E V E N T S

may /june 20 11 Volume 13, number 6

Outstanding Alumni 8

Logo Items 8

www.yale.edu/graduateschool

Graduate School of arts and Sciences – yale university

the president, master of Jonathan Edwards College, and longtime lecturer in the Eng-lish department, “Yale has a great tradition of lecturing.” Although in its earliest days, students gave “recitations,” translating aloud or repeating material they had memorized, the Yale faculty has been graced with notable lecturers ever since enrollments increased during the mid-nineteenth century. Laurans noted the distinguished scientist Benjamin Silliman and the imposing social scientist William Graham Sumner from that early era, citing historical works that reference their rhetorical and oratorical capabilties. Laurans pointed to the influence of mes-merizing lecturers like Professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker, who is credited with inspiring Paul Mellon (b.a. 1929) to fund Yale’s Center for British Art and other major gifts to the University, and Vincent Scully, whose lecturing produced several genera-tions of great architects and architectural historians. Memorable lecturing—while

Continued on page 3

Spring Teaching Forum: Lectures

Recent educational research has established that interactive learning is far more effective than passive listening. Does that mean lec-ture courses should be abolished? On the contrary, lectures, when properly managed, can promote active student engagement and serve students’ needs very well. Speakers at the thirteenth-annual forum held on April 1 presented the history of the lecture at Yale, discussed administra-tive reasons why lectures are widespread throughout the curriculum, and suggested strategies that instructors and students might use to maximize the effectiveness of lecture courses. Graduate students, faculty

members, and admin-istrators from across campus and from

area colleges packed into hgs 211 to learn

about and analyze the genre of lecture.

According to Penelope Laurans, special assistant to

Economics Reunion Conference 5

G SAS NEWS

In light of the fact that more than half of Yale’s under-

graduates are enrolled in lecture-based classes each

semester, it was fitting that the organizers of the Spring

Teaching Forum selected “Let’s Talk Lecture!” as this

year’s theme.

The winners of this year’s Graduate Men-tor Awards are Julia Adams, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and co-director of the Center for Comparative Research; Langdon Hammer, professor of English and American Studies; and Jordan Peccia, associate professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Established in 2000, the Graduate Mentor Award honors faculty members

Honoring MentorsThe Graduate Student

Assembly has named

three faculty members as

outstanding mentors who

guide, encourage, and

inspire their students.

Continued on page 2

Commencement 2010

T u E S d Ay, M Ay 3, 5 – 6 : 3 0Dean’s Spring Reception. HGS Courtyard,Common Room and 119

F R I d Ay, M Ay 61-4 pm Spring Chillout, De-stress Day. HGS Courtyard5 pm First Friday at Five: San Antonio Theme. Graduate Students’ Happy Hour. BYOMug. 21+ with IDCourtyard (Common Room if rain)

S AT u R dAy, M Ay 14 Yale Day of Service. Global community service for students and alumniwww.yaledayofservice.org

T u E S d Ay, M Ay 17, 11: 3 0 A M – 5 p MGSAA Career Workshop. “Where Do I Go from Yale?” HGS 119

S u N d Ay, M Ay 2 2 , 2 p M Commencement Convocation and Reception. Awarding of student prizes and faculty mentor awards.HGS Courtyard

M O N d Ay, M Ay 2 3 , 10 : 3 0 A M University Commencement exercises, Old Campus www.yale.edu/commencement

J u N E 11 – 2 5 International Festival of Arts and Ideaswww.artidea.org/event_list.php

Full information on events above: http://calendar.yale.edu/cal/gsas

STEPHEn CHESTER Stephen Chester (Anthropology) recently received eight separate grants totaling approximately $37,000 in support of his dissertation research. The granting agencies include the

National Science Foundation and Leakey Foundation, as well as Sigma Xi, the American Society of Mam-malogists, the University of Califor-nia Museum of Paleontology, and the American Museum of Natural His-tory. Stephen’s dissertation is focused on the origin and early evolutionary history of primates, particularly fossil primates from the Paleocene epoch (between 65 and 55 million years ago). The funding will allow him to travel to various museums to collect data and to use microCT scanning to study the skeletons of fossil and living mammals. He seeks to clarify which anatomical features separate primates from other early mammals and to elucidate the order in which certain modern primate features evolved. Stephen earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida.

niCk RUTTER Nick Rutter (History) has won the 2011 Webb-Smith Essay Competi-tion sponsored by the University of Texas at Arlington. Participants were invited to submit essays on “Transna-

tional Perspectives on the Soviet Bloc, 1944–1991.” His essay, “The Western Wall: How the Iron Curtain was Recast in 1951,” recounts the illiberal measures taken by American authori-ties to block Western participation in the World Youth Festival held that year in East Berlin. Nick’s dissertation tells the history of the Soviet-sponsored festival, the largest international youth gathering the world had ever seen, from its origins in Prague in 1947 to its thirteenth and final Cold War iteration in Pyongyang in 1989. The essay will appear in a volume of the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series, published by Texas A&M Press. Nick’s dissertation, “Fete of the Future: the World Youth Festi-val, 1945–1989,” is advised by Adam Tooze. Nick earned his undergradu-ate degree from Brown University.

