Accolades May 19, 2011

FACULTY
Professor Charles Baxter's (English) short story collection Gryphon is reviewed by Claire Messud in the April 28 issue of The New York Review of Books.

Emeritus Regents Professor Ellen Berscheid (Psychology) has been selected to receive the 2012 William James Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). This is the Association's highest award, given for lifetime achievement in basic psychological science. The award ceremony will be in May 2012 at the APS annual convention.

Associate Professor Lois Cucullu (English) has received two summer fellowships for 2011: Mayers Fellowship, Huntington Library for work on Christopher Isherwood; and Williams Andrews Clark Library Fellowship at UCLA for work on Oscar Wilde.

Professor Maria Damon (English) published Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries with University of Iowa Press (April 2011).

Professor James Dillon (Music) is the winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Large-Scale Composition Award for "Nine Rivers," which premiered in Glasgow last November by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. With this award, James becomes the most celebrated winner in RPS Music Awards history, having received four awards from the society. The annual RPS Music Awards, presented in association with BBC Radio 3, are the highest recognition for live classical music in the UK. For historical reference, the Royal Philharmonic Society commissioned Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Read more at the BBC.

Professor Jo-Ida C. Hansen (Psychology) is the recipient of the Minnesota Psychological Association's MPA 2011Graduate Education Faculty Award. She received the award during MPA's annual convention on April 2. This award honors Jo-Ida's abiding contributions to graduate education in the Psychology department, and is also fitting because of her service to graduate education across CLA in her role as associate dean for graduate education and research.

Professor Nabil Matar (English) co-authored Britain and the Islamic World: 1558-1713 with Gerald MacLean (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Professor Guerino Mazzola (Music) is president of the Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music, which will host the 3rd International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music. Mazzola will give two talks at the conference, which will take place on June 15-17, 2011 at IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music in Paris, France.

Associate Professor Matthew W. Mehaffey (Music) co-edited with Heather J. Buchanan the third volume of Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir (GIA Publications, 2011). As part of this, Mehaffey presented a session on choosing quality repertoire as part of the National Convention of the America Choral Directors Association in Chicago. In spring he also conducted the West Virginia High School All State Chorus and served as an adjudicator for the Oregon State High School Choral Festival.

Professor Riv-Ellen Prell (American Studies and Jewish Studies) has been selected as the 2011 Marshall Sklare Memorial Award honoree. This award is given by the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ), recognizing the achievements of a senior scholar whose scholarly work has made a great impact on the social scientific study of Jewry. She will deliver the annual Sklare lecture at the Association for Jewish Studies. In giving Riv-Ellen this award, the ASSJ stated, "Your scholarly work has impacted countless readers, students and researchers, in our theoretical, methodological, and substantive understanding of many areas of Jewry; your generous mentoring of younger scholars; your focus on topics of interest to the policy-makers, have all been more than impressive. The award will recognize your multiple contributions to (and stretching of) the field of the social scientific study of Jewry."

Professor Wendy Rahn (Political Science), will be a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York for the academic year 2011-12.

Associate Professor Katherine Scheil (English) co-edited with Randall Martin Shakespeare, Adaptation, Modern Drama: Essays in Honour of Jill Levenson (University of Toronto Press, 2011).

Professor Emeritus Thomas M. Scott (Political Science) (also director emeritus, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs) received a 2011 President's Award for Outstanding Service.

Assistant Professor Yang Zhang (Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences) received the 2010 Developmental Science Early Career Research Prize, for the paper "Neural coding of formant-exaggerated speech in the infant brain" (Yang Zhang, Tess Koerner, Sharon Miller, Zach Grice-Patil, Adam Svec, David Akbari, Liz Tusler and Edward Carney). Each year, only one paper is selected for the prize award by the flagship journal in developmental research. More details and the article in full are online.

Associate Professor Daniel Kelliher (Political Science), Associate Professor Erika Lee (History), Professor Chad Marsolek (Psychology), and Assistant Professor Cheryl Olman (Psychology) have received 2010-11 Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Awards from the College of Liberal Arts. This award requires nomination by at least five CLA students, and recognizes excellence and innovation in teaching.

The Office of the Vice President for Research has announced Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship awards for 2011-2013. CLA recipients are:
Kathleen Collins (Political Science), The Rise of Muslim Politics: Islam and State in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Alexander Fiterstein (Music), Weber Clarinet Concertos and Concertino Recording
M. Fitzgerald (English), Elizabeth F., a novel
Ruth Mazo Karras (History), A History of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
Brenda Kayzar (Geography), Desired Patina or Layer of Toxicity: Environmental Justice and Revitalization
Seth Lewis (Journalism and Mass Communication), Professions, Boundary Work, and Open Innovation
Alice Lovejoy (Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature), The Army and the Avant-Garde: Art Cinema in the Czechoslovak Military
C. Kenneth Waters (Philosophy), Philosophical perspectives on causal reasoning in biology: workshop support

STAFF
Robert Fox, Graduate Program Administrator for the Department of Sociology, has been accepted into the U of M President's Emerging Leaders (PEL) Program. As a member of the 2011-2012 cohort, Fox will spend the next year working with a team of 25 PEL participants to develop skills that will prepare them for future leadership roles. Learn more about PEL online.

Immigration History Research Center student staffers Muna Mohamed, Mia Overly, and Kao Choua Vue were accepted into the Minnesota History Fellowship Program at the Minnesota Historical Society and will be interning at MHS this summer after graduation.

IHRC staffers Keit Osadchuk (Undergraduate Research Assistant) and Mia Overly (Senior Administrative Assistant) have each been selected for an Outstanding Student Employee Award given by the Office for Student Affairs.

Department of English course coordinator Michael Walsh (MFA 2006) won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for his debut collection The Dirt Riddles.

GRADUATE STUDENTS
Colleen Bertsch (M.A. candidate, ethno/musicology, violin) is a 2011-12 recipient of the McKnight Fellowship for Perfoming Musicians along with her band Orkestar Bez Ime. OBI is a Balkan dance band that specializes in odd meters and sounds from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Serbia, and Romania.

Denis Evstuhin (D.M.A. candidate, piano, student of Alexander Braginsky) is one of 30 contestants from 11 countries to be invited to participate in Cleveland International Piano Competition in July. The competition began with a field of 241 applicants and was narrowed down to 150 who were invited to audition in different cities. Out of these, 30 contestants--including Evstuhin--were selected to go to Cleveland in July.

MiYoung Kwon (Ph.D. Psychology) is the winner of the 2011 University of Minnesota Graduate School's Best Dissertation Award in the Social and Behavioral Sciences and Education. MiYoung completed her Ph.D. in June 2010. Her thesis was titled "Spatial-Frequency Requirements of Pattern Vision" and her adviser was Gordon Legge. MiYoung is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California.