Faculty Accomplishments

Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Tamar Friedmann has coauthored a new paper, "Euler’s reflection formula, infinite product formulas, and the correspondence principle of quantum mechanics," recently published in Journal of Mathematical Physics.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Jin Goh and Jameson McCue '22 have coauthored a new paper titled "Perceived Prototypicality of Asian Subgroups in the United States and the United Kingdom." Accepted for publication at Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the study "examined how (non-Asian) Americans and Britons perceive different Asian subgroups in terms of how prototypically Asian and how foreign they seem."

A chapter by Tom Morrione, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, was included in the recently published Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism (D. vom Lehn, N. Ruiz-Junco and W. Gibson, eds. Routledge, June 2021). The chapter, titled "Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, and 21st-century Sociology," presents the theoretical framework for that perspective and explores its relevance for guiding contemporary social science research, with special emphasis on large-scale social phenomena, industrialization, and race prejudice.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has been accepted to join Climate Strategies, a member-based international, not-for-profit research network of world-leading researchers. Climate Strategies works at the science-policy interface, advancing climate policy through meaningful interactions between decision-makers and researchers across Europe and internationally. Her membership was approved at a recent board meeting.

Associate Professor of History Arnout van der Meer was a guest on a Cornell Press podcast discussing his new book, Performing Power: Cultural Hegemony, Identity, and Resistance in Colonial Indonesia. van der Meer "explores the importance of material and visual culture ... for both the legitimization of colonial authority as well as its contestation in turn of twentieth-century Indonesia," Cornell Press reports. 

The summer issue of the Maine Arts Journal opens with an introduction written by Professor of Art Véronique Plesch, who is one of the journal's editors; contains a Q&A between Plesch and Associate Professor of Art Bradley Borthwick; and includes a historical piece in which Plesch mentions the Isamu Noguchi sculpture in the Colby College Museum of Art. Moreover, noted art critic Carl Little reviewed the L.C. Bates show that Whitney White '21 and Carissa Yang '21 curated under Plesch's supervision and which is on the same theme, Marks and Tracks, as the journal.

Robert A. Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, Emeritus, has published a paper 10 years in the making in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. Titled "A tale of two Tweefonteins: What physical correlation, geochronology, magnetic polarity stratigraphy, and palynology reveal about the end-Permian terrestrial extinction paradigm in South Africa," the paper offers results to settle the debate of whether or not there were pre-extinction or post-extinction unique groups of animals during the end-Permian extinction. Gastaldo's interdisciplinary team provides several sets of independent evidence demonstrating that there was no extinction of land animals as widely held in the literature. This finding has implications for modeling how terrestrial animals and plants might respond to our current climate challenges of rising temperatures and increasing C02 levels. That means, Gastaldo said, that "we no longer have a model for how life on land, particularly the animals, responded to changing climates and conditions on Earth during what has been called the 'Mother of Mass Extinction' events."  The paper is the culmination of 10 years of research that began with several undergraduate projects in a locality called Tweefontein (two springs) in South Africa's Karoo Basin. The geology majors who first worked on these rocks were Mduduzi Langwenya '14, Kody Spencer '14J, and Tara Chizinski '14. Subsequent to their graduation, Kathy Trafton '16, Jiawen Li '16, Takuto Sasijama '16, along with Sam Sinkler '18 and Kaci Kus '18, were instrumental in both field and laboratory studies, several of which resulted in honors projects and coauthored publications.  

Associate Professor of Sociology Damon Mayrl and Dahlia Venny '22 have coauthored a new paper, "The dejudicialization of religious freedom?" published in Social Compass. The study "conceptualizes the dejudicialization of religious freedom (DRF) in institutionalist terms, examines the structural forces that have facilitated JRF [judicialization of religious freedom], and considers whether and how they may be waning in recent years," according to its abstract.

As president of the Maine Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German, Associate Professor of German Arne Koch was invited to the Maine Department of Education's virtual signing ceremony to celebrate a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Goethe-Institut Boston. Koch expressed enthusiasm for the MOU, which will promote German language and cultural education in Maine.  The event was covered by Maine's Education Department's newsroom.

Jacob Young '20, Martha Arterberry, the Clara C. Piper Professor of Psychology, and Joshua Martin, assistant professor of biology, have coauthored a new paper, "Contrasting Electroencephalography-Derived Entropy and Neural Oscillations With Highly Skilled Meditators." Published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience-Cognitive Neuroscience, the study "examined the neurophysiological responses by highly skilled meditators while meditating and while engaging in a mind-wandering task."