E V E N T S

april /may 20 11 Volume 13, Number 5

Life at Yale 5

Understanding Alzheimer’s 6

www.yale.edu/graduateschool

Graduate School of arts and Sciences – yale University

discipline within chemistry. Gary Brudvig’s group studies photosynthesis—nature’s way of making fuel from sunlight—and artificial systems designed to reproduce the reactions in natural photosynthesis. Robert Crabtree, an inorganic synthetic chemist, focuses on catalysis, making inorganic complexes to speed up the chemical reactions at the heart of the process. Charles Schmuttenmaer, an experimental physical chemist, specializes in ultrafast lasers that produce extremely short pulses of light. His students examine transient photo-conductivity and electron transfer in dye-sensitized, nanoparticulate semiconductors—processes they can study on a time scale of one one-trillionth of a sec-ond. Victor Batista complements the other groups’ experimental work with theoretical studies of chemical dynamics and electronic structure calculations. “Our research interests are each very different from the others,” says Schmutten-maer. “This is a rather unique environment for the graduate students. They are learning a much wider range of chemistry than they would in a traditional mono-group setting.” “I entered graduate school with an emphasis in physical chemistry,” says Rob

Continued on page 3

F r i d AY, A p r i L 1, 5 – 7 p mFirst Friday @ Five Happy Hour. McDougal Common Room & 119 HGS

T U E S d AY, A p r i L 5 , 3 : 3 0 – 5 p mGCS Panel, “From PH.D. to Administration: Academic Affairs Careers.” 119 HGS

T h U r S d AY, A p r i L 712-1:30 pm Summer day camps/programs information fair for parents. 119 HGS5-8 pm Beer Fest Dinner. HGS Dining Hall

S AT U r dAY, A p r i L 9, 9 A m – 1 2 p m McDougal Public Service CorpsSecond Saturday of Service. Signup at mcdougal.service@yale.edu

W E d N E S d AY, A p r i L 1 3, 7 p mGrad Homebrew Contest & Beer Tasting. 119 HGS. Tix on sale in advance.

T h U r S d AY, A p r i L 1 4 , 4 p m In the Company of Scholars Lecture.“Is There the Courage to Change the Ameri-can Diet?,” Kelly Brownell. 119 HGS

S AT U r d AY, A p r i L 1 6 , 7 p m Grad Night@Yale Rep. Autumn Sonata. Tix at www.yalerep.org

T U E S d AY, m AY 3 , 5 – 6 : 3 0 p m Dean’s Spring Reception. HGS Court-yard (Rain site: Common Room)

F r i d AY, m AY 6, 1 – 4 p m Spring Chillout. HGS Courtyard

F r i d AY, m AY 6 , 5 – 7 p m First Friday @ Five Happy Hour. HGS Courtyard (Rain site: Common Room)

Full information on events above: http://calendar.yale.edu/cal/gsas

Green Energy Consortium

Keenly aware of the importance of achiev-ing this goal, four Yale chemistry professors have teamed up to explore the possibility of creating “solar fuels” by using photons to produce clean, efficient, renewable energy. In technical terms, they aim to demon-strate the feasibility of using oxomanganese catalysts immobilized on TiO2 (titanium dioxide) nanoparticles to achieve photocata-lytic water oxidation. Additional details are available at www.chem.yale.edu/~green. Each of the four faculty members is leading a group of graduate students and

postdoctoral fellows who are engaged in a different aspect

of the project. Each team approaches the challenge

from a different sub-

Winter Ball 4

G SAS NEWS

The world is facing an urgent challenge to develop new

cost-effective energy sources that will meet current and

future demand in an environmentally responsible manner.

The Center, directed by hhmi Professor Jo Handelsman in mcdb, is an extension of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching that she founded at uw-Madison. Handelsman and colleagues offer programs grounded in an evidence-based approach to introduce graduate students, postdocs, and faculty to the principles and prac-tices of scientific teaching. This approach involves actively engaging diverse groups

Teaching Science ScientificallyThe Center for Scien-

tific Teaching at Yale

was opened in 2010 to

enhance science educa-

tion both here and on

campuses nationwide.

