Carolina Arts and Sciences Spring 2011 by UNC College of Arts and Sciences

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C R E AT I V E C O L L A B O R AT I O N S

Faculty and students breaking new ground in Chapel Hill, China, Italy and the Galapagos

T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

O F

N O R T H

C A R O L I N A

A T

C H A P E L

H I L L

FROM THE DEAN F R O M T HE DEAN Carolina Arts & Sciences

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Spring 2011

Cultivating collaborations

Donn Young

As dean of the College and as a scientist, I know firsthand

about the importance of collaboration. The opportunity to develop partnerships across disciplines, institutions and geographic boundaries offers scholars and students a chance to create new and exciting things — including solutions to major challenges facing our state, region and world. In this spring issue, we showcase examples of interdisciplinarity in teaching, research and public engagement across the College and beyond. Here are a few highlights: • More than 30 UNC faculty and nearly a dozen graduate and undergraduate students from many diverse departments Karen M. Gil across the University are involved in research in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador — in collaboration with our international partner, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). This May, UNC will dedicate the new Galapagos Science Center in San Cristobal to further education, research and outreach about the islands. • Although we may be rivals on the basketball court, Duke and UNC are developing strong allegiances in their efforts to tackle North Carolina poverty. Undergraduates at both institutions are taking a two-semester class, “The Moral Challenges of Poverty and Inequality,” taught by UNC historian James Leloudis (B.A. ’77, Ph.D. ’89) and Duke public policy professor Robert Korstad (B.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’88). • What if medical professionals could utilize a simulation tool like aeronautics engineers use in treating children with obstructed airways? Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and a multidisciplinary team from the College will work to develop a computer model that doctors can use to predict the outcome of various surgical options. The new Pediatric Airways Project will be funded with a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. • Dimes clattering on a table top and ice melting in a cup might not seem rhythmic to you, but it means sweet music for music professors Allen Anderson and Stephen Anderson (no relation) and their students. In the Electro-Acoustic Studio on the second floor of Hill Hall, they’re joining forces to turn sounds into electronic music compositions. Alex Van Gils ’10 said teamwork with professor Allen Anderson was essential to a piece they created from its inception to performance. • Triangle high school students will be coming to campus this spring to debate such thought-provoking topics as linkages between corporal punishment and child abuse, American-born children of illegal immigrants, and privacy on social networks such as Facebook. They will be here for the new High School Ethics Bowl, sponsored by our own Parr Center for Ethics in the department of philosophy. It’s one of many programs offered by the innovative Parr Center, which is the public face of ethics for the University. As I walk across campus, I love strolling by Venable and Murray Halls, the last two buildings in the Carolina Physical Science Complex. The story behind the naming of Murray Hall is a tale about the importance of mentorship. Carolina alumnus Lowry Caudill provided the gift to name Murray Hall after one of his UNC mentors, Kenan Professor of Chemistry Royce Murray. Stay tuned for more news from the College as we continue to cultivate a spirit of collaboration. — Karen M. Gil, Dean

College of Arts and Sciences • Karen M. Gil, Dean • William Andrews ’70 MA, ’73 PhD Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities • Michael Crimmins Senior Associate Dean, Natural Sciences • Jonathan Hartlyn Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences, International Programs • Tammy McHale Senior Associate Dean, Finance and Planning • James W. May Senior Associate Dean, Program Development; Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation • Bobbi Owen Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education

Arts and Sciences Foundation Board of Directors • James L. Alexandre ’79, Haverford, PA, Chair • Vicki Underwood Craver ’92, Riverside, CT, Vice Chair • Karen M. Gil, Chapel Hill, NC, President • William L. Andrews, ‘70 MA, ‘73 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC, Vice President • Tammy J. McHale, Chapel Hill, NC, Treasurer • James W. May, Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Secretary • Ivan V. Anderson, Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC • R. Frank Andrews ’90, ’95 MBA, Washington, DC • Valerie Ashby ’88, ’94 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC • Constance Y. Battle ’77, Raleigh, NC • Laura Hobby Beckworth ’80, Houston, TX • William S. Brenizer ’74, Glen Head, NY • Cathy Bryson ’90, Santa Monica, CA • R. Duke Buchan III ’85, Amenia, NY • Jeffrey Forbes Buckalew ’88, ’93 MBA, New York, NY • Sunny H. Burrows ’84, Atlanta, GA • G. Munroe Cobey ’74, Chapel Hill, NC • Sheila Ann Corcoran ’92, ’98 MBA, Los Angeles, CA • Steven M. Cumbie ’70, ’73 MBA, McLean, VA • Jaroslav T. Folda III, Chapel Hill, NC • Emmett Boney Haywood ’77, ’82 JD, Raleigh, NC • Lynn Buchheit Janney ’70, Butler, MD • Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC • William M. Lamont, Jr. ’71, Dallas, TX • Edwin A. Poston ’89, Chapel Hill, NC • John A. Powell ‘77, San Francisco, CA • Benjamine Reid ’71, Miami, FL • Alex T. Robertson ’01, New York, NY • H. Martin Sprock III ‘87, Charlotte, NC • Emily Pleasants Sternberg ’88, ’94 MBA, Greenwich, CT • Karen L. Stevenson, ’79, Los Angeles, CA • Eric P. Vick ’90, Oxford, UK • Charles L. Wickham, III ’82 BSBA, London, UK • Loyal W. Wilson ’70, Chagrin Falls, OH

TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS Carolina Arts & Sciences

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Spring 2011

DE P A R T ME N T S inside front cover

FROM THE DEAN Cultivating collaborations

HIGH ACHIEVERS

Billy E. Barnes

Two Rhodes scholars; awards for country,

blues and Paris opera books; studying galaxy evolution; scholars win Fulbrights; and more

24 HIGHLIGHTS

Unlocking the potential of synthetic blood;

F E AT U R ES Interdisciplinary research in the Galapagos Islands

1 • Creative 1 Collaborations

Imaginative partnerships explore poverty, ethical dilemmas, the oil spill, electro-acoustic music, and more

MEET THE PROFESSOR

31 COLLEGE BOOKSHELF

Poetry by Michael Chitwood, a marine’s

path to peace, best American short stories, football fatalities and catastrophic injuries, religion and adolescents, recollections of Chapel Hill, and more

FINAL POINT Photographer Bill Bamberger ’79 explores the democratization of basketball, and the intersection of sports and culture in American life.

Eric Darton

Alane Mason helps readers travel the world of literature

COVER PHOTO: A Galapagos land iguana basks in the sun on a lava rock. Cover photo by Steve Walsh.

inside back cover

Royce Murray’s science ‘family’ pays tribute

3 • Words without 2 Borders

researches international conflict.

0 • Mentoring 2 Chemistry

creating 3-D models of landmarks; online William Blake archive expands; gifts support dramatic art, the humanities, Jewish studies and faculty leadership; global centers net $11.29 million; and more

Political science professor Mark Crescenzi

Steve Exum

Steve Walsh

6 • Paradise Paradox

COMING SOON Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner speaks on campus April 10

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 1

HIGH ACHIEVERS A C H I E V E R S

MUMBY HONORED FOR COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

Dennis Mumby, professor and chair of the communication studies department, has won a research award from the National Communication Association. Mumby received the Charles H. Woolbert Research Award, which recognizes a book chapter or journal article that has stood the test of time and has become a stimulus for new ways of looking at communication research. Articles or book chapters must be in their 10th to 15th

Dennis Mumby

year of print. Mumby was recognized for “Modernism,

Dan Sears

H I G H

Country, blues music books win awards Scholars Jocelyn

Neal and William Ferris have received national honors for their books on Jocelyn Neal (right) talks with a student after class. country and blues music. Neal, associate Recorded Sound Collections in the category, professor of music and adjunct associate Best Research in Recorded Country Music. professor of American studies, is the author Give My Poor Heart Ease (University of of The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy North Carolina Press, 2009), the book, CD in Country Music (Indiana and DVD by historian William Ferris, was University Press, 2009). She also honored with a certificate of merit by received a Deems Taylor the same association in the category, Best Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors Research in Recorded Blues, Rhythm & Blues or Soul Music. and Publishers. The awards The Ferris collection comprises are presented to American recordings of roots blues singers, lyrics and authors and journalists whose tunes, plus film, interviews and photos, which books, articles and liner notes he collected in the 1960s and ’70s in his about music are selected for native state of Mississippi. their excellence. Ferris is Joel Williamson Eminent The Rodgers book Professor of History and senior associate also recently received a director of the Center for the Study of the certificate of merit from American South. • the national Association for

Post-Modernism and

Phillips honored for distinguished service

Communication Studies: A Rereading of an Ongoing Debate” (Communication Theory, 1997). One reviewer wrote: “[Mumby’s article] attunes me and the students with whom I work to the preconceptions, assumptions and consequences of adopting any research orientation or method. It makes us more aware of what we’re doing and why, and reminds us that how we go about learning makes a difference.” •

arl N. “Phil” Phillips Jr. has received the inaugural Dean’s Award for Distinguished Service to the College. The award was presented by Dean Karen Gil and James L. Alexandre ’79, chair of the Arts and Sciences Foundation board of directors, at the board’s meeting last fall. The award recognizes alumni who have served the College with distinction through their exceptional vision and leadership, and who have made extraordinary contributions that further its mission and goals. Phillips, a 1962 alumnus, is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean and North Carolina businessman. He created the Phillips Ambassadors Program, which provides up to 50 scholarships each year for students to study in Asia. Since the program’s inception in 2007, 116 undergraduate students have been named Phillips Ambassadors, more than doubling the number of Carolina students who have studied in Asia. He also has strengthened faculty in the College with the establishment of a distinguished professorship in international studies and has supported students with an endowment in Latin American studies. • Phil Phillips

2 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

HIGH ACHIEVERS A C H I E V E R S

Dan Sears

H I G H

Zhou tapped for engineering institute Otto Zhou has been named

Musicologist Annegret Fauser has won a prestigious award from the

to the College of Fellows of the

American Musicological Society for her

American Institute for Medical and

essay collection on opera and musical

Biological Engineering.

theater in Paris.

Zhou is the David R. Godschalk Professor in the department

Fauser is a professor of music and adjunct professor of women’s studies. Fauser and co-editor Mark Everist of

of physics and astronomy.

the University of Southampton received

Zhou joins a group of individuals who are outstanding medical and bio-engineers

Otto Zhou displays a carbon nanotube model.

AWARD HONORS ESSAY COLLECTION ON PARIS OPERA

the Ruth A. Solie Award for the book, Music, Theater and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830-1914 (University of Chicago

in academia, industry and

Press, 2009). The Solie Award honors

government. As leaders in the field,

a collection of musicological essays of

the fellows have distinguished

exceptional merit. Music, Theater and

themselves through

Cultural Transfer explores

their contributions in research, industrial practice and/or education.

the diverse institutions that

He is a global leader in the science and technology of carbon nanostructures,

shaped Parisian music and

which have applications in electronics, medicine, homeland security and construc-

extended its influence across

tion. He pioneered several major advances in the field of nanotechnology. He started

Europe, the Americas and

a company, Xientek, to apply his research to revolutionary X-ray technology. •

Australia. Opera and musical Annegret Fauser

COLLEGE SCHOLARS WIN FULBRIGHTS

Geography professor Michael

Emch was one of three scholars in the College who received 2010-2011 Fulbright Scholarships. Emch is studying in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury this semester. His research will seek ways to determine what is more important in disease transmission: where one lives or social connections. The approach could apply to many health problems, including infectious diseases such as the flu or more socially connected issues, such as smoking and smoking cessation.

theater dominated French culture in the 1800s, and the

Other College Fulbrights are: • Joshua Davis, a doctoral candidate in history, for a lecture on “Globalizing American Studies Through Teaching and Scholarship” at the University of Hamburg in Germany. • Christopher Nelson, associate professor of anthropology, for research on “In the Darkness of the Lived Moment: Okinawa and the Trauma of History” at Waseda University in Tokyo. The Fulbright Scholar Program for faculty and professionals is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars under an agreement with the U.S. Department of State. •

influential stage music that emerged from this period helped make Paris, as Walter Benjamin put it, “the capital of the nineteenth century.” Fauser’s research focuses on music of the 19th and 20th centuries and in particular that of France and America. She is working on a new book, Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II. • ONLINE EXTRAS: Watch Fauser talk about her research at www.youtube.com/ user/UNCCollege.

