Research News

Do Election Projections Decrease Voter Turnout?

In eight of the past 12 presidential elections, TV networks proclaimed the winner as early as three hours before polls closed in Western states.  Did these projections decrease voter turnout? 

Join Bill Adams, GW professor of public policy and public administration, for the answer to this quadrennial controversy about how media projections affect voter turnout. 

Read more, listen to the podcast.

Left-Leaning Blog Readers More Active

Henry Farrell, GW assistant professor of political science and international affairs; Eric Lawrence, GW assistant professor of political science; and John Sides, GW assistant professor of political science, examine the questions of blogs, the politics of the readers, and how much they participate in American politics in their paper "Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics."  The paper was published July 1, 2008, on TheMonkeyCage.org, a blog dedicated to political science research. Read more.

Immigration's Impact on Cities Worldwide

GW Associate Professors of Geography Lisa Benton-Short and Marie Price, in photo, discuss the economic and socio-cultural impacts that immigrants have on major cities worldwide, as well as the linkages immigrants create with their countries of origin.

Benton-Short and Price recently published Migrants to the Metropolis: the Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities. The analysis, based on field research, redirects the global narrative surrounding migration away from states and borders toward cities, where the majority of economic migrants settle.

It examines contemporary global immigrant trends and the profound effects on specific host cities, focusing not only on destinations with long-established diverse populations, but also on lesser-known gateway cities such as Amsterdam and the emerging gateways of Johannesburg, Singapore, Dublin, and Washington, D.C.

Listen to the podcast or read more.

The Real Jurassic Park

National Geographic Magazine features the research of Biology Professor James Clark, who uncovered ancestors of T. rex and other reptile giants in China.

Read the article.

Watch the National Geographic video series on YouTube.

Students Return from Dig

GW students this summer traveled to the Megiddo archaeological excavation site near Haifa, Israel.

Read the blogs from this summer's dig.

Listen to Dr. Cline talk about Megiddo on YouTube.

'Hobbit' Fossil Linked to Evolution

A GW Anthropology research team used new methods to discover that a fossil, dubbed the "Hobbit," is linked to human evolution. The researchers, Adam Gordon, Lisa Nevell and Bernard Wood, found that the fossil species represents a unique human lineage that diverged from our own, and strikes another blow against the idea that human evolution occurred in a linear progression. The research appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and is also featured in The New York Times.

Professor, Graduate Student Research
Opens Door to Discovery

Akos Vertes, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and graduate student Peter Nemes unveil their laser spectrometer research, which can provide on-the-spot analysis for everything from evaluating tumors to detecting explosives.

Read the article in Analytical Chemistry.
Read the Reuters article.
Listen to a podcast of Akos Vertes.

Vertes was also featured in the March 2008 issue of Biophotonics International, a journal dedicated to finding photonic solutions for biotechnology and medicine. The article, "Deeper Into the Plant Kingdom," focused on Vertes' metabolic imaging work.

Faculty News

Art

Professor of Ceramics Turker Ozdogan is featured in the January-March 2008 edition of Seramik, a Turkish ceramic magazine.

Anthropology

A new multimillion-dollar grant will help researchers from nine universities across the globe — including GW — to learn about human evolution by examining an essential function: chewing. Associate Professor of Anthropology Brian Richmond (in photo) and Professor of Anthropology Peter Lucas, of GW's Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, will join the researchers. Read more ...

Brian Richmond also co-authored a study, published in the journal Science,that discovered that humans’ early ancestors were adapted to walking upright on two legs almost six million years ago. Read more.

Biology

Biology professor L. Courtney Smith has received a National Science Foundation grant for $525,000 over three years to study diversity of genes in the sea urchin, an analysis of gene promoters, and investigation of genes in individual immune cells and analyzing protein functions.

History

Assistant Professor of History
Christopher Klemek won the William H. Whyte
Award from the New York Metro Chapter
of the American Planning Association for an exhibition on Jane Jacobs that he co-curated. The multidisciplinary project, "Jane
Jacobs and the Future of New York,"
was sponsored by the Municipal Art
Society of New York and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Watch the YouTube video featuring excerpts of Klemek in a apenel discussion, "Can One Woman (Still) Make a Difference? Jane Jacobs and New York."

Read a review of the exhibition.

Read The New York Observer article.

History Professor David Silverman was named the winner of the 2008 Douglass Adair Memorial Award by the editorial board of the William and Mary Quarterly, the leading journal for the study of early America. The award honors the best article to appear in the journal over the previous six years.  The board chose David's article “Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha’s Vineyard” (April 2005) as the winner of the prize. 

