Conversations About our Scholarly Lives
Fall 2011

Every Monday at noon, CASL provides Macalester faculty with an opportunity to learn about our colleagues’ scholarly work while joining together for lunch and informal conversation. Presenters have 20 minutes to discuss their research in progress, the excitement and challenges of doing research at a small liberal arts college, or their fully formed research products. The rest of the hour will be spent discussing the issues raised in the presentation. Bring your curiosity, collegiality, and your questions; we provide the lunch (no RSVP necessary). 12:000-1:00 at the CST, Room 338 in the Library.

September 12 – Duchess Harris, American Studies, “Kathryn Stockett is Not My Sister and I am Not Her Help” On August 12, 2011 The Feminist Wire published an article written by Harris entitled, "Kathryn Stockett is Not My Sister and I am Not Her Help."  A week later after the article had been shared 2,000 times on line, the editor of the magazine, Hortense Spillers, wrote:  "We have been overwhelmed and overjoyed by our readers’ response to Duchess Harris’s article on the novel, The Help.”  Come here Harris' comments on this moment in American culture.

September 19 – Paul Dosh, Political Science, “Scholar Dilemma: Dare We Help the Vulnerable Populations We Study?” A U.S. scholar interviews a social movement leader in the shantytowns of Peru.  The Peruvian activist needs a meal.  And a roof.  And a job. What should the scholar do?  Do scholars dare help vulnerable research subjects, or does intervention undermine their research?  Integrated with his research of urban social movements, Paul Dosh has co-founded the Center for Development with Dignity, which provides leadership training for some of the Peruvians whom he has studied.  Please join us for a discussion of the possibilities and pitfalls of integrating intervention and scholarship.

September 26 – Sanchayeeta Adhikari, Berg Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography, “Are Parks Working? A Case Study of Bannerghatta National Park in India” The focus of this talk is forest cover dynamics in protected areas of India. It is a “good news story about vegetation recovery inside a protected area of a tropical country” unlike earlier studies which focused on deforestation trends of tropics. The talk will focus on a small case study of a national park in India which is one of the oldest habitats of Asiatic elephants and is situated outside one of the fastest growing cities of India – Bangalore. The park’s location gives rise to various people-park conflicts which are relevant for biodiversity conservation and will be discussed in the talk.

October 3 – Lara Nielsen, Theater and Dance, “The Riddles of Labor and Performance, or: What Do They Know of Baseball Who Only Baseball Know?" Whereas professional baseball is a culture industry that traffics in racialized Caribbean labor and performance for US national purposes, players enact and perform both conquest and counterconquest, on and off the field. In this talk Nielsen will discuss her recent research in the Dominican Republic.

October 10 – Andrew Beveridge, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, “Scotty Macalester and the Mathematical Sorting Hat” Have you ever wondered how incoming students are assigned to First Year Classes? Starting with the class of 2013, this constrained optimization problem has been resolved using a computer algorithm designed by Sean Cooke (Mac 2009) and Beveridge. They will discuss their collaboration with Academic Programs, the development of their mathematical model, and reflect on the improved quality of the assignments.

October 17 – Ernesto Capello, History, “Commemoration, Cartography & Visual Culture: Second French Geodesic Mission to Ecuador” Between 1901 and 1906, a French military mission measured the arc of the equatorial meridian running through the Andean section of Ecuador.  This journey not only clarified the rate of the earth's ongoing flattening due to gravity, an invaluable measurement for global cartographic study, but also commemorated an eighteenth-century French & Spanish mission that had traveled to the Andean nation for the same purpose.  In his talk, Capello will discuss his research in Ecuador and France regarding the performance, visual culture, and politics of commemoration developed during this mission and in its aftermath. 

October 24 – Brian Lush, Classics, “Combat Trauma and Psychological Injury in Euripides' Medea" In this presentation of his recently completed research, Lush will apply the model of traumatic injury and PTSD developed in Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam to Euripides' well known, filicidal protagonist.  Medea's background, experiences and language in the play will be viewed through the lens of combat trauma as Shay characterizes it in Vietnam veterans and the warriors of Homeric epic.

October 31 – Chris Wells, Environmental Studies, “Car Country: An Environmental History” In the early 20th century, all U.S social, political, and economic institutions were oriented entirely around foot-, rail- and water-based transportation. Rural roads were in decrepit condition, turn-of-the-century streets in big American cities were in a state of crisis, and early motor vehicles were ostentatiously expensive and notoriously unreliable. Yet by 1956, when Congress funded construction of the Interstate highway system, nearly all of the basic patterns underpinning the creation of car-dependent landscapes—as well as the most significant environmental problems related to heavy car use—were firmly in place. Car use became not just easy but almost mandatory. Why and how did the U.S. become Car Country?

November 7 – Jim Laine, Religious Studies, “Resisting My Attackers, Resisting My Defenders: My Book on an Indian Hero, the Protest, the Indictment, and the Ban” In 2003 Laine published a book on the Indian hero Shivaji (d. 1680). In 2004 several protests of the book led to a government ban and controversy surrounding the national campaign in which the current PM Manmohan Singh was elected. Last summer the Supreme Court of India gave a final ruling on the ban. Laine will reflect on the experience of interpreting the reactions of both attackers and defenders in India and around the world.

November 14 – Deb Smith, Sociology, “Branded Workers:  Labor Control in the ‘New Economy” How are workers controlled in the ‘new’ American economy?   This session focuses on a new mode of labor control rooted in the use of employer brand identity.  In this system, employers attempt to align employees’ identity to the brand as a way to elicit their cooperation, loyalty, and consent.  By examining this system, we can shed light on the changing dynamics of power in American workplaces.

November 21 – Devavani Chatterjea, “Mast Cells: Unexpected Sentinels of Pain (and how the world's youngest team of mast cell biologists is making things happen!)”

November 28 – John Kim, Media & Cultural Studies, “On the Theory and Practice of New Media” Kim will talk about his position in New Media Theory and Practice, and the challenges of balancing and integrating writing and practice based work as components of his research.  He will focus on his work with two Macalester students on Security Gate 26.11, an interactive, electronic art work, shown at Northern Spark (Twin Cities) this summer and the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (Istanbul, Turkey) this Fall.

December 5 – Dan Hornbach, Biology & Environmental Studies, “Studying Mussels for 20 Years – Isn’t That Like Watching the Grass Grow?” For the past 20 years Hornbach has studied populations for freshwater mussels in the St. Croix River. Today he will reflect on the ecological questions that prompted this research and how the move to an interdisciplinary program has influenced those questions. In the past 7 years Hornbach has worked collaboratively with two colleagues in the science division and he will describe how that has reinvigorated his work. Finally, he will discuss the joys that comes with involving 83 students in this work.