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 3

HIGH ACHIEVERS H I G H

A C H I E V E R S

FACULTY ELECTED SCIENCE FELLOWS

ive faculty members in the College were named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The association, the world’s largest general scientific society, elects fellows who advance science applications that are considered scientifically or socially distinguished. The fellows are biologist Kerry S. Bloom, anthropologist Paul W. Leslie, chemist Wenbin Lin, computer scientist Dinesh Manocha and physicist John F. Wilkerson. Bloom was recognized for his research using yeast cells, which has led to insights into how chromosomes work and the mechanics and dynamics of cell division. Leslie was honored for his contributions to demographic, social, health and environmental modeling of human populations living in arid and semi-arid environments in East Africa. Lin was tapped as a fellow for his work in the field of inorganic chemistry, including nanoparticle imaging agents and anticancer drugs. He is a principal investigator on a new $2.3 million National Cancer Institute grant to address the critical need for early diagnosis of and more effective treatments Wenbin for pancreatic cancer. Lin Manocha was recognized for his research in geometric computing, and strong applications to computer graphics, robotics and parallel computing. Wilkerson was honored for his leadership of experimental efforts to understand the Paul W. fundamental properties of the Leslie neutrino and neutron. •

Kannappan to study galaxy evolution Sheila Kannappan, assistant professor project will train a new generation of scientists of physics and astronomy, has won a $795,000 National Science Foundation award to analyze the components and structures of galaxies and the larger cosmic web in which they live. She was awarded the Faculty Early Career Development Award, a major honor given to junior teacher-scholars who show the most promise for lifelong achievement in building integrative research and education programs. Kannappan will conduct the RESOLVE (REsolved Spectroscopy Of a Local VolumE) Survey to create an unprecedented view of gas, dark matter and stars in the nearby universe. She and her research group will have access to UNC’s partnership in the SOAR and SALT telescopes in Chile and South Africa. The

in future growth areas of astronomy. Kannappan will partner with Teach For America and others at UNC to develop an astronomy enrichment curriculum for the state’s high schools as well as workshops to train teachers in mentoring student projects. The RESOLVE Web site will provide a range of discovery activities and small research projects for high school and undergraduate students. • Sheila Kannappan (seated, center) with her research team.

HAGAN WINS LATINA/O BOOK AWARD

Sociologist Jacqueline Hagan received the 2010 Distinguished Book

Jaqueline Hagan

Award from the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Hagan was recognized for Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Harvard University Press, 2008). Drawing on more than 300 interviews with men, women and children, Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertaking — the role of religion and faith in surviving the journey. Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants risk their lives to cross the border into the United States, yet until now, few scholars have sought migrants’ own accounts of their experiences. The book also won a 2009 Distinguished Book Award honorable mention from the Association for Latina/Latino Anthropologists, a section of the American Anthropology Association. •

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HIGH ACHIEVERS H I G H

A C H I E V E R S

desperate need of clean water, and children working in a landfill in Managua, Nicaragua. “The Rhodes Scholarship will allow me to study in the [master’s degree] program in development studies at Oxford and become an engaged scholar in international development, working for the advancement of marginalized women around the world,” Laurence Deschamps-Laporte she said. (left) and Paul Shorkey Morehead-Cain international experiences have taken Deschamps-Laporte TWO NAMED to places where she could make a difference. RHODES SCHOLARS Her second experience, in Uganda, saw her in villages populated mainly by AIDS widows, ollege seniors Laurence Deschamps- who identified a need for clean water. Laporte and Steven Paul Shorkey Jr. have Deschamps-Laporte helped start rainwater won Rhodes Scholarships, the world’s oldest harvesting systems that eventually reached and best known awards for graduate study at 450 households. the University of Oxford in England. Deschamps-Laporte is fluent in French Deschamps-Laporte, 22, of Repentigny, and English; advanced in Arabic, German and Quebec, Canada, and Shorkey, 21, of Spanish; and a beginner in Farsi and Luganda, Charlotte, both came to Carolina on the main language of Uganda. Morehead-Cain Scholarships — full, four-year Shorkey was one of 10 undergraduates scholarships to UNC. chosen to develop and teach a for-credit An honors student, Deschamps-Laporte is course for fellow undergraduates: “Selfmajoring in global studies with a concentration Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors: Suicide on the Middle East and a minor in Islamic and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.” studies. He has studied such behaviors in two Shorkey is double majoring in psychology campus laboratories and one at the London and business administration. He will use the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College. scholarship to pursue master’s degrees in Inducted last spring into Phi Beta Kappa psychological research and neuroscience. The and the psychology honor society, Shorkey is work will speed him to his goal of becoming the second author on a paper presented to the a clinical psychologist who combines research international conference of the Association of with patient service. He would like to go on to Behavioral and Cognitive Therapists. earn a doctorate in clinical psychology. On one of his Morehead-Cain summers, Deschamps-Laporte wants to help Shorkey volunteered for an organization people like those she has seen in Uganda, in combating HIV/AIDS in South Africa. •

Stephen Pizer

Scientist honored for medical image computing Stephen Pizer was recognized by an international computing organization for his contributions to the field of medical image computing. Pizer is Kenan Professor of Computer Science in the College and an adjunct professor in the departments of radiation oncology, biomedical engineering and radiology in the School of Medicine. He has been named a fellow of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention Society, the premier society in the field of medical image computing. Medical image computing involves extracting and presenting information from medical images to be used, for example, in radiation treatment

Hackney is kinesiology fellow

planning and minimally invasive surgical

Anthony Hackney, a professor of exercise physiology and nutrition, has been

named a fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology. The National Academy of Kinesiology fellows have made significant contributions to kinesiology through scholarship and professional service. The Academy promotes the study and educational applications of the science of human movement and physical activity. Hackney joins eight U.S. and two international scholars who were recently inducted into the academy. He is the assistant chair of the department of exercise and sport science and serves on the board of directors for the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes. •

procedures. Pizer is a pioneer in the field, having written the first dissertation on medical image computing in 1967. His research led the way for international standards on electronic display of medical images and the routine clinical use of 3-D display of medical images. •

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 5

Par 6 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

radiseW

Exploring the interplay of tourism, development and conservation in the Galapagos

PARADISE PARADOX

By T. DeLene Beeland

LEFT: A Galapagos land iguana on lava rock. ABOV E : Boats

in Wreck Bay on San Cristobal Island. ABOVE RIG H T: The Puerto Ayora waterfront on Santa Cruz Island.

•

Photos by Steve Walsh

hen your 737 jet touches down on the small islet of Baltra, one of two tourist entry points in the Galapagos Islands archipelago, you spy concrete pads left over from U.S. military buildings erected during World War II. The structures are long gone, but the pads stand out in the cacti-pocked landscape as reminders of the longevity of the human footprint in the Galapagos. But you’re a tourist. You paid a $100 fee to enter the Galapagos National Park, which spans all 19 islands and numerous islets located 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. You’re here to see this world-famed ecological paradise. So you grab your bags and board a ferry. You cross the Canal de Itabaca to Santa Cruz, a nearby island and major tourism hub. When you hail a taxi or take a bus for the 30-minute drive to the central town of Puerto Ayora, a bustling city greets you. The streets are busy and lined with gift shops, places to rent kayaks, Internet cafes, bars, bicycles and trucks. This could be any booming beach town along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, you think, perhaps a little disappointedly. Puerto Ayora hosts the largest human population in the Galapagos Islands; between 15,000 and 17,000 people call it home. Beyond the hodge-podge of buildings, you glimpse hills rising in the distance. Your spirits rise. Maybe tomorrow you’ll visit the highlands to get a taste of what you journeyed to this remote outpost to experience — a chance to look into the face of a giant tortoise, to see a land iguana bask in the sun or to listen to the song of a Darwin finch. c o n t i n u e d

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 7

The islands The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago that lie about 600 miles offshore from Ecuador. The Galapagos National Park protects more than 1.7 million acres of land and about 51,000 square miles of water via the associated Marine Reserve that rings the islands.

Many visitors say they are surprised by the level of development and infrastructure that greets them when they arrive at the Galapagos Islands. While only 3 percent of the islands are allowed to be developed by the Galapagos National Park, this restriction is deceptive; in other areas where people are allowed to build and to live, the tug-of-war between conservation and development is heated. “Most people who are in-the-know say the battle for conservation was waged and lost in Santa Cruz,” says Steve Walsh, a geography professor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences who directs the University’s interdisciplinary Galapagos Initiative. “Isabela is now the real battleground.” Isabela, with only about 2,200 people, is one of the least densly populated islands. Its unpaved streets are formed with beach sand, but park benches are incised with a saying: “Isabela grows for you.” But it is San Cristobal that Walsh will likely be visiting the most in the coming years. This island has a modest 9,000 or 10,000 citizens — and in mid-May, Walsh, Chancellor Holden Thorp and other UNC visitors will travel to the remote outpost to dedicate the Galapagos Science Center. It’s a new 12,000-squarefoot building, designed and constructed jointly by UNC and its partner, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), a top private university in Ecuador. The chancellor of USFQ, Santiago Gangotena, is a UNC alumnus who earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1978 and received a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2009. The new science center is part of the larger Galapagos Initiative, a joint venture linking UNC and USFQ through education, outreach and research about the islands. More than 30 UNC faculty and nearly a dozen graduate and undergraduate students are involved from diverse disciplines, including anthropology, biology, city and regional planning, computer science, economics, environmental sciences, epidemiology, 8 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

A B O V E : A sea lion mother and pup at Playa Mann on San Cristobal Island. L E F T: The flowers of night-blooming

cereus open in the evening and last only until mid-morning of the next day. B E LO W: The central islands of the Galapagos archipelago of Ecuador.

geography, journalism, public policy, marine sciences, sociology, geological sciences and nutrition. The building is a physical crystallization of this partnership. The new science center will provide research support space including laboratories, offices and a classroom. It’s designed to support a broad slice of natural, social and spatial inquiry, from marine ecology and conservation to invasive species; from evolutionary biology to habitat recovery or restoration; from geological sciences and tectonics to climate and environmental change; from microbiology to population, tourism and migration studies; and from water, hygiene and sanitation to health, nutrition and medicine. The science center will open up new study abroad opportunities for undergraduates and links to the local community as well as to other islands and the Galapagos National Park. In short, the Galapagos Science Center will enable the cross-disciplinary work needed to understand the interplay of conservation, development and tourism and their impacts on human, marine and terrestrial environments. The irony that researchers need a new 12,000 square-foot building to study this is not lost upon Walsh. But he believes the research benefits will outweigh the physical footprint. Most of all, he believes that the Galapagos Science Center will help to crack the Galapagos paradox.

Darwin

Darwin sailed to the Galapagos in 1835. The rest of the world caught up in recent decades, spawning a demand for modern hotels, restaurants, gift shops and transportation.

ABOVE: A brown pelican resting on the volcanic shoreline of Isabela Island. RIGHT: A giant tortoise lives along the rim of the Alcedo

Volcano on Isabela Island.

The Galapagos paradox Darwin sailed to the Galapagos in 1835. The rest of the world caught up in recent decades, spawning a demand for modern hotels, restaurants, gift shops and transportation. At first, tourists flocked to the archipelago to soak up its natural history by boat, but nowadays they want somewhere on land to sleep, grab a hot shower and even buy a frosty beverage. Consider this: In 1990, some 41,000 people visited the Galapagos; last year that number had grown to 175,000. In 1990, about 10,000 people lived there, but today that number is closer to 35,000. Almost everything consumed in the Galapagos is shipped in from the mainland — from necessities like fuel and bottled water to frivolities like potato chips and chocolates. And nearly all the power is derived from diesel generators. As the tourism industry has blossomed to $418 million per year, poor Ecuadorians migrate from the mainland to the islands with the hopes of getting jobs working in construction, tourism, or driving a taxi. An estimated $63 million of that enters the local economy; for a country with a per capita GDP of $7,600, this is a lucrative industry. The more both tourists and tourism industry employees visit and increasingly stay, the more buildings need to be built, food and water shipped in, and energy consumed. The islands, a living laboratory for studying evolution and ecology, global environmental change and conflicts between

nature and society, were the first locale to be named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. In 2007, the islands were placed on a “watch-list” for concerns about environmental degradation. They were removed from the list this year due to their demonstrated progress in addressing some of the greatest challenges that are linked to the expanding human imprint. “The paradox is that the isolation and the specialness that created the Galapagos and its branding is the very thing that is drawing people to the Galapagos,” Walsh says. “How can you have remote isolation when you have 175,000 people coming to visit? Can the golden egg be broken and tarnished so much that it ceases to be a special place?”

Multidisciplinary studies Walsh first began doing mapping projects in the Amazonian headwaters of Ecuador about a decade ago. He had no inkling that his studies would pull him farther west until one day he’d find himself mapping invasive guava plants 600 miles offshore in the Galapagos National Park. Guava was choking out native and endemic plants and even degrading agricultural areas within human-use zones. It was Walsh’s first peek at the growing problems the archipelago faced as a consequence of the expanding human dimension. Now, Walsh teaches an undergraduate course on the Galapagos, and he routinely brings UNC students into the field with him to do research. In 2006, one of those students was a geography Ph.D. candidate named Carlos Mena. After graduating from UNC, Mena returned to his home country of Ecuador where he is now a professor of geography at USFQ and the coleader of the joint UNC and USFQ Galapagos Initiative. Carolina study abroad students have showed up in Mena’s classroom in Ecuador, and his classes have interacted with Walsh’s in Chapel Hill through online interactive video documentaries. (Walsh teaches his students about the human imprint that tourism and development leave on the natural environment in the Galapagos as c o n t i n u e d well as the islands’ ecological treasures.) CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 9

The paradox

“The paradox is that the isolation and the specialness that created the Galapagos and its branding is the very thing that is drawing people to the Galapagos.” “It’s a microcosm of contested places and spaces that suffer from the collision of conservation and development,” he says. The Galapagos Science Center will help Walsh and his colleagues to study these issues more continuously and more deeply. Last summer Walsh brought a cadre of UNC students to the islands to secure GPS coordinates for every dwelling structure on Isabela Island. They also documented sewer and water conditions, with the intention of looking for patterns connecting high coliform levels in the near shore waters with human health issues. There are no functional water-treatment and sanitation systems in the Galapagos. It’s a semi-arid environment, and Walsh says that water quantity and contamination are big problems. Walsh is also interested in a better understanding of what he calls the “pushes and pulls” of migration from the mainland, by tracing the economic forces that drive (or attract) people to the islands. Among the “pushes” that take tourism workers back to the mainland are major medical events, he says. Women, if they are able, choose to travel back to the mainland to give birth. People struck with illness or needing special medical attention also depart. “It disrupts family structures and work,” Walsh says. He plans to investigate the feasibility of “telemedicine,” by using ultra high-speed Internet with real-time video and voice applications to allow, say, a doctor at UNC Hospitals to examine and diagnose someone in the Galapagos. In terms of terrestrial studies, Walsh is interested in researching what might be viewed as an unusual invasive species — goats. Pirates and buccaneers released goats on the islands a few hundred years ago. Years later, the goats had grown to a herd nearly 70,000 strong on Isabela Island that denuded much of the northern parts of the island of its vegetation, out-competed giant tortoises for

— S T E V E

W A L S H

food and left ecosystem structures altered from their native states. The goats are now mostly eradicated, but their legacy lives on like an ecological cautionary tale. Walsh and his colleagues are also setting their sights on understanding threats to the mangrove finch. Fewer than 100 of the birds remain, and he wants to assess what their habitat needs and threats are, while keeping an eye on how people and their activities may be affecting these elements. “What has kept the islands so unique all these years has been their isolation. But they are isolated no more, and the human imprint is dramatic,” Walsh says. “It’s the interactions of humans and the environment that we are keenly interested in understanding.”

An island of opportunity Walsh hopes that the new Galapagos Science Center will produce solutions that can be exported to similarly challenged places around the globe. Researchers are developing mapping methodologies that use the newest technologies from NASA and other space agencies to plot species and land-use change, water conditions and urban expansion. This information could be applied to study similar issues in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, for example. Computer models and spatial simulations that capture the way human, land and marine systems interact could be useful for policymakers in the Galapagos and in North Carolina. “Sustainable agriculture, new opportunities for our fishermen, invasive species and a balanced tourism industry are important to the Galapagos Islands,” says Jorge Torres, governor of the Galapagos Province. “We hope UNC and USFQ can work with us to address these important challenges now and into the future.” •

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESE ARCH

The Galapagos Initiative includes wide-ranging research projects engaging faculty across disciplines. Here are just a few examples of recently funded projects: • Ec o n o mi c G r ow t h a n d t h e Im p a c t s o f To u r i s m UNC political scientist Michele Hoymann will examine the use of tourism as an economic development strategy. She will survey local government, business and nonprofit leaders about their views on balancing sustainability and growth, the challenges to implementing a viable tourism strategy, how they have had to adapt their economic development approach over the

past 20 years and their attitudes to the recent laws designed to promote sustainable tourism. • M o b ili t y UNC researchers Ronald Rindfuss, Kyle Crowder and Margarita Mooney (sociology) and USFQ researchers Carlos Mena and Diego Quiroga (geography) will seek to understand mobility to and within the Galapagos Islands, as well as how tourism and migration blend into one another and influence one another.

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• N u t r i t i o n, Fo o d S e c u r i t y a n d S u s t a in a b l e A g r i c u l t u r e UNC researchers Margaret E. Bentley and Marci Campbell (nutrition) and Gabriela Valdivia (geography) will evaluate current nutritional status and food security as well as the determinants of health on San Cristobal Island. The project includes an assessment of local agricultural practices and food production for local consumption, which may impact food security among residents.

c r e a t i v e

c o l l a b o r a t i o n s

Steve Exum

Donn Young

Steve Exum

CREATIVE Collaborations

Expanding knowledge and seeking innovative solutions to 21st century challenges require creative partnerships that offer diverse approaches and perspectives. In these pages, we highlight a few examples of alliances in research, teaching and engagement involving faculty, students and alumni across the College of Arts and Sciences and beyond. In their quest for answers, these collaborators cross disciplines, institutions, geographic boundaries and experience levels, reaching a new understanding of what’s possible.

Billy E. Barnes

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T : See stories, pages 20, 12, 14, 18.

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 11

traditional surface waves as well as density-stratified fluids and internal waves, the tank is unique among research institutions. That ability garnered a $100,000 NSF grant following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, to study the physics of oil plumes interacting with the sort of density stratification found in the Gulf of Mexico. B Y N A N C Y E . O A T E S The mathematicians worked on why the plumes settled at the level they did; Steve Exum marine sciences added a new insight. Scientists study fluid dynamics ABOVE: Mathematicians Roberto Camassa (left) “Until we using giant water tank and Rich McLaughlin study fluid dynamics in a brought in marine 120-foot-long wave tank in Chapman Hall. sciences, we didn’t know that the plumes were being eaten he road from fish tank to wave and marine scientist Alberto Scotti received by bacteria,” McLaughlin said. “Neither tank started with a stick of dynamite. a highly competitive National Science department would have been able on its In constructing Max C. Chapman Foundation grant of $744,000 to build the own to convert research into something as Jr. Hall, contractors miscalculated either three-chamber tank, which was completed relevant to real-world problems.” the density of the bedrock or the strength in 2010. Marine scientist Brian White With help from marine scientist Carol of the blasting material and ended up joined the team in 2008. Arnosti, another NSF grant of $900,000 with a foundation hole deeper than they The group has collaborated to win funds the lab’s study of “marine snow” — expected. No one recalls who made additional grants, fund research projects organic particles from decaying marine life the decision to retain the underground and train undergraduates, grad students and in the lighter water near the ocean’s surface space rather than backfill it in, but when postdocs who work on the experiments. raining down through the heavier water then-marine sciences department chair They were awarded a $400,000 Defense near the ocean floor. Cisco Werner saw the space during a tour University grant from the Navy to add “That’s an important process in of the construction site in 2005, he gave a saltwater filtration system to the tank determining how much carbon gets a heads-up to applied mathematicians so its water could be reused. Even the sequestered in the deep ocean,” White said. Rich McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa, computer science department got involved “The ocean absorbs a tremendous amount the Kenan Distinguished Professor of recently when the director of the applied of carbon dioxide, preventing it from Mathematics. They requested the space engineering lab, Leandra Vicci, donned a remaining in the atmosphere where it acts for their fluids lab. At the time, the lab wet suit to tinker with a balky computeras a greenhouse gas. Not all of this carbon, consisted of a collection of fish tanks in a controlled gate in the deep tank. however, sinks to the deep ocean. Some of room in Phillips Hall the size of a supply The tank’s total length is 120 feet. It it gets released by biological processes in the closet. can hold up to 13,500 gallons of water. upper ocean, from which it can return to “It was dirt, no actual floor, but it “We started doing fluid dynamics 10 the atmosphere.” spanned one whole side of the building,” years ago in a fish tank,” Camassa said. The In all, about 30 undergrads, graduate Camassa said of the serendipitous cavern. new wave tank tests whether their theories students and postdocs work in the lab, “It gave us a clear shot to fit this long tank hold true after being scaled up. supported by a five-year, $1.2 million that I’d been dreaming about.” The promise of the tank attracted training grant from NSF, the second such The fluids lab has brought in more White to UNC from the Woods Hole grant the lab has won. than $3.3 million in grant funding so far. In Oceanographic Institution. With its “That will fund 10 years of training in 2006, Camassa with McLaughlin, Werner ability to allow researchers to study the lab,” McLaughlin said. •

MAKING Waves

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Shared love of music leads to debut CD, new record company

Tangled up U

IN BLUES

NC historian his attention by UNC folklore graduate student ABOVE RIGHT: William Ferris recalls in Vincent Joos, who is the editor of the French Carrboro artist vivid detail that swelterblues magazine, ABS. Phil Blank ing evening on Aug. 2, Turchi took more than three hours of raw Kristen Chavez designed the 1967, in Como, Miss., audio recordings, digitally mastered them and cover for Devil when he recorded legreleased “Mississippi Fred McDowell: Come and Down Records’ debut CD. ABOVE LEFT: endary blues artist Fred McDowell, his Found You Gone, The Bill Ferris Recordings,” Historian Bill Ferris (left) and student wife Annie Mae, and fellow musicians the debut CD from his new record company, Reed Turchi share a love of blues music. rocking the night away at a friend’s Devil Down Records. house. “Now this here’s the first piece I learned to It was an especially memorable play when I was a little boy: it’s called the ‘Big encounter for young Bill Ferris. But even he couldn’t imagine then Fat Mama with the Meat Shaking on Her Bone,’” McDowell says that his tapes would one day inspire another young man to launch as he opens the CD’s 18 tracks. a recording company. That night was the beginning of Ferris’ work The CD also features an interview with Ferris. The songs as a folklorist. He was blown away by McDowell’s style of playing appear on the album in the order they were played that night 43 the bottleneck guitar, which Ferris described as sounding like “an years ago, giving it a “house party feel.” Positive reviews have come orchestra” or “a freight train running down the tracks.” McDowell, in from blues publications all over the world. Turchi wrote a business who died in 1972, influenced countless musicians, including Bonnie plan for his company after taking an arts entrepreneurship class Raitt, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones. taught by associate professor of music Mark Katz and music industry “It was magical,” Ferris recalled. “I was this young, white kid entrepreneur Ken Weiss. Turchi designed a Web site, complete with discovering a world I had never known, of music and of families audio samples and videos of McDowell playing the guitar. who welcomed me and took me on a journey that was deeply “As the night wears on, Fred McDowell warms up the guitar,” rooted in the Northeast Mississippi hills. … I recorded over three Turchi said. “It’s some of those later tracks, like ‘Come and Found hours of singing and of conversation, and then we drove back home You Gone,’ that I would argue are among the best McDowell and I slept on a couch in [the McDowells’] living room. The next recordings because they are informal like that.” morning, I woke up to the smell of biscuits and eggs and bacon What’s next? Devil Down Records co-released the North cooking and coffee.” Mississippi Allstars’ next album “Live in the Hills” in January. This Today Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of spring, Turchi also will be releasing an album by North Mississippi History and senior associate director of UNC’s Center for the Study legend Kenny Brown and a compilation from the North Mississippi of the American South. The Fred McDowell recordings eventually Hill Country Picnic. And Turchi recently became president of became a part of the William R. Ferris Collection in the Southern UNC’s student record label Vinyl Records. Folklore Collection at UNC. Until recently, Ferris had not listened “Reed is one of the most resourceful students we’ve had,” said to the recording of that one special night in 1967 in about 40 years. Katz. “He seems to have unlimited energy.” That’s where Carolina junior and blues fan Reed Turchi of Ferris agreed. Asheville comes into the picture. Turchi is pursuing a major in “I always tell my students to follow your heart and do what you American studies (with a concentration in Southern studies) and love in the deepest way — and if you do that, you will be successful minors in entrepreneurship and history. Turchi took Ferris’ class in and happy. And Reed is the embodiment of that.” • Southern music, and the Fred McDowell tapes were brought to ONLINE EXTRAS: More at devildownrecords.com. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 13

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imes clatter on a table top. Audience members make cat sounds. Ice melts in a cup. These sounds are fodder for the UNC students who compose electronic pieces of music in the Electro-Acoustic Studio on the second floor of Hill Hall. “Electronic compositions can create, in a way that you can’t with traditional music, different human experiences and have them juxtaposed in a different way,” said assistant professor Donn Young of music Stephen Anderson, who teaches advanced composition. “These pieces can have broader implications Professors, students & computers than standard music create new compositions does. The challenge is to provoke a moving B Y D O N E V A N S ’ 8 0 human experience without having traditional pitches and rhythms be the central focus TOP: Stephen Anderson chats with of the music.” students in the Electro-Acoustic Studio. Stephen Anderson and music colleague Allen Anderson (no RIGHT: Allen Anderson also collaborates Donn Young relation) ask their students to see what they can create with diverse with students on music compositions. sounds. Students learn that similar to traditional repertoire, electroacoustic compositions may evoke a sense of forward motion, musiLearning runs both ways: Allen Anderson broadened his palette cal progression, dynamics, cadence and climax, as well as delineate a by tapping into his students’ enthusiasm for making music with well-defined formal structure and share a program or storyline. computers. He didn’t bring the expertise of using the software, The pieces also require a degree of collaboration among but he did bring an energy to learn about it and talk about it that students and instructors not seen in every classroom. Students inspired the students. bounce ideas off classmates and professors, use creativity to fuel Van Gils and four other students worked with Allen Anderson energy levels, and share computer techniques and listening ears. on “Cicadas in the Clouds,” which they performed at the CHAT “It helps to get other opinions because ears can get tired,” Festival. The piece involved several laptops, a microphone to said Lowell Hutcheson, a junior in Stephen Anderson’s class who capture sounds from the audience and a mixing board. used dimes to produce the sound she needed for her piece “Cold “What we worked out with the software was a way for the Hard Cash.” “Fresh ears are helpful to sound creation and sound sound captured in the microphone to be recorded as a sound file processing.” and sent from a hub to the other computers,” Allen Anderson said. Melding compositional ideas, such as melodic material or “We were a laptop orchestra; there were no instruments on stage. structure, with actual nuts-and-bolts technical programs for the Sounds went into one computer, were captured as sound files, laptops to use was inspiring to Alex Van Gils ’10. He took a isolated as sound files and then sent over our private network to the composition class with Allen Anderson and worked with him other computers. We had a little collection … that we could then and several students on an electronic piece that was performed play back to the audience.” at a campus festival called Collaborations: Humanities, Art & In speaking of another collaborative composition, Van Gils Technology (CHAT) in February 2010. said teamwork was essential to the piece from its inception to the “Some of us who are in rock groups are used to the shared performance. group effort,” said Van Gils. “But for composers, the writing “Rather than, I write a movement, you write a movement, process usually is solitary. This collaborative process has more of a and we put it together, we literally wrote every note of the piece democratic feel to it.” together, discussing and sharing ideas,” Van Gils said. The Electro-Acoustic Studio, with its arrangement of monitors, The experience also gave Allen Anderson a chance to respeakers, electronic boards, a keyboard and thickets of electronic examine his role in the partnership between teacher and student. wiring, provides a cozy space where students can produce finely “What it comes down to for the instructor is [creating] tuned soundscapes. The computer programs alter, create and process the opportunity for people to feel like they have something to sounds. Junior Vince Webb spent an hour recording melting ice for contribute to a project,” he said. • Stephen Anderson’s composition class.

Electro-Acoustic

MUSIC

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REAL-LIFE Ethics

Innovative Parr Center addresses real-world dilemmas B Y

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themselves to easy solutions is too tempting for teachers and students to pass up. Certainly, there will never be a shortage of teachable moments. Consider just a few of the scenarios that

ong after most people had finished final exams and left for winter break, four philosophy graduate students and Jan Boxill, director of the Parr Center for Ethics, gathered in a small room on the second floor of Caldwell Hall to continue with big plans for the spring: the first-ever Triangle High School Ethics Bowl, modeled after the collegiate UNC Ethics Bowl, now in its fifth year. Already dedicated “to being the public face of ethics for the University,” the Parr Center is keen to take that commitment statewide. Given the Parr Center’s affiliation with the philosophy department, it’s fitting that Boxill, who’s also a senior lecturer in the department, has two equally logical constructs for its mission. There’s this: “Ethical thinking moves you from the more theoretical aspects of philosophy to real-life principles. It helps you organize your thoughts, and gives you a framework for when to speak and how to act.” And then this: “Ethical thinking gets [you] out of the ivory tower and down onto the fields of play.” UNC graduate students will serve as “coaches” for the teens from public, private and charter high schools in the Research Triangle area who will participate in the ethics bowl. Organizers believe the opportunity to make sense of rippedfrom-the-headlines issues that don’t lend

the Lunch & Learn series, which is free and open to the public. The first Lunch & Learn of 2011 was “Wiki Leaks, Ethics, and the Law,” led by two professors of journalism and mass communication at UNC. Julian Assange’s disclosures of massive amounts of closely guarded war and diplomatic information led to everything from cries TOP: A 2008 UNC team competes at the of “treason” and threats National Ethics Bowl in Cincinnati. BOTTOM: of legal prosecution to Parr Center Director Jan Boxill (left) with hearty congratulations. environmental ethics speaker Noam Chomsky. The philosophers and ethicists at the Parr Center recognized another opportunity to help people think more deeply about a controversial situation. In addition to the timely Lunch & Learns, each academic year the Parr Center chooses a dedicated theme. The planned theme for next year is social media and information. Programming in the current acedamic year has revolved around environmental ethics issues, kicking off last will be in play for the April 30 competition: October with a public lecture by renowned writer and linguist Noam Chomsky. When to speak out against homophobic slurs, linkages between corporal punishment The year will conclude with a day-long and child abuse, American-born children of symposium on April 2, addressing local illegal immigrants, privacy on social networks environmental issues such as transportation, such as Facebook and the rights of athletes to food, energy, water and development. “All of the choices we make on a local compete while pregnant. level, from the food we buy, to where our Putting feet on theoretical issues has garbage goes, to how we move around, to proved to be a savvy strategy for the Parr how we develop our communities, have Center, established during the 2004-2005 academic year with a gift from the Gary W. profound ethical implications for ourselves, our neighbors and even people on the other Parr Family Foundation. From the getside of the earth,” Boxill says. go, there’s been an effective collaboration “Feelings are important, but our lives among undergraduates, graduates, faculty as individuals and our lives in common fellows, and visiting fellows and scholars. are about more than feelings. We need This has created a pool of talent and to also deal in facts and recognize no one expertise vast enough to address themes is infallible. Just because there aren’t easy from environmental responsibility and genetic testing to political liberty and military answers doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at ethics. In 2008, the American Philosophical the facts and try to appreciate different sides Association awarded its Prize for Excellence of an argument. Ethics figure into every aspect of life.” • and Innovation in Philosophy Programs to the Parr Center. ONLINE EXTRAS: More information at Among the Center’s regular programs is parrcenter. unc.edu. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 15

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Superfine are working on a computer model to evaluate surgical options for children with obstructed airways.

Scientists and surgeons are developing ways to clear children’s airways

Breathing RELIEF W Steve Exum

hen a child is born with an obstructed airway, physicians can intervene with different types of surgery. But to decide whether to operate and when, and which procedures to offer, doctors must make educated guesses, relying heavily on their own experience. “Typically it’s very young children with these problems, so the challenge in deciding the best therapy is: Do we allow the airway to grow first, or do we surgically intervene now? It’s really up to the individual surgeon or pediatric pulmonologist caring for the child,” says Stephanie Davis, chief of pediatric pulmonology in the UNC School of Medicine. Computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians precisely model how air flows in constricted spaces. Why can’t they do that to predict when surgery will help children with these conditions? Davis and other physicians from the School of Medicine are working with a multidisciplinary team from the College of Arts and Sciences to do just that. Funded by $3.6 million from the National Institutes of Health, the Pediatric Airways Project is creating a computerbased workbench that doctors can use to predict the outcome of various surgical options, based on computed tomography (CT) images and other information about their patients. CT is a powerful technique for producing 2-D and 3-D cross-sectional images of an object from flat X-ray images. For now, the project will focus on modeling airways of children with two conditions —

Pierre Robin sequence (characterized by small jaw and posterior displacement of the tongue, causing airway obstruction) and subglottic stenosis (narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords). The scientists hope to equip pediatric pulmonologists and otolaryngologists/head and neck surgeons with a simulation tool like those used by aeronautics engineers. “When engineers make a change in the aircraft, they have first very carefully simulated the results, so they understand what effect that will have on performance,” says Russ Taylor, research professor of computer science, physics and astronomy, and applied and materials sciences. “We want to develop a similar tool so that [medical professionals] can ask the computer, ‘if this is the geometry of the airway that we know from CT scans, and we adjust it this way with surgery, how is that going to affect the breathing within this infant?’” This pediatric airway model is possible only because of a large collaboration that began in 2003 — the Virtual Lung Project. Initially started by Richard Superfine, Taylor-Williams Distinguished Professor in the department of physics and astronomy, Gregory Forest, Grant Dahlstrom Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering, and Richard Boucher, Kenan Professor of Medicine and director of UNC’s Cystic Fibrosis Center, the virtual lung is a huge undertaking. The researchers are trying to model how mucus clearance and other functions work deep in the lung,

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down to the level of the cell, with the goal of ultimately developing new treatments for lung disorders such as cystic fibrosis. Superfine says that half the challenge of such collaborations is teaching scientists to understand each other’s languages, so in this way the pediatric airways project has a head start. “We’re applying the strengths of the community we’ve developed for the virtual lung to this closely related but new problem,” Superfine says. The Pediatric Airways model will combine existing virtual-reality and airflow simulation technologies in a workbench where physicians can see, touch and hear how different surgical procedures will affect the airflow of each individual patient. The team will work with some newer imaging tools, such as optical coherence tomography (OCT), a technique which is similar to ultrasound but uses light waves rather than sound waves and produces images of a finer resolution. The project will use data and images from actual pediatric patients, but treatment decisions will not be made based on the model during this initial period. The researchers will spend four years developing and validating the model, says Carlton Zdanski, chief of pediatric otolaryngology/ head and neck surgery and surgical director of the North Carolina Children’s Airway Center. • ONLINE EXTRAS: Watch the researchers talk about the project at www. youtube.com/user/UNCCollege.

