October 7, 2024
Student Chronicles
Year two at Richmond
A group of students from the Class of 2027 look back at their first year and reflect on their first few weeks as sophomores.
School of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Annual Report
2023-24 Now Available!
Biology Seminar Series
“The Evolution of Extreme Weapons. Lessons from a Rhinoceros Beetle."
Monday, October 28, 12-1 p.m. | Gottwald Auditorium
Hear from Douglas Emlen, Montana Regents Professor of Biology at the University of Montana and Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, about extreme animal weapons as part of the Biology Seminar Series.
What limits the size of nature’s most extreme structures? For weapons like tusks, antlers, or beetle horns, one possibility is a tradeoff associated with mechanical levers: as the output arm of the lever system gets longer — the antler or the beetle horn — it should also get weaker.
Refreshments will be served.
2024-20245 Tucker Boatwright Festival of Literature & the Arts
The Nature of Representation
The Nature of Representation asks how our understandings of “nature” have been shaped by representational practices in both the aesthetic and political senses, exploring how the current climate catastrophe is inextricable from colonialism and anthropocentric worldviews. The festival features contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers who don’t take for granted that language is merely human, that there are other “natural” languages, and that attuning to those other languages allows us to tell stories that disrupt the violence of Man.
Susan Stryker, "Changing Gender: A Conversation with Susan Stryker."
Wednesday, November 13, 4:30 p.m. | Humanities Commons
Susan Stryker is one of the founders of trans studies, author of many award-winning books including the almost canonical Transgender History, as well as many influential essays across four decades, some collected in the just-published When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader, edited by Mckenzie Wark. One of the most visible and influential trans scholars, she has appeared widely in national and international media. She was co-editor of the Transgender Studies Reader’s two editions, and co-founder of the journal TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.
Hosted by the Department of English.
Department of English Writers Series
Idra Novey
Monday, October 21, 6 p.m.
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Idra Novey’s most recent novel, Take What You Need, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and it was named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Her first novel, Ways to Disappear, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, and her second novel, Those Who Knew, was a finalist for the Clark Fiction Prize. Her works as a translator include Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. and a co-translation of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian’s Lean Against This Late Hour, a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages, and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She teaches fiction writing at Princeton University.
Meet the 2024-25 Beckman Scholars
A&S students Marcos Hendler, of Rye, New York, and Aine MacDermott, of Lexington, Virginia, have each been awarded a prestigious Beckman Foundation Scholarship to support faculty-mentored student research in the sciences.
Beckman Scholars are selected among undergraduate biology and chemistry students based on commitment to research, strong academics, and potential to become scientific leaders. UR has had 26 Beckman Scholars since 2006.
Hendler, a chemistry major, is studying computational chemistry focused on molecules related to anticancer, which has implications in possible treatments. Hendler’s faculty mentor is chemistry professor Carol Parish. MacDermott, a biochemistry & molecular biology major, is researching ancient DNA under the mentorship of biology professor Melinda Yang. MacDermott is focused on the evolution of the alcohol metabolism gene ADH1B in present-day and ancient East Asian humans.
Humanities Center
2024-2025: How (And Why) Do We Represent Nature?
This question invites us to consider “representation” in both its political and aesthetic meaning. “Nature” is represented in paintings, poems, scripture, music, dancing, novels, laws, regulations, equations, activisms, advertising campaigns. This question asks how environments — and often their relations to human concerns — are represented across media, geographic and cultural contexts, and different historical moments.
A&S Feature Stories
October 4, 2024
Student Experience
Fighting food insecurity
Third-year student Ben Mayes spent his summer working on a local farm to help provide produce for those in need.
October 4, 2024
Student Experience
A life-changing summer
Two Richmond student-interns learned the importance of playtime while working with pediatric patients at a New York City cancer center.
October 3, 2024
Student Scholars
University of Richmond Student Named Gilman-McCain Scholar
Glen Kettering is the first UR student to receive this award, which he is using to study abroad in Prague, Czech Republic.
A&S Faculty in the News
October 5, 2024
How to stop comparing yourself to others online all the time
Psychology professor Janelle Peifer is quoted.
October 4, 2024
No, UN Pact for the Future is not WHO pandemic treaty in disguise
Health studies professor Kathryn Jacobsen, an expert on global health, is quoted.
October 2, 2024
Lessons from America’s first ‘war on rats’ summit
Jonathan Richardson, an expert on urban rat populations, is quoted throughout this piece.
September 30, 2024
Research News
Climate Change's Upsetting Impacts On Fall Foliage Viewing
Research on fall foliage from geography and environment professor Stephanie Spera is highlighted.
Events
Faculty Expertise
Do you envision college as a place where your professor’s office hours are spent in deep conversation about topics beyond this week’s assignment? Where you can work side-by-side with a faculty member on cutting-edge research that is published in a professional journal?
In A&S, our faculty are experts on the cutting edge of their fields. While they could work in some of the top research institutions in the world, our faculty chose Richmond because they believe in educating tomorrow's leaders and are passionate about mentoring and sharing their knowledge with students.
A&S Faculty Highlights
Lambert Published
Kelly Lambert, MacEldin Trawick Professor in Psychology, published Biological Psychology: Brain in Context, a multidisciplinary textbook that delves into how environmental factors shape our perception of situations influencing stress responses and physiological reactions.
View Bio
Hartvigsen Published
Kitty (Sarah) Hartvigsen, Trawick Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, published "Mini-Symposium: Training the Trainers of the Next Generation of Neuroscience Advocates" in the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education.
View Bio
Blondino Published
Courtney Blondino, Assistant Professor of Health Studies, published "Utilizing natural language processing to analyze student narrative reflections for medical curriculum improvement" in Med Teach.
View Bio
Parish & Undergraduate Students Published
Carol Parish, Floyd D. and Elisabeth S. Gottwald Professor of Chemistry, along with undergraduate students Khanh Vu, ’23, Josh Pandian, ’23, Boyi Zhang, ‘16, Christina Annas, ‘16, Anna J. Parker, ‘11, John S. Mancini, ‘11, Evan B. Wang, ‘09, Diomedes Saldana-Greco, ‘10, Emily S. Nelson, ’12, and Greg Springsted,’10, published “Multireference Averaged Quadratic Coupled Cluster (MR-AQCC) Study of the Geometries and Energies for ortho-, meta- and para-Benzyne” in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.
View Bio
Parish & Undergraduate Students Published
Carol Parish, Floyd D. and Elisabeth S. Gottwald Professor of Chemistry, along with undergraduate students Aamy A. Bakry, ’24, and Matthew G. Fanelli, ’09, and Department of Chemistry collaborators, Kelling Donald, Clarence E. Denoon Jr. Chair in the Natural Sciences, and Marty Zeldin, visiting research scholar, published “Dative Bonding in Quasimetallatranes Containing Group 15 Donors (Y = N, P, and As) and Group 14 Acceptors (M = Si, Ge, Sn, and Pb)” in Inorganic Chemistry.
View Bio
Jacobsen Published
Kathryn Jacobsen, William E. Cooper Distinguished University Chair and professor of health studies, published “Planetary health learning objectives: foundational knowledge for global health education in an era of climate change” in The Lancet Planetary Health.
View Bio
Redican and Undergraduate Student Published
Kyle Redican, teaching faculty of geography, environment, & sustainability and director of the Spatial Analysis Lab, along with undergraduate Matteo Gonzalez, ‘24, and Beth Zizzamia, Spatial Analysis Lab GIS operations manager, published “Assessing ChatGPT for GIS education and assignment creation” in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education.
View Bio
Zizzamia and Undergraduate Student Published
Beth Zizzamia, Spatial Analysis Lab GIS operations manager, along with undergraduate Matteo Gonzalez, ‘24, and Kyle Redican, teaching faculty of geography, environment, & sustainability and director of the Spatial Analysis Lab, published “Assessing ChatGPT for GIS education and assignment creation” in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education.
View Bio