Faculty News

A Likeness in Marble
Malcolm Baker, professor of art history, received a fellowship for the 2007–2008 academic year from the Huntington Library to work on a book, tentatively titled The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain. The book will examine how the portrait bust became modern.

Piecing Together Mayan History
Megan O’Neil, assistant professor of art history, received a 2007–2008 J. Paul Getty (Museum) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. She will work on a book manuscript, Ancient Maya Objects of History, which will involve fieldwork at ancient Mayan archaeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as archival research there and in the United States.

Brain Business: Making Decisions
Antoine Bechara, associate professor of psychology, was awarded a small interdisciplinary grant from the James H. Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund of USC. With the grant, Bechara and Debbie MacInnis, vice dean of research at the USC Marshall School of Business, will host a two-day meeting of mainly USC scholars from disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, law, politics, economics and communication. The conference will encourage research collaborations to address issues such as how humans judge and decide, and how emotions influence cognition.

Latin American Art Scholar Honored
Daniela Bleichmar, assistant professor of art history and Spanish and Portuguese, received the Association for Latin American Art Dissertation Award for the finest dissertation in the field of Latin American visual culture completed during 2004–2006. The association is a nonprofit organization “dedicated to the advancement of the study of Latin American art.”

A Lifetime of Free Radicals
Biogerontologist Kelvin Davies, a professor of gerontology and biological sciences, was honored by the Society for Free Radical Biology & Medicine with the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award for pioneering work on oxygen’s harmful effects. Davies showed the irony in the human body’s dependence on and vulnerability to oxygen, calling it the “Oxygen Paradox.”

Encouraging Women in International Studies
Ann Tickner, professor of international relations and president of the International Studies Association, has received the Susan S. Northcutt Award from the Women’s Caucus for International Studies. The award recognizes a person who actively works to advance women and other minorities in the profession, and whose spirit is inclusive, generous and conscientious. Furthermore, the recipient has made significant contributions to the profession of international studies and to the association. As the leader of ISA, Tickner has encouraged the involvement of women in the organization and its publications.

Order of the Palms
Beatrice Mousli Bennett, French lecturer and director of the Francophone Research Center at USC, has been named a Knight in the Order of the French Academy Palms by the government of France. Created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 to honor university professors, it is the oldest civilian award in France.

Heavy Metal Complex
Professor of chemistry and materials science Mark Thompson was awarded the 2006 MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society for the “development of highly-efficient heavy-metal phosphor complexes.” The medal is awarded for a specific outstanding recent discovery or advancement that has a major impact on the progress of a materials-related field.

Festschrift for Chemist
To celebrate the 65th birthday of Philip Stephens, professor of chemistry, his former students Gerard Jensen (Ph.D., chemistry, ’94) and Karl Jalkanen (Ph.D., chemistry, ’89) served as guest-editors of a special issue of Theoretical Chemistry Accounts. The issue includes a scientific autobiography of Professor Stephens’ work along with original articles from leading scientists and former students on topics related to Stephens’ research. A Festschrift (loosely translated from the German as “celebration publication”) is an international academic tradition of preparing a book or volume to honor a scholar on an important anniversary or birthday.

A Street Named Rev. Murray
Cecil “Chip” Murray, the holder of USC’s first endowed chair, the John R. Tansey Chair in Christian Ethics, now has a street named after him. Dr. Cecil L. Chip Murray Circle was dedicated at the end of January outside the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at West 25th Street and South Harvard Boulevard in Los Angeles. Before coming to USC in 2005, Murray was senior pastor at the church for 27 years. “I am deeply honored to have the intersection named for me,” he said. “It is the circle of life, the circle of love.”

Online Navigators of History
Four USC College historians — Lisa Bitel, professor of history; Cynthia Herrup, professor of history and law; Philippa Levine, professor of history; and Peter Mancall, professor of history and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute — are now on the editorial board for Blackwell Publishing’s new online journal History Compass. The online-only journal contains peer-reviewed survey articles from across the discipline, spanning both centuries and continents.

Classicist Headed to Princeton
Kevin van Bladel, assistant professor of classics, received a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research will focus on the origins and development of annalistic historiography in Arabic. He also received a summer award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Distinguished in Foreign Policy
Patrick James, professor of international relations and director of the Center for International Studies, a multidisciplinary institute housed in USC College, has been named 2006–07 Distinguished Scholar by the Foreign Policy Analysis Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). This selection honors his achievements in scholarly research, impact on the field of foreign policy analysis and past service to the section. At its annual meeting in February, the ISA held a panel and reception highlighting the career of James, who joined the College faculty in 2005 as part of the Senior Faculty Hiring Initiative.

On Thee and Thou
Bruce Smith, professor of English, was a presenter at the 2006 English Institute in Cambridge, Mass. He spoke about pronouns in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Remarkable Woman
Hanna Reisler, the Lloyd Armstrong Jr. Chair in Science and Engineering and professor of chemistry, received a Remarkable Women Award for her work as the head of the provost’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Task Force, which contributed significantly to an increase in the number of tenured women faculty at USC. The Office of Campus Activities and Women’s Student Assembly sponsor the award.

2007 Baylor Alumni Award
In January Dallas Willard, professor of philosophy at USC College and a popular religious author, received the Baylor University Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award for 2007. The honor was presented at a black-tie banquet at the university in Waco, Texas. Presented annually since 1965, the award has honored governors, scientists, artists and religious leaders, as well as educators and entrepreneurs. During the banquet, Willard was recognized for his religious writing, which includes The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), which was chosen as the book of the year by Christianity Today. Willard, 71, who has taught at USC since 1965, was on sabbatical this spring, working on his next book, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge.