May 6, 2008
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 Lawford Anderson |
Lawford Anderson, professor of earth sciences, and Al Fischer, professor emeritus of earth sciences, were presented Distinguished Alumnus Awards by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Geology & Geophysics at its recent Spring Awards Banquet. Anderson’s citation lauded him as “one of those rare individuals who excels in research, teaching, and service — the holy trinity of academia.” Fischer was praised for the volume and breadth of his work, the geological techniques he pioneered and the other researchers he has mentored. |
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Malcolm Klein, professor emeritus of sociology, is the recipient of the 2008 August Vollmer Award of the American Society of Criminology. The award “recognizes a criminologist whose research has contributed to the treatment or prevention of delinquent behavior.” |
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Wiebke Ziebis of biological sciences received a 2008–09 individual award from USC’s James H. Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund for her project “Animal-Sediment-Microbe Interactions at Pacific Methane Seeps.” |
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More than two dozen faculty with appointments in USC College received USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences grants.
Winners were: David Albertson of religion; Caroline Betts of economics; Tim Biblarz of sociology; John Bowlt of Slavic languages and literatures; Carolyn Cartier of geography; Andrew Curtis of geography; Roberto Diaz of Spanish and Portuguese and of comparative literature; Stephen Finlay of philosophy; Macarena Gomez-Barris of sociology and of American studies and ethnicity; Douglas Greenberg of history; Peggy Kamuf, Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French and professor of comparative literature and English; Kara Keeling of critical studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts and of American studies and ethnicity in the College; Sonya Lee of art history and of East Asian languages and cultures; Frank Lewis of philosophy; Paul Lichterman of sociology and religion; Nancy Lutkehaus of anthropology and gender studies; Susan McCabe of English; Natania Meeker of French and Italian; Lori Meeks of religion and of East Asian languages and cultures; Richard Meyer of art history; Beth Meyerowitz of psychology; Tania Modleski, Florence R. Scott Professor of English; Viet Nguyen of English and of American studies and ethnicity; Laura Pulido of American studies and ethnicity and of geography; Jefferey Sellers of political science; Xiaobing Tang of East Asian languages and cultures and of comparative literature; Karen Tongson of English and gender studies; Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and associate professor of religion in the College; and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta of linguistics. |
April 29, 2008
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Thorsten Becker of earth sciences has been named a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Geosciences for spring 2008. |
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Richard Meyer of art history and fine arts has received a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers’ Grant. Funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and administered by Creative Capital, the program “aims to promote critical discourse that is both rigorous and accessible, to foster innovation in arts writing, and to encourage writing that nurtures connections between art and the public at large.”
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April 22, 2008
USC-Mellon Mentoring Awards |
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Supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching, the USC-Mellon Mentoring Awards honor individual faculty for helping build a supportive academic environment at USC through faculty-to-student and faculty-to-faculty mentoring. Twelve USC College faculty members received awards at a ceremony April 22.
Charlotte Furth of history received an award for faculty-to-faculty mentoring. |
 Oscar Aparicio |
Oscar Aparicio of biological sciences, Nancy Lutkehaus of anthropology and gender studies, Lorraine Turcotte of kinesiology and biological sciences, and Rachel Walker of linguistics won USC-Mellon Mentoring Awards for mentoring graduate students. |
 Lanita Jacobs-Huey |
Steven Finkel of biological sciences, Albert Herrera of biological sciences, Lanita Jacobs-Huey of anthropology and of American studies and ethnicity, Gayla Margolin of psychology, Amy Parish of gender studies and anthropology, Edward Rhodes of physics and astronomy, and Terry Seip of history won USC-Mellon Mentoring Awards for mentoring undergraduates. |
April 15, 2008
Academic Honors Convocation Awards |
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Michael Waterman, University Professor, holder of the USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences in USC College and professor of biological sciences, computer science and mathematics, received the Presidential Medallion, USC’s highest honor, at the Academic Honors Convocation April 7. In the citation presented to him at the event, Waterman was lauded for “interdisciplinary insights and talent [that] have been instrumental in placing USC in the vanguard of genomics research.” |
 Nicos Petasis |
Nicos Petasis, holder of the Harold and Lillian Moulton Chair in Chemistry, and Nicholas Warner of physics and astronomy and of mathematics are winners of the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research. The award is the highest honor the university faculty can bestow on its members for distinguished intellectual and artistic achievements. |
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Craig Stanford of anthropology and biological sciences won the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award is the highest honor the university faculty bestows on its members for outstanding teaching, recognizing the winners’ career achievements. |
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Margaret Russett of English received a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for her book, Fictions and Fakes: Forging Romantic Authenticity, 1760–1845 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The citation presented to her at convocation lauded her “invaluable contribution to the study of literary forms through her erudite analysis of various types of hoaxes and Romanticism.” |
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Vern Bengtson, professor emeritus of sociology, received the USC Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award. Given to a very select number of retired faculty at the each year’s Academic Honors Convocation, the award recognizes eminent careers and notable contributions to the university, the profession and the community. |
April 8, 2008
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Daniel Richter of classics has been named a fellow of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., and will be in residence there spring 2009. Each year 12 scholars are made fellows of the center, which houses one of the world's premier libraries for the study of the classical world. |
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Kevin van Bladel of classics has won a Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities. Administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and Pomona College, the Graves Award is given every other year to eight to 10 young faculty from private liberal arts colleges in California, Washington and Oregon who exhibit exemplary skill and enthusiasm as teachers.