Some review questions are assigned for discussion sections led by teaching fellows and others are used by informal groups of students to teach one another. Handouts include a list of key terms, which Pollard described as “the working vocabulary for the course.” He explained that “These terms are useful for students to check if they are on top of the vocabulary. Even more important, it limits their jeopardy, since a typical science course has thousands of new terms. Having a list of the most important terms saves students from worrying about the less important ones or wasting a lot of time memorizing terms

that they are sure to forget.” Dean Pollard and other speakers recommended frequent, short quizzes to provide both students and faculty with feedback on which topics have

been mastered or need clarification. The questions should be thought-provoking, not tests of memorized facts, he advised. To pro-vide instant feedback, he distributes written sample answers at the time quizzes are col-lected. This approach encourages students to keep up, gives them exercise in thinking, and

reinforces new concepts and information. Mark Schenker, associate dean of Yale College, described the periodic workshops focused on listening and note-taking skills that he offers to undergraduates to help maxi-mize their learning in lecture courses. in those workshops, he urges the students to listen actively, experiment with different ways of taking notes, review the previous class’s notes before the next lecture, and annotate their notes afterward. notes, Schenker argued, “are not a transcription of what the lecturer said. They are the record of the transaction that occurs in the lecture hall” between the teacher and the student. Getting students to listen actively may involve having them respond in class to questions using an electronic poll-taking “clicker,” an approach strongly advocated by John Harris, professor of physics, who used colored flash cards before clickers were

available to elicit quick feedback from his students. He said he finds it useful to teach difficult topics in ten-minute modules

followed by clicker-based feedback. Tori Brescoll, assistant professor at the School of Management, described the web surveys she assigns to her students before a lecture, which she credits with eliciting engage-ment from quieter students. She also advo-cated for the use of media clips to enliven a long lecture class and urged banning the use of laptops during lectures to eliminate web surfing. Speaking in defense of the tradi-tional, no-clicker, no-PowerPoint, words-only lecture, Steven Smith, the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science and master of Branford College, admitted that he “likes a good lecture.” He regards the large introductory lecture course as an effective teaching tool in which “you can make the case for your field, expose stu-

dents to great texts, and share your enthusiasm for the subject.” A lively, well-organized lecture is an excellent way to “draw students in,” Smith sug-gested. “Focus on what’s important, even though you know much more

than you can talk about in 50 minutes,” he advised, and “never condescend to your students.” The forum’s organizing committee included Rando; Jennifer Frederick, associate director of the Graduate Teaching Center and the Center for Scientific Teaching at Yale; Marie Bragg (Psychology); Paul Lagunes (Political Science); kristin Rudenga (neu-roscience); and postdoctoral fellow Samuel Schaffer (ph.d. 2010, History). Reflecting on the event afterward, Marie said, “The forum touched on a number of issues that are relevant to gradu-ate students, post-docs, and professors. it struck a great balance, providing attendees with concrete, practical tools and tips for improving their lectures, as well as some philosophical and theoretical ideas to pro-cess as they go through their careers.”

only one mode of excellent teaching —per-sists at Yale, she said, naming Yale faculty members Ben Polak, Christine Hayes, Mark Johnson, kathryn Lofton, Ramamurti Shan-kar, Jonathan Holloway, and Peter Salovey, among others, as carrying on the tradition. if we have compelling evidence that active learning is better than passive, why does Yale offer lecture courses at all? Deputy Provost Frances Rosenbluth addressed that question, noting that some professors are so charismatic that students flock to their courses, inflating enrollments and requiring large classes in order to accommodate the demand. in addition, the faculty-student ratio necessitates some larger classes.

“The history of an institution creates a culture,” noted William Rando, director of the Graduate Teaching Center. “Admin-istrative realities change how we teach.” At a workshop Rando offered for all new instructors at Yale last fall, he asked par-ticipants to consider how they wanted the course they were about to teach to change their students and then urged them to find ways to accomplish those changes. Each lecture should have a clear purpose that students understand, he said. “Give your students a map showing them where we are now, where we’re going, and how far we’ve come” so they have evidence that learning is happening and goals are being met. Tell students what to listen for and “keep students engaged in meaningful action. Lectures aren’t meant to be passive.” Dean Thomas Pollard spoke at the forum about a cell biology lecture course that he has team-taught since 1972, which students regularly evaluate as one of their most challenging and satisfying classes. He and his co-instructors attend each others’ lectures so they can cross-reference mate-rial presented by their colleagues. They distribute illustrated lecture handouts both on paper and online so students can absorb the lecture as a whole instead of struggling to write down every last detail. The handouts include behavioral objectives that specify the skills and concepts students are expected to master. Review questions that parallel the behav-ioral objectives allow the students to deter-mine if they’ve learned what is expected.

Spring teaching Forum, continuedK u d O S

The Forum’s organizing committee included, left to right, paul Lagunes and Marie Bragg, co-chairs, Jennifer Frederick, Kristin Rudenga, and Bill Rando.