Continued on page 2

Winter Ball 2011

KAI Du Kai Du (Management) has been awarded a Deloitte Foundation Doc-toral Fellowship in Accounting, a two-year prize given by the not-for-profit arm of Deloitte LLP to support gradu-

ate research. He joins a distinguished group of more than 1,000 accounting PH.D. candidates who have received this prestigious award over the last 55 years. Nearly 100 universities nation-wide are invited to nominate students for the honor, with ten winners selected each year. Shyam Sunder is Kai’s advisor, and his committee includes Rick Antle, Jacob Thomas, and Aleh Tsyvinski. His dissertation is titled “Essays on the Relation between Eco-nomic Fundamentals and Accounting Information.” He earned a B. A. in finance from Peking University and an M.A. in economics from Georgetown.

MARIA TAROuTInA Maria Taroutina (History of Art) will present “Triangulating Modern-ism: Icons, Vrubel and Soviet Con-structivism” at the symposium “Art in Russia, 1770–1920” on March 25

in the Loria Center at 190 York St. She is co-organizing the event with Molly Brunson, assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures. This is the first time Yale is hosting a symposium dedicated to Russian art, and Maria is the only Yale graduate student on the program. Her talk during the session on “Modern Icons” will examine the ways in which a widespread revival of medieval art in Russia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century catalyzed the rise of Modernism and the Russian avant-garde. Maria’s dissertation, “From the Tessara to the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival,” is advised by David Joselit and Tim Barringer. She earned her undergraduate degree from Yale College.

involved in the project, rather than when working somewhere alone.” “Solar power only works when the sun is shining, but we need power 24/7, so energy storage is essential,” says Crabtree. His group focuses on two aspects of converting solar power into a storable fuel. The first aspect involves collaboration with the Batista, Brudvig, and Schmuttenmaer groups to achieve the direct conversion of water by solar light into hydrogen and oxygen, a step that is necessary to store energy as a fuel. Oana Luca makes the catalysts that split water to produce hydrogen, James Blakemore and nathan Schley make

the catalysts that produce oxy-gen, and Laura Allen and Lauren Martini make the organic struc-tures that link these components together. The second aspect requires Crabtree’s collaboration with Batista’s group and scientists from ge, Stanford, and Berkeley.

They address the issue of storing the solar energy, “not as hydrogen, a material that’s normally expensive to store, but in the form of a liquid fuel that functions like today’s gasoline, but avoids the carbon emissions that affect climate,” Crabtree explains. “In a future automobile, the driver would use our liquid fuel to provide motive power, but carbon-emission-free.” At weekly meetings, members of all four teams share their latest results and present any problems that they have encountered. “The

meetings range anywhere from one to two hours,” says Rebecca (Becky) Milot, a mem-ber of Schmuttenmaer’s group. “Each week three or four people present a few Power-

Point slides about the progress that they have made since their last presentation. The presentations are not overly formal and are meant to stimulate discussion. We spend the bulk of the time discussing data, answering questions, and planning future experi-ments.” “In addition to exposing me to other chemistry sub-disciplines, the meetings help me to maintain the focus of my research,” Becky says. “Without the structure of the group and the constant reminder of our long-term goals, I think that it would be very easy to get side-tracked.” The collaborations continue beyond the meetings. “We often stop by each other’s offices and labs to coordinate experiments, talk about papers we are writing together, or just ask questions that we did not address during the meeting,” she says. During each of the past three sum-mers, the collaborators have held a solar symposium at which faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students present their research on solar fuel production, photo-chemistry, chemical methods of reducing carbon dioxide, and related topics.

Snoeberger, one of Batista’s students. “While working in the group, I’ve had a chance to learn about inorganic chemistry, synthesis, and electrochemistry. At times I’ve tried to resist and stick to my chosen field, but it has been a gift to learn from the other professors and their students in their element, doing research.” “The problem of generating fuels with sunlight is incredibly challenging,” notes James Blakemore, whose work overlaps both Crabtree’s and Brudvig’s areas. “As chemists, we need to throw everything we collectively have at the system to get it work-ing in the end. The answer will not lie with

any one discipline, but rather in the midst of many. I have become knowledgeable on one small piece of the puzzle (electrochemistry and catalysis) and, luckily, can hand off the work to my colleagues with complementary specialties. Thus, we all get to do and learn more about the system.” “It is definitely an advantage to be able to see the whole story,” says graduate student Laura Allen, who is in Crabtree’s photocatalysis group. “I can make some-thing that has been suggested computation-ally by the Batista group and then give it to both the Schmuttenmaer and Brudvig groups for further analysis without having to send out materials and wait for months for a possible answer, which can happen when your collaborator is in another state or country. Through these meetings, I’ve also been exposed to a tremendous amount of chemistry outside my niche, for which I am very thankful. We are a tight-knit group, and I feel like I can go seek advice from any of the four pis without hesitation.” “Our collaborative work in many ways is an on-going conversation,” James says. “I seem to always have my best moments of inspiration when talking to other people