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April 1, 2008
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Roumyana Pancheva of linguistics and of Slavic languages and literatures has received a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. No more than 10 of these prestigious fellowships are awarded each year. |
March 25, 2008
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Viet Nguyen of English and of American studies and ethnicity has received a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Nguyen will be working on “The Afterlife of War: Between Viet Nam and the United States,” a project examining how the Viet Nam War remains a traumatic event in popular memory, by looking at U.S. and Vietnamese literary and visual cultures of the 60s through the present. |
March 11, 2008
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 Daniela Bleichmar |
Daniela Bleichmar, assistant professor of art history and of Spanish and Portuguese, and Sonya Lee, assistant professor of art history and of East Asian languages and cultures, have been awarded nonresidential J. Paul Getty Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships. Bleichmar will use the fellowship to complete a book based on her dissertation, Visible Empire: Colonial Botany and Visual Culture in the 18th Century Spanish World. Lee will use the fellowship to complete her book Surviving Nirvana: Death and Transfiguration of the Buddha in Chinese Art. Their colleague art historian Megan O'Neil received a Getty fellowship last year. |
February 26, 2008
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Susan Forsburg of biological sciences has been named a faculty fellow of the USC Center for Excellence in Research (CER). Founded in 2007, the center is designed to increase the impact and prominence of scholarly research throughout the university. Faculty fellows are selected based both on accomplishments and on commitment to promoting a culture of excellence in research at USC. Forsburg joins historian Peter Mancall and psychologists Carol Prescott and Rand Wilcox as CER faculty fellows in USC College. |
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Francille Rusan Wilson of American studies and ethnicity has received the Mary McLeod Bethune Excellence in Education Award from Our Authors Study Club, the Los Angeles branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The association, which was established in 1915, founded Black History Month. |
February 19, 2008
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 Sarah Gualtieri |
Stephen Finlay of philosophy and Sarah Gualtieri of history and of American studies and ethnicity won Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowships, funded by the Mellon Foundation, are awarded to junior faculty “whose scholarly contributions have advanced their fields and who have well-designed and carefully developed plans for new research.” |
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Paul Lerner of history has been awarded a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Started in 1907, the center is devoted exclusively to postdoctoral research on Jewish civilization in all its historical and cultural manifestations. |
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Philippa Levine of history has been elected vice president and president-elect of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS). The NACBS sponsors the Journal of British Studies, a yearly conference and a number of scholarly awards.
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February 12, 2008
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Karen Halttunen of history received an Innovation Inside curriculum award from the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. The award recognizes faculty who are enhancing their existing classes in experimental ways to best cultivate innovative traits and skills in students. Through her Freeman House Project, undergraduates engage in a multiyear interdisciplinary project on the 20th century historical environment of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House. |
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Bosco Tjan of psychology has been named to the editorial board of the Journal of Vision. The journal, published by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, is an online, peer-reviewed publication devoted to all aspects of visual function in humans and other organisms. |
February 5, 2008
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Daniel Lidar of chemistry has had one of his articles chosen as a highlight of 2007 by Journal of Physics B: Molecular, Atomic and Optical Physics. The editorial board picked “Optimal control of quantum gates and suppression of decoherence in a system of interacting two-level particles,” originally appearing in the May 14 edition, to appear on a special list featuring articles that they feel represent the breadth of publication in the journal. |
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Vanessa Schwartz of history has won the Society for French Historical Studies’ 2008 Chinard Prize for her book It's So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2007). The prize is awarded annually to the the best book on the history of themes shared by France and the Americas. |
January 29, 2008
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Patrick James of international relations has taken office as president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS). Established in 1971, ACSUS is the largest organization of Canadian studies specialists in the world. |
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Gerardo Munck of international relations has had his book Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press) named as one of the best books of 2007 by the Spanish language version of Foreign Policy. The volume, co-authored with Richard Snyder, collects interviews with the most prominent scholars in comparative politics since World War II. |
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Jennifer Wolch of geography has been named to the Newsweek Second Annual Global Environment and Leadership Advisory Committee. The committee, which includes prominent figures from environmental organizations, the energy industry and academe, will meet with Newsweek editors to plan an April conference in Washington, D.C., and a special issue of the magazine. |
January 22, 2008
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Douglas Capone, holder of the William and Julie Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and professor of biological sciences, has been elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Fellow status is an honor granted to no more than .1 percent of the organization’s membership each year.