Language Center

From left to right, Ludmila Guslistova, Shoko Hamano, Wakana Kikuchi-Cavanaugh, Jocelyne Brant and Margaret Gonglewski, Director of the Language Center.

Shoko Hamano and Wakana Kikuchi-Cavanaugh, Japanese professors in the East Asian Languages and Literatures department, received the first Language Center Award for Innovations in Language Teaching on May 7, 2008. The award recognizes innovations in language teaching that inspire students' extraordinary engagement with a language and culture, while promoting effective language learning practices. Hamano and Kikuchi-Cavanaugh were honored for their online program, "Visualizing Japanese Grammar," which uses computer-generated animations to demonstrate and explain Japanese grammatical concepts that tend to be difficult for English-speaking Japanese learners to grasp.

Assistant Professor of French Jocelyne Brant also was honored for her integration of creative writing into upper-level French language courses, and Ludmila Guslistova, adjunct assistant professor of Russian, for her creative treatment of authentic language materials for her course, Readings in the Russian Press.

Philosophy

David DeGrazia of the Philosophy Department published the lead article in the Jan./Feb. issue of The Hastings Center Report. The article, "Single Payer Meets Managed Competition: The Case for Public Funding and Private Delivery," appears with three comment pieces.

Physics

Physics Professor Harald Griesshammer was
awarded a National Science Foundation grant for nuclear physics research -- specifically to answer questions about the genesis of nuclear physics from high-energy physics, such as "how much does the universe weigh?" Read more.

Political Science

Assistant Professor Steven Kelts was awarded a 2008 Student & Academic Support Services Employee of the Month Award for his successful initiatives as part of the faculty-in-residence program. Kelts worked with more than 800 second-year students to create learning experiences on and off campus. Kelts initiated a "Take Your Professor to Lunch," where students hosted a GW faculty member for a brown bag lunch; other events included "Quiz Your Professor" and "Major Pain," designed to help second-year students select their academic majors. This is the first time the award, which began in 1992, was given to an individual faculty member.

Public Policy & Public Administration

Dr. Kathryn Newcomer, the associate director of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, was awarded the Elmer B. Staats Award for Accountability in Government, given by the The American Society for Public Administration, national Capital Area Chapter. Read more.

University Writing Program

The Journal of Advanced Composition, a top-tier journal in Rhetoric and Composition that focuses on the more theoretical aspects of both Rhetoric and Writing Studies, featured articles by two writing program professors. They are Phyllis Mentzell Ryder's article, "Multicultural Public Spheres and the Rhetorics of Democracy," and Rachel Ridner's "Affective Encounters: Writing Zapatismo."

Recent Faculty Publications

The Underdogs
Translation by Sergio Waisman, Associate Professor of Spanish (2008)

New translation of Mariano Azuela's novel about the first great revolution of the 20th century in the Mexican countryside.

Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England
By Jeffrey J. Cohen, Professor of English; Contribution by GW alumnus ('02) Jon Kenneth Williams (2008)

This collection of essays connects the Normans of Sicily with the rulers of England, or Chaucer with legends arriving from Bohemia. It can also be seen in surprising places in literature, as when green children are discovered in twelfth-century Yorkshire or when Welsh animals begin to speak of the long history of their land’s colonization. The contributors to this volume seek moments of cultural admixture and heterogeneity within texts that have often been assumed to belong to a single, national canon, discovering moments when familiar and bounded space erupt into unexpected diversity and infinite realms.

Living As Equals
By Phyllis Palmer, Professor of American Studies and Women's Studies (2008)

Through interviews with leaders and participants and historical archives, the author documents three interracial sites where white Americans put themselves into unprecedented relationships with African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans.

America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11
By Jim Goldgeier, Professor of Political Science (2008)

America Between The Wars examines how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9 and the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 shaped the events, arguments and politics of the world we live in today. The book tells the story of a generation of leaders grappling with a moment of dramatic transformation, changing how we should think about the recent past, and uncovering important lessons for the future.

Read the review in The New York Times.

Cities and Nature
By Lisa Benton-Short with John Ronnie Short (2008)

Cities and Nature illustrates how the city is part of the environment, and how it is subject to environmental constraints and opportunities. This book reconnects the science and social science through the examination of the urban. It critiques the dominant academic discourse which ignores the environmental base of urban life and living, and discusses the urban natural environment.

Medical Applications of Mass Spectrometry
By Akos Vertes, Professor of Chemistry, along with Karoly Vekey and Andras Telekes (2007)

The mass spectrometric analysis of metabolites and proteins promises to revolutionize medical research and clinical diagnostics. This book addresses key issues in its medical application, from basic principles and methods to cutting-edge applications.