“Our collaborative work in many ways is an on-going conver-

sation. i seem to always have my best moments of inspiration

when talking to other people involved in the project, rather

than when working somewhere alone.” J A m E S B L A k E m O r E

Green Energy Consortium, continued

“Solar power only works when the sun is shining, but we need

power 24/7, so energy storage is essential.” r O B E r T C r A B T r E E

k U d O S

Left: how the solar cell works. Solar light drives electrons from the light absorber (purple dots and purple column) through the titanium dioxide electrode material (gray spheres) to the electrode. An iodine based solution carries the electrons (green arrows) from the counter electrode back to the light absorb-ers through the liquid in which the electrode and counter electrode are immersed.

Below: members of the solar fuel research team include (standing) robert Crabtree, Gary Brudvig, rebecca milot, Victor Batista, James Blakemore, Charles Schmuttenmaer and (seated) robert Snoeberger i i i and Laura Allen.

of students, regularly assessing learning, and redesigning classroom strategies based on the interpretation of data. “Imagine if music schools trained pianists to play with only the right hand, leaving them on their own to figure out the left hand’s responsibility. Ridiculous?

Yes, but that is not unlike the way research universities train scientists, who emerge largely untrained to teach. Research uni-versities should raise a generation of future scientists who, like pianists who play with

both hands, practice their art with a dynamic component of skills to the great benefit of society,” says Handelsman. “Building the new Center for Scientific Teaching here is an exciting opportunity to take our work in science education to a new level and for Yale to position itself as a leader in reforming college science education,” says Jen-

nifer Frederick, associate director of the Center for Scientific Teaching at Yale and of the Graduate Teaching Center. Team-ing up with Handelsman and Frederick to lead the

Center is James Young, executive director. Scientific teaching aims to bring a philosophy and framework to instruction that makes the process more rigorous, reflective, and evaluative. “The teaching of science

should be faithful to the nature of science” by replicating the dynamics of discovery in the classroom, Frederick says. Research has shown that the lecture method is one of the least effective ways for students to learn, according to Handelsman. It is even less effective at advancing higher-level thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and creative

synthesis, but when students actively process information and ideas, lectures can become highly effective teaching tools. To engage students, scientific teaching often uses audi-ence response systems, or “clickers,” which enable student participation and provide the instructor and students with instant feedback. Electronic quizzes administered before class allow the instructor to assess what concepts and skills the students have mastered, so that class time can be spent most effectively. Even low-tech tools like short writing assignments,

ies departments and programs that serve traditionally underrepresented students are increasingly at risk of losing funding. This conference will address the current political climate and its impact on diversity in the future of higher education as well as more equitable ways to address campus-wide

cutbacks that do not sacrifice programs designed to meet the needs of diverse stu-dent populations. The first institution in the united States to award the doctoral degree, Yale is alma mater to Edward A. Bouchet, the first self-identified African American ever to receive the ph.d. in any discipline and the sixth person in the Western Hemisphere awarded the ph.d. in physics.

The theme for this year’s meeting is “The Future of the Academy: Maintaining and Strengthening Academic Diversity in the Midst of the Current Economic and Political Climate.” This year’s Bouchet Leadership Award Keynote Lecturer is John Ruffin, director of the national Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. An aca-demician and a scientist, Ruffin has devoted his career to improving the health status of racial and ethnic minorities and other medically underserved populations in the united States and providing leadership for the research activities of the national Institutes of Health (nih) that relate to minority health and health disparities. He has developed and supported programs to increase the number of minority scientists, physicians, and other health professionals, as well as to attract a diverse group of researchers to study health disparities. With universities and colleges facing tight budgets, ethnic and cultural stud-

The Office for Diversity and Equal Opportunity will host

the eighth-annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity

in Graduate Education on March 25 and 26.

Supporting diversity in higher Education

Teaching Science Scientifically, continued

small group discussions, and debates can be used to engage students. The first cohort of Yale Scientific Teaching Fellows was trained during the fall semester in graduate courses co-taught by Handelsman, Frederick, and Carl Hashimoto, professor of Cell Biology. “Theory & Practice of Scientific Teaching i and ii” covered fun-damental learning theory and practical strate-gies for teaching biology. Students taking the first course learned research-based methods for effective and inclusive teaching and prac-ticed teaching challenging biology concepts to one another and managing classroom dynamics. In the second course, they devel-oped and evaluated instructional materials for a college-level biology course. Some of these students and postdocs are now serv-ing as tfs for a new undergraduate course taught by Handelsman and Hashimoto, mcdb 123—“Genes and Environment.” At Yale, Handelsman’s lab in mcdb focuses on understanding diversity in micro-

bial communities and their role in infectious diseases. In January, she was one of 11 individuals selected by President Barack Obama to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Before coming to Yale in January 2010, Handelsman led for many years the

national Academies Summer Institute for undergraduate Education in Biology at the university of Wisconsin-Madison, which trains faculty at research universities in the principles of scientific teaching. Some of the programs she developed have been replicated at hundreds of other colleges and universi-ties. The hhmi recently funded Handelsman to expand the summer institute model; a northeast Regional Summer Institute will be held at Yale in August 2011.

“research universities should raise a generation of future scientists

who, like pianists who play with both hands, practice their art with a

dynamic component of skills to the great benefit of society.” J O h A N d E L S m A N

“Building the new Center for Scientific Teaching here is an

exciting opportunity to take our work in science education

to a new level and for Yale to position itself as a leader in

reforming college science education.” J E N N i F E r F r E d E r i C k

Top: the first cohort of Yale Scientific Teaching Fellows studied fundamental learning theory and practical strategies for teach-ing biology, guided by Jo handelsman, Jennifer Frederick, and Carl hashimoto (at far right).

Jennifer Frederick, associate director of the Center for Scientific Teaching and of the Graduate Teaching Center, taught “Theory & practice of Scientific Teaching” in the fall.

This conference will address the current political climate and its

impact on diversity in the future of higher education as well as more

equitable ways to address campus-wide cutbacks that do not sacrifice

programs designed to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

Capacity crowd + outrageous desserts + live music and dJ for dancing = Winter Ball, February 12, 2011.

dancing the Night Away

LESSOnS frOM 127 HOurS

In the movie 127 Hours, Aron ralston gets himself into a life-threatening situation in a canyon in the remote desert. The movie is based on a true story, with Aron portrayed by Yale graduate student and Academy Awards host James franco (English). In february, graduate and professional students were privileged to attend a free screening of 127 Hours followed by a Q&A session with the star, organized by the fellows and staff of McDougal Graduate Student Life.

L i F E @ YA L EDon’t  go  alone   into the  wilDerness. 

Aron cuts himself off from family and friends and doesn’t tell anyone where he plans to hike. In gradu-ate school, dissertation writing can be a very solitary pursuit. To avoid feeling alone in the wilderness of the mind, share your work. Sign up for a Graduate Writ-ing Center dissertation bootcamp or support group, join a research-in-progress discussion group, and talk to friends in and outside your program. Try to com-municate regularly with your advisor or pi, even, and perhaps especially, when things are not going well.

Be well-equ ippeD anD take  care  of  yourself. 

Relying solely on his skills, Aron goes off alone without proper tools, food, and water. Writing a dissertation isn’t exactly like being trapped in a crevasse, but you do need to come at it prepared and ready to care for yourself when the going gets rough. That means eating well, getting enough sleep, taking time for exercise, hobbies, and stress relief, and staying in touch with family and friends. You need to have a bag of tools for surviving and thriving: perseverance, resiliency, curios-ity, flexibility, reflection, and a sense of humor. And if you are stuck down a dark hole, call for help from friends, advisors, family, gsas staff, or campus mental health professionals.

you may have  to  lose  a  part of  yourself  to  survive   (spo iler  alert ! )  Aron cuts off his trapped arm to escape. Words are an extension of ourselves—our limbs, our creations, our children. Sometimes you need to cut off the excess in order to progress. Don’t be afraid to elim-inate those beloved words (or paragraphs or pages) if it makes your work better. You will survive.

have a  plan for afterwarDs. 

While trapped, Aron imagines the life he might have if he escapes. Graduate students should also envision the future they will enjoy after they complete the ph.d. use the resources and workshops of the Graduate Career Services office and engage in activities that help you discover and build skills, develop leadership, and broaden your talents. A vision for life after Yale will help motivate you to complete your dissertation and

provide direction for the next phase of your life.

Comments by Bianca Mercado (History), Jennifer Newman (Drama), Justin Khoo (Philosophy), and Markus Labude (Philosophy). Compiled by Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Lisa Brandes (PH.D. 1994, Political Science).

