c i r o t e e h c r n e a Th esist r f o
UWM associate professor of English Derek Handley reveals how rhetoric shaped black resistance to urban renewal. Page 6.
College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
February 2020, Vol. 10, No.2
Hallway gallery
Contents Feature Stories
Lapham hallway home to biology gallery Geosciences student makes IMAX debut Prof explains urban renewal rhetoric UWM Libraries wins archive mining grant PoliSci prof explains public opinion gap
p.2 p.4 p.6 p.8 p.10
Columns Upcoming Events In the Media Alumni Accomplishments Laurels and Accolades Passings Video Story People in Print Published College the
the first
Tuesday
of Letters and
University
Contact
of
of each month by the
Science
at
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
us at let-sci@uwm.edu or
(414) 229-2923.
p.12 p.13 p.14 p.14 p.15 p.15 p.15
A new addition to one of Lapham Hall’s most frequently used hallways shines a spotlight on undergraduate and graduate research through stunning high-resolution, poster-sized images. The Biological Sciences Research Gallery is a permanent exhibit that highlights the research that students do in the department. Made up of 33 canvases and growing, the gallery begins at the opening of Lapham Hall’s main hallway, continues past the Biological Sciences main office and extends into the hallway connecting Lapham to the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex. “They show the beauty of biology,” said Jeffrey Karron, professor of biological sciences at UWM. “It’s such a visual science.” Karron came up with the idea for the project last spring as the department looked for ways to make the blank hallway more engaging to students. Inspired by the research his students and colleagues were doing, Karron proposed a photo gallery to showcase these achievements and foster an excitement for research work. The large canvases not only make the hallway more colorful but also show current and prospective students what they can do with biological sciences. He asked his colleagues for pictures, and many of them produced their own original photographs of their students. The canvases display remarkable shots of badgers, bees, and birds, and students collecting data in the field. A closeup of a bright green frog perched on a stem is a staff favorite, Karron said, because it is “so whimsical.”
L&S Dean: Scott Gronert In Focus Editor: Deanna Alba
Find us at UWMLetSci
2 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
Loretha Jack, a recent graduate of the biological sciences program, stands next to a poster showing her research on freshwater phytoplankton in the Biological Sciences Research Gallery. The canvas depicts a phytoplankton diatom colony, important for the health of freshwater ecosystems, and Jack collecting samples in Lake Michigan. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
shows off the beauty of biology
Loretha Jack (left), a recent graduate of the biological sciences program, and graduate student Wendy Semski walk through the Biological Sciences Research Gallery in Lapham Hall. Both have their research on display in the gallery. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Some canvases are as large as 4 feet wide by 3 feet high, with detailed images of microscopic organisms to better show a world that not many get to see. Other pictures highlight students at work in the UWM Field Station, the Biological Sciences Greenhouse and using technology in UWM’s laboratories. These areas are inaccessible to prospective students when they tour campus, but through the research gallery, students can see the opportunities UWM offers and picture themselves at work here. “We bring it to them,” Karron said. Hoping to inspire It is also a way to feature and congratulate the work that current students are doing, Karron said. He hopes that students can be inspired by the many areas of research that their peers engage in.
