Posts Tagged School of Arts and Sciences

Knill, who came to the University as an associate professor in 1999, was a leading scientist in the study of human perception. He also served as the associate director of the Center for Visual Science since 2001. Most of his work, which included over 60 research and review articles, focused on visual perception and how humans use vision to guide physical actions.

Associate professor of religion Nora Rubel has been named director of the University’s Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies. As a scholar of religion, Rubel says she was excited to move to Rochester in 2007 to live near the ‘burned over’ district where many religious movements began. “But once I arrived I was just as drawn to the area’s ties to abolition and the women’s rights movements.”

Elika Bergelson, a newly-appointed research assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, focuses on understanding how babies learn words between 6-to 18-months old. Funding from the NIH recognizes Bergelson as one of the nation’s “exceptional early career scientist” and will help her pathbreaking work advance more quickly.

Sex, authority, and psychoanalysis take center stage on Thursday, Oct. 16, in Todd Theatre as the International Theatre Program begins its 25th season with the provocative farce, What the Butler Saw.

Scientists have recently developed several ways—some simple and some involving new technologies—to hide objects from view. The latest effort, developed by physics professor John Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi, not only overcomes some limitations of previous devices, but uses inexpensive, readily available materials in a new way. “This is the first device that we know of that can do three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking,” said Choi.

Biology researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov report that the “jumping genes” in mice become active as the mice age when a multi-function protein stops keeping them in check in order to take on another role. A protein called Sirt6 is needed to keep the jumping genes—technically known as retrotransposons—inactive.

The story of Salomé has been recreated in popular culture for more than 2,000 years. On Oct. 8-11, her evolving role in religion, society, and the arts will be explored in a two-day symposia and series of events titled The Veils of Salomé, at both the River Campus and the Eastman School of Music.

As a child, professor and noted author Joanna Scott played with figurines collected by her great-grandfather, Armand de Potter. After unearthing a trunk filled with diaries and documents, Scott realized her great-grandfather wasn’t the man he seemed. This disquieting discovery became the basis for her new novel, De Potter’s Grand Tour.

Robert Doran looks at the intense interest in the “sublime” as an aesthetic concept — distinct from and even surpassing “beauty” — in his forthcoming book The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant.

Institute for Popular Music kicks off its 2014-2015 performance and lecture series with a tribute to the iconic 70s rock band, Led Zeppelin. In the spring, lectures and a concert will focus on the music of the Rolling Stones and the 50th anniversary of the group’s career-making hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”