in the biomedical sciences in Birmingham, Alabama in May.
Michael Jubien was the keynote speaker for a special session on modality at the Pacific conference of the American Philosophical Association. His paper, “On Quine’s Rejection of Intensional Entities,” appeared in a special volume of Midwest Studies in Philosophy published in August.
Greg Ray co-organized the Society of Exact Philosophy’s annual conference at the University of Maryland in May. The society is an international organization dedicated to providing sustained discussion among researchers who employ rigorous methods in the conduct of philosophical investigation.
Psychology
Manfred Diehl was one of four American scholars invited to present his work on self-concept development at the fall academy of the predoctoral program in “Neuropsychiatry and Psychology of Aging” in Berlin, Germany on September 15–17. He presented a colloquium titled “Self-Concept Organization in Adulthood and Old Age: Implications for Aging Well.”
Romance Languages and Literatures
Álvaro Félix Bolaños (Spanish) presented two papers, “El carnero Read Through Hispanism” and “Hetergeneity and Canon Formation in Latin America” at a recent Latin American studies conference at The Johns Hopkins University.
Daniele J. Buchler’s (French) article, “Le Cercle dystopique dans ‘L’Icôna dins l’iscla’ fable en occitan de Robert Lafont” has been accepted for publication and will appear in TENSO, the Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX devoted to Occitan studies and published at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
Carol Murphy (French) presented the paper “Black and White in Color: Jean Paulhan’s Essay on Jean Fautrier” at the annual meeting of the UK Society for French Studies held at Cambridge University in July. On September 12, she delivered a keynote speech, “Marguerite Duras: affect, écriture, lecture en mouvement,” at the Colloque Marguerite Duras at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in England. Her essay, “Re-presenting the real: Jean Paulhan and Jean Fautrier,” appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Yale French Studies.
Geraldine Nichols (Spanish) presented a paper, “No parirán: Resisting Orders in Postwar Spain,” at a symposium held at Harvard University in May, in honor of writer Robert Spires.
Zoology
Colette St. Mary recently returned to UF after spending five months teaching and researching as a Fulbright professor at the University of Helsinki in Finland. She had the opportunity to collaborate with colleague Kai Lindstrom, a former Fulbright Fellow who visited her lab in 1999–2000, on a project exploring the role of sexual selection in the evolution of male parental care in the sand goby, a type of fish. She presented their work at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology meeting held in Jyvaskälä, Finland in July. She also gave a plenary lecture on the topic at the European Ichthyological Society meeting in Tallinn, Estonia in September.
Photos:
Jane Dominguez (Moseley, Stevens)
Weather Channel (Abrams)