
School of Arts & Sciences 2022-23 Dean’s Report

A&S Next
Registration is now open!
Register by January 21.
Turn Your Education into a Career with Passion and Purpose.
You’re a Spider, so you dream big. You don’t want to land just any job after UR, but a purposeful career you’re passionate about.
A&S NEXT on Friday, February 16, through Saturday, February 17, at the Omni Hotel in downtown Richmond, is a career program specifically for A&S students where we aim to give you the tools to understand your personal strengths and how you can translate your education into a career that you love. You’ll meet alums with unexpected and interesting career paths and you’ll gain hands-on experience exploring and solving real-world problems alongside alums and faculty who work to solve these problems in their own careers every day.

A&S Student Symposium
Each April, we celebrate our diverse community of learners at the A&S Student Symposium, a showcase of student-led research projects from nearly 30 disciplines in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Student researchers share their scholarly work with the campus community and the public through oral presentations, poster sessions, performances, and art exhibits.
FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 2024, 12:30 TO 5:30 P.M.
Participant Information
Any A&S student who participated in A&S-funded student research or creative work during the summer of 2023 up to the submission deadline of February 9, 2024, is required to participate in the symposium.
Regardless of funding, any A&S student who conducted student research or creative work is encouraged to share their work during the A&S Student Symposium.
- Student Symposium Application, due by Friday, February 9, 2024 at 5 p.m.

Reimagining Community In Cinema
2023-2024 Tucker Boatwright Festival of Literature & the Arts
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant
A book talk and film screening of Dear Corky (2022) with Curtis Chin, followed by Q&A and a book signing reception.
January 26, 3 P.M. | Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Center for the Arts
“Reimagining Community in Cinema” explores the diverse ways in which community is historically imagined and reimagined in documentary and fiction film from the silent era to the digital age. Through events such as symposia, masterclasses, film screenings, and conversations with filmmakers, the festival honors in particular the contributions of historically marginalized communities.
Hosted by the Film Studies interdisciplinary program.

UR’s home for the humanities becomes a space for interactive experiences. Read more.
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

Dieter Gunkel, associate professor of historical linguistics, published “Musical Evidence for Low Boundary Tones in Ancient Greek” in Greek and Roman Musical Studies.
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Jake Tan, visiting assistant professor of chemistry, published "Modification of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Emitters Comprising Acridan-pyrimidine Moieties for Efficient Sky-blue to Greenish-blue OLEDs" in Journal of Materials Chemistry C.
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Wade Downey, professor of chemistry, along with undergraduate students Tyler G. Chong ‘23, Alex V. Helbling, and Remi D. Graff, published "One-Pot Silyl Imidate Formation-N-Alkylation Reactions of Amides With Propargyl Propionates" in Tetrahedron Letters.
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Wade Downey, professor of chemistry, along with undergraduate researchers Elizabeth D. Heafner ‘19, Xuechun Lin ‘18, Alexa H. Connors ‘24, Hanyu Zhong ‘21, R. Joseph Coyle ‘23, and Yiqi Liu ‘18, published "One-Pot Enol Silane Formation–Allylation of Ketones Promoted by Trimethylsilyl Trifluoromethanesulfonate" in SYNTHESIS. The article was published as part of a special issue of SYNTHESIS honoring the accomplishments of Downey's Ph.D. advisor, the late Dr. David A. Evans.
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Rhiannon Graybill, Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein & Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies, published Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by Yale University Press.
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Rhiannon Graybill, Marcus M. and Carole M. Weinstein & Gilbert M. and Fannie S. Rosenthal Chair of Jewish Studies, published What Are They Saying about the Book of Jonah? Paulist Press, 2023.
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Sharon G. Feldman, William Judson Gaines Chair in Modern Foreign Languages, attended the staged reading of her English language translation of The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts (2021) by Catalan playwright Josep Maria Miró, directed by Jay Stull and performed by actor David Skeist at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. The event, the culmination of Miró’s three-week residency in New York City, was produced by The Play Company, with the collaboration of the Institut Ramon Llull and the Sala Beckett (Barcelona).
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Lilla Orr, assistant professor of data science and statistics, published "Is Affective Polarization Driven by Identity, Loyalty, or Substance?" in the American Journal of Political Science.
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