Arcangela Tarabotti: Lettere Familiari E Di Complimento
By Lynn Westwater, Assistant Professor of Italian, along with Meredith Ray and Gabriella Zarri

Authors lend new awareness about the Venetian nun and writer Arcangela Tarabotti, who published her collection of personal correspondence in 1650.

Lydia's Open Door: Inside Mexico's Most Modern Brothel
By Patty Kelly, Assistant Professor of Anthropology (2008)

Patty Kelly examines the lives of the women who work in a state-run brothel. Kelly documents the modernization of the sex industry and illustrates how state-regulated sex became part of a broader effort by government officials to bring modernity to Chiapas, one of Mexico's poorest and most conflicted states.

Read Patty Kelly's opinion piece in the L.A. Times here.

Country Brothers: Kinship and Chronotope in Brazilian Rural Public Culture
Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 80, No. 2
By Andrew Dent, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Brazilian "country" music, both in its commercial (música sertaneja) and folkloric (música caipira) forms, is performed by duplas (duos), most often of brothers. Dent accounts for the increasing popularity of brotherhood as the means of organizing rural musical performance.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World
By Marcy Norton, Associate Professor of History (2008)

A fascinating story of contact, exploration, and exchange in the Atlantic world, "Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures" traces the ways in which these two goods of the Americas both changed and were changed by Europe.

Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction
By David DeGrazia, Associate Professor of Philosophy (2008)

This volume provides a general overview of the basic ethical and philosophical issues of animal rights. By presenting models for understanding animals' moral status and rights, and examining their mental lives and welfare, DeGrazia explores the implications for how we should treat animals in connection with our diet, zoos, and research.

Refiguring the Ordinary
By Gail Weiss, Professor of Philosophy (2008)

Refiguring the Ordinary examines the ways in which individuals' bodies, habits, environments, and abilities function as horizons that underpin their understandings of the ordinary. These features of experience, according to Gail Weiss, are never neutral, but are always affected by gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, and perceptions of bodily normality.

Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Peripheryn
By Sergio Waisman, Assistant Professor of Spanish (2008)

This book studies the importance of translation for Borges and the importance of Borges for translation.

Whole Oceans Away:
Melville and the Pacific
By Christopher Sten, Professor of English and American Literature, along with Jill Barnum and Wyn Kelley (2008)

This collection includes Sten's essay, "Facts Picked Up in the Pacific: Fragmentation, Deformation and the (Cultural) Uses of Enchantment in 'The Encantadas.'" The essay is based on a series of sketches Herman Melville wrote about the Galapagos Islands.

Leopoldo Lugones: Selected Writings
Translated by Sergio Waisman, Associate Professor of Spanish (2008)

A collection of the work of Leopoldo Lugones, one of Argentina's best-known writers.

Reason and Hope: Knowledge, Belief, and the Future of Humanity
By Peter Caws, Professor of Philosophy

This book is a printing of Caws' lecture in 2006, in which he makes a connection between reason and rationality, and an attitude of hope toward the future in American politics.

Gente: Elementary and Intermediate Spanish
By Maria de la Fuente, Associate Professor of Spanish (2008)

Gente's task-based approach to teaching language is a complete elementary Spanish program. The activities have contexts, non-linguistic goals, linguistics goals, non-linguistics outcomes and linguistics outcomes that enable readers to learn the language and understand the culture.

Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities
By Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short, Associate Professors of Geography (2008)

Offering penetrating analyses by leading scholars in the field, Migrants to the Metropolis redirects the global narrative surrounding migration away from states and borders and toward cities, where the vast majority of economic migrants settle.

The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture
By Marsha Belenky, Associate Professor of French (2008)

This book covers the years from 1818 to 1898, and shows how the subject of jealousy was used as a projection screen for social and cultural debates in the decades between the French Revolution's radical challenge to religious and political authority, and the advent of psychoanalysis at the century's end.

Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism
By Roy Richard Grinker, Professor of Anthropology (2008)

Selected as Library Journal Best Books, 2007, this investigation communications a much-needed truth: Autism is both a disease (biological) and an illness, i.e., a life-altering experience completely at odds with society. Hope comes in vignettes of parents across the world who've adapted to their children's "unstrange" worldviews.

From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible
By Eric Cline, Chair, Department of Classical & Semitic Languages and Literature (2008)

Cline looks at the most enduring biblical mysteries: Was there really a Garden of Eden, and if so, where was it? What happened to Noah's ark? Did the Israelites really trek through the desert for 40 years? What happened to the 10 lost tribes of Israel? Cline advances his own theories about what happened and mentioning alternative opinions.

