News Release Date:
Friday, Jan 18, 2008
Whitman student/faculty teams will be conducting research this spring
on subjects as diverse as the writings of the eighteenth century author Daniel
Defoe, the security forces of
The Abshire
awards have financed undergraduate research projects since the program was
established in 1981 by Alfred D. Abshire ’45 in memory of his wife. The awards,
given each semester, provide students with the opportunity to work in
collaboration with their professors on professional research.
The 12
teams that have been awarded Abshires this spring are:
Sharon
Alker, assistant professor of English, and Kim Trinh ’08 will continue work on
the Daniel Defoe Society project, which involves the creation and development
of a new international society and the maintenance of a scholarly website:
www.defoesociety.org. Trinh will also help research a paper on Defoe and
cyberspace that Alker will present at the March conference of the American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.”
Ian Hoyer
’10 and Julia Spencer ’10 will assist Professor of Geology and Environmental
Studies Bob Carson to research his next
book, tentatively titled “East of Yellowstone: The Geology of Clarks Fork
Valley and the adjacent Absaroka Mountains, Beartooth Plateau and Bighorn
Basin.”
“Bearing
Arms without an Army: The Security Forces of Costa Rica” is a current research
project of Associate Professor of History Julie Charlip. Jaspreet Gill ’11 will
assist Charlip in her research on the role of domestic security forces in Costa
Rican life.
Junior
biology major Nicole Goehring ‘09 will assist Heidi Dobson, professor of
biology, in conducting research for a new, interdisciplinary course that looks
at the history and the ethno biology of the ancient trading routes across Asia
known as the Silk Roads.
The history
portion of the interdisciplinary course on the Silk Roads will be taught by
Brian Dott, associate professor of history, who will be working with Kate
Rosenberg ’08.
Ian Jagel
’10 will assist Associate Professor of Theatre Tom Hines in his ongoing
research for “The Ancient Theatre Archive” project. This online, encyclopedic
survey of ancient Greek and Roman theaters, developed by Hines as an Internet
resource for theater history and archival studies, receives more than 1,000
hits a day.
“Climate
Change and the Social Organization of Denial: A Comparative Study Between the
U.S. and
Assistant
Professor of Physics Dayle Smith and Ben Miller ’09 will research
“Current-Potential Characteristics of DNA,” in which they will explore the
conductive properties of DNA, which will some day be crucial for designing
novel nanoscale computing devices.
Tommaso Vannelli, visiting assistant professor
of chemistry, and John Nelson ’09 will research the “Synthesis of a Small
Library of Amino-acid Modified Dioxochlorins for Application in Photodynamic
Therapy of Cancer.”
Prof. Vannelli and Simon Quay ’09 will study “Expression,
Purification, and Characterization of the Large Subunit of an Arsenate Oxidase
Homolog from Thermus thermophilus,” the results of which have the potential to
make significant strides toward developing a portable arsenite enzyme-based
water analysis system, which could protect people all around the world from
arsenic poisoning.
The team of
Zahi Zalloua, assistant professor of French, and Anne Conners ‘08 will address
questions about magic realism through an examination of “Beloved,” Toni
Morrison’s 1987 novel, “which displays ambivalence towards magic realism and
its postcolonial mapping of otherness.”
CONTACT: Lenel Parish,
Email: parishlj@whitman.edu
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