Karron and his colleagues worked as a team to bring together the 33 pictures from the three disciplines of biological sciences: microbiology, cellular and molecular biology, and ecology and evolution. “There’s something for everyone,” Karron said. Karron hopes that the exhibit does not stop with him and his colleagues. He is optimistic that the Geosciences and Physics departments will promote their students’ research by creating their own galleries to add to the wall of images. He envisions the pictures blending together seamlessly to show how intertwined the natural sciences are. Many professors already have captivating images from their research and they deserve to be shown, Karron said. “I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.” By Amanda Neibauer, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
An Antarctic dinosaur d
Geosciences student is an expert in IM
Libby Ives is coming to the big screen – a very, very big screen. Ives, a UWM student who is working toward her PhD in Geosciences, is one of the subject matter experts in a new IMAX documentary set to debut in February. The film, “Dinosaurs of Antarctica,” was shot in conjunction with a “Dinosaurs of Antarctica” exhibit created by the Field Museum in Chicago and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Since Ives was heading to Antarctica anyway, film writers and producers Andy Wood and Deborah Raksany asked if they could follow along. Ives is not a paleontologist, and she’s not looking for dinosaur bones. Instead, her research focuses on ancient climate. By examining the changes in composition of the rocks in Antarctica, she can decipher all sorts of information about glacial movement, water levels, and climate in the region stretching back hundreds of millions of years. In 2017, she traveled with her mentor, UWM distinguished professor of geosciences John Isbell, and a cohort of scientists to Antarctica to conduct her research. While they were there, Giant Screen Films, the company producing the documentary, worked with photographers and videographers already in Antarctica to get footage of Ives and her fellow scientists at work. “Mostly they wanted to shoot the paleontologists. By that time, the people who were working on the vertebrate fossils had already had things partly excavated, plastered up, and ready for extraction. They got some good footage,” Ives said. “We also work with paleobotanists – they like to say that they study dinosaur food.”
4 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
The IMAX film “Dinosaurs of Antarctica” was produced by Giant Screen Films with funding from the National Science Foundation. To watch the trailer, visit https://vimeo.com/380374758.
The climate science Ives may not be a dinosaur expert, but she can tell what kind of environment gave rise to the prehistoric creatures. “In the film, they’re covering change through time leading up to, during, and then after the dinosaurs. The rocks where we were in Antarctica captured two periods of time: The first being a period of time we call the Permian, and the second being the beginning of the Mesozoic, the beginning of the dinosaur times,” Ives explained. The Permian period, she said, began at a time when the Earth was relatively cold and glaciers covered the South Pole. Over time – about 50 million years – the rock record shows that the Earth gradually warmed, culminating in a mass extinction event at the end of the Permian. “About 95 percent of species in the ocean and three quarters of those on land totally disappeared from the fossil record and died out,” Ives said. “That extinction event gave rise to the time of the dinosaurs. It allowed
debut
MAX documentary dinosaurs to fill out niche spaces that were previously occupied by larger animals. That is captured in the film.” The camera crew shot most of the film in Antarctica, but Ives finished some voice-over work at the WUWM Radio station, and filled in some filming gaps when the production company flew her and other experts to New Zealand this past summer. When the film debuts, she and the other scientists will attend outreach events across the country to explain more of the science to elementary and middle school students. “Hopefully, it inspires a couple of kids to see that this is something that they could do and that scientists are real people,” Ives said. “Hopefully it inspires some students to try and get down there – whether it’s as a scientist or behind a camera.” A breathtaking sight Ives has only seen a rough cut of the IMAX film, but she promises that the results are stunning.
A camera man films Libby Ives as she searches for rocks in Antarctica. Photo by John Isbell. Background photo by John Isbell.
“Not only does it portray the science really well, but they did an excellent job of capturing the feeling of awe when you’re down there – awe and humility and wonder,” she said. In addition to artist-renderings of dinosaurs, the film features breathtaking shots of Antarctica as it is today – barren, harsh, and wildly beautiful. Ives hopes the audience feels the same sense of wonder she did when she first stepped on the continent, and she hopes they gain a new appreciation for the animals that roamed the Earth millions of years before humans ever did.
