News Center

Sept. 5, 2011 – Faculty at Allegheny College have recently authored works or participated in professional activities in a range of subject matter.

Associate Professor of English Christopher Bakken’s culinary memoir, Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table, is forthcoming from University of California Press. Full chapters from the book were published in the past two issues of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and shorter excerpts appeared serially in four recent issues of Odyssey: A Magazine of Greece and the Greek Diaspora. He is also translating poetry and propaganda documents for a documentary film called Comme des Lions de Pierre à l’Entrée de la Nuit, about anti-communist internment camps set up in Greece between 1947 and 1951.

Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Sarah Conklin is second author on the manuscript “Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and blood pressure,” which was accepted for publication in the American Journal of Hypertension. The manuscript, a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, reports a modest, inverse association between dietary fatty acid intake and blood pressure. The results suggest that consumption of fatty acids through diet modification rather than large dose supplementation represents a candidate strategy for future studies of hypertension prevention.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Lauren Paulson presented an educational session titled “Forming Sidewalks: Connecting Rural Mental Health Workers through Peer Supervision” at the annual National Association of Rural Mental Health Conference on June 23 in Dubuque, Iowa. She co-presented a paper with William Casile, associate professor of counseling at Duquesne University, at the Third Paris International Conference on Education, Economy and Society on July 21. The presentation was titled “Collaborative Supervision: Enhancing the Professional Development of Counselors in Schools.”

In mid-August, Assistant Professor of Biology Lisa Whitenack was a visiting researcher at the Smithsonian, where she worked with preserved sharks and shark jaws in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History. In addition to visiting the main campus in D.C., she visited the Museum Support Center in Suitland, Md., where most of the preserved material is stored. She examined about 50 specimens, including thresher sharks and zebra sharks. More information can be found on her lab’s blog: https://whitenacklab.wordpress.com/.

Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu was invited to provide English translation for a Chinese-language research paper. The translation, titled “Interpreting liberty: an analysis of the history of ideas,” appears in The Journal of Modern Chinese History, Vol. 5, No. 1. In July he presented a paper titled “Discovering an Ethnic Culture in Qing China: Local Officials’ Representations of the Miao and Their Accommodating Policies in the Yongzheng Period (1722-35)” to the 20th annual World History Association conference held in Beijing. Wu’s book of last year, Zheng Guanying, Merchant Reformer of Late Qing China and His Influence on Economics, Politics, and Society, was quoted at length by Gloria Davies, associate professor of Chinese studies at Monash University, Australia, in her “Fragile Prosperity,” an essay appearing in the June 2011 issue of China Heritage Quarterly, a journal of Australian National University.