Program Schedule

Friday September 27, 2024 at the Axinn Center

Panels will run for 60 minutes, with each presentation lasting no more than 15 minutes for 3-person panels with 5 minutes for questions.

11:00 am, Axinn 232: What’s in the Water?
Chair: Grace Spatafora, Professor of Biology

Carolyn Dash, Assistant Laboratory Professor of Biology
Virtual Stream Field Trip using an ArcGIS StoryMap Collection

Miguel Fernandez, Professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies
A Living Museum in the Sea: The Wreck of USS H-1 Seawolf Submarine

Andrew Swafford, Assistant Professor of Biology
Hunting a Host: Motile Fungal Spores Sense Host-associated Cues as Guides for Infectious Behavior.

11:00 am, Axinn 229: Conflict Transformation: Interdisciplinary Research in 2023
Chair: Sarah Stroup, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Conflict Transformation Collaborative

Ajay Verghese, Associate Professor of Political Science
The Roots of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India

Lida Winfield, Assistant Professor of Dance
Movement Matters: Global Body in Conflict

Laurie Essig, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, Feminist Studies
Feminist Studies vs. Feminist Activism

11:00 am, The Abernethy Room: Awakening Humans (and Rats)
Chair: Pieter Broucke, Professor of History of Art and Associate Curator of Ancient Art

Gyula Zsombok, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
“La folie woke”: How the French press became obsessed with “le wokisme”

Kristin Bright, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Cancer Activism and Medical Humanities in The Body Online Lab

Mike Dash, Associate Professor of Psychology
Who’s sleepy?  You or your neurons?

12:00-1:00 pm, The Grille Conference Room: Lunch for presenters and moderators

1:15 pm, The Abernethy Room: Final Frontiers
Chair: Nicolas Poppe, Associate Professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies

Alexis Mychajliw, Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
Community-driven conservation of the Caribbean’s “Last Survivors”: Combining old fossils and new genomes to protect a Critically Endangered mammal

Sean Peters, Visiting Assistant Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences
Doing Geology in Space:  Exploring Volcanoes on Mars

Mike Dunham, Assistant Professor and David R. Mittelman ’76 Faculty Fellow in Astronomy and Astrophysics
The formation of stars

1:15 pm, Axinn 232: Changing What We See
Chair: Marcos Rohena-Madrazo, Associate Professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies & Linguistics

Marguerite Lenius, Assistant Professor of Art History
Seeing is Believing? Secrecy, the Power of Sight, and Figurative Imagery in the Arts of Initiations in Northeastern Tanzania

James Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of International and Global Studies
Transforming Conflict with Friends and Enemies: Arendt on Conflict and Peace Processes 

Catharine Wright, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric & Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies
Sheep As Lens Into Culture and Climate

2:30 pm, Axinn 100: Ways to Make Change
Chair: Jessica Teets, Professor of Political Science

Daniel Fram, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
Political Obligations: The Consent Theory Reconsidered

Jessica Teets, Professor of Political Science
Advocating for Policy Change in China

Michael Sheridan, Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Annotating the Local Archive: Historical Documents in Rural Tanzania

2:30 pm, Axinn 232: Many Moving Pieces
Chair: Greg Pask, Assistant Professor of Biology

Olga Parshina, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology
The effect of language immersion on reading in the second language

John R. Schmitt, Professor of Mathematics
A chessboard problem of the polymath Martin Gardner

Jonathan Isham, Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies
Whole Earth Finance

2:30 pm, The Abernethy Room: A Look into the Past
Chair: Dana Yeaton, Associate Professor of Theatre

Stefano Mula, Professor of Italian
Philology, past and present

Pieter Broucke, Professor of History of Art and Associate Curator of Ancient Art
A Case Study in Connoisseurship: Middlebury’s Ancient Greek Lekythos by the Marathon Painter

Mark Saltveit, Davis Family Library
A Newly Recovered Late Roman Poetry Collection

3:30-4:30pm, Axinn Winter Garden and Hallway: Reception for presenters and attendees
Opening Remarks by Jim Ralph, Dean of the Faculty