“I hope audiences take away that not only are dinosaurs super-cool, but also when we talk about geology, we’re not only talking about the animals. We can tell a lot about the environment that they lived in and how that environment changed through time,” Ives said. “Just because it’s at the pole, doesn’t mean Antarctica has always had glaciers on it. During warmer periods in our Earth’s history, there were forests, there were rivers, and there were large animals.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
Fair housing no
UWM English professor revea shaped resistance to
Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the Hill District in Pittsburgh was a thriving neighborhood, home to African American families who enjoyed the community’s markets and jazz clubs. The downside was that conditions were overcrowded – sometimes you found three families packed into a one-family home, for instance, as more black people moved northward to escape persecution and Jim Crow laws in the South and shady landlords took advantage. And then the city started to tear it down. At first, the residents were excited. Urban renewal seemed like a lively era of change where overcrowded conditions would be abated and the city would construct more and better housing. The reality was much different: Pittsburgh began cutting into the Hill District to build a new arena, and city officials had no intention of accommodating the thousands of people they displaced. “That’s when things kind of flip,” Derek Handley said. “The residents claimed this one corner just above where the arena was built. It was renamed, over a period of time, Freedom Corner. It was a site for gatherings, to begin to do marches into downtown. They actually put a billboard on this corner saying, ‘You will not build past this point.’” Handley is an assistant professor in his first year with the UWM Department of English. He studies rhetorical strategies that African American communities used in response to urban renewal in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with a particular focus on Pittsburgh; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Milwaukee. It’s the topic of his current book project, titled “‘The Places We Knew So Well Are No More:’ A Rhetorical History of Urban Renewal and the Black Freedom Movement.” Urban renewal meant upheaval Urban renewal swept the nation after the end of World War II. City officials were eager to combat “white flight”
6 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
and build new attractions and highways that would connect cities to their suburbs and draw people in. But overwhelmingly, the areas that they deemed “blighted” were in minority communities. And while cities razed homes, they weren’t building new dwellings for the people they displaced. To pile on, housing policies, Derek Handley like covenants in Shorewood or Wauwatosa that forbade homeowners from selling their homes to African American buyers, meant black people were restricted in where they could live. In Milwaukee, for example, most black residents were funneled into the city’s north side. “You take away available housing and you’re not building enough replacement housing. So what happens? They pile on into where they could live, which creates some of the same conditions that were problematic before,” Handley said. Faced with discrimination and loss of their homes and businesses, and inspired by the Civil Rights movement sweeping the southern United States, African Americans began to organize. In Milwaukee, residents marched to protest for fair housing, while in Pittsburgh, the sign went up in Freedom Corner.
ow!
als how rhetoric o urban renewal The rhetoric of civil rights At the heart of this resistance to urban renewal were two core concepts, Handley said. First, that African Americans had to be treated as full-class citizens – “We want equal rights. We want to live like the people in Wauwatosa, or wherever. We have the money; we can afford it. Why can’t we live here?” Handley said. The second idea was even more basic: Humanity. African Americans argued for their humanity and that these discriminatory practices were fundamentally inhumane. Organizers had a variety of rhetorical strategies to spread their message. While Handley certainly respects leaders of the broader Civil Rights movement like Dr. King and Stokely Carmichael, he’s fascinated by the way local leaders rallied citizens and taught them to be advocates for their neighborhoods. In Milwaukee, for example, local chapters of the NAACP and the Urban League worked with sympathetic faculty from the UW-Milwaukee extension and Marquette University to host leadership seminars to teach protestors how to speak at public hearings or how to interact with landlords. Handley calls this rhetorical strategy “circulation of agency.” “Part of leadership is empowering other people to become leaders in their neighborhoods and communities, and that’s what I’m seeing by studying these rhetorical strategies,” he said. For example, “One of the persons out of these classes went on to create another organization, WAICO, the Walnut Avenue Improvement Committee Organization. Through their interactions with the city and with the people, they rehabbed houses to get rid of blight.” Continued on page 8
These photographs, and the front cover of In Focus, show building removal in the Lower Hill District as part of Pittsburgh’s renaissance and urban renewal programs. Photo courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh. Photographer unknown.