GLOBE-TROTTING

for Tardigrades Physics major studies microscopic ‘water bears’ B Y

unior physics major Susan Clark traveled halfway around the world last summer hunting tiny superheroes who can withstand extreme conditions. These microscopic animals can survive boiling, freezing, radiation, exposure to the vacuum of space and very long periods of dehydration. Clark is a Morehead-Cain Scholar-turned-microorganism detective who is interested in astrobiology research. She teamed up with her friend Kristin Rhodes from the College of William and Mary on an international summer research experience. Clark had financial support from the scholarship program; she just needed to figure out where to go. She found out about the Google Lunar X Prize, a worldwide competition of privately funded teams vying to be the first to launch a robot on the moon between 2012 and 2014. Clark started e-mailing teams to see if they would be willing to take two “super-enthusiastic physics undergraduates” under their wing for the summer. She got an e-mail from Team Selene in China, led by Markus Bindhammer. “Markus said, ‘You should come to China. We want to do this project where we send tardigrades into space,’” Clark said. “Our reaction was, ‘Yes, we’d love to do that, but what are tardigrades?’ I literally typed ‘tardigrades’ into Google, and one of the first things that came up was Dr. [Bob] Goldstein’s lab. And I thought, ‘Well, how very convenient. He’s at UNC!’” Tardigrades are affectionately known by scientists as “water bears” because they look like chubby minuscule bears (with four pairs of legs). Many species are transparent, and they are only about a quarter to half of a millimeter long.

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According to biologist Goldstein, tardigrades have developed an almost cult-like following because of their ability to survive in a dried-up state for years. Then, after being rehydrated with water, the tardigrades come back to life in only a few minutes. After surviving about 600 million years of evolution, tardigrades could hold the keys to the ways in which animals evolve. Goldstein has even created a Web site devoted to the creatures (tardigrades. TOP: Tardigrades are bio.unc.edu). affectionately known as ‘water Goldstein let bears.’ MIDDLE: Susan Clark (left) Clark borrow some and Kristin Rhodes at the University books and articles on of Padua in Italy. BOTTOM: Clark at tardigrades and invited a lab in Modena, Italy. her to lab meetings. He gave her some lab space under the guidance of postdoctoral fellow Jenny Tenlen, one of only a few experts worldwide on tardigrade development, to practice rearing the water bears. And then he sent a letter of recommendation for Clark and Rhodes to tardigrade experts in Italy. Italian researcher Roberto Bertolani identified the tardigrade species that Goldstein’s lab is now studying. His colleague Lorena Rebecchi was part of a team that analyzed tardigrades when they came back from a 2007 space mission. The Italians offered to set up lab space for Clark and her friend for part of their summer. The duo then spent four weeks in Italy and five in China researching tardigrades. Finding the water bears in China posed a more difficult challenge than Clark had anticipated. She and Rhodes poked and prodded moss samples, tree bark and leaf litter in Shanghai for days. “We were getting pretty worried, but we finally found them on a tree covered in lichen,” Clark said. A sample of those tardigrades was sent by FedEx to Italy, where they were analyzed by Bertolani and Rebecchi (after spending several weeks in Italian customs). China’s Team Selene is still vying for the Lunar X Prize and hoping to send tardigrades into space. Clark calls her global experience “the most amazing summer of my life.” She is continuing her biophysics work this spring in Goldstein’s lab and is considering a graduate degree in physics. “Carolina is an unbelievable place for undergrads who want to do research,” she said. • ONLINE EXTRAS: Want to be tardi-savvy? Check out Clark’s blog at moonstruck2010.wordpress.com. Listen to an NPR story featuring Goldstein at tinyurl.com/cpflfw. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 17

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‘TO RIGHT These Wrongs’

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UNC-Duke project addresses N.C. poverty

early 17 percent of North Carolinians live in poverty. In the winter of 2009, more than 10,000 homes in the state had no heat and almost twice that number had no indoor plumbing. Undergraduates at UNC and Duke University had absorbed those sobering facts on paper in their new two-semester, jointcampus course on poverty and inequality. But it wasn’t until they took class field trips in the fall to different regions of the state that those numbers became real. Eddie Wu, a junior philosophy major from Duke, and a classmate Billy E. Barnes visited the department of social services in Halifax County. The students were ushered through a crowded Donn Young waiting room to the director’s office for an interview. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Donn Young “As we walked out, I could not A grandmother near make eye contact with the people Boone makes homemade knitted sitting outside who were still waiting goods for sale and a Lumbee child in to be seen,” Wu wrote in an essay for Robeson County plays on a tenant farm Encompass, Duke’s ethics magazine. in these two black-and-white photos “That spoke to me as powerfully as any from the N.C. Fund. • Students in Jim statistic. … We as college students take for granted our privilege of access.” Leloudis’ and Robert Korstad’s class The Moral Challenges of Poverty listen to and present projects on poverty and Inequality project is the brainchild and inequality in North Carolina. of two UNC history alums who were in graduate school together and now 18 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

teach in both Blue Devil and Tar Heel country. James Leloudis (B.A. ’77, Ph.D. ’89) is professor of history and associate dean for honors in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Robert Korstad (B.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’88) is Kevin D. Gorter Professor of Public Policy and History at Duke. Korstad and Leloudis had teamed up to write a book on the groundbreaking North Carolina Fund, a philanthropic effort created

Lily Roberts, a UNC junior with a double major in peace, war and defense and English, said one of the hardest things about the class has been trying to “dispel our collective understanding of what the face of poverty looks like.” “Even as we read statistics that indicated otherwise, we kept going back to stereotypical images of welfare mothers and drugaddicted homeless people,” she said.

Donn Young

“We are at a crossroads. How do Donn Young we build a prosperous future for all North Carolinians? This demands as much intellectual creativity as we can bring to it.” —James Leloudis

by former N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford to address the state’s poverty. To Right These Wrongs, with photographs by Billy E. Barnes, was published in 2010. The N.C. Fund came up short in the battle against poverty, but the story Korstad agreed that one of the continues to be a source of inspiration. challenges was in getting students to And the co-authors understand the historical roots of poverty, wanted the book to and that it’s not an “individual problem.” Donn Young do more than just sit “They’ve begun to understand that TOP LEFT: on a library shelf and it’s a complicated story,” he said. “Their Students discuss what they’ve learned at a dinner gather dust. previous interaction with people they consider poor was at Robert Korstad’s house. TOP RIGHT: UNC “We wanted often at the homeless shelter or soup kitchen. They’ve students take the free Robertson Bus to Duke for to see this book do learned that the people cleaning their dorm rooms may not the poverty class. BOTTOM: Robert Korstad (left) and some work in the make enough money to [rise] above the poverty line.” James Leloudis want to see their book on the N.C. world,” Leloudis said. As part of the project, a yearlong faculty colloquium, With help made up of scholars from Duke and UNC across different Fund’s war on poverty ‘do some work in the world.’ from Duke’s disciplines, also has been meeting to discuss poverty. Kenan Institute for This semester, the project will finalize plans for Ethics and UNC School of Law’s Center on Poverty, Work and a new online magazine called At The Table. It will be a forum Opportunity, Leloudis and Korstad launched their honors course for translating research into social action, and for philanthropists, in the fall. UNC undergraduate students have been taking the free social entrepreneurs, poverty organizations and others to share best Robertson Scholars bus to Duke for the class. The students have practices, grant opportunities, problems and solutions. been meeting in weekly “labs” — maps, computers, books and Leloudis and Korstad hope to expand the poverty conversation a whiteboard spread around them — where they’ve been doing to campuses and communities around the state. intense analyses of poverty in diverse regions of the state. The labs “We are at a crossroads,” Leloudis said. “How do we build a are directed by graduate students and overseen by Rachel Seidman prosperous future for all North Carolinians? This demands as much at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. intellectual creativity as we can bring to it.” • This spring, students are developing individual projects, ONLINE EXTRAS: Learn more at www.torightthesewrongs.com. including research, documentary film and public service efforts. Read a book chapter at lcrm.lib.unc.edu/voice/works. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 19

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RIGHT: Students explore the skies

via Chapman Hall’s rooftop observatory. MIDDLE: Royce Murray (left) served as a mentor for UNC alum Lowry Caudill. BOTTOM: Chemist Gary Glish works on an explosives detector in Caudill Hall. Steve Exum

Mentoring CHEMISTRY

Royce Murray’s science ‘family’ pays tribute

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lthough his name adorns a new building in the Carolina Physical Science Complex, Royce Murray remains as down-to-earth and humble as when he joined the UNC chemistry department more than 50 years ago. Having a building named for him “feels like a dream,” says Murray, “and one morning I’m going to wake up. But I deliberately try not to notice it; I have seen people who have been changed by recognitions, and I don’t want to be like that.” The building name is just one of many ways that Murray’s contributions as a scholar and mentor in the field of analytical chemistry have been recognized. The extensive list includes being elected to the National Academy of Sciences, being selected as the editor of the preeminent journal in his field, Analytical Chemistry — a position he has held since 1991 — and receiving UNC’s Thomas Jefferson Award, which honors the faculty member who best exemplifies the ideals and objectives of the founding father. Murray, Kenan Professor of Chemistry, says another a recent moment that has brought him great joy was learning about the birth of his first and only grandson. That’s not surprising since family is such an important thing in Murray’s life, not just his immediate kin but his self-described “chemistry family.” Murray says that he feels like a father to the students he mentors, and many think of him that way, too. In fact, it was one former student, Lowry Caudill, who provided the $5 million gift to the science complex project which funded the naming of Murray Hall. Caudill, who received his B.S. in chemistry from Carolina in 1979, is highly accomplished in his own right, having co-founded Magellan Laboratories after 20 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

Steve Exum

a successful stint at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. In his last year as a Carolina undergraduate, Caudill did his senior research in Murray’s lab. “I remember thinking at the time that if I were ever in a position to lead a group or organization, Steve Exum I wanted to model myself after Professor Murray,” says Caudill. “He is one of the most recognized chemists in the world, yet he was, and still is, an incredibly nice person. He helped me take my first steps into the scientific world which I love.” Mark Wightman, the W.R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Chemistry, was another role model for Caudill and a link in his connection to Murray. After doing his graduate work in Murray’s lab in the early 1970s, Wightman joined the faculty at Indiana University. At the suggestion of Murray, after graduating from Carolina, Caudill joined Wightman’s lab at Indiana, where he received his Ph.D. Wightman returned to Carolina as a faculty member in 1989, becoming a colleague of Murray’s. “As a student, I learned that Royce is just a first-class mentor,” says Wightman. “He is very current on what is interesting in chemistry, so projects he gives to graduate students are at the cutting edge of science.”

Venable Hall and Murray Hall, the last two buildings in the Carolina Physical Science Complex, were dedicated on University Day, Oct. 12. The five buildings that comprise the complex house the departments of chemistry, computer science, marine sciences, mathematics, physics and astronomy, and the Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology. The buildings were designed to enhance collaboration and interdisciplinary inquiry.