Transforming Public and Nonprofit Organizations: Stewardship for Leading Change
By Kathryn Newcomer, Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration (2008)

This book provides public and nonprofit leaders and students with theoretical knowledge and practical tools for acomplishing change goals while protecting the broader public interest

Department News

CCAS Names New Associate Dean
for Graduate Studies

Tara Ghoshal Wallace has been named the new Associate Dean for Graduate Studies for the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, replacing Michael Moses, who has worked to build and support the CCAS graduate programs. Wallace has taught in the English Department at GWU for two decades, first as adjunct faculty, then as tenure-track and tenured professor. She served on the English Graduate Committee for many years, and was appointed Director of Graduate Studies in 2006. In the English Department, she has also served on the Curriculum Committee and
Appointments Committee, and she has been a member of the CCAS Graduate Committee, Dean's Research Advisory Council, and Student Grievance Committee. At the University level, she served on the University Honors Committee and advised the Enosinian Scholars. Tara has a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She has published books on Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and 18th -century women critics, and is currently finishing a manuscript on imperial discourses in the 18th century.

English

Family Gives Gift to Literature Program

Businessman and GW parent Albert Wang and his family have made a leadership commitment of $1 million to GW's English Literature program, and to create a permanent library collection focused on the study of Taiwan.
Read more >

Economics

Professor Emeritus Mary Holman Dies

Dr. Mary A. Holman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, died on July 4, 2008. Dr. Holman is remembered as an engaging and thought-provoking instructor. For more than 40 years, she trained thousands of students in the field of economics. She served as Associate Administrator for NASA’s Manned Space Flight Program and as consultant for a number of governmental organizations and law firms, including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Bureau of Standards, and the Institute for Defense Analysis. Read more.

Judaic Studies

$2.5M Gift to Fund Judaic Studies Faculty

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences' Judaic Studies program received a $2.5 million gift from Dr. Munr Kazmir to establish and fund a full-time endowed faculty position. Read more. Or read the article in Washington Jewish Week

Media & Public Affairs

International Emerging Filmmakers at GW

A pioneering $400,000 grant from the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is bringing 10 top young emerging filmmakers from around the world to Foggy Bottom for study at the The George Washington Documentary Center with Nina Seavey, director of the center. Once here, the participants will learn the theory and practice of making documentaries over the course of six weeks, utilizing George Washington’s advanced video technology and creating short pieces with Washington, D.C., and New York City as film settings. Read more.

Physics

Dept. Hosts National Nuclear Physics School

In its 20th year, the National Nuclear Physics Summer School came to Washington, D.C. – and the GW Physics Department and Center for Nuclear Studies was proud to host.

From June 15 to 27, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation and additional sponsors United States Department of Energy and the National Institute for Nuclear Theory, nuclear physicists one or two years from earning their Ph.D. were invited to stay on campus and attend lectures and seminars given by experts in the field. GW’s Harald Greisshammer and Allena Opper organized this year’s program.

The experts hailed from all over the continent. Physicists from NASA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security presented, as well as from Oak Ridge National Lab, Jefferson Lab and SNOLab. Universities across the country sent their best, from Maryland to Wisconsin and from Tennessee to Alberta. Week one topics included, but were by no means limited to, Fundamental Symmetry and Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics while week two covered Baryon and Meson Resonances as well as Hot Dense Nuclear Matter.

Political Science

History of Congress Conference participants gather at the cenotaph honor Reps. Nick Begich (D-AK) and Hale Boggs (D-LA) during a tour of the Congressional Cemetery, guided by Associate Senate Historian Donald Ritchie, front row, second from left.

Dept. Hosts 7th History of Congress

The Political Science Department hosted 40 congressional scholars from around the United States and England in may for a discussion of current work on the evolution of legislative institutions and behavior Professors Sarah Binder, Forrest Maltzman, Eric Lawrence and Gary Young organized the 7th annual conference, which had previously been hosted by Columbia, MIT, Stanford, Washington University, Yale and Princeton. The conference was partially funded by the Alben W. Barkley Endowment Fund.

Public Policy and Public Administration

Gift Creates Midge Smith Center

The George Washington University's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration recently established the Midge Smith Center for Evaluation Effectiveness through a $1.6 million in-kind donation plus future sustaining funds from M. F. "Midge" Smith.  The first of its kind in the world, the center creates and facilitates the use of evaluation knowledge and best practices to enhance program performance in the public and nonprofit sectors. Read more.

Student News

►Read about Columbian College of Arts and Sciences recipients of 2008 undergraduate fellowships, both nationally and at GW.