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7
Urban renewal In Pittsburgh, Handley noticed another strategy: The use of place. Think back to the “You will not build” billboard erected at Freedom Corner. “It meant to unify the community around this one central part in the city. In the case of Pittsburgh, they proved to be successful. (Officials) didn’t do any building past that point,” Handley said. The legacy continues today. Freedom Corner is still a meeting place for organizations like Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement. A personal history, and a lasting history One reason this area of study drew Handley was because his family lived it. His parents left behind homes in Alabama and North Carolina to settle in Pittsburgh as part of the Great Migration, and Handley’s older siblings grew up in the Hill District. In 1968, when the country passed the Fair Housing Act, Handley’s parents moved the family to the Pittsburgh suburbs. “Which meant for me, my life was completely different. By the ‘80s, if I’d still been in the Hill District, where the crack epidemic ravaged these communities, who knows what my life would have been like?” Handley wondered. “I’m not disparaging anyone who grew up in urban environments, but it shows one particular effect that that law had. Members of my family were affected by urban renewal.” And urban renewal is still going on today, he notes, but this time, it’s gentrification. Younger, usually white and more affluent, professionals are moving to cities and buying up housing in areas that have traditionally been minority communities. That in turn increases housing costs, often pricing out long-time residents. And now, just like then, people are beginning to resist. Handley recounts the story of a neighborhood record store in Washington, D.C., that had played music outdoors each day for more than 20 years. People new to the predominately-black area complained about the noise. “Their rhetorical strategy of resistance was, not only are we going to play this music; we’re going to play it louder, and we’re going to turn this block into a block party,” Handley said. “And they rallied around this location as the resistance point of gentrification. They said, you will not quiet us. If you want to live here with us, you’re going to accept our cultural norms instead of trying to impose yours. “You will not build past.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science 8 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
UWM Team Awarded M A collaborative team led by Ann Hanlon, head of Digital Collections and Initiatives at the UWM Libraries, and Dan Siercks, interim director for Web and Data Services in the UWM’s College of Letters & Science, has received a $50,000 Andrew W. Mellon Grant through Ann Hanlon the University of Nevada Las Vegas, for the “LGBTQ+ Audio Archive Mining Project.” The core team also includes Marcy Bidney, assistant director for Distinctive Collections at UWM Libraries, and Cary Costello, associate professor of sociology and director of UWM’s LGBT Studies program.
Dan Siercks
The UWM Libraries house one of the largest collections of historical and contemporary LGBTQ+ materials in Wisconsin and the Midwest, including a rich record of Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ communities. The “LGBTQ+ Audio Archive Mining Project” will use machine learning tools and data analysis and visualization to build and process text datasets extracted from a variety of AV materials in these collections, including collections of oral histories, local television news and radio broadcasts, and early LGBTQ+ community cable programming. The project will aid in a deeper understanding of the contents of these collections, and enhance discoverability of previously unrecognized topics, relationships, and patterns that shed light on the history of the LGBTQ+ community in Milwaukee and the Midwest. “This project is especially exciting,” Hanlon says,
Mellon Grant for “Archive Mining”
“because it will enable us to better comprehend our past—something that is all the more important in the case of communities whose histories have often been hidden, such as the LGBTQ+ community. This will open up new audiences for our archival collections, and give students and Marcy Bidney the community an opportunity to use our collections in ways that simply weren’t possible in their original formats.” In addition to the core team, project participants include UWM Libraries staff Shiraz Bhathena, Jie Chen, Karl Holten, and Ling Meng. The project kicks off this month and concludes in April 2021.
The New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation issues grants totaling more than $320 million every year for projects driven by higher education and cultural institutions that promote and explore the humanities and the arts. The University of Nevada Las Vegas received $750,000 for “Collections as Data: Part to Whole.” Cary Costello This three-year project explores how existing cultural heritage collections at universities can be used and deployed as usable data. UWM was one of twelve universities nationwide selected by UNLV to share in this grant. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
A difference of opinion: PoliSci professor find If you’ve ever thought that elected officials in Washington don’t care about your opinions, you might be right.
data back from 2002 and 2004, have pretty good implications for our current affairs.
That’s according to new research by UWM political science professor Hong Min Park, whose forthcoming paper, “Determinants of the Opinion Gap between the Elites and the Public Hong Min Park in the United States,” will be published in Social Science Journal.
My analysis shows that public opinion differed most from elites’ concerning immigration, foreign aid, and trade. At this point in time, we know that those are the important issues that shape the public discussion, especially under the Trump presidency. But this data is from 2002 and 2004. As we can recall in 2002 and 2004, those issues were some of the concerns of the public and some of the concerns of the elite, but they were not a main concern at that time.
Park’s research uncovered some wide “opinion gaps” between the views of the American public and the views of elites, or the politicians in charge of legislating for that public. He sat down to discuss his research – and how it might explain today’s current political climate. In this paper, you examine how views of the public and politicians differ. What inspired your research? I have been wondering why the public has a different opinion on a lot of issues than the elites, especially the elected politicians. They need to be reelected, but they do not listen to the public. I always wondered why and when the elected politicians follow, or try to follow, public opinion, and when they do not need to or want to follow public opinion. To find the answers, I found one public opinion survey that asked the exact same questions to the public and to the elites at the same time in 2002 and 2004. There is one caveat, which is that this is an old public opinion survey. We cannot easily generalize the comparison into a more recent case. That could be a theoretical concern. But the findings that I had, by comparing these public opinion and elite survey
10 • IN FOCUS • February 2020
How do public opinion surveys from the early 2000s shed light on politics in 2020?
But now, in 2020, these are the main concerns that we have. I cannot prove it, but my suspicion is that some of the political strategists recognized this difference of opinion between the regular public and the elites … and they might (have thought) that there was room where they could maneuver and manipulate. They try to emphasize these issues so that they can get the attention of some of the public. What issues did the public and elites disagree on the most? What I found is that the elites and the public do not share their preferences and policy opinions more on domestic and economic issues, but they share more on foreign policy issues. When I say economic policies, it’s trade – NAFTA, that kind of thing. When I say foreign policy issues, it’s more about diplomatic policies – for example, Middle East policies or policies against Iran, or North Korean nuclear policy. When I say domestic, it’s more job-related issues and immigration. I found that on domestic policies, the regular public and the elites have very, very different opinions. On average, on domestic policies,
ds wide opinion gap between elites and public as compared to diplomatic and defense policies, the preference difference is around 15 percentage points more. It’s pretty significant. In terms of economic policy, that difference was 6 percentage points higher as compared to diplomatic policies. Are there certain types of issues where the public and elected politicians have bigger opinion gaps than others? Among the domestic and economic policies, I pulled up the question items whose opinion gap was more than a 30 percentage point difference. I could identify 13 items out of 236. Four of them were about immigration issues. For example, “we need to favor restricting immigration to the U.S.”; “We need to control and reduce illegal immigration as an important policy goal”; and “Protecting jobs of American workers is an important goal.” As you can imagine, the public has a more negative view on immigration issues compared to the elites. Another four items were about helping people in other countries – for example, whether we need to send economic aid to other countries. The opinion gap was 52 percentage points. The majority of the elites strongly favor economic aid to other countries, and the majority of the public is strongly opposed. The third important item was trade. Is it good to have NAFTA? Elites think yes, but the public does not think so. The opinion gap is 32 percentage points. Is there a reason that the gap between elected politicians’ and the public’s opinion is so wide? Do politicians just not care what the public thinks? My theory is that, in terms of foreign policy versus domestic or economic policies, the public does not care about foreign policy issues that much, because it’s not about our interests. We usually build our opinion based on what the media says or what our representative says. For economic and domestic issues on the other hand, people know and are experiencing that issue, so they have a very strong opinion. Elites also have a strong opinion, so that’s why we have a very dramatic difference in opinion.