Although in its earliest days, students gave “recitations,” translating

aloud or repeating material they had memorized, the yale faculty

has been graced with notable lecturers ever since enrollments

increased during the mid-nineteenth century.

“Keep students engaged in meaningful action. Lectures

aren’t meant to be passive.” B I L L R A N d O

“A good lecture can make the case for your field, expose students

to great texts, and share your enthusiasm for the subject. It is

an excellent way to draw students in.” S T E V E N S M I T H

PAULA MOnTERO LLOPiS Paula Montero Llopis (MCDB) is one of twelve graduate students worldwide to receive a 2011 Harold M. Wein-traub Graduate Student Award spon-sored by the Basic Sciences division of

the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The winners, selected on the basis of the quality, originality and significance of their work, will present their research at a scientific symposium in May at the Hutchinson Center in Seattle. Paula’s research explores how bacterial cells are able to organize the flow of genetic information despite lacking internal compartments. Her advisor is Christine Jacobs-Wagner. She completed her undergraduate degree at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

AnDRé REDWOOD André Redwood (Music) has been awarded a 2011–2012 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowship will fund the

final year of work on his disserta-tion, “The Eloquent Science of Music: Marin Mersenne’s Uses of Rhetoric in the Harmonie Universelle (1636).” Mersenne, a clergyman and scientist whose extensive writings touched on topics ranging from theology, philoso-phy, and mathematics to mechanics, optics, and acoustics, is a significant figure in the history of music theory owing to his experimental approach to the study of sound and, by extension, to the study of music. André’s disserta-tion advisor is Patrick McCreless. More than one thousand applicants nationwide competed for this grant, and only 70 were awarded. André earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music.

who are exceptional in their support of the professional, scholarly, and personal development of their students. it signals the commitment of the University and the Graduate School to recognizing effective and empathetic student guidance. “Mentoring is the foundation of a great education in graduate school,” says Bill Rando, director of the Graduate Teach-ing Center. “Our award recipients have made an exemplary contribution to the core mission of our school.”

“The importance of the advisor cannot be overstated,” says Paul Pearlman (Engineering and Applied Science), chair of the gsa. “Because graduate education is an apprenticeship, quality mentoring is essential for the success and well-being of ph.d. students.” Paul adds, “Positive encouragement goes a long way, but all three recipients of the Mentoring Award this year take their roles a great deal further than that. it was clear from the letters sent by her students that Julia Adams is a singularly empathetic mentor who understands the needs and characteristics of her advisees and provides them with the attention they deserve. Langdon Hammer emerged as a very kind soul who takes his responsibilities as an advisor seriously. Students described numerous small acts of kindness and encouragement that he paired with strong guidance. Jordan Peccia’s mentoring goes beyond the laboratory and class-room to ensure that his students are successful in their careers and their lives. The nominating letters demonstrated that he fully realizes the significance of the advisee-adviser relationship. These three have made the pursuit of the ph.d. a learning experience for their students that extends far beyond the scope of individual research projects.” in nominating Professor Adams, one student noted, “While her schedule made

it clear she was busy, when i sat across her desk, i always had her undivided attention.” Professor Hammer was described as a mentor who “meets me where i am, takes me seriously, and inevita-

bly transforms anxieties into opportunities.” Another writer stressed Professor Peccia’s availability and encourage-ment: “Jordan has an ‘open door’ policy and is always willing to discuss our research

triumphs as well as failures and to help us work through them.” “it was deeply meaningful to me to be named as an outstanding mentor to graduate students,” says Adams. “When i was a student, i had several superb mentors. One thing they all had in common was that they respected students’ autonomy and creative individuality in the context of rigorous train-ing. That sounds a bit paradoxical—and it is —but maintaining that balance and ten-sion is, i think, the bottom line. “i also think that even if students are feeling low about their own capacities at a

given time, or are overwhelmed by an intel-lectual task, the mentor is there to believe in them and help inspire them to continue the disciplined work that it takes if they’re to express their particular genius and apply it to the demands of the day. And in the midst of

all of this discipline and seriousness, i

would say that every mentor—and student—

needs a sense of humor. it would be awfully hard to survive

graduate school without being able to laugh at the ups and downs.” To this end, Adams recommends Ali-son Lurie’s Imaginary Friends, a book about the lighter side of sociology written from the standpoint of a recently-minted ph.d. “Mentoring is teaching,” says Ham-mer. “But it’s teaching that tends to go on outside the classroom—and it continues to evolve over the years, with plenty of chal-lenges, and the growth and benefits going both ways. And for that reason, it may very

well be the most satisfying kind of teaching.” Peccia says, “Every day i’m impressed with my students’ abilities and potential. As a faculty member, the most effective way for me to make an impact on the world is through helping and encouraging these talented people. i’ve been lucky enough to have several good mentors. They were kind people, they took a personal interest in me, and they gave me intellectual space.” Asked how he mentors his students, Peccia notes, “Every person is different and needs to be treated differently by their mentor. While the path will be different for each one, the important thing to me is that my students leave Yale as fundamentally sound engineers, independent thinkers, and good writers.” The award winners will be hon-ored at the Graduate School’s Commence-ment Convocation in May.