►Celebration 2008 -- Read Dean Peg Barratt's remarks to graduates.

►The Columbian College has named the Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellowship recipients for 2008-09.The students will receive $5,000 in funding for the next fiscal year to complete their projects.

History

►Chris Mason, a Ph.D. student, is co-author of an article that appears in the latest issue of The Atlantic--Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, "All Counterinsurgency is Local," The Atlantic (Oct. 2008): 36-38.  This is a condensed version of a much longer article they published recently in International Security, 32/4 (Spring 2008): 41-77, titled " No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier."

►History student Justin Pope received a one-semester fellowship at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. This fellowship is one of the most pre-doctoral awards in the early American history field.

►Sophomore history student Zach Baum won a Gilder Lehrman Institute Summer Fellowship, for a one-week, all-expense paid stay in New York to work with historians and at exclusive archives. This year's topic is the American revolution.

►Helena Kaler, a current Ph.D. history student, was awarded a $10,000 grant from The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq to conduct research in India and Britain on education and sectarianism in mandate Iraq. This is a prestigious grant from one of the affiliates of the Council of American Overseas Centers.

Hominid Paleobiology

►Fourth-year graduate student Felicia Gomez, currently working on a Ph.D. in Hominid Paleobiology, was recently honored at the “Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education,” sponsored by the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society. Gomez won first place for her presentation of her research on malaria susceptibility candidate genes. Read the story.

Mathematics

► Jennifer Chubb and Sarah Pingrey, Ph.D. students in Mathematics, co-published (with J. Chisholm, V. Harizanov, D. Hirschfeldt, C. Jockusch and T. McNicholl) a research paper "Pi-0-1 classes and strong degree spectra of relations" in Journal of Symbolic Logic 72 (2007), pp.1003-1018.

►The George Washington University has selected 16 outstanding undergraduate women mathematics majors from across the United States to participate in a unique five-week immersion program. The university's 14th annual Summer Program for Women in Mathematics provides broad exposure to mathematical culture, tools necessary for success, applications of mathematics in business and industry, and career opportunities. Read more.

Music

►At 18, Emily Robertson became the youngest recipient of the Irving Lowens Award by the Capital Chapter of the American Musicological Society for her research on a piece of music discovered in the binding of a 16th century medical textbook at the National Institute of Health. Emily graduated from GW this spring, 2008, with honors as an Enosinian scholar with a degree in music. She will pursue a master’s degree in music beginning this fall at the University of Maryland. Read the article in The Hatchet.

University Writing Program

►Jesse Regis, one of last year's UW20 students, was the first-place winner of the Eckles Prize for his research paper on the unique contribution of GW students to anti-Vietnam war protests.

Alumni News

► Swathi Veeravalli, of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, will be attending Oxford University’s renowned Human Rights and Development Programme this fall to pursue her master’s degree. Veeravalli was inspired by the work of Eleanor Roosevelt, and by Dr. Allida Black, Director and Editor of the Papers Project and a Professor of History.

Read the full story >

►William Moreau Goins, B.A., Anthropology, '84, received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the Arts from the State of South Carolina. Readmore.

►On April 29, 2008, Amy Fiedler was recognized by President Bush in the Rose Garden Ceremony at the White House for medical volunteer work in Eritrea. The ceremony was to honor volunteerism in America; Fiedler, now a GW medical student, was one of six Physicians for Peace volunteers acknowledged. Amy Fiedler graduated from GW’s Biology program with special honors in 2004. She was a Gamow fellow who conducted research with GW’s Dr. Randall Packer, as well as a co-author on a paper presented at the Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego in Fall 2005.

► Alyson Reed, M.A., Public Policy, has been named the new executive director of the Linguistic Society of America. She previously was the executive director of the Maryland Commission for Women and of the National Committee on Pay Equity.

► Gregory Camp, B.A. '07, Music, has completed a master's degree in musicology at the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar, a program for international students with a 4.6 percent applicant acceptance rate. He has been accepted for the D.Phil. on the same scholarship.

►Michelle Raxter, M.A. '04, Anthropology, is the lead author of a published article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The article, "Stature Estimation in Ancient Egyptians," continues work she conducted at GW for her master's thesis.

►Heidi Rauch, B.A. '91, with a minor in Spanish and Modern Dance, was featured in Washington Post Magazine, touting her approach to addressing the problem of global poverty: by starting a lingerie company.

►Mary Coble, M.F.A. '04, has a piece on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in a recent acquisitions exhibition.

►Get more Alumni News and information on upcoming events at GW's Alumni Association Page.

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