Category: Human Nature

At an event earlier this week, a colleague mentioned Shakespeare's recent birthday and offered a few appropriate lines. Exhilarated by the latter, I've always been a little skeptical of references like the former - to the actual man - as I've written about here previously.

Now comes this article in the UK Telegraph Independent about Shakespeare as a wiley businessman and speculator who made a fortune off of grain:

Hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger — it's not how we usually think of William Shakespeare.

But we should, according to a group of academics who say the Bard was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.

Researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales argue that we can't fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.

"Shakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born," the researchers say in a paper due to be delivered at the Hay literary festival in Wales in May.

...

The charge sheet against Shakespeare was not entirely unknown, though it may come as shock to some literature lovers. But the authors argue that modern readers and scholars are out of touch with the harsh realities the writer and his contemporaries faced.

He lived and wrote in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, during a period known as the "Little Ice Age," when unusual cold and heavy rain caused poor harvests and food shortages.

"I think now we have a rather rarefied idea of writers and artists as people who are disconnected from the everyday concerns of their contemporaries," Archer said. "But for most writers for most of history, hunger has been a major concern — and it has been as creatively energizing as any other force."

For artists and writers, it probably always seems as if the times we live in are the very worst for our pursuits, so Shakespeare's 'ingenuity' adds perspective to those struggles. Looks like the arts and business have quite the shared history. No act of common passage, perhaps, but neither a strain of rareness.

Image: Public domain image of a portrait of William Shakespeare by an unknown painter (if you can believe that).

Careers in academia are, in some ways, like those of any other profession: once you have secured a position, you set about to address professional obligations, establish personal goals and pursue opportunities for advancement. Most of all of these would occur within the framework of the position for which you were intially hired.

An important difference in the professoriat, and one emphasized by a program at UGA, is the opportunity to study outside of your chosen discipline. The 2013-2014 Study in a Second Discipline Fellows were just announced and they are all from the Franklin College:

"Some of the most notable research and scholarship occurs at the interface of fields, and the Study in the Second Discipline program is one of the many ways that the university encourages interdisciplinary research," said Provost Jere Morehead. "I commend the recipients of this fellowship for undertaking projects that will advance their fields and have the potential to foster long-term collaborations on campus."

The 2013-2014 Fellows are:

• Benjamin Ehlers, associate professor of history, who will study in the geography department to gain proficiency in data mapping and further his research into patterns of religious violence in the Spanish Mediterranean;
• Chad Howe, associate professor of Romance languages, who will study in the department of statistics with the goal of applying advanced quantitative techniques to the study of language variation;
• Amy Ross, associate professor of geography, who will study in the departments of philosophy and military science to advance her research on civilian casualties and lay the foundation for a new course on "The Geographies of Conflict." 
• Janice Simon, Meigs Professor of Art History, who will study Native American culture in the anthropology department to broaden the scope of her research on landscape images as well as her courses on American art;
• Robert Varley, professor of mathematics, who will study in the physics department to enhance collaborative research on particle physics and quantum field theory; and
• Andrew Zawacki, associate professor of English, who will study photography in the Lamar Dodd School of Art and incorporate the technical and theoretical knowledge he gains into an upcoming book of poetry.

Congratulations to these faculty members, and thanks to their colleagues in every department for supporting their return to the classoom in a different guise. We look forward to the fruits of their study in a second discipline and salute the dedication to innovative scholarship.

Graduate students often participate in conferences, in formal presentations and conversations about their work with other participants during poster sessions and other events. Most frequently, academic conferences are organized by discipline but the UGA Graduate Student Association tried something different in April with their Interdisciplinary Research Conference and it seems to have been an overwhelming success. Among the unusual outcomes was the presentation of People's Choice Award at the conference, which went to psychology graduate student Brian Stone:

Stone's research focuses on the way the brain uses information from the senses to keep track of where the body is in space. This sensory information lets the brain know what is part of the body and what is an outside object.

By manipulating people's senses in the lab, psychologists have found that the brain can be tricked.

In his presentation, Stone highlighted the connection between sensory psychology and fields like robotics and engineering. Short-term applications include designing better prosthetics.

"(We can use) sensory tricks to incorporate an external object, like a prosthetic, into the body for someone like an amputee," Stone said.

The chance to discuss these broader implications of his research was what drew Stone to present at the Interdisciplinary Research Conference.

The idea of a conference like this is great and the Grad Student Association is to be commended. They know the importance of getting feedback from outside their disciplines and interacting with colleagues from other areas, which is why they organized such a conference. Even picking a favorite presentation is less of a competition and more of an acknowledgement of insightful work. Great job, and congratulations to Stone for being the People's Choice.

The Franklin College and UGA are venturing into online offerings like never before. For summer 2013,  a great selection of courses is available to help students stay on track for graduation even if they are studying abroad, involved in an internship and/or working a summer job.

Have a look. Sign up. Stay on track.

In what has been a terrific series of events on campus this semester, the Origins Lecture Series concludes tomorrow evening, April 24 at 7 pm in the Chapel with Norm Thompson speaking on the Origin of Mankind:

What stories can our hominin ancestors tell us?
In 1969, upon landing on the Moon, Neil Armstrong placed his left foot on the lunar surface and humbly stated: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." About 6 million years previously, some of our ancestors took their first small steps on Earth’s surface as bipedal walkers. Our evolutionary story since is a legacy that our ancestors can share with us and has consisted of “small steps and giant leaps” influenced by our genes and environmental changes on Planet Earth. In this lecture we will explore some of the exciting stories that our hominin ancestors are telling us.

