Faculty Accomplishments

Professor of English Debra Spark has written a review of Lauren Oyler's debut novel Fake Accounts for Yale Alumni Magazine. "Oyler is a terrific writer, her long propulsive sentences featuring one mordant comment after another, so that even a reader wholly uninterested in social media will enjoy the obsessive analysis of online behavior and contemporary culture," Spark wrote.

Mary Ellis Gibson, the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature, has guest-edited an article, "Forum: Varieties and Denominations of Victorian Christianity," which appeared in the fall issue of Victorian Review. In the same issue, Gibson also coauthored another essay, titled "Protestant Evangelism in India: A Beginner's Guide."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored a new paper titled "Financing loss and damage from slow onset events in developing countries." Published in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, the paper reviews the most recent publications on the topic and finds that current options for sustainable and equitable finance are limited—insurance schemes are not appropriate, though levies and taxes are likely to be relatively fair, predictable, adequate, and transparent. 

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored a new paper titled "Climate compatible development in practice." Published in the journal Development in Practice, the paper uses three island case studies to argue that, in practice, climate compatible development is not always a deliberate policy tool, and that a focus on either mitigation, adaptation, or development can have unintended but positive outcomes for one or both of the other domains. D'Arcy Carlson '21 is one of the coauthors.

Professor of Creative Writing Adrian Blevins read her poem "Bereavement Status" for WERU's Poetry Express project on May 2. This poem is from her forthcoming poetry collection Status Pending, to be released by Four Way Books in 2023.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Leeann Sullivan wrote a "letter" titled “For species reintroduction, it’s all politics” published in the most recent issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Sullivan's article explores how citizen-led efforts to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado were as much about re-democratizing conservation as they were about wolf reintroduction.

Assistant Professor of Biology Christina Cota has been awarded a $700,000 National Science Foundation grant to carry out a collaborative research project with Princeton University and Swarthmore College. The research will look at the interplay between cell division and the signals that cells exchange to coordinate their behavior. "This is a critical area of investigation because signal-dependent coordination of cell behavior is essential for the growth of all life forms," stated the research's abstract. "Additionally, errors in signaling are the primary cause of cancer. Because cancer also entails unregulated cell division, it is particularly important to understand how division may exacerbate signaling errors."

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies Hong Zhang and her coeditors were interviewed about their new book on an episode for New Books Network podcast. The book, Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies, explores the complexities of aging and caregiving in contemporary East Asia. Berghahn Books released the book in 2020 . New Books Network is a consortium of author-interview podcast channels dedicated to raising the level of public discourse by introducing scholars and other serious writers to a wide public via new media. 

The latest book by Associate Professor of Art Gary Green, Around Midnight, was included in a piece called "Psychotic Reactions" on Landscape Stories. Green is in good company, as many well-known writers and photographers such as Chris Killip, Nick Waplington, Christian Patterson, Paul D'amato, and Rebecca Solnit are included in the piece.