Steve Exum

“And Royce is a great colleague because he always has an open ear,” continues Wightman. “He is very collegial yet highly productive. His whole scientific career has these benchmarks where he has thought up a new idea that nobody has ever thought about before, and immediately people are jumping on the bandwagon.” In addition to being an outstanding teacher and scholar, Murray has strengthened the sciences at Carolina through his involvement in the design of campus science buildings. He began in 1970 with the planning of the building now called Kenan Laboratories, and continued through the development of the complex containing the building bearing his name. “To create buildings that work, you have to understand what your colleagues need; the requirements are different for a physicist, organic chemist or physical chemist, for example,” Murray says. Caudill says that giving back to Carolina by helping to fund new buildings has been a privilege. Another building in the complex, the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories, bears the name of Caudill and his wife. “When I look back, my science career is pinned to two people: Royce Murray and Mark

Wightman,” Caudill says. “The success that I have had from a business standpoint, I can trace right back to those two guys giving me such a fundamental understanding of problem solving and science and just a great foundation for my Steve Exum career.” Caudill also has been instrumental in the entrepreneurship program in the College of Arts and Sciences. After selling Magellan Laboratories to Cardinal Health in 2002, he and his business partner decided to leave the company in December 2003 “because we were ready to move on to our next endeavors,” Caudill says. Not long after, Caudill was invited to a dinner at which successful entrepreneurs were asked for their input on the curriculum for a minor in entrepreneurship. Steve Exum Ultimately, Chancellor TOP: The courtHolden Thorp, then yard area between Murray and chair of the department of Venable Halls. MIDDLE: The Royce chemistry, asked Caudill to Murray family on Murray Hall co-teach and co-create the dedication day. BOTTOM: Chemistry scientific ventures course. graduate student Danielle Herrod “All of the classes are works with plants in Caudill Labs. taught by an academician and co-taught by a cardcarrying entrepreneur,” says Caudill. “I have now been teaching since the spring of 2007, and it has been a wonderful experience.” “UNC is one of the recognized leaders in the world at teaching entrepreneurship,” he adds. “To be part of that is a real privilege.” Now that he is on campus teaching, Caudill sees Murray and Wightman regularly. “I bump into them all the time. We also have seen each other socially. It’s great to be back with my science family.” • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 21

magine taking a class on postwar Germany in German or a global business marketing class in Spanish. Students interested in advancing their language skills at Carolina are doing just that, thanks to the Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Special program integrates study of foreign languages into mainstream curriculum

Kristen Chavez

¿Hablas ESPAÑOL? B Y K R I S T E N C H AV E Z ’ 1 3

Sophomore global studies major Ana Cabello-De la Garza is taking her second LAC course this spring, “Latin America Since Independence.” (She previously participated in a French section for a global studies course.) Her current class has a Spanish section led by Julian Diez Torres, a Ph.D. candidate in romance languages. One benefit of the course is that it covers all areas, says Cabello-De la Garza. “You learn what was and currently is happening in Latin America, and it gives you the opportunity to express yourself in Spanish and [enhance] your communication and comprehension skills.” The LAC program reaches beyond classes and across a variety of departments and disciplines across the University to bring the relevance of other languages and cultures closer to students and faculty. “We’re trying to find a way of engaging students from different disciplines, but also taking interdisciplinary approaches to global topics,” said Tanya Kinsella, the undergraduate academic program coordinator in the Center for European Studies, who also oversees the LAC program. “It’s an additional commitment on behalf of the students, but they are usually really motivated and excited to use the language.” Since it began in the spring of 1996, the LAC program has offered nine languages (Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Swahili, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish) for more than 55 courses across 23 disciplines,

and it is still growing. TOP: Ph.D. candidate Kristen Chavez The initiative is Allison Bigelow (right) funded in part by the discusses global marketing in Spanish College and U.S. Dewith undergraduate Ginny Crothers. partment of Education while incorporating BOTTOM: Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers Title VI funds, which information from leads the German section for ‘Society support programs and the local Latino and Culture of Postwar Germany.’ centers focusing on community. global area studies. Senior business Although UNC was not the first university major Caitlin Styres is enrolled in English to incorporate this type of intensive language Ph.D. candidate Allison Bigelow’s “Global instruction, it has one of the longest-lasting Marketing” Spanish section. Styres said programs, according to Kinsella. learning business skills in another language is Students may enroll in a main lecture critical to success in today’s world. course, which may not always have a “Cultural knowledge and awareness direct relation to the language in their LAC are just as important as the ability to speak sections. Sometimes a faculty member is another language, something that Allison closely tied to the language and research, has been able to bring to the class through such as history professor John Chasteen’s country-specific case studies,” Styres said. Latin America course. He has researched Undergraduate students are not the only many aspects of Latin American culture, ones who benefit from LAC. The program including nationalism and national identity. relies on graduate teaching assistants who For less commonly taught languages, like receive valuable hands-on teaching skills for Swahili or Arabic, there are combined the job market. With additional coursework, discussion sections. they may apply for a graduate certificate in Strong student demand led to the languages-across-the-curriculum instruction. creation of a Spanish section for “Intro The program shouldn’t deter students to Environment and Society” last fall, an who are not yet fluent in another language, attempt to attract students in the sciences. as a LAC class provides more opportunities And approval for LAC research credit is in to practice their skills with native speakers in the works for students who are conducting the class, says Cabello-De la Garza. research in a foreign language. “With the interaction and dynamics For example, students taking a course of the class, you experience new words and with Hannah Gill, assistant director for the colloquialisms with native speakers, which Institute for the Study of the Americas, also exposes you to new viewpoints by conducted ethnographic research in Mexico applying what you know,” she said. •

22 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

PROFILE P R O F I L E

Words without Borders Alane Mason helps readers travel the world of literature

Eric Darton

By Pamela Babcock RIGHT: Alane Mason, founder of Words without Borders,

in New York City’s Bryant Park.

Alane Salierno Mason longs

for days when snow stops the world, when appointments are canceled, meetings are postponed, the phone goes quiet and even the relentless stream of e-mail slows to a nearly frozen trickle. In the cocoon of those halted hours she can be alone in doing what she loves — working with words.

Mason is a New York book editor. It’s a busy job in a busy place. But as much as she enjoys reading, she wants to change something about books. She wants to knock down the walls that separate great writing by the author’s language. Her goal is to make it easier for readers, especially those who read only in English, to travel the world of literature. Mason (English ’86), a vice president and senior editor at W.W. Norton & Co., is founder and president of Words without Borders, a not-for-profit dedicated to translating, publishing and promoting the best in international literature. “The aim is really to broaden the horizons of all English language readers and to nurture the spirit of curiosity and openness to the rest of the world,” said Mason, whose modest office on Fifth Avenue overlooks the New York Public Library. Mason founded Words without Borders in 2003. It’s an online magazine where editors can sample works by writers

from other countries “and maybe fall in love with one or two authors. Because the only way you can publish literature is to fall in love with somebody and really go to the wall to champion that author,” Mason explained. A native of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., Mason’s upbringing was greatly influenced by her Italian grandparents. Her family lived in an apartment in a Tudor-style house that her grandfather, an immigrant from Naples, Italy, bought in 1946 for $7,500. Mason took Italian for the first time at UNC and spent a summer in Italy studying the language and researching her family’s roots. Her first job out of college was as an intern at Harper’s Magazine. She later worked at Simon & Schuster and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, but continued studying Italian. In the mid-1990s, she translated a short novel, Elio Vittorini’s Conversations in Sicily, and was hooked on translation. Mason’s acquisition list, representing 16 years of work at Norton, includes Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, which was a #1 New York Times paperback bestseller and National Book Award finalist, and Stephen Greenblatt’s bestseller and Pulitzer finalist Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Since its inception, Words without Borders has published more than 1,100 pieces from more than 110 countries and 90 different languages, Mason said. Success stories include Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, a recent anthology by best-selling author Reza Aslan, as well as a piece by Romanianborn German novelist Herta Müller, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Words

without Borders also was the first to publish Magdy El Shafee’s graphic novel Metro, seized by Cairo police upon publication and never available in the original Arabic. Mason and Randall Kenan, now an associate professor of English at Carolina, met while they were students taking the honors seminar in creative writing taught by English faculty members Doris Betts and Daphne Athas. The first book that Mason acquired and edited was Kenan’s second, a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. “Alane is smart, ruthless, dedicated and what I would describe as a pragmatic idealist,” Kenan said. “Her taste in literature is impeccable.” “Aside from creating a legacy as a top-notch New York editor, with a stable of lasting and important writers to her credit, she has created an extremely valuable resource in Words without Borders,” Kenan added. “In time it will be recognized as a powerful and important archive which will have a vast impact upon literature and upon international relations.” Words without Borders recently launched an education initiative with the hope of getting educators to use contemporary international literature in the classroom. The group has begun to link foreign writers with American classes, and some teachers have developed lesson plans using Words without Borders material. “There are a limited number of people who are readers,” Mason said. “But of those people, many if not most have a curiosity and an interest in finding out about the rest of the world.” • ONLINE EXTRAS: Read more at wordswithoutborders.org.

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 23

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

Lee Yeager May is the new associate dean and director of academic advising in the College of Arts and Sciences. She replaces longtime associate dean Carolyn Cannon, who retired from UNC after 25 years of service.

Lee May

May had been the associate director for advising and admissions in the undergraduate program at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School since 2006. In that role, she promoted UNC and the business school to prospective students and their families, designed and conducted programs for high school students, and advised students part time in the College of Arts and Sciences. •

Online William Blake archive expands T

he English poet, painter and National Endowment for the Humanities printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) (NEH) recently granted it $230,000, which invented a technique he called illuminated will let the editors add another 500 digital printing. images to the archive, Viscomi said. “He would write a poem The professors and teams of students backward on a copper plate with at UNC and Rochester also will be able to a quill pen, using an ink that was add new features and tools to enhance the impervious to acid, and draw a user’s experience; further their work on design around the words,” said manuscripts and rare typographical works; Joseph Viscomi, James G. Kenan prepare 20 or more illuminated books and Distinguished Professor of English. numerous series of prints, drawings and “Then Blake or his wife would print paintings for publication; code more than the plate on fine wove paper and finish the impression in watercolors, pen and ink.” Today, Blake’s illuminated books, scattered in museums and special collections libraries, bring millions at auctions. But scholars and students around the world can study Blake’s works online thanks to the William Blake Archive, a project created by scholars at the University of Rochester, the University of California, Riverside and UNC. The creators and editors are Morris Eaves, English professor and Richard L. Turner Professor of Joseph Viscomi is a creator and editor of The Blake Archive. Humanities at Rochester; Robert Essick, distinguished professor emeritus of English literature at Riverside; 1,000 images so that they are searchable; and UNC’s Viscomi. and add 40 years worth of issues of Blake/ Sponsored by the Library of Congress, An Illustrated Quarterly, a peer-reviewed the archive, available at www.blakearchive. journal that Viscomi calls “the journal of org, has now received a major boost. The record in Blake studies.” • Dan Sears

MAY NAMED HEAD OF ACADEMIC ADVISING

Carolina #1 best value for 10th time

iplinger’s Personal Finance has ranked UNC the best value in American public higher education for a “remarkable” 10th time in a row. The consumer finance magazine started ranking the best values in public universities in 1998; Carolina has been number one every time. Kiplinger’s editors say their top 100 public campuses deliver “a stellar education at an affordable price.” “The takeaway for soon-to-be matriculating students: Look for schools that deliver an outstanding, affordable education in good times and bad,” Kiplinger’s story states. “The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill … is a prime example.” •

24 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

LOCALS MOVE OUT WHEN IMMIGRANTS MOVE IN

U N L O C K I N G the potential of synthetic blood A

Dan Sears

team of UNC scientists has created particles that closely mirror some of the key properties of red blood cells, potentially helping pave the way for the development of synthetic blood. The new discovery — outlined in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — could lead to more effective treatments for life-threatening medical conditions such as cancer. Researchers used technology known as PRINT (Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates) to produce very soft hydrogel particles that mimic the size, shape and flexibility of red blood cells, allowing the particles to circulate in the body for extended periods of time. Researchers believe the findings — especially regarding flexibility — Joseph DeSimone (left) and Timothy Merkel are significant because red blood cells naturally deform in order to pass through microscopic pores in organs and narrow blood vessels. Over their 120-day lifespan, real cells gradually become stiffer and eventually are filtered out of circulation when they can no longer deform enough to pass through pores in the spleen. To date, attempts to create effective red blood cell mimics have been limited because the particles tend to be quickly filtered out of circulation due to their inflexibility. The findings could affect approaches to treating cancer. “Creating particles for extended circulation in the blood stream has been a significant challenge in the development of drug delivery systems from the beginning,” said Joseph DeSimone, the study’s co-lead investigator and Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry. The PRINT technology was developed in his lab. “We believe this study represents a real game changer for the future of nanomedicine.” The study was led by DeSimone and Timothy Merkel, a graduate student in DeSimone’s lab. • ONLINE EXTRAS: Timothy Merkel discusses the synthetic blood discovery at www. youtube.com/user/UNCCollege.

ative residents of a neighborhood are more likely to move out when immigrants move in, according to new research co-authored by UNC sociologist Kyle Crowder and published in the American Sociological Review. The study shows that for native whites, the tendency to leave areas with large and growing immigrant populations appears to be rooted in reactions to the racial composition of a neighborhood. In contrast, decreasing homeownership rates and increasing costs of housing in the neighborhood appear to be the primary impetus for native blacks to leave neighborhoods with large and growing immigrant populations. However, large concentrations of immigrants in areas surrounding a neighborhood reduce the likelihood that native black and white residents of that neighborhood will leave. The scholars propose that this may be because these surrounding areas, which normally would be the most likely destinations for native householders seeking to relocate, become less attractive to those native householders when they contain larger immigrant populations. “These findings have important implications for processes of immigrant incorporation, patterns of neighborhood change and broader systems of residential segregation,” said Crowder, the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology. •