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Francille Rusan Wilson of American studies and ethnicity has been appointed to the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and was confirmed by the L.A. City Council earlier this month. Wilson will serve a five-year term on the commission, which assists in assuring women have full and equal opportunity to participate in city government and promotes the general welfare of women in Los Angeles.
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January 15, 2008
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Frank Alber of biological sciences has had two of his papers selected as favorites of 2007 by the editors of Nature. “Determining the architectures of macromolecular assemblies” and “The molecular architecture of the nuclear pore complex” made the year-end roundup featured in the Dec. 27 issue. According to Nature, the technology described and demonstrated in Alber’s research “will allow cell biologists to look at the detailed structure of all manner of macrocellular machines.” |
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Dani Byrd, USC College vice dean and associate professor of linguistics, has been elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. The citation accompanying the announcement recognized her “research on the relation of linguistic structures to the temporal realization of speech.” Byrd will be presented with a certificate at the society’s summer meeting in Paris. |
 Tansu Celikel |
Tansu Celikel and Sergey Nuzhdin of biological sciences both published articles in the same recent issue of Science. Celikel’s “Ongoing in Vivo Experience Triggers Synaptic Metaplasticity in the Neocortex” and Nuzhdin’s “Rarity of Males in Pea Aphids Results in Mutational Decay” appeared in the Jan. 4 edition. |
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Ruth Wilson Gilmore of American studies and ethnicity and of geography received a 2007 Outstanding Book Advancing Human Rights honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, for her book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press).
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Ricardo Ramírez of political science and of American studies and ethnicity was profiled by Diverse: Issues In Higher Education as one of 10 emerging scholars under 40 in the publication’s annual edition recognizing rising stars in academe. The Jan. 10 issue includes an article describing Ramírez as having “gained national recognition for his research on the voting and political behavior of individuals across racial and ethnic lines.” |
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Marianne Wiggins of English is a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle award in fiction. Her acclaimed novel The Shadow Catcher (Simon & Schuster), a postmodern fictionalization of the life of photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis, is one of five nominees in the category. The winners will be announced on March 6. |
December 4, 2007
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Daniel Lidar of chemistry has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. Lidar, who also holds an appointment in electrical engineering at USC Viterbi, was recognized ”[f]or his contributions to the theory of decoherence control of open quantum systems for quantum information processing, especially the decoherence free subspace method.”
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November 27, 2007
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Margaret Gatz of psychology has been named this year’s recipient of the M. Powell Lawton Award for Distinguished Contributions to Clinical Geropsychology by the Society of Clinical Geropsychology, a section of the American Psychological Association. Gatz, who also holds appointments in gerontology and preventive medicine, will be presented with the award at the APA annual meeting, where she will deliver an invited address.
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November 13, 2007
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Apichai Shipper of political science and international relations has been awarded an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council for his comparative study of Japan, Sweden and the United States.
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November 6, 2007
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 John Tower |
Steven Finkel and John Tower of biological sciences had their research featured in the October issue of Scientific American. The “News Scan” section highlighted a Cell Metabolism study led by Tower and Finkel finding that flies scrubbed free of bacteria lived no longer than their peers, a result that calls into question the idea that even harmless microbes hasten their hosts’ death.
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Eliz Sanasarian of political science received the 2007 award for Best Research Book on Women in Iran from the Sedigheh Dovlatabadi Library in Tehran for The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression. Her book, translated into Persian by Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, was selected from amongst a field of 200.
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October 30, 2007
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Michael Messner of sociology and gender studies was named one of the “100 most influential sports educators” by the Institute for International Sport. Compiling this list constituted a three-year project for the institute, and Messner was picked from amongst a field of 1,500 nominations.
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October 23, 2007
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Itzhak Bars of physics and astronomy was featured in a New Scientist cover story highlighting his theory of additional dimensions of time and space. According to the article, his work could lead to a “theory of everything” uniting the physical laws of the universe.
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Nicos Petasis, holder of the Harold and Lillian Moulton Chair in Chemistry, was awarded the 2007–2008 Novartis Chemistry Lectureship, given in recognition of outstanding contributions to organic and computational chemistry, including applications to biology. |
October 9, 2007
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Jeb Barnes of political science was formally recognized for outstanding teaching by the American Political Science Association (APSA) and Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, at a ceremony during APSA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago this summer. |
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Thorsten Becker of earth sciences has accepted an invitation to give the C.F. Gauss lecture of the German Geophysical Society at the European Geoscience Union meeting in Vienna, April 2008. |
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Susan Mc Cabe of English won first prize in the Aghda Ali Shahid Poetry Competition, judged by award-winning poet Cole Swensen. Descartes’ Nightmare, Mc Cabe’s book of poetry taking on the modern nightmare birthed during the Age of Reason, will be published in spring 2008 by the University of Utah. |
