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Campus Notes

"Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew," by John Felstiner, published by the Yale University Press, won the 1997 Annual Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. Administered by the Iowa Writer's Workshop, the $50,000 award is the world's largest annual cash prize for literary criticism. The work, published by the Press in 1995, is the first critical biography of Celan, an East European Jew and Holocaust survivor who exposed the atrocities of Nazi destruction in his writings.

The Penn State University Press recently published a book by Law School student Robert B. Ahdieh which assesses the history and future of Russian legal culture. Mr. Ahdieh has traveled and lived in Russia on numerous occasions during the last decade, conducting interviews and research on Russian legal and poliitical culture. His new book focuses on the final years of the Soviet Union and the early years of Russian independence.

Thus far, 1997 has been an award-winning year for the Elm City Ensemble, which features Jessica Bruser '98 of Jonathan Edwards College on piano, and School of Music graduates Garrick Zoeter, Ingrid Sweeney and Rebecca Patterson on clarinet, violin and cello, respectively. The professional chamber music group, which was established at Yale in 1995, took first-place honors at the Fischoff National, Yellow Springs, Coleman and Carmel chamber music competitions.

Five graduate students received grants for summer research from the Program for the Study of Race, Inequality and Politics, a research program housed with-in the Institute for Social and Policy Studies. The students, who each received $1,500 for their research projects, and their fields of study are: Rabab Abdulhadi, sociology, "Identity Work: After Oslo -- Whither Palestinian Nationalism?"; Martin Benjamin, anthropology, "Race and Representation in International Development Programs"; Donald Braman, anthropology, "The Social Costs of Incarceration"; Vivan Louie, sociology, "Asian Americans and the Mass Media: The Construction and Framing of the 'Model Minority' Stereotype"; and Robert Perkinson, American studies, "Escape to Prison: The Campaign to Abolish the Georgia Chain Gang, 1932-1944."

Several other graduate and postdoctoral students have recently won awards. Meredith Weiss, a graduate student in political science, received an International Predissertation Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. Anne Boyle, an advanced graduate student in sociology, is working this summer with a science reporter at the Albuquerque Tribune as the first ASA-AAAS Media Fellow; her grant is supported by the American Science Academy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And the Cancer Research Fund of the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Foundation has awarded postdoctoral fellowships to Henry Chiu-Yu Chang, who will work in the laboratory of Yale cell biologist Ira Mellman on "Analysis of the sub-cellular localization of the sevenless protein in Drosophilia eye"; and Jennifer C. Fung, who will work in the laboratory of Yale biologist G. Shirleen Roeder on "Elucidation of the mechanism of meiotic chromosome synapsis through the study of the Zip2 protein in yeast."

Karl K. Turekian, the Benjamin Silliman Professor of Geology and Geophysics, recently received the Maurice K. Ewing Medal for significant original contributions to understanding physical, geophysical and geological processes in the ocean. The medal was presented jointly by the U.S. Navy and the American Geophysical Union. The award citation described Professor Turekian as "one of the world's most productive, widely known and best-loved geochemists" whose research has been "carried out with unsurpassed insight, originality, dedication and selflessness." Professor Turekian also is director of the Center for the Study of Global Change at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and curator of meteorites at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Four faculty from the School of Music have received awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). They are: Martin Bresnick, professor (adjunct) of composition; Ezra Laderman, professor of composition and former dean of the School of Music; Frank Tirro, professor of music and another former dean of the school; and Jack Vees, lecturer in electronic music and acting director of the Center for Studies in Musical Technology. The ASCAP awards are designed to assist and encourage writers of serious music.

Ten members of the Class of 1998 received undergraduate prizes from the Council of Masters at the conclusion of their junior year in May. The F. Wilder Bellamy Jr. Memorial Prize, which is named after a member of the Class of 1937, was awarded to: Margaret Hayden of Timothy Dwight College, Preston Hopson of Silliman College, Daniel Schwartz of Jonathan Edwards College and Tiffany Tipps of Ezra Stiles College. The John C. Shroeder Award, which was named after a member of the Class of 1948 and is given to students who "will find his/her own place and play a good part in the good labor of the world" was presented to: Jana Bozelko of Silliman College, Jaime R. Harrison of Pierson College, Sonia Martin of Jonathan Edwards College and Chi-Young Tschang of Calhoun College. And the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial, which is named after a member of the Class of 1949 and is given to students who demonstrate "verve, idealism and constructive interest in music and the humanities," was awarded to: Inbal Meggido of Calhoun College and Cynthia Miller of Davenport College.

Peter Gay, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, has been named as the founding director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The center, which is expected to open in January of 1999, will seek to foster innovative thinking about society by supporting humanities scholarship and discourse. During his career, Professor Gay has written extensively on the Enlightenment, the Weimar Republic, Sigmund Freud and bourgeois culture. The fifth and final volume of his study "The Burgeois Experience: Victorians to Freud" will be published in January by W.W. Norton.

Yale has received a three-year $160,000 grant from The Henry Luce Foundation's United States-China Cooperative Research Program for "The Development of Complex Societies in China: A Regional Approach," a project to excavate prehistoric remains in southeastern Shandon Province. Collaborating with Yale on the project are Shandong University, the Bureau for Management of Cultural Relics in Rizhao, Shandong, and the Rizhao City Museum. The project, which explores how and why complex societies developed in China, is designed to provide the first comprehensive picture of a late prehistoric political center through the excavation of elite houses, craft workshops and other remains. Since it was founded in 1988 by the Luce Foundation, the U.S.-China Cooperative Re-search program has awarded more than $6 million to 39 projects bringing together teams of American and Chinese researchers. Yale was one of five U.S. universities to receive funding this year.

John W. Stauffee, a Ph.D. candidate in American studies, has been awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for 1997-98. Administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Newcombe Fellowships seek to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences. Winners receive $14,000 for 12 months of full-time dissertation writing. The title of Mr. Stauffer's dissertation is "The Black Hearts of Men: Gerrit Smith and the Dilemmas of Race, Religion and Reform in Nineteenth- Century America."

Four physicians who hold the title of professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine and who are affiliated with Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) are on the list of the "Best Doctors for Women" in the U.S., which ap-peared in the August edition of Good Housekeeping magazine. The Yale professors cited are: Dr. Frederick Naftolin, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the medical school, professor of biology and director of the Yale Center for Research in Reproductive Biology; Dr. Peter E. Schwartz, chief of gynecology/oncology and assistant chief of obstetrics and gynecology at YNHH; Dr. Joshua Copel, chief of maternal/fetal medicine at YNHH; and Dr. David Olive, chief of reproductive endocrinology at YNHH. The 400 physicians cited by Good Housekeeping were among 1,500 doctors named as the leading doctors in their fields by 260 department chairs and section chiefs in obstetrics and gynecology across the country.

Dr. Charles Greer, associate professor of neurosurgery, recently organized and chaired the joint meeting of the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste XII and the Association for Chemoreception XIX meeting in San Diego, California. The joint meeting, which occurs every 12 years in the U.S., was the largest to date and included 652 presentations from 850 participants from throughout the world. Dr. Pasko Rakic, the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and professor and chair of neurobiology, was honored during the meeting with the 19th Givaudan-Roure Lectureship.

CORRECTION: In the Campus Notes section in the July 21- Aug. 25 issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar, we reported that Edward Kamens, professor of Japanese literature, had been named as chair of the department of East Asian languages and literatures. We also reported that he was director of graduate studies in that department and the Council on East Asian Studies. The latter statement was based on outdated information. Edwin McClellan, the Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, is director of graduate studies in East Asian languages and literatures, andb Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, associate professor of the history of art, is director of graduate studies for the Council on East Asian Studies.


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