Honoring Mentors, continued

“Mentoring is teaching. But it’s teaching that tends to go on

outside the classroom — and it continues to evolve over

the years, with plenty of challenges, and the growth and

benefits going both ways. And for that reason, it may very

well be the most satisfying kind of teaching.” L A N G d O N H A M M E R

K u d O S

“Every person is different and needs to be treated differently by their

mentor. While the path will be different for each one, the important

thing to me is that my students leave yale as fundamentally sound

engineers, independent thinkers, and good writers.” J O R d A N p E C C I A

J u L I A A d A M S

J O R d A N p E C C I A

L A N G d O N H AMMER

“Mentoring is the foundation of a great education in graduate

school. Our award recipients have made an exemplary contri-

bution to the core mission of our school.” B I L L R A N d O

The Graduate Student Assembly had a productive and exciting year. In November, the Steering Committee met with Provost Peter Salovey, and among the outcomes was a $15,000 increase of funding from the Graduate School for the Conference Travel Fund. As a result of this increase, beginning this year, the GSA will offer a new review cycle during the summer session. Applications for this cycle will be accepted until August 1. Jamie Duke, director of the CTF, updated the application in an effort to make the process more efficient. The new form and submission process for the CTF are now digitized. Please visit the GSA website (http://gsa.yale.edu) for more information or to apply for funding. The GSA is in the process of restructuring Mentoring Week to best reflect graduate student concerns. Rather than hold general sessions for the entire student body, the GSA would like to encourage department-specific events that foster careful mentoring and profes-sional development for students in those departments. Another GSA initiative involves improving the quality of the annual Dissertation Progress Report. The GSA is currently gathering feedback on the format, accuracy, and comprehensive-ness of the form. If you have not already completed the survey, please consider sharing your experiences and suggestions at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WLZ8LVN. GSA representatives have been active all year on issues related to tran-sit, security, library policy, facilities, and healthcare. In addition to addressing cycling and pedestrian infrastructure and the campus shuttle bus service, the Transit and Security Committee has engaged in conversations about future city-wide changes, including plans to restructure Route 34. The GSA continues to engage concerns related to the Payne Whitney Gymnasium. If you would like to report problems related to the gym, please contact Luke Thompson (lucas.thompson@yale.edu). Looking ahead, the GSA is excited to launch a new Sustainability Committee that will work with the Office of Sustainability. The GSA also aims to launch a Peer Advisory Pro-gram next year to help guide graduate students who are having personal or academic problems to find the best method for resolving their concerns. If you would like to be part of the committee in charge of implementing the pilot program in the fall, or if you are interested in being a peer advisor, please contact Sigma Colón (sigma.colon@yale.edu).

C o n t r i b u t e d b y S i g m a C o l ó n ( american Studies)

G S A u p d AT Ehttp://gsa.yale.edu

Commencement is just around the corner, bringing both

anxiety and excitement to this year’s graduates. Recently,

with the downturn in the economy, what life after gradua-

tion will entail is no longer straightforward.“As a recent graduate, i know first-hand the worries and the optimism that attend this phase of life,” says Bobbi Sutherland (ph.d. 2009, Medieval Studies), assistant professor of history at Dordt College in Sioux Center, iowa. “Many students worry that a professorship or post-doctoral fel-lowship are their only options or that their training suits them only for very special-ized academic research. Others think that they might not find satisfaction in a career outside academia. in general, this is not the case!” For many years, scientists have chosen to work for industry or government and many humanities scholars have gone to law school. But these paths do not begin to convey the myriad opportunities available to people with ph.d.s or master’s degrees. Graduates of gsas have elected to apply their training toward careers as research librarians, high school teachers, business consultants, and translators. One recent graduate is working for the cia, another for the State Department.

According to Sutherland, acquaintances from Yale who have opted for non-academic careers “report satisfaction from their jobs and consider their Yale education invaluable in their work.” She notes, “Graduate students often fail to see the many skills they have regarding technical processes and equipment, writing, research, languages, and analytical thinking. All of these skills can be translated to many different careers.” A faculty position is very much an option, especially if the applicant will con-sider campuses outside the u.s., or at newer universities. Marie-Rose Logan (ph.d. 1974, French), for example, became professor of European and comparative literature at Soka University in California in 2005, having spent a number of years on the faculty of Columbia University. Soka first opened its doors in 2000 and is now fully accredited. “Since i have been here,” Logan remarks, “we have made several excellent appointments in all fields, including in many areas of the humanities. As the University expands, it will undoubt-edly hire more professors at all levels.”

