Faculty Accomplishments
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Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates shared her expertise and experiences working with the State of Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap with public lectures on Oct. 20, 2022. Bates was asked to share best practices with planners, government agencies, and energy developers in California, where offshore wind is following Maine’s trajectory. Her presentation highlighted the role of proactive planning to generate a path forward to meet state and federal climate goals. This event was organized by UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.
Bates was also invited to speak to the Maine Youth for Climate Justice coalition about the importance of public engagement and the role of youth voices in energy planning, while also framing equity and justice-based principles in offshore energy planning. Sharing lessons from serving on Maine’s Energy Markets and Strategy Committee, Bates aims to inspire youth to continue working toward justice-based solutions to the climate crisis.
Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has been selected to organize and host webinars for the Addison Gallery's "Collection in Dialogue" series. The series invites "leading scholars of American art to analyze objects in the Addison's permanent collection." Sheehan has identified "collection areas and speakers with the aim of demonstrating the museum's commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion," the gallery reports. The first webinar is Dec. 1 at 6 p.m. and is titled "The Art of HIV/AIDS." These virtual webinars are free and open to pre-registrants.
Professor of Biology Cathy Bevier was the lead author of the paper "Early Life of the Mink Frog (Rana septentrionalis): From Fertilization to Metamorphosis," published in the journal Ichthyology and Herpetology. The paper reports on the team's "initial efforts to describe larval Mink Frog development by inducing breeding of wild-caught adults in the laboratory, then sampling tadpoles from fertilization until the subsequent spring," the paper's abstract states. "Our approach here demonstrates that Mink Frogs can be captive bred for use in laboratory experiments, and our work provides a novel larval series from egg mass to metamorphosis for this secretive, understudied species."
As part of the University of Pennsylvania's Climate Week activities, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson delivered a short lecture on October 12 titled, "Climate justice in an unjust world." In it, she highlighted the challenge of climate change in Caribbean small island developing states and called for a recognition of the uneven impacts of climate change, debt relief from the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions, and increased transparency in climate funding allocations.
Professor of English Debra Spark penned a review of Getting Lost, a new book by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Noble Prize in Literature. Published on the website Frenchly, Spark's review questions why Ernaux published Getting Lost after already covering the same material in her novel Simple Passion, which recounts her love affair with a Russian diplomat. "In the end, I found it tormenting (and boring) to read about Ernaux’s torment," Spark wrote. "The feminist in me does not want to see a woman of Ernaux’s accomplishments feel as she does, though, of course, I’ve seen many an accomplished woman do the same."
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored an article titled "The unequal geographies of climate finance: Climate injustice and dependency in the world system." Appearing in the journal Political Geography, the article asks whether climate finance follows the expectations of world-systems theory and reproduces relationships of dependency. It finds that it does, in many ways. However, potential avenues exist for challenging spatial dependency, contesting the unequal balance of power between states, and advancing climate justice.
Mathematician and Research Associate Jan Holly has won a Paul R. Halmos - Lester R. Ford Award from the Mathematical Association of America for her paper “What Type of Apollonian Circle Packing Will Appear?” which originally appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, 128:7. Holly's article "stands out for its rich set of gifts: several directions for further inquiry and numerous specific questions for which the reader has been well-prepared by the author. Indeed, the author’s use of easily accessible analytic techniques, complex geometry, and visual reasoning, including definition of a key sub-packing, offer a reader both inspiration and multiple tools for further study," the MAA said. The Paul R. Halmos - Lester R. Ford Award recognizes "authors of articles of expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly."
Véronique Plesch, professor of art, traveled to Belgium to present a paper Oct. 7 at the University of Liège in Belgium's international conference "Now the arts connect: Tom Phillips’ Constellations." Plesch's paper on the contemporary British artist is titled "Tom Phillips’s Paradoxes: Word and Image in A Humument."
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch wrote an essay for the catalog for the retrospective exhibition of the works of Barbara Sullivan, titled Barbara Sullivan: "Forty + Years." The show is on view through Nov. 10, 2022, at the Emery Community Arts Center at the University of Maine at Farmington.
"Community" is the theme for the 2022 fall issue of the Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly, and Professor of Art Véronique Plesch contributed an art historical piece to it titled “Creating Community.” Plesch, who serves on the journal's editorial board, also wrote "Introduction: Fall 2022: Community" for this issue.