Dr. Thompson is an associate professor in the department of mathematics and science education in the College of Education. We look forward to this concluding talk in the series and congratulate Series founder Mark Farmer on the overall success of these events. As always, get there early if you want a seat.

Image: from NASA of Neil Armstrong in Buzz Aldrin's visor during their afternoon on the moon on July 21, 1969.

A crannog is a kind of artificial island, usually found on lakes, rivers and estuaries in Scotland and Ireland, that were used as dwellings over five millenia from the European Neolithic Period. On Wednesday April 24, The Archeological Institute of America, along with the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the classics department and the department of archeology present a lecture on this and other prehistoric mysteries of Scotland.

The lecture, at 5:30 pm in room S150 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, features Celtic archeologist Nick Dixon of Edinburgh University. Free and open to the public.

Image: cover from Dixon's 2004 book on the crannogs of Scotland.

One thing we missed in the rundown of the Faculty Awards banquet is the announcement of the 2013 Distinguished Research Professors. Among the three awardees is one of our favorite researchers and teachers from the department of chemistry, John Stickney.

Stickney has received worldwide recognition for his contributions to the field of electrochemistry. He singlehandedly invented a method of producing extraordinarily thin semiconductors created one atomic layer at a time through a process he called electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy, or EC-ALE. He patented this approach and founded a company to market equipment for making materials by this process. The materials produced by EC-ALE are of a quality previously unmatched through traditional methods of electrodeposition, and they have great potential in a number of technological applications, including solar energy conversion, as specialty sensors and for catalysis, the process of accelerating a chemical reaction by a catalyst.

I am fortunate to have spent time with Stickney, intervewing and writing about his work several times over the years. The EC-ALE process is fascinating and he can make it sound easy to understand and obvious, a true mark of genius in my view. But more than that, Stickney is as funny and engaging as he is serious and creative about his work. Even in formal settings, he is able to talk about very complex science in a way that makes you want to learn more. He is intrigued and fascinated by his field, and maybe that is one of the keys to thinking creatively about sensors and semiconductors.

The title Distinguished Research Professor is bestowed upon faculty who are internationally recognized for their original contributions to knowledge and whose work promises to foster continued creativity in their discipline. That describes John Stickney perfectly. Congratulations.

The 'Amazing student' feature on the UGA homepage is a window onto some of the most accomplished students you will ever hear about. Featured this week is actress and student judge for the Peabody Awards, Paige Pulaski:

All of the time that I’ve spent in the theatre department has led me to form intimate relationships with the performance, academic, design, administrative and custodial staff and faculty. There’s something about teaching a form of art and manipulating personal skills that opens a student up to her professor as a mentor. I am particularly enamored with John Bray’s capacity to entertain dramatic writing as a flexible, creative medium. His explicative powers are impressively coherent for an art form that is so deeply personal. I’ve learned things about story structure that I’ve been able to apply to my everyday life and can never hear or read a piece of text without analyzing it ever again. There’s no escape.

She is also featured in the Commedia Robotica project the department produced (and we filmed) in December. Congratulations, Paige. Great job and good luck.

Image: UGA Photographic Services.

Very big news for two Franklin College faculty members and even moreso for our overall efforts in the humanities:

Two faculty members in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences are among seven recipients nationally of the 2013 American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowships. Associate history professor Stephen Berry and English professor William Kretzschmar will spend a year dedicated to a major project intended to advance scholarship in the digital humanities.

The ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship program supports digitally based research projects in all disciplines of the humanities and humanities-related social sciences. The program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, marked its eighth year in 2012-2013.

“The ACLS Digital Innovation Fellows program represents truly creative new pathways for scholarship and broadening the general body of knowledge,” said Franklin College Dean Alan T. Dorsey. “For UGA faculty to be awarded two out of seven fellowships in a national competition is a significant accomplishment and speaks to our commitment to advancing the humanities and social sciences.”

Among this year’s supported projects are a new searchable digital archive of coroners’ reports that allows scholars to view the Civil War-era South through the eyes of a crime scene investigator; a tool to explore Pompeii through a geographic information system model that maps bibliographies of existing scholarship onto relevant points throughout the archaeological site; and an online bilingual multimedia book that probes new directions in both performance studies and scholarly publication.

Look for more news soon from the Willson Center about efforts to support research in these areas. Our faculty and administration recognize the importance of humanities scholarship and its place in the firmament of a liberal arts education. This is how we expand knowledge, increase its availability and inspire new generations of students and scholars. Congratulation to Berry and Kretzschmar but to the university and its private donors as well, for their foresight in supporting crucial research and fostering an atmosphere of innovation in the social sciences.

Very nice feature (and cover photo) of professor emeritus of English at UGA and very dear friend of the blog Coleman Barks in our local alt. weekly, Flagpole. 

The article focuses on one of his recent collections of poetry, Hummingbird Sleep. But few contemporary poets have had the impact of Barks' work on the world. He has made the words of love and wisdom from the 13th Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi accesible to millions of English speakers and readers.

Good job, Flagpole. Great work, Coleman.