Alumni Association Online: www.aya.yale.edu/grad

Notes from the yale Graduate School C A R E E R W O R K S H O p M A y 1 7

To help students explore the many careers available to Yale ph.d.s, the Graduate School Alumni Association will host a career workshop titled “Where do i go from Yale?” on May 17. The program, coordinated by Mary Ann Carolan (ph.d. 1989, italian), will give students practi-cal ideas for applying the skills learned in graduate school to work outside academia. After a light lunch in the Common Room from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm, three panels will convene in 119 hgs. The first, chaired by Colleen Shogan (ph.d. 2002, Political Science), will present options for careers in government and the non-profit sector, both national and international. The second session, “Academic and Cultural Admin-istration,” led by Valerie Hotchkiss (ph.d. 2000, Medieval Studies), will explore areas such as library science and academic administration. The final panel, chaired by Rahul Prasad (ph.d. 1987, Engineering and Applied Science), will focus on corporate and research careers in the business sector. Participants will then continue the discussion at Mory’s over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

A T T E N T I O N , N E W G R A d u A T E S ! Get involved with the gsaa. The gsaa will provide you with opportunities to network, to give back to the community, find intellectual stimulation and have fun! We wish you all the best wherever life may take you.

Commencement SuNdAy, MAy 22, 2 pM Graduate School Convocation and Reception. Awarding of student prizes and faculty mentor prizes, HGS Courtyard

MONdAy, MAy 23 university Commencement.

9:00 am, Graduates & guests assemble, HGS Courtyard

9:25 am, procession from HGS to Cross Campus

9:40 am, Cross Campus

10:30 am, university Commencement exercises, Old Campus. www.yale.edu/commencement

12:00 pm, Graduate School diploma Cer-emony, Woolsey Hall,* followed by dean’s luncheon reception, HGS courtyard

* Students receiving master’s degrees from the Macmillan Center and the Economic Growth Center (IdE) receive their diplomas at Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue.

One panel addressed the current economic climate, including the housing bubble, the meltdown of financial institutions, and the recession. “Yale Economists and the Crisis,” moderated by Ben Polak, featured four alumni: John Geanakoplos (b.a. 1975), the James Tobin Professor of Econom-ics; Jeffrey Alan Goldstein (ph.d. 1983), under-secretary, u.s. Department of the Treasury; David Swensen (ph.d. 1980), Yale’s chief investment officer; and Janet Yellen (ph.d. 1971), vice chair of the Fed-eral Reserve Board of Governors. Geanakoplos placed the blame for the crisis on too much leverage and said the government needs to monitor and regulate collateral rates or leverage, just

as it does interest rates. Goldstein suggested that the Treasury and the federal govern-ment needed to cooperate across party lines. “tarp,” he said, “has been an enormous

success and not sufficiently understood and appreciated. it broke the back of the crisis,” by recapitalizing the banking system, reviv-ing credit markets, and restoring confidence in the banking system. Swensen spoke off the record about four meetings he had with President Obama to discuss financial regula-tory reform. Yellen discussed the Federal

Economics Reunion ConferenceClose to 235 people gathered at Yale in April for the “Eco-

nomics at Yale” graduate alumni reunion and conference.

Participants from across the U.S. and as far away as Nicara-

gua, Brazil, Mexico, the U.K., and Switzerland came to hear

scholars and industry leaders discuss the evolution of

the discipline at Yale, with panels devoted to development

economics, econometrics, and industrial organization.

Reserve’s need to respond quickly to the “severe economic downturn” so as “to increase demand and prevent a deflationary spiral.” She noted that “Economic condi-tions do not yet call for the Fed to exit from its unconventional policy, but i look for-ward to a time when we can return to busi-ness as usual.” She added, “We’re putting in place a much better system to oversee and monitor and address the situation” in order to “avoid anything of this magnitude happening again.” Robert Shiller, the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, gave an overview of “The Yale Tradition in Macroeconomics,” a field for which the University is well known. He pointed out that although Yale was established in 1701, the first economics course, “Politi-cal Economy,” wasn’t offered until 1824. Even then, there were no economics professors until 1873, when Francis

Amasa Walker joined the faculty. Shiller noted that economists have held major positions in Yale’s administration

over the years, right up to today. The first president of the university who wasn’t a clergyman was an economist: Arthur Twining Hadley, who took office in 1899. Economist Edgar Stevenson Furniss became dean of the Gradu-

ate School in 1934 and the University’s provost in 1956. Yale awarded its first ph.d. in eco-nomics to irving Fisher in 1891. He went on to have a prestigious, but controversial academic career at Yale and an interesting life. He was a devotee of physical exercise, an anti-smoking crusader, an inventor (of the folding chair, price level mechanism,

wooden clock, and more), and a prolific author of books about monetary policy. in 1937, the Sheffield Scientific

School merged with Yale College into a single Faculty of Arts and

Sciences, and the Department of Economics was officially established. Since then, it has produced many outstand-ing alumni and served as the academic home to a distin-guished faculty, including Alfred Cowles, Arthur Okun, James Tobin, and Richard C. Levin, Yale’s current presi-dent.

