People & Places: February 2021

People & Places is published monthly during the academic year by the Office of College Relations. It reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievement.


Michael Michaelides, assistant professor in economics, recently had published an article in the scholarly journal Finance Research Letters. Titled “Large Sample Size Bias in Empirical Finance,” the article points out a methodological issue in finance research in relation to significance testing under a large or massive sample size, and provides a possible solution by recommending a rule of thumb adjusting the level of significance.


Assistant Professor of Art Byron Rich presented his forthcoming project Xeno-Terra at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Montreal. Xeno-Terra is a 10m dirigible with an on-board self-regulated hydroponic system that contains flora from the arid grasslands of southern Alberta. Byron also chaired a panel of scholars, artists, and scientists on art/science collaborations as part of the International Symposium on Electronic Art. Xeno-Terra was also the subject of Byron’s presentation at the RIXC Conference in Riga, Latvia, this past November which was held partially online.

Assistant Professor of Art Paula Burleigh and Byron Rich were invited speakers at Taboo, Transgressions, Transcendence, held in Vienna, Austria, where they spoke alongside other internationally-recognized art/science scholars about their collaboratively curated exhibition entitled Bioscientific Imaginaries shown at The Allegheny Art Galleries this past fall.


 Intersectional Feminism in the Age of Transnationalism book coverAssistant Professor of World Languages & Cultures Rosita Scerbo published a book chapter entitled “Re-imagining the Borderlands: Intersectionality and Transnational Queering of Laura Aguilar’s Self-Portrait Three Eagles Flying” in Intersectional Feminism in the Age of Transnationalism, published by Lexington Books and edited by Olga Bezhanova and Raysa E. Amador. The book explores the limitations of the transnationalist approach to feminism and questions the neoliberal emphasis on individual freedom and consumer choice as the central goals of feminist activism. All chapters proceed from the belief in the continued usefulness of intersectionality as a valuable category of critical analysis that is particularly necessary at the time when the effects of neoliberal globalization are undermining many familiar categories of critical inquiry.


Assistant Professor of Marketing and Neuromarketing Gaia Rancati received the Award for Best Paper at the Convergence 2020 conference for the innovative methodology and the quantitative research in her paper “Robot-human interactions in retail stores: a neuromarketing perspective.” The conference on Winning through Service Excellence: Theory and Practice shed light on such questions through case studies, research paper presentations, keynote addresses, panel discussions, etc., by academicians, researchers, and practitioners. IFIM Business School is committed to showcasing and supporting this conference as a forum for sharing knowledge as well as stimulating fresh ideas and research vis-à-vis service excellence in this new era of growing service-technology convergence.


Associate Professor of History Guo Wu published an invited book review on a new book on Chinese nationalism: Stating the Sacred: Religion, China, and the Formation of Nation-State (Columbia University Press, 2020) by Michael J. Walsh. The review appears in The Chinese Historical Review, Volume 27, 2020 – Issue 2, and it is available here.


Aus und davon book coverGerman author Anna-Katharina Hahn, Allegheny’s Max Kade Writer-in-Residence of 2017, has published a new novel in which Meadville features prominently. In Aus und davon, Hahn interweaves German and U.S. history into a family portrait spanning decades and continents. The book was published with Suhrkamp, one of the preeminent publishing houses in Germany, publisher of literary icons such as Bertold Brecht, Max Frisch, and Hermann Hesse. Hahn’s residency did not only give her the chance to teach a creative writing class to German students, but to immerse herself in Meadville’s landscape and history.


Biology faculty Yee Mon Thu, Lisa Whitenack, Lauren French, Brad Hersh, and Margaret Nelson presented “FSBio 201: A CURE-based course that scaffolds research and scientific communication” at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) annual meeting on Jan. 5, 2021. They were invited to talk about FSBio 201 as part of the NSF-funded “Biology Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning Through Authentic Research, Design, and Community Engagement” symposium, co-organized by Whitenack and collaborators from the University of Oklahoma, University of California Berkeley, Colorado Mesa University, and Fresno State University.


Allegheny student Will HarrodWill Harrod ’21 and Professor of Biology Ron Mumme published a paper in the January 2021 issue of Ibis, the journal of the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU). The paper is entitled “Females compensate for moult-associated male nest desertion in Hooded Warblers” and is based on student-faculty collaborative summer research that the authors conducted during the summers of 2018 and 2019. Harrod and Mumme also co-authored a blog post on the work for the BOU Blog. Harrod is a senior double major in biology and environmental science and sustainability, and his summer research was supported by the Provost’s Office and the Cathy Forsyth McKeever ’63 Faculty Support Fund. (Harrod is pictured above.)


Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies Carl Olson has had two invited essays published in books, each of which consists of an international group of scholars, edited by scholars from Romania and Israel. The first essay is entitled “Repetition, Difference, and Being-time: Deleuze, Derrida, and Dogen on Time and Becoming” in The Time Is Now: Essays on the Philosophy of Becoming, edited by Mihaela Gligor, Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2020, pp. 114-142, and “Sankara’s Deconstruction of the Bhagavad-gita Grounded in His Preunderstanding” in The Bhagavad-Gita: A Critical Introduction, edited by Ithamar Theodor, London: Routledge, 2021, pp. 51-67.


Assistant Professor of English John MacNeill Miller presented a virtual public talk in the “Biophilia: Pittsburgh” lecture series hosted by the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. The talk, “A Story That Shaped the Sky: The Curious Case of Shakespeare’s Starlings,” featured research Miller conducted with Lauren Fugate ’20 on the cultural history of starlings in North America, drawing on this case study to argue for the broader importance of using literary methods to understand humans’ relationship with the natural world. A recording of the presentation is available for viewing here.