The movie is a gripping story of survival in the face of immense obstacles, rather like graduate school itself. Here is some 127 Hours-inspired advice for those researching and writing a dissertation. enjoy the  scenery, But know where you are  heaDeD. 

Aron almost loses himself in the beauty of the desert. Similarly, students can get lost in the thrill of discovery in the archives or in their data and lose sight of the goal of finishing the thesis. Have a work plan and try to stick to it. Indulge in your passion for discovery, but don’t let it run your life. A dissertation is a book-length project or a series of articles. For most of us, it’s our first major work of original scholarship, not our magnum opus.

if you’d like to contribute an essay about your life at Yale, please send it to gila.reinstein @ yale.edu

2011 Spring Teaching Forum

This year’s Spring Teaching Forum will consider

all aspects of the lecture course, from its

history to an analysis of its effectiveness as a

pedagogical tool. The event is coordinated by

marie Bragg (psychology) and paul Lagunes

(political Science), along with Graduate Teach-

ing Center director Bill rando and Associate

director Jennifer Frederick. Speakers include:

thomas pollarDDean, Graduate School of Arts and SciencesSterling Professor of MCDB

penelope laurans Master of Jonathan Edwards CollegeAssociate Dean, Yale CollegeSpecial Assistant to the PresidentLecturer, Department of English

frances rosenBluthDamon Wells Professor of Political Science Deputy Provost for the Social Sciences and Faculty Development

mark schenkerAssociate Dean, Yale College

tori  BrescollAssistant Professor, School of ManagementFormer Graduate Teaching Center staff member

steven smithMaster of Branford CollegeAlfred Cowles Professor of Political Science

john harrisProfessor of Physics

T h E G r A d UAT E T E A C h i N G C E N T E r’ S

iN The CompaNy oF SCholarSNext lecture in the dean’s lecture series: prof. kelly Brownell “is There the Courage to Change the American diet?” Thursday, April 14, 4 pm, hGS 119

S T U d E N T r E S E A r C h

Despite its name, PrPC is not what is usually considered a “prion”— the distorted form of the protein PrPC that is responsible for Creutzfeld-Jacob and mad cow disease. Rather, PrPC is a normal membrane protein expressed in a variety of cells. Haakon’s dissertation involves explor-ing the role of PrPC in the neuronal dysfunc-tion seen in Alzheimer’s disease. He studies the impairment of spatial memory in mice that have been exposed to a mutated human gene known to cause familial Alzheimer’s. Haakon’s project compares two groups of old Alzheimer mice—one which had normal expression of PrPC and another where PrPC was genetically removed. “The

results were encouraging. The removal of PrPC rescued the memory impairment in Alzheimer mice, suggesting a critical role of PrPC in this model system.”

In addition to memory impairment, Alzheimer patients also have a higher risk for seizures, which may significantly impair cognitive performance. As seizures can be very subtle, their true incidence in Alzheim-er’s patients is not fully known, but can exceed 80% in severe familial cases. “The underlying mechanism is thought to be similar to that of memory impairments, affecting the stability of the broader neuronal network and possibly mediated by PrPC. To test this hypothesis, we implanted a large cohort of old Alzheimer mice with intracra-nial electrodes and recorded their brainwaves while in their natural state, using continu-ous video-eeg monitoring. Again we were encouraged by the results.” The Alzheimer mice without PrPC did not develop seizures, while more than 40% of those with normal PrPC expression did. “Our ultimate goal is to alleviate Alzheimer symptoms, and a major step is to determine whether our findings can be translated to humans.” Based on the research so far, PrPC looks promising.

An irreversible, progressive, degenerative brain disease, Alzheimer’s slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and eventually compromises the ability to carry out even the simplest tasks. Yet, more than 100 years after its discovery, none of the existing therapies effectively stabilize or reverse the disease. “The prospect of helping to change that is incredibly motivating,” says Haakon nygaard (Investigative Medicine). A native of norway, he came to Yale as a medical intern and neurology resident after earning his undergraduate and medical degrees from Creighton university in Omaha, nebraska. While interviewing for a neurology residency, he learned about Yale’s innovative Investiga-