“Economic conditions do not yet call for the Fed to exit from

its unconventional policy, but I look forward to a time when

we can return to business as usual. We’re putting in place a

much better system to oversee and monitor and address the

situation.” J A N E T y E L L E N

Below, left: david Swensen. Below, right (left to right), Ben polak, Jeffrey Goldstein, Janet yellen, John Geanakoplos, and david Swensen

“T A R p has been an enormous success and not sufficiently

understood and appreciated.” J E F F R E y A L A N G O L d S T E I N

S T u d E N T R E S E A R C H

conflicts during the World War ii period has not. My research seeks to extend this frame and contribute to a new critical examination of this part of Spanish history,” she explains. nicole’s dissertation, advised by noël Valis, is titled “Reading War: Soldiers’ Experi-ence in Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film.” in her project, nicole discusses how “ideas about war and the past are shaped by texts and film” and explores how Spaniards have “attempted to negotiate their relationship to the present by turning to narratives of history and memory of war.” Using fiction, poetry, oral history, and film, nicole demonstrates that “the traumatic consequences of war and its aftermath are actively evolving in today’s political, historical, cultural, and artistic scene in Spain.” in fact, she regards the repercussions of Spain’s militant past as “omnipresent in cultural life” and per-sisting within “the Spanish psyche and society.” Among the materials nicole analyzes for her dissertation are Guillermo del Toro’s

nicole says that her Cuban heritage, and Asturian and Basque lineage led her to Spain, and the result was a fascination with Spanish culture and history that became a serious intellectual pursuit. nicole has written her dissertation on the cultural manifestations of a turbulent period in Spain’s history: the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the repressive regime that followed, during which Francisco Franco ruled the country from 1939 until his death in 1975. in particular, she examines the literary and cinematic representations of the experi-ence of Spanish soldiers during World War ii. “The Spanish Civil War is, without question, the most significant Spanish con-flict of the 20th century,” she says. “Many Spaniards, however, did not stop fighting in April 1939 and remained engaged in armed combat in Spain and abroad during the 1940s and later. While the Spanish Civil War has received much attention as the subject of cultural production and aca-demic inquiry, the continued involvement of Spaniards in other local and international

“I will never forget the profound and captivating sense of

‘first love’ and intrigue that I felt during my first visit to

Spain ten years ago,” says Nicole Mombell (Spanish).

understanding War through Film and Text

Spanish

Academy-Award-winning movie El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006); Julio Llamaz-

ares’s 1985 novel Luna de lobos (Wolf Moon), which was adapted on film by Julio Sánchez Valdés in 1987; and two novels by Javier Cer-cas: Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001) and La velocidad de la luz (The Speed of Light, 2005). She shows how these authors and filmmakers seek “to vindicate the historical

experiences of soldiers and ex-combatants that have previously been shut out of the public sphere.” She uses a theoretical frame-work that considers culture and history “as intersecting discursive practices” and traces out “the ways in which Spanish intellectual, political, biographical, and national history is re-inscribed and worked over by texts and films that offer articulations of new perspectives.” in the fall, nicole will begin a tenure-track position in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont.

inversus. Most of these individuals live normal healthy lives, their condition often not diag-nosed until their doctor finds the heartbeat on the right-hand side. in rare cases, however, fetal development fails to allocate organs properly between the right side and the left, causing organs to be misplaced and the heart to be severely malformed. This condition, called “heterotaxy,” leads to life-threatening congenital heart disease in 90 percent of the children who have it. Reconstructive surgery is often necessary to save their lives. To date,

The heart sits on the left side of the body, along with the stomach and spleen. The liver sits on the right. The left and right sides of the heart perform very different functions: the right side pumps blood to the lungs while the left sends oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. This asym-metry is necessary for proper development and survival. Approximately one in every 8000 people has a complete reversal of their left-right body axis, a condition called situs

From the outside, human beings appear symmetrical,

but that’s not the case with our internal organs.

Fighting a Childhood Heart diseaseGenetics

very little is known about genes that cause this devastating disease in humans. Hoping to understand the condition and improve survival rates, researchers at Yale School of Medicine have used genet-ics and developmental biology to identify genes that cause heterotaxy. The findings were published in the January 31 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition. Graduate student khalid Fakhro (Genet-ics) and his co-authors studied “copy number variations” (cnvs) in over 250 patients with heterotaxy, as well as a large number of con-trol subjects. cnvs are sections of dna that are either deleted or duplicated in individual genomes. The researchers first found that rare gene-disrupting cnvs occur at a much higher frequency in these patients than among the control group. They then tested the effect of knocking down some of the genes from patient cnvs in Xenopus tropicalis, a frog model with a conserved developmental framework for establishing the left-right axis that is very similar to humans. They ultimately identified five genes that cause severe left-right patterning abnormalities in the model system, all of which were novel to human heterotaxy and congenital heart disease. in order to make his discoveries, khalid gathered expertise in three different labs, those headed by his dissertation advisor Richard Lifton, the Sterling Professor of genetics; Mustafa khokha, assistant profes-sor of pediatrics and genetics; and Martina Brueckner, associate professor of cardiology,

pediatrics, and genetics. Each of these labs studies genetics with an ultimate focus on human disease, and both the khokha and Brueckner labs are interested in using ani-mal models to understand congenital mal-formations that afflict children, especially congenital heart malformations. khalid’s lab work involved analysis of mutations in humans in the Lifton lab, followed by vali-dating gene candidates using techniques in molecular and developmental biology in the khokha and Brueckner labs. “i enjoyed the wide spectrum of learning experience gathered from such an integrated cross-disciplinary approach,” he says. This area of research interests khalid because it combines his core interest in the genetics of human disease with relevant investigation of the biological significance of gene candidates identified from such large-scale genetic studies. “i hope that the work will lead to a more thorough push to integrate human genetics with model organism investigation, especially at a time like this when mutation detection technologies are getting better and cheaper, allowing for genetic discoveries at such a rapid pace,” he says. Ultimately, he hopes that “identifying genes involved in human disease will help prioritize networks and pathways that enhance our understand-ing of disease prognosis and provide better molecular targets for patient management.” khalid earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.

“The traumatic consequences of war and its aftermath are actively evolving in

today’s political, historical, cultural, and artistic scene in Spain.” N I C O L E M O M B E L L

in the article, the authors outline a ten-item sjt that measures risk perception far better than the conventional approach. Their sjt doesn’t ask participants to rank options from best to worst because, they argue, “it does not serve any purpose to judge which cultural type is superior to another or which course of action is the right one. instead, these sjts are meant to measure the cultural biases associated with different risk situations.” Here is a sample item in their situ-ational judgment test.

Instructions: for each situation described, rank the four options in the order you would most likely take. For example, write ‘‘1’’ for the option that best describes what you would do, ‘‘4’’ beside the option that least describes what you would do. Every statement must have a different rank; no two statements should share the same rank.

To minimize acts of terrorism, airport checks have become more stringent and time-consuming.

(a) I obviously don’t fit a terrorist’s profile. The checks are an unnecessary imposition and a waste of my time.

(b) Such stringent checks infringe upon our liberties and freedom. It is likely to focus on minorities.

(c) These regulations are necessary to ensure better airport security and should be encouraged.

(d) I don’t have much of a choice, other than to accept these measures. If you’re caught in a terrorist attack, it’s just bad luck.

Using a multi-step process, experts inter-preting the tests can analyze the choices made by four types of people identified by cultural theory—“individualists, egalitar-ians, hierarchists and fatalists.” They can then more reliably predict the future behav-ior of each personality type. “We hope that this article has given cultural theory a measurement boost that will nurse it to the healthy status that it deserves,” he says. Reuben earned the m.sc. degree in management research at Oxford. At Yale, he studies aging under the guidance of Becca Levy. As a Fulbright Scholar, his work is fea-tured at http://scienceandtech.fulbrightonline.org/sat-program-fellows/fellow-publications. Reuben also serves as Graduate Writ-ing Center Fellow.

Reuben ng (Public Health) is trying to find out. He and Steve Rayner of Oxford University have published an article titled “integrating psychometric and cultural the-ory approaches to formulate an alternative measure of risk perception” that appeared in the October issue of the journal Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. The paper critiques current methods of mea-suring risk perception and proposes a novel approach based on recent developments in industrial organizational psychology. The standard approach asks people to consider and rank their sense of risk from various sources, such as terrorism, railroad collisions, pharmaceuticals, or caffeine. “We argue that this approach has two limitations,” Reuben says. “The first is that attitude measurements capture only static thoughts and therefore may not be good predictors of behavior. The second is that certain survey questions used in the psychometric approach primed thoughts of death.” Previous research has established that thinking about death leads people to be more conservative in their actions and attitudes, influencing the measurements and making the research outcomes inaccurate. “Such unintentional priming evoked defense mechanisms that would subcon-sciously activate participants’ cultural biases and values when answering some questions but not others,” Reuben says. Reuben and his colleague propose the use of Situational Judgment Tests (sjts) instead of the conventional methodol-ogy. “sjts solicit anticipated behavior in risky scenarios and measure the dynamic nature of thinking rather than the static attitudes measured using the standard approach.” sjts grew out of studies undertaken by the Aviation Psychology Program of the us Air Force during World War ii to aid in the selection and classification of flight crews. sjts present test-takers with situa-tions that they might encounter, as well as possible responses. Participants are usually asked to choose the best and worst course of action or rank them in order. The answers are scored with reference to an answer key based on the choices that achieved consen-sus among experts in the field.

The essay will be published in a forthcom-ing issue of the Journal of American History. Christine’s prize-winning essay, “The Memory Frontier: Uncommon Pursuits of Past and Place in the northeast after king Philip’s War (1675–78),” revisits a conflict that took place in colonial America, destroy-ing new England frontier settlements and decimating native American communi-ties. Her essay examines how differently Eastern Algonquians and Euro-Americans have remembered, marked, and mapped the conflict—or struggled to forget it. While standard histories routinely erase native peoples from new England at that point in history, calling the war the “indians’ last stand,” tribal communities have used this same conflict to “make visible alternative geographies of persistence and recovery,” she says. Christine challenges Yankee narratives about the war and contends that the creation and preservation of what she calls “place-sense” can be used to marginalize, but also to promote “resistance, regeneration, and even surprising cross-cultural reconciliation.” “How do we know what we know about the violent colonial past of the northeast?” she asks. Her answer: “By identifying some of the region’s most influential memorykeepers, the sources from which they derive their knowl-edge, and the spaces where they perform their work.” Using those materials, she has teased out the reasons “indigenous commu-nities and their neighbors have maintained, severed, or re-shaped their relationships with a troubling past and its grounds.” To identify some overlooked com-plexities of the war itself and its aftermath,

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) has

awarded the 2011 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, given for

the best essay on any topic in American history by a gradu-

ate student, to Christine M. DeLucia (American Studies).

