News

"Teeth are like a snapshot into the past," says George Armelagos (Anthropology)

04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Saturday, February 13, 2010

Emory anthropologist George Armelagos has found that prehistoric remains provide strong evidence that people who acquired tooth enamel defects while in the womb or early childhood tended to die earlier, even if they survived to adulthood. His analysis of defects in teeth enamel and early mortality was recently published in Evolutionary Anthropology. The paper is the first summary of prehistoric evidence for the Barker hypothesis – the idea that many adult diseases originate during fetal development and early childhood.

For more details, see eScienceCommons at the link below.

More info: esciencecommons.blogspot.com…

Deepa Mehta trilogy, classics on screen for spring

04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Department of Film Studies and Emory College’s Emory Cinematheque continue its series of international film classics in 35mm on Wednesday nights in White Hall 205 at 7:30 p.m.

Highlights of the spring series include Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 detective film/portrait of postwar Japan “Stray Dog” (Feb. 3); Francois Truffaut’s 1959 breakthrough autobiographical French New Wave movie “The 400 Blows” (Feb. 24); Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 award-winning portrait of World War II, “The Cranes are Flying” (March 3); Hsiao-hsien Hou’s 1989 acclaimed portrait of a family in late 1940s Taiwan “A City of Sadness” (April 14); and summer 2009’s surprise sci-fi hit, “District 9” (April 21).

All screenings are introduced by professor Eddy von Mueller of the Department of Film Studies and are free and open to the public.

In addition, the Department of Film Studies and the Provost’s Office are co-sponsoring 35mm screenings of internationally acclaimed director Deepa Mehta’s “Elements” Trilogy in advance of her visit to Emory and her delivery of the Sheth Lecture in Indian Studies on Sunday, Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. in the Law School’s Tull Auditorium.

The “Elements” trilogy is an exploration of tradition and change in 20th century India. The screenings start with “Fire” (1996), in which two sisters-in-law suffer in unhappy arranged marriages but find solace in each other (Feb. 4). Next is “Earth” (1998), based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel “Cracking India,” which portrays, through the eyes of a child, the violent and abrupt undoing of the warm friendships between Hindu, Sikh, Parsee and Muslim friends during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 (Feb. 11). The series concludes with “Water” (2005), a film centered on an 8-year-old widow who by orthodox Hindu custom must spend the rest of her life in an ashram, set next to the Ganges River.

“The trilogy is about elements on one level that nurture and destroy us,” Mehta has said. “They are very tangible elements. ‘Fire’ is about the politics of sexuality, ‘Earth’ is about the politics of nationalism, and ‘Water’ is about the politics of religion.”

All screenings are at 8 p.m. in White Hall 208 and are free and open to the community.

Emory Fulbright Scholars selected

04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Saturday, February 13, 2010

Three faculty from the Emory College of Arts and Sciences have been selected as Fulbright Scholars, which gives faculty and professionals an opportunity to go abroad and conduct research in a variety of academic and professional fields.

Stefan Boettcher, assistant professor of physics in Emory College of Arts and Sciences, will lecture and conduct research in the analysis of spin glasses and NP-hard combinatorial problems at the Otto Von Guericke University of Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany.

Thomas Burns, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, is researching “using religion and environmental factors in Hungary to illustrate early European history” at the University of Pecs in Pecs, Hungary.

Kenya Casey, assistant director of the Center for International Programs Abroad, will go to Korea to be part of a U.S.-Korean international education administrators program.

Two visiting scholars for this academic year at Emory were also Fulbright recipients: Cecile Dolisane Ebosse Nyambe, in the Department of French and Italian Studies and Ming-Wen Wang, in the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Frances Smith Foster (English) challenges theories about slave marriages

04 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Saturday, February 13, 2010

In her new book, “‘till Death or Distance Do Us Part: Marriage and the Making of African America” (Oxford University Press, 2010), English Professor Frances Smith Foster, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women’s Studies, challenges deeply ingrained theories about slave marriages and the impact they have had on modern African American marital stability.

“None of the antebellum records that I have seen written by enslaved people suggest that brides and grooms vowed to stay faithful “‘til death or distance do us part,” says Foster. “In fact, accounts by enslaved African Americans reveal that wedding officiators deliberately declared that only God could dissolve a wedding, not distance or slave owners.”

For more details, see the Emory Report article (2/1/10) at the link below.

More info: www.emory.edu…

Emory's humanities receive $2.4 million Mellon grant

08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Thanks to a $2.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory's humanities programs will be strengthened across the University. At the core of the program will be the hiring of new faculty who will work to help guide how humanities departments and faculty can export principles of humanistic inquiry across the university. Graduate students also will be included as Student Fellows in the program, their involvement serving as a bridge to the next generation of faculty.

For more information, see the link below.

To hear Prof. Martine Brownley talk about the programs of the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, see the YouTube video at www.youtube.com…

More info: tiny.cc…

Lawrence Barsalou (Psychology) describes recent shifts psychology research

08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Ongoing through Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Lawrence Barsalou, an Emory psychologist and leading researcher of grounded cognition, talks about how new theories are expanding our knowledge of how the mind works and opening a new era in psychology research. For more details, see the YouTube video at the link below.

More info: www.youtube.com…