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 25

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

Cancer researchers share motivation behind discovery

Dan Sears

wo UNC researchers who lost friends to cancer are working on a promising new drug that could eliminate some of the painful side effects of chemotherapy for future patients. The FedEx Global Education Center houses UNC’s international centers. The pre-clinical findings developed by chemist Matthew R. Redinbo and his graduate student Bret Wallace, the paper’s first author, are published in the journal Science. Their research relates to the drug CPT-11, or Irinotecan, a chemotherapeutic agent used against colon cancer and other solid malignancies. It is believed to be the first successful targeting of an enzyme in symbiotic bacteria found in the digestive system. While it has proven a valuable tool for attacking tumors, even international centers at UNC have received CPT-11 can also cause severe diarrhea, which limits the dosage competitive Title VI grants from the U.S. Department of that patients can tolerate, curbing the drug’s potential effectiveness. Education that will total $11.29 million over the next four years. The team led by Wallace and Redinbo has discovered it is possible to target and block the enzyme which is thought to play a The awards will support global business education, major role in the gastric international and regional studies — including foreignside effects. language and area-studies fellowships for students Redinbo was — language instruction, teaching, research and motivated to tackle the problem of community outreach involving Africa, Europe, Eurasia, curbing CPT-11’s side Latin America and the Middle East. effects after seeing the Six of the Title VI centers are designated as treatment’s debilitating impact on a colleague, U.S. Department of Education National Resource Lisa Benkowski, who Centers (NRCs) for providing language instruction and contracted colon cancer comprehensive international education. Five are in the and died in 2003. College of Arts and Sciences and one in the Center for For a long time, he did not share this Matthew Redinbo (left) and Bret Wallace Global Initiatives. with the members UNC is tied for fifth among American universities of his research team because he did not want to risk putting for having the largest number of NRCs, behind the universities undue pressure on them. But as their work progressed, he told them. That’s when he learned that Wallace had exactly the same of California, Berkeley and Wisconsin-Madison (eight each) experience: a family friend, Stacey Micoli, was diagnosed with and Indiana University and the University of Washington (seven cancer in 2006, treated with the same drug, suffered the same way each). The University of Michigan also has six. and died last year. Both women are cited in the study’s acknowledgements The seventh Title VI center to receive funds from the grant section. is the UNC Center for International Business Education and “It’s remarkable to me that we both had personal reasons to Research at Kenan-Flagler Business School — one of 33 such find a way to improve CPT-11 tolerance,” Redinbo said. centers nationwide designed to increase global competitiveness. “This paper is a testament to the fact that as scientists, our experiences can have a profound effect on our work, and that Some of the funds will support new positions for those experiences can translate from life, through the laboratory faculty experts on Arabic languages and literature, European and — hopefully, in cases such as this — into patient clinics.” economics, energy and environmental issues in Central Asia or ONLINE EXTRAS: Redinbo and Wallace talk about their research at www.youtube.com/user/UNCCollege. • the Caucasus, and lecturers in Persian, Swahili and Wolof. •

Global centers awarded $11.29 million

Lars Sahl

26 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

CREATING 3-D MODELS OF LANDMARKS Computer scientists have invented a technique that automatically creates 3-D models of landmarks and geographical locations, using ordinary two-dimensional pictures available through Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr. The technique creates the models using millions of images, processing them on a single personal computer in less than a day. It was devised by a team of researchers from Carolina and the Swiss university, ETH-Zurich, led by Jan-Michael Frahm, research assistant professor of computer science at UNC. To demonstrate their technique, the researchers used the 3 million images of Rome available online to reconstruct all of the city’s major landmarks. It took less than 24 hours on a single PC using commodity graphics hardware. They also reconstructed the landmarks of Berlin in the same manner.

Dan Sears

Frahm said the process provides a far richer experience and is an improvement of more than a factor of 1,000 over current commercial systems and alternative techniques developed by other researchers. Jan-Michael Frahm (left) and Svetlana Lazebnik “Our technique would be the equivalent of processing a stack of photos as high as the 828-meter Dubai Towers, using a single PC, versus the next best technique, which is the equivalent of processing a stack of photos 42 meters tall — as high as the ceiling of Notre Dame — using 62 PCs,” he said. “This efficiency is essential if one is to utilize the billions of user-provided images continuously being uploaded to the Internet.” One advantage of the 3-D models compared to viewing a video of a landmark is that the Internet photo collections used to construct them show the scene at different times and under different lighting and weather conditions, potentially creating a richer experience for viewers, he said. Frahm said eventually the models could be embedded into common consumer applications such as Google Earth or Bing Maps, allowing users to explore cities from the comfort of their homes. He also noted that the technology could be a building block for disaster response software. Frahm collaborated on the project with Marc Pollefeys, professor of computer science at ETH-Zurich and an adjunct professor at UNC, and Svetlana Lazebnik, assistant professor of computer science at UNC. •

Steve Exum

Who says Rome wasn’t built in a day?

Joseph Haj

An innovative theater residency program

layMakers Repertory Company has received a $200,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support annual residencies by theater ensembles over the next three years. The ensembles will come to campus to develop new theater pieces with artistic, technical and administrative support provided by PlayMakers. Pig Iron Theatre Company (Philadelphia, Pa.), SITI Company (New York, N.Y.) and The TEAM (New York, N.Y.) are the ensembles that will be in residence. Each group uses a unique collaborative process to create their performance pieces devised from theater, dance, performance art, video, visual art, music and other influences. The PlayMakers residency program will provide support for the ensembles’ “research and development” period with access to the theater’s staff, production shops, rehearsal halls and performance spaces, and the intellectual resources of UNC. “We are deeply honored to receive this grant from the Mellon Foundation,” said PlayMakers producing artistic director Joseph Haj. “Pig Iron, SITI and The TEAM are some of theater’s most daring and forward-thinking artists. Developing their future work with us will spread the word that innovation is a priority at UNC.” •

CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2011 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • 27

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

Family Affair

The Pardues support new professorship, graduate fellowship in technical theater By Jim Magaw ’89

A lifelong love of theater

“The Pardue Professor will

and decades of dedicated service

mentor and teach students about

to the University have resulted in

the full arc of the production

the establishment of the David

experience — from page to stage,”

and Rebecca Pardue Distinguished

department chair McKay Coble

Professorship in Technical Theatre

said. “The technical capabilities

and Production Management and

of our venues combined with

the Courtnay Arpano and David

the acumen of our extraordinary

Pardue III Graduate Fellowship

faculty, now to include the

Fund. The two new endowments,

Pardue Professor, will make

totaling $1.4 million, will provide

Carolina a destination for students

a great boost for the department

pursuing a life in theater.”

of dramatic art and PlayMakers Repertory Company. “I have loved PlayMakers since

In addition, the Pardue Graduate Fellowship, given by the Pardues’ children Courtnay

my parents took me to my first real

Arpano and David Pardue

play there when I was 12 years old,”

III ’88, will help the department

said David Pardue ’69. “And my

attract and train gifted graduate

wife Becky has been very involved

students in technical production and

with the PlayMakers Ball since

management.

1988.”

“Upon graduation, our students

Through their work with

are sought out by professional the-

PlayMakers, the Pardues became

aters, entertainment industries and

friends with Carroll Amanda Kyser,

the best technical theater education

who was in charge of promotion and

programs,” Coble said. “The Pardue

special events for the professional

Fellowship will support talented

theater company.

graduate students as they learn with

“Carroll was a wonderful person and a real inspiration. Sadly,

us.” The Pardues have established

we lost her to cancer in 1993 at age

several other funds at UNC,

45,” Pardue said. “Our gift is given in

including the D. Earl Pardue Faculty

her memory.”

Fellowship in the Institute for the Arts

The new Pardue Professor will

and Humanities, the Dr. George and

focus on technical and production

Alice Welsh Professorship and the

management, especially for

Pardue Professorship in the College

undergraduate performances.

of Arts and Sciences. •

28 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

ALUMNI COUPLE SUPPORTS THE HUMANITIES WITH DISTINGUISHED PROFESSORSHIP By Joanna Worrell Cardwell (M.A. ’06)

or Barbara “Bobby” Gitenstein and Don Hart, choosing to support the humanities at UNC was an easy decision. Both earned their doctorate degrees in the humanities at Carolina — Gitenstein in English in 1975 and Hart in philosophy in 1981. The couple grew up in the same small town in south Alabama and chose Carolina for its “excellent” English and philosophy departments. They formed lasting relationships with several faculty members who served as important mentors for them in their careers. Both established distinguished careers in higher education and the humanities. Gitenstein has enjoyed a long career as an English professor Don Hart and Bobby Gitenstein and administrator, and she is now president of the College of New Jersey, where she became the institution’s first woman president in 1999. Hart has taught philosophy, directed an honors program, and most recently been involved with computing in the humanities. “As an academic administrator and a faculty member, I genuinely believe that we in higher education do some of the most important work in the world,” Gitenstein said. “I am convinced that the lessons and skills learned in humanities education can make the world a better place.” Gitenstein and Hart recently decided to create a legacy for the humanities by including a provision in their wills to create the R. Barbara Gitenstein and Donald B. Hart Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. This gift will establish an endowment for a distinguished professor in any of the humanities disciplines and will ensure that future generations of Carolina students continue to benefit from the high standard of excellence and teaching in the humanities that the couple enjoyed as Carolina students. “We are convinced that a humanities education was the foundation for our success in life, and that the discipline of critical thinking should be the means for civic engagement and communication,” Gitenstein said. •

HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S

By Karen Gajewski Howard R. Levine

UNC alumnus

Howard R. Levine, chairman and CEO of Family Dollar Stores Inc., has created an endowment to support undergraduate and graduate students in Jewish studies at his alma mater. The Howard R. Levine Student Excellence Fund in Jewish Studies, created through a $500,000 pledge, will support academic studies and scholarly research. When fully funded, the endowment will provide the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences with a permanent source of funding to further the Center’s teaching mission. “Through this gift, I hope students will have a more enriching college experience and perhaps have the means to take advantage of learning opportunities that otherwise might not be within their financial reach,” said Levine, who graduated from UNC with a business degree in 1981. The endowment will: • support student research inside and outside the classroom, including student travel and study abroad; • fund academic field trips to extend the classroom experience into the community; • enable the Center to bring in visitors to meet with students and deliver unique programs; and • allow the Center to expand its course offerings to meet rising student demand. “We are so thankful to Howard and his family for this generous and inspiring gift to the Center and to Carolina’s students,” said Jonathan Hess, Center director and Moses M. and Hannah L. Malkin Term Professor of Jewish History and Culture. “The level of study and the quality of the research conducted by UNC students is truly impressive. Now, thanks to the Levine family, our students can participate in more projects and programs than ever before.” Levine, a Charlotte native and resident, said he is delighted to give back to UNC’s students. “I’ve been following the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies for a few years now, and I’ve heard nothing but positive things about the program and its growth,” Levine said. “Furthermore, I like that the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies attracts students with different backgrounds and a range of interests.” Established in 2003, the Center unites the public, students and faculty from various academic disciplines who share a passion for a deeper understanding of Jewish history, culture and thought. •

MEET THE PROFESSOR

Mark Crescenzi

Issac Sandlin

Students to benefit from gift to Jewish studies

Associate Professor of Political Science • Backstory

Two seminal international conflicts during Crescenzi’s undergraduate years at the University of California at Irvine altered the anticipated trajectory of his career. After watching the Tiananmen Square massacre and then the Persian Gulf War unfold, the native Californian scuttled plans to get a degree in economics. Today, his fields of specialization include international relations, conflict processes and international political economy. • Give Peace a Chance

“I am what they call a peace scientist,” says Crescenzi, a scholar who uses “the objective tools of science to look at what’s causing conflict and how to address it.” He’s proud that UNC has hosted the Peace Science Society Conference. In November 2009, some 250 members of the international Peace Science Society gathered on campus to present research on everything from conflict management and foreign aid to negotiation with terrorists and ethnic segregation. Who reads this research? “Outside of academia, people in the policy world, though maybe not the top level. They might get the executive summary. Scholars, policymakers and students are the primary audiences.” • Good Rep, Bad Rep