Rethinking the Colonial Indian WarsAmerican History

Can you measure what people worry about and use

the results to predict their future behavior?

Research: public Health

Measuring perceived RisksChristine studied archival records of towns, reservations, and even families to evaluate “local senses of belonging and collective pur-pose.” Much of the material was available at Yale, especially in the Ezra Stiles manuscripts and new England colonial histories at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, but she also located important materials in several dozen local and state historical col-lections and museums across new England, Quebec, and Bermuda. Some of her research was done at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode island, and at the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal nation Museum & Research Center in Ledyard, Connecticut. Her essay focused on three significant sites: one in Rhode island, one on the new Hamp-shire/Maine border, and the third in Ber-muda, where there is a community believed to be descended from native American prisoners of war. Christine also studied records of oraltradition, performance, material culture,archaeology, and the physical environmentwhere events took place, which enabled her to demonstrate that “vernacular transmissionof historical consciousness has long been athoroughly multidimensional endeavor fornatives and settlers alike.” Christine won a Council on Library and information Resource/Mellon Fellowship last year for this research. Additional funding came from the Gilder Lehrman Center and the MacMillan Center. The essay is based on her dissertation, advised by John Mack Fara-gher. She has also worked closely with Yale’s two native American historians, professors ned Blackhawk and Alyssa Mt. Pleasant.

Above, left: Christine M. deLucia. Above, right: Historic signpost at Northfield, Massachusetts, marking the site of a clash during King philip’s War. Below: Carter House, St. david’s Island, Bermuda, said to be home to a community of descendents of enslaved Native Americans, captured in King philip’s War.

VO L. 13, N u M B E R 6 , M Ay /J u N E 2 011

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S A R A H H A L E y The Organization of American Historians (oah) has awarded Sarah Haley (ph.d. 2010, American Studies and African Ameri-can Studies) the 2011 Lerner-Scott Prize, given annually for the best doctoral dis-sertation in u.s. women’s history. Haley’s dissertation, “Engendering Captivity: Black Women and Convict Labor in Georgia, 1865–1938,” explores how gender, race, and class intersected in Georgia’s convict labor system during the Jim Crow era. She demonstrates that black women occupied a position wholly at odds with normative femininity and highlights their efforts for freedom in contexts such as women’s blues productions, imprisoned women’s every-day activities, and the work of the black women’s club movement. Haley’s research identifies the experiences of imprisonment and gendered racial terror as a new way of understanding of how gender ideology developed and shaped the South. The dis-

sertation, advised by Hazel Carby, Glenda Gilmore, and Joanne Meyerowitz, won the Sylvia Ardyn Boone Dissertation Prize from the Graduate School last year. Haley won the Liza Cariaga-Lo Award for Diversity in Scholarship and Service from Yale and was inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet national Graduate Honor Society in 2009. Haley is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. in September, she will begin an appointment as assistant professor in the Women’s Studies department of the University of California, Los Angeles.

C A I T L I N F I T z Caitlin Fitz (ph.d. 2010, History) is cur-rently a Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mcneil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is writing a book based on her dissertation, “Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions.” Her

research illuminates the wave of enthusi-asm for Latin American independence that engulfed the United States during the early nineteenth century. Drawing on Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English sources as well as archival research from Boston to Buenos Aires, she shows how events elsewhere in the Americas shaped popular understandings of race, revolution, and republicanism in the United States. Her dissertation advisors were John Demos and Joanne Freeman. Following the fellowship year, Fitz will join the faculty of northwestern University.

C A R R I E L A N E Carrie Lane (ph.d. 2005, American Stud-ies), assistant professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, recently published her first book, A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment (Cor-nell University Press, 2011). Based on years of fieldwork among unemployed high-tech-nology workers in the Dallas area, the book explores how frequent layoffs, changes in the job search process, and dual-income

Sarah Haley Caitlin Fitz

marriage have reshaped the way today’s skilled workers view unemployment. “in the American economy’s boom-and-bust business cycle since the 1980s, repeated lay-offs have become part of working life,” she says, arguing that people have embraced a new definition of employment in which all jobs are temporary and all workers are, or should be, independent “companies of one.” Although sympathetic to the benefits that this individualistic ideology can offer, Lane also explores how it hides the true costs of an insecure workforce and increases the dif-ficulty of collective and political responses to job loss and downward mobility.

Carrie Lane

Photo by Karen Tapia/courtesy Cal State Fullerton

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