tive Medicine Program and decided to apply. “At that point I had already developed a deep interest in neurology and felt a special connec-tion with older patients,” he says. His dissertation, “The Role of Cellular Prion Protein in β-Amyloid Induced neu-ronal network Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease,” is advised by Stephen Strittmatter. One of the diagnostic features of Alzheimer’s disease, first described by Alois Alzheimer in 1907, is the widespread deposit in the brain of a protein known as β-Amyloid (Aβ). The soluble form of Aβ is particularly toxic to neurons, Haakon explains, and “its elevation in Alzheimer patients is widely believed to be a major mechanism underlying the disease.” understanding exactly how Aβ causes neuronal dysfunction may provide a key insight into developing an effective treat-ment for the disease. “By the time I started my thesis work, my mentor Dr. Stephen Strittmatter and his postdoc Juha Lauren had discovered that Aβ potently binds to neurons via cellular prion protein (PrPC).”

“I think the ghosts and monsters that haunt each culture tell us a lot about what those cultures fear and, alternately, what they value,” she says. “In one of Professor noel Valis’s classes on nineteenth-century realist masterpieces, she mentioned offhandedly that Benito Pérez Galdós had also penned a fantastic novella at the start of his career, and that remark got the wheels in my head

turning about an overlooked corpus that might engage all the same issues as the real-istic fiction, but in a different way.” Wan steeped herself in the fantasy writings of four major Spanish authors: Galdós (1843–1920), Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921), Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1833–1891), and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870). Her dissertation, advised by Valis, is tentatively titled “Haunting Modernity: The Fantastic Short Story in nineteenth-Century Spain.” “People tend to trivialize fantastic lit-erature as escapist and frivolous, but noth-ing could be further from the truth. For my research, I look in particular at how the fantastic short stories of these Spanish authors reflect critical changes in the social landscape of nineteenth-century Spain and dramatize some of the anxieties that these changes produced.” Wan is interested in “the intersection between the short stories at hand and three nineteenth-century Spanish phenomena: urbanization and urban development, widespread religious crisis, and the mass dissemination of literature,” each of which led to the popularization of new literary forms such as serialized novels. “These four authors are all widely read and studied, but not necessarily for

Wan Tang (Spanish) has always been fascinated by

what scares people.

reading Fantasy for Social TruthsSpanish Literature

their fantastic works. Galdós and Pardo Bazán, for instance, are best known as the foremost realist novelists of nineteenth-century Spain,” she notes. But each of them wrote fantasy, too. “Galdós’s Madrid was a city marked by two opposing tendencies: one shooting forward with an eye on the future and the other firmly anchored in the past. The fantastic mode, with its mixture

of age-old superstitions and newfangled science, perfectly paralleled this moment of urban transition. In a similar vein, Pardo Bazán’s fantastic

writing treats the nineteenth-century reli-gious crisis as symptomatic of a larger crisis of faith perfectly encapsulated in fantastic writing, given that fantastic tales drama-tize the tug of war between the traditional

An estimated 26 million people worldwide have

Alzheimer’s disease.

investigative medicine

Understanding Alzheimer’s

“people tend to trivialize fantastic literature as escapist and

frivolous, but nothing could be further from the truth.” WA N TA N G

Benito pérez Galdós

beliefs of yesteryear, religious and otherwise, and the new, positivist skepticism sweeping through Spain. These authors thus estab-lish the fantastic mode as a sort of literary funhouse mirror, through which readers might examine their reality from a different perspective.” She argues that “the fantastic mode was perfect for capturing a transitional moment in Spanish history.” Wan earned her undergraduate degree from the university of Southern California.

haakon’s dissertation involves exploring the role of prpC

in the neuronal dysfunction seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

she is a Junior Fellow. She followed that up with an article titled “Meaning, Celebrity, and the underage Pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears” in the journal Cultural Sociology. In the article, Elizabeth maintains that previous scholars’ analysis of fame and the role of celebrities in society “did not suffi-ciently explain why the pregnancy of a minor celebrity—in two senses, both underage and relatively unknown beyond her immediate fan base—occasioned debates in the media about teen sex and teen pregnancy, the responsibili-ties of parents, and why teen pregnancy rates in the united States are high compared to similar countries.” She argued that celebrities are “symbolic figures” that ordinary people use to “interpret and narrate our collective experience and moral boundaries. I didn’t know it then, but that question about Juno and Jamie Lynn would lead me to many other questions and, eventually, to my dissertation work.” Part of Elizabeth’s dissertation, advised by Alexander, examines fan magazines from the early 1930s along with mainstream news sources, including Time magazine and The

She was writing a paper for Jeffrey Alexander on performance theory at the time the media announced the