People, Papers, Presentations

The Center for Education’s School Science Project collaboration with Aldine Independent School District has been named a Texas Alliance Special Recognition Partnership for 2002 to be recognized at the 2002 Governor’s Conference on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education. Wallace Dominey is the director of the school science project and a research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Marcia J. Citron , the Martha and Henry Malcolm Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology in the Shepherd School of Music, presented a paper on second- and third-wave feminism, ”Of Feminist Waves and Music,” at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society Columbus Oct. 31.

At the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in Chicago (Oct. 2002) Steven Crowell’s book, ”Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning” (Northwestern UP 2001) was awarded the Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize for the best book in phenomenology published in the past three years. Crowell, professor of philosophy and of German and Slavic studies and chair of the Department of Philosophy, has also recently been an invited speaker at the following conferences: ”Phenomenology and Human Pathos” (Chinese U. of Hong Kong), ”Phenomenology, Nature, and Technology” (Seoul National U.) and ”Issues Confronting a Post-European World” (U. of Prague).

Kimberly Davenport , director of the Rice University Art Gallery, has been appointed to the United States General Services Administration National Register of Peer Professionals for the Art and Architecture Program. The GSA commissions works of contemporary American art for the nation’s important civic buildings. Davenport was the keynote speaker for ”Care of Contemporary Art: Who Decides?,” a conference jointly organized by the Upper Midwest and Southeast Regional Conservation Associations, Nov. 1-3 in Nashville, Tenn.

Bethany Johnson ’01 and associate editor of the Journal of Southern History, won the Will Holmes Award for best paper by a graduate student/junior faculty at the Southern History Association Conference held recently in Baltimore. This conference had more than 1,500 attendees and dozens of presentations. The papers were judged by a three-person panel of senior historians.

Hans G. Avé Lallement , professor of earth science, was invited by the Sociedad Venezolana de Ingenieros Geofisicos to be a distinguished lecturer at XI Congreso Venezolano de Geofisica Nov. 18-20 in Caracas, Venezuela. His lecture, co-authored by Virginia Sisson, research scientist in the Dept. of Earth Science, was titled ”Geodynamic Evolution of Northern Venezuela.”

Alan Levander , the Carey Croneis Professor of Earth Policy and chair, Dept. of Earth Science; Avé Lallemant; and Colin Zelt , associate professor of earth science, went to Venezuela Nov. 15-22 to survey roads for a major National Science Foundation-sponsored seismic experiment to be carried out in March and April 2003, and to attend the 11th biannual meeting of the Sociedad Venezolana de Geofísica. Levander presented a paper titled ”The SE Caribbean Continental Dynamics Project,” in which he discussed the details of the seismic experiment. The experiment will cover the southeastern Caribbean Sea and the Venezuelan continental margin (from the beaches to about 100 to 150 km inland). It will shed light on the breakup of Pangea (about 170 million years ago), the collision of the Antilles volcanic island arc with South America and the growth of the northern Venezuelan mountain belt (from 55 million years ago to the present).

Steven W. Lewis , senior researcher in Asian politics and economics at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and lecturer in Asian studies, presented ”Consumer Citizens in New Public Spaces: Subway Advertising in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei” at the international conference ”Media in China: Content, Consumption, Crisis” at the U. of Melbourne Oct. 1.

Angelo Miele , research professor and the Foyt Family Professor Emeritus in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Computational and Applied Mathematics, delivered a keynote lecture on ”Feasibility of Manned Interplanetary Travel from Earth to Mars” at the Fifth European Space Agency (ESA) International Conference on Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control Systems in Rome, Oct. 22-25. Miele lectured on ”Feasibility of Multistage Launch Vehicle Design” at the U. of Pisa Oct. 25 and at the Polytechnic of Turin Oct. 29.

An updated translation into Polish of Ewa Thompson’s book ”Witold Gombrowicz” (originally published by J.K. Hall in 1979), came out in November from the University of Silesia Press. In that connection, Thompson, professor of Slavic studies, was invited to give two lectures at the University of Silesia Dec. 10 and 11. Chapter 4 (”Holy Fools and Shamanism”) of her book ”Understanding Russia: The Holy Fool in Russian Culture,” will be republished in ”Shamanism: Critical Concepts,” edited by Andrei Znamenski (London: Routledge, 2003). In the fall 2002 issue of Modern Age (Vol. 44, No. 4), Thompson’s article titled ”Reflections on the Possible Ways Out of Postmodern Discourse” appeared. Vol. 6/7 of Periphery (2000/01) published her article, ”Russia in Postcommunism.” Thompson gave a lecture Nov. 13 on the Solidarity Labor Movement at the U. of St. Thomas in Houston.

Stephen A. Zeff , the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting and professor of management, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, has had his ”Du Pont’s Early Policy on the Rotation of Audit Firms” accepted by The Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.

Entries for People, Papers, Presentations should be submitted to the Office of News and Media Relations by e-mail, < ricenews@rice.edu >; fax, (713) 348-6380; or campus mail, MS 300. Entries will run on a space-available basis.