Do elites not care? Possibly. For the most part, the outcome of American elections, especially at the federal level, is pre-determined early in the campaign season based on factors such as presidential popularity, economy, and district demographics. We all know that the city of Milwaukee is Democratic, and we know that when we go farther north, it’s Republican. If I’m a candidate, I know that I’m going to win again if I’m still in the Democratic party representing Milwaukee. My position on specific issues is less important. What does that mean for our elections? The problem is that politicians need to go through a primary. Then they need to follow the opinion of primary voters. According to the political science research, primary voters are very different from the general public. They tend to be very attentive to politics and policies. Their preferences are somewhat extreme in the sense that they care about things more aggressively. Elites tend to become more extreme because we tend to have more extreme primary voters. The Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate and the elites need to follow those opinions, and they are moving apart. Of course, on average, the public is in the middle! As (primary voters) move farther apart, the opinion gap will be wider and wider on issues like immigration or trade. Was there anything that surprised you? The uncertainty the elites have on a certain policy. When the survey asked elites about different issue items, some elites say, “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” or “I refuse to answer.” Then I measure that as “uncertainty” an elite has on a given policy item. It turns out when elites are not certain about their own positions on a particular issue, that’s when they tend to follow public opinion. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
Upcoming Events Sun
February 2020 Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat 1
February 5
Planetarium Show: Stars, Stories, & Rhythms of Africa. 6-8:30 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Explore African cultures across the continent’s latitudes with stargazing, music, storytelling, and live dancers. Sponsored by Sociolcultural Programming and the Planetarium Club. This event is free.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
https://bit.ly/2GGJYGX
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
February 6
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Geosciences Spring 2020 Career Planning Seminar. 4-5 p.m. Lapham N103. Job seeking advice, interview and résumé tips, and networking. Presented by UWM Career Planning and Resource Center and hiring specialists from the Ramball Group and the WI Department of Natural Resources. United We Read. 7:30 p.m. Boswell Books Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave., Milwaukee. Readings by Su Cho, Anthony Correale, Lauren Maddox, and Liam Callanan.
February 7
Neuroscience Seminar: Harnessing the natural behaviors of the nematode C. elegans to model neural and muscular disorders. 2-3 p.m. Lapham N101. Andres Vidal-Gadea, Illinois State University. Geography Colloquium: Social Science, Native Politics, and the Ethics of Settler Research. 3-4 p.m. AGS Library. Kennan R. Ferguson, UWM.
February 7-28
Science Bag - CRISPR Critters: The ins and outs of this genome-editing tool. 7-8 p.m. Physics 137. Shows run Fridays Feb. 7-28 with a matinee show at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 16. Free and family-friendly. Jen Gutzman explains the gene-editing tool CRISPR and how it’s used in medicine and agriculture. uwm.edu/science-bag Planetarium Show: Scale of the Universe. 7-8 p.m. and 8:15-9:15 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Learn the size and structure of the universe. Shows run Fridays through Feb. 28. Open to the public. Tickets are $6 general admission and $5 for UWM students. https://bit.ly/37OOj6W
February 9
Planetarium Show: Solar System Expedition. 2-3 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Take a tour of our cosmic neighborhood. This show is appropriate for ages 4 and up. Open to the public. Tickets are $6 general admission and $5 for UWM students. https://bit.ly/36JlA25
February 13
Geosciences Colloquium: Accumulation of lead in vegetables grown in metals rich soil – a health risk to children from urban agriculture. 4-5 p.m. Lapham N103. Graduate student Harris Byers, UWM Geosciences, presents.
February 14
Neuroscience Seminar: How nicotine and synaptic activity change the Golgi apparatus. 2-3 p.m. Lapham N101. Bill Green, University of Chicago. Graduate Student Grant Development and Writing Workshop. 3-4 p.m. AGS Library. Kari E WhittenbergerKeith, Office of Sponsored Program and Office of Research at UWM. Edward Shanken: Deus ex Poiesis-A Manifesto for the End of the World and the Future of Art and Technology. 3:30-5 p.m. Curtin 175. Organized by Center for 21st Century Studies and the Golda Meir Library Digital Humanities Lab.
February 14-23
Festival of Films in French. Union Cinema. The annual Festival of Films in French returns to UWM with 16 films shown nightly over two weeks. Films are shown in French with English subtitles. Free and open to the public. For a full schedule of films, visit https://uwm.edu/frenchfilm-festival/.
February 20
Maxwell Woods: On the Chilean Social Explosion of 2019-Urban Segregation, Public Transport as Public Space, and Neoliberal Modernity. 3-4:30 p.m. AGS Library. Woods traces the history of urban segregation and modern public transportation in Santiago, Chile. Organized by Center for 21st Century Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. https://bit.ly/3aXlhUV
12 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
In the Media and Around the Community Sensitive viewers, beware before clicking the link: Margaret Noodin (English) provided the creepy background vocals for the trailer of director Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, Antlers. The voiceover begins at 1:26 in the clip. https://youtu.be/kLkaO67TJ6Q
Pamela Harris (’08, PhD Mathematical Sciences) discussed her research, her job as a professor at Williams College, and her life as a undocumented Mexican immigrant in an article for Massive Science. https://bit.ly/2NTiwtL
Sara Benesh (Political Science) predicted in the Christian Science Monitor that United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would do his best to remain apolitical during the impeachment trial of President Trump. https://bit.ly/2TMFN4p Shale Horowitz (Political Science) detailed Iran’s likely responses to the U.S. killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on CBS News (https://bit.ly/2sTuUCU) and explained how the current tensions fit into the tense relationships between the two countries on WUWM. (https://bit.ly/2R0GZOC).
“There’s a certain snob appeal” in using the letter R in Lao, the language of Laos, Garry Davis (Linguistics) told The Washington Post. The letter R was officially dropped in the language for some time to decrease foreign influence on Laos’ culture. https://wapo.st/2sSLhQ3
Carnegie’s Networked Improvement Community January newsletter featured senior lecturer Kelly Kohlmetz (Mathematical Sciences), who is also the university’s Math Literacy Pathway Coordinator. She helps advisors and students ensure that students are enrolled in the correct math course for their abilities and schedule. https://bit.ly/38yB4XZ
The Washington Post quoted Marc Levine (emeritus History) in an article examining the amount of start-ups and patents – or lack thereof – generated by universities in the U.S. https://wapo.st/2RmrxxJ
How does sexism impact Elizabeth Warren’s bid to be the Democratic nominee for president? Kathy Dolan (Political Science) shared her theories in a FiveThirtyEight.com article. https://53eig.ht/2uowooW
Paul Roebber (Atmospheric Science) shared the finer points of weather forecasting and weather prediction technologies on WUWM. https://bit.ly/2Rju9MA
Youth climate change activist Greta Thunberg has hit upon some excellent rhetorical strategies to impart her message, Mike Allen (Communication) said on Mashable.com. https://bit.ly/2RIiypw
Upcoming Events February 20
Geosciences Colloquium: Archetypal Depositional Systems of the Cretaceous Western Interior SeawaySedimentaology, Ichnology, Stratal Architectures, and Controls. 4-5 p.m. Lapham N103. Peter Flaig, University of Texas at Austin.
February 21
Neuroscience Seminar: Axonal Transport and Autophagy-Lysosomal Regulation in Alzheimer’s Disease. 2-3 p.m. Lapham N101. Qian Cai, Rutgers University.
Elana Levine (English) was a guest at the “TV at the Pollock” series at UC-Santa Barbara in February at the event’s “Gender, Work, and the Sitcom Family” panel. https://bit.ly/3aFiaR0
Why do you have to take the stairs to reach the front doors of some Milwaukee houses? Graduate student Jonathan Bohrer (History) explained the city’s street grading efforts on WUWM Radio’s “Bubbler Talk” program. https://bit.ly/2Rv1UKU
Jeffrey Sommers (African and African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies) discussed how unionbusting led to racial inequality in an opinion piece published on Urban Milwaukee. https://bit.ly/39V5gOu College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
Alumni Accomplishments Pamela Harris (‘12, PhD Mathematical Sciences) was promoted to associate professor with tenure at Williams College in Massachusetts. The Board of Trustees particularly noted Harris’ outstanding mentorship of students, especially firstgeneration students and students of color. Harris is the recipient of the 2019 Henry L. Alder award from the Mathematical Association Pamela Harris of America and the 2019 Early Career Mentor Award from the Council on Undergraduate Research. She has completed prolific research and has many other professional accomplishments.
Brie Schettle (’16, BA Art History and BFA Painting) presented her art at the Spring Resident Show & Tell in January. Schettle is a resident at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Lincoln City, Oregon. https://bit.ly/2RHmQNT
Christopher Medina-Kirchner (’14, BA Psychology) is now a researcher at Columbia University. Years ago, he was under arrest for peddling drugs. Medina-Kirchner was featured in The Verge for his current research on MDMA. The article mentions his time at UWM as a McNair Scholar and his mentor, Krista Lisdahl (Psychology). https://bit.ly/37kUEGW
https://bit.ly/39SXbKh
Sam Rogers (’19, BA Political Science) was selected as the Coalitions Director to lead Concerned Veterans for America - Wisconsin. He recently kicked off a $1.5 million campaign to leverage non-partisan alliances of veterans, family members, and communities to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and End Endless Wars. While at UWM, he served as President of the Student Veterans of America, served as the Veteran Advocacy Senator in the Student Association, and worked at the Military and Veterans Resource Center.
Laurels and Accolades Jen Gutzman (Biological Sciences) was awarded a $152,000 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The monies, to be distributed over two years, will support her project titled, “Developmental models to determine the molecular mechanisms that cause MYH9-related diseases.” The research will generate novel vertebrate developmental model using zebrafish and CRISPR/Cas genome editing to identify how human mutations in the MYH9 gene cause the five clinical disorders that are classified as MYH9related diseases. Lisa Silverman (Jewish Studies and History) was elected to a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Association of Jewish Studies. Her term began in December 2019 and will run through 2022. The Association of Jewish Studies is the leading learned society in the field. https://bit.ly/2TL7CKa 14 • IN FOCUS • February, 2020
Derrick Harriell
Derrick Harriell (’11, PhD English) won an Edgar Award, a major national award for crime and mystery writers. The honor, the Robert L. Fish Memoriam Award, is presented by the Mystery Writers of America and was given for his short story “There’s a Riot Goin’ On (Sherman Park)” in the anthology Milwaukee Noir published by Akashic Books. http://theedgars.com/ awards
W. Hobart Davies (Psychology) was selected to receive the Society of Pediatric Psychology’s Michael C. Roberts Award for Outstanding Mentorship. Davies was nominated by six former students, who reflected on his positive and lasting impact on their careers and the field. He will be honored at the Society of Pediatric Psychology Annual Conference (SPPAC) in the spring.
Hobey Davies
Kimberly Blaeser (English) and Val Klump (Freshwater Sciences) were selected as 2020 Academy Fellows by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Blaeser will be honored at an April 17 celebration for her substantial contributions to the cultural life and welfare of Wisconsin and its citizens. https://bit.ly/2sSsFj8
Passings Abbas Hamdani passed away on Dec. 23, 2019, surrounded by his family. He was 93 years old. Hamdani was a professor in UWM’s Department of History for 31 years, where he taught Middle East and Islamic history. During his tenure, he helped establish and chair committees in Middle East and North African Studies and in Comparative Religions before his retirement in 2001. He was a prolific researcher and writer and was widely published on subjects from Islamic history and philosophy to current events in the Middle East and Islamic world. He received numerous grants throughout his career and earned several awards at UWM, including Distinguished Service and Teaching awards and an Educator of the Year Award, among other honors. Hamdani was born in Surat, India, and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1950. He joined the UWM faculty in 1971, where he was beloved by his students and colleagues. A full obituary is available at https://legcy.co/2Roplps.
Video Story
People in Print Jeffrey Sommers (African and African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies) and C. Marian. 2019. Education alone does not support open societies, but the right educational content might. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern European Studies, 27(2-3): 213-225. https://bit.ly/2QDESkN Karyn Frick (Psychology). 2020. Estrogens and memory: Basic Research and Clinical Implications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://amzn. to/36gWWWn
Before the next deep freeze hits, catch up on winter weather forecast terms like “polar vortex” with UWM’s Paul Roebber, a distinguished professor of mathematical sciences. He is the founder of the Innovative Weather forecasting service at UWM.
Thomas Haigh (History) and Mark Priestley. 2020. Von Neumann thought Turing’s Universal Machine was ‘Simple and Neat.’: But That Didn’t Tell Him How to Design a Computer. Communications of the ACM, 63(1): 26-32.
https://youtu.be/TyRSyP0uLRQ
https://bit.ly/2TRBkNC
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