Crescenzi focuses on international economic interdependence and conflict, the role of democracy on international conflict, and, most recently, theories of reputation, history and learning in world politics. While the most important thing about an ally is its political and military power, new research shows that attractive potential allies are also those who live up to their promises. Still, even good alliances can crumble when self-interest is threatened. He created a mathematical model to help parse the reputations of allies over the past two centuries and determine who held fast and why. • Passing It On

In 2008, nine years after arriving at UNC, Crescenzi was honored with the Tanner Teaching Award. It was “a real treat” to be recognized for his work with undergraduates. This spring, in addition to his responsibilities as associate chair of the department, he is teaching an introduction to world politics course. While telling his students about “history as an eco-system within which all political action takes place,” the professor hopes he’ll inspire a future peacemaker. • — By Lisa H. Towle

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$1 million gift supports leadership grants to faculty chairs Terry Rhodes, front center, music department chair and leadership grant recipient, rehearses with UNC Opera students.

an Bardsley knew just what to do with surprise funding from the dean’s office. A stipend for a graduate student to oversee logistics for a major Asian studies conference on campus? Yes. Funds for faculty who elevate the department’s profile by editing prestigious academic journals? Yes. Research awards for talented junior

Budgets are tight, but research has to continue and even $1,000 or $2,000 is extremely valuable, particularly because travel costs for our research in Asian studies is expensive. These awards provide great encouragement.” Gil, a former department chair, said it’s her priority to support the College’s academic leadership.

authority on course development, teaching assignments, merit raises and leaves. Without committed, creative, problem-solving chairs, faculty production and morale declines, and they leave for other institutions, compromising a quality educational experience for students. Chairs also place their careers on hold to run the department. “The resources made available by “THIS GIFT WILL EMPOWER CHAIRS TO DO this gift will prove to potential faculty chairs that their scholarship will not suffer THEIR WORK AND GIVE THEM RESOURCES if they accept the position, but could, in TO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.” fact, be strengthened,” said Lloyd Kramer, faculty writing their first books. Yes! “Being a chair is a large, timehistory chair for five years, and another Thanks to a $1 million gift to the consuming and demanding job that’s recipient of the initial grants. “It enhances College of Arts and Sciences from an performed mostly without recognition and the attractiveness of being chair, and its anonymous alumni couple, the dean, too, adequate compensation,” she said. “It’s like benefits have a ripple effect throughout the can say “yes” with support for department running a small business and having little to department.” chairs — faculty leaders who often sacrifice put into building the business.” Matt Redinbo, chemistry chair, said their own careers to serve the University. “The best way for me to recruit the generous grant — even more welcome Dean Karen M. Gil made the first the most able faculty to serve as chairs with the campus’ economic pressures awards — academic leadership grants — is to provide greater and more effective — has enabled him to send faculty to this fall to 12 department chairs, including incentives,” Gil added. “This wonderful gift chemistry teaching conferences to deal Bardsley of Asian studies. Awards ranged not only provides funds for me to direct to with curriculum changes to pre-med from $13,000 to $20,000. Gil will have our College leadership, but it also sends a requirements. $200,000 available each year for the next message that we support our chairs. This gift “I’ve also been able to focus on five years to provide chairs with funds will empower them to do their work and mechanisms to recruit under-represented they may use to support research, teaching give them resources to make things happen.” minorities, both students and faculty, to the and “say yes” initiatives for faculty in their And chairs must make plenty of things department.” departments. Chairs may also use the grants happen. For Carolina to compete with the to support their own academic, professional They oversee searches that bring best schools in the country and for the best or administrative activities, or as summer talented faculty to campus. They mentor people, it must have funds to attract top compensation. junior faculty, and when faculty are courted faculty, said one of the donors. “I am really grateful to the dean and by peer institutions, chairs work with the “Department chairs make decisions the donors for this funding,” said Bardsley, dean to make a counter-offer for a valued with long-term repercussions about the who reserved a small amount for her own faculty member. The dean also asks chairs direction of their departments and have great postponed research as a Japanese culture for recommendations on tenure decisions. influence over the University’s future,” she scholar. Chairs set priorities that influence the said. “It is extremely important that we have “The ability to help junior faculty get quality of department curricula, oversee the best faculty possible in these positions ahead on their research was very helpful. multi-million dollar budgets, and wield and that we equip them well.” • 30 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

Donn Young

SAYING YES

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SPRING • 2011

• Poor-Mouth Jubilee (Tupelo Press) by Michael Chitwood. The author — a poet, essayist and UNC creative writing lecturer — calls his seventh collection of poems “ghost stories, both holy and profane” populated by ghosts who “have their motorcycles, their shotguns and their public address systems.” It comes with an audio CD. • A Faith of Their Own: Stability and Change in the Religiosity of America’s Adolescents (Oxford University Press) by

Lisa D. Pearce and Melinda Lundquist Denton. Drawing on a massive study of adolescents and young adults over a three-year period, including 120 in-depth interviews, the authors show that religion still plays an important force in the lives of many teens. Pearce is a UNC sociologist and Denton a UNC doctoral alumna teaching sociology at Clemson University. • Adrian Piper: Race, Gender and Embodiment (Duke University Press) by John P. Bowles. The author explores the life and work of the avant-garde feminist conceptual artist who challenged Americans on their assumptions about race, gender, sexuality and class during the 1960s and ’70s. Bowles is an associate professor of art. • It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace (Bloomsbury) by Rye Barcott. Ten years ago, while he was still a Carolina undergraduate, the author

co-founded Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a nonprofit based in Nairobi. Despite staggering poverty and ethnic violence, the community-based organization involving Kenyans and Carolina students built a medical clinic, health services, recreational programs and hope in the largest slum in east Africa. To date, Tabitha Clinic has treated more than 41,000 patients, and more than 5,000 boys and girls have participated in CFK’s annual soccer tournament. Barcott’s story takes readers in and out of Kibera as he was deployed as a Marine in Iraq, Bosnia and Africa, wrestling to make sense of two forms of service as they clashed and converged in his head and heart. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu calls it “a tremendous story of the power of friendship, love and the transforming grace of God.” • Chasing the Mad Lion, a full-length documentary film directed by UNC alumnus Jason Arthurs, recounts the unlikely friendship of alumnus Rye Barcott and Kenyans Tabitha Festo and Salim Mohamed, and how they collaborated to create Carolina for Kibera (CFK), to empower community within a massive African slum (see above). This

riveting story of joy and pain illustrates the power of participatory community development. The film crew includes UNC alumnus Andrew Johnson (assistant director), UNC Endeavors senior staff writer Mark Derewicz, and producer Beth-Ann Kutchma, senior program officer for UNC’s Center for Global Initiatives. chasingthemadlion.org. • Labor Rights and Multinational Production (Cambridge University Press) by Layna Mosley. This useful guide for scholars, students, activists and policymakers analyzes the positive and negative impacts of the global economy on labor rights in developing countries. One MIT reviewer calls Mosley, a UNC political scientist, “one of her generation’s leading scholars of international political economy.” • Designing Democracy in a Dangerous World (Oxford University Press) by Andrew Reynolds. The author, a UNC political scientist and chair of global studies, has designed a series of case studies for students, teachers, researchers and policymakers on fragile and divided c o n t i n u e d

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says this “steam-rolling chronicle of the subversive and mostly forgotten history [of Chapel Hill] … puts both people and institutions in context … in wonder and respect. Every single syllable sings.” • Football Fatalities and Catastrophic

states. Covering lessons learned from successes and failures in democratization over the past 40 years, Reynolds also draws from his own experiences consulting on electoral and constitutional issues in diverse hot spots from Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq and Jordan to Northern Ireland, South Africa, Yemen and Zimbabwe, among others. • Writing Blackness: John Edgar Wideman’s Art and Experimentation

(Louisiana State University Press) by James W. Coleman. The author, a UNC professor of English, explores how Wideman’s life as an African-American student, athlete, Rhodes Scholar, Ivy League professor and literary star, affected his writing and its evolution. After early success in fiction, Wideman has focused more on “blackness,” combining elements of fiction, biography, memoir, history, legend, folklore and dreams. • The Mystification of a Nation: ‘The Potato Bug’ and Other Essays on Czech Culture (University of Wisconsin Press) by

Vladimir Macura, translated and edited by Hana Pichova and Craig Cravens. This first book-length translation of

Czech writer Macura’s work offers essays analyzing a variety of myths and symbols that have defined his nation and its identity and culture. Pichova is UNC associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures; Cravens is at the University of Texas at Austin.

Injuries: 1931-2008 (Carolina Academic

• Best American Short Stories 2010 (Mariner), edited by Richard Russo, includes stories by UNC creative writing alumni Jill McCorkle (“PS”), Brendan Mathews (“My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened with the Lion Tamer”) and Scott Nadelson (“Oslo”) and UNC Kenan Visiting Writer Lori Ostlund (“All Boy”).

Press) by Frederick O. Mueller and Robert C. Cantu. Ever since the first collegiate football game on Nov. 6, 1869, the need to reduce injuries has played a major role in finding ways to improve the safety of the sport through rule and equipment changes. This study looks at the history of football injuries by decade and critically analyzes important circumstances relating to fatalities and catastrophic injuries. Mueller is professor emeritus and former chair of the department of exercise and sport science and director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, both at UNC; Cantu is medical director of the Center.

• Chapel Hill in Plain Sight: Notes from the Other Side of the Tracks (Eno Publishers) by Daphne Athas, foreword by alumnus Will Blythe. Whether you’re a fan of Chapel Hill or of beloved creative writing instructor emeritus Daphne Athas, you will enjoy her frank recollections of yesteryear when Betty Smith, Paul Green, Junius Scales and Milton Abernethy roamed Franklin Street, and the author lived in a self-built “shack” on the edge of town. Former student Michael Parker

• Copperhead (Carnegie Mellon University Press) by Rachel Richardson. In her debut collection of poems, the UNC folklore graduate pays homage to the folk ways and myths of the rapidly disappearing Old South. “Like mist rising from lowlying fields, these poems linger in our imagination long after reading,” writes William Ferris, UNC’s Joel Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South. •

32 • COLLEGE.UNC.EDU • SPRING 2011 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES

FINAL POINT F I N A L POINT

CAROLINA

ARTS & SCIENCES Carolina Arts & Sciences

•

Spring 2011

Director of Communications Dee Reid Editor Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 Assistant Director of Communications Editorial Assistant Kristen Chavez ’13 Graphic Designer Linda Noble Contributing Writers • Pamela Babcock • DeLene Beeland • Joanna Worrell Cardwell (M.A. ’06) • Kristen Chavez ’13 • Don Evans ’80 • Del Helton • Michele Lynn • Jim Magaw ’89 • Nancy E. Oates • Angela Spivey ’90 • Lisa H. Towle Contributing Photographers • Bill Bamberger • Billy E. Barnes • Kristen Chavez ’13 • Eric Darton • Steve Exum ’92 • Lars Sahl • Issac Sandlin • Dan Sears ’74, UNC News Services Photographer • Steve Walsh • Donn Young Photographer Bill Bamberger’s grassroots project “BALL” explores the democratization of basketball, and the intersection of sports and culture in American life. Bamberger is a 1979 American studies graduate and has lectured for many years in that department. The “BALL” project took him all over the country to photograph basketball goals in small towns, large cities, rural landscapes, fire stations, school yards, community centers and private residences. These two photos were taken in North Carolina — the abandoned red barn in Mebane and the meat market sign in Caswell County. His work is represented by Ann Stewart Fine Art of Chapel Hill. See more photos at www.billbamberger.com.

Carolina Arts & Sciences is published semiannually by the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and made possible with the support of private funds. Copyright 2011. If you wish to receive Carolina Arts & Sciences News, our periodic e-mail bulletin, please send us a note with your name, mailing address and e-mail address to: artsandsciences@unc.edu. More News/Events: college.unc.edu Facebook: www.facebook.com/UNC.College Twitter: twitter.com/unccollege YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/UNCCollege

Coming Soon • APRIL 10 Playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor, will discuss “Art, Community and Culture” with PlayMakers Producing Artistic Director Joseph Haj. 7 p.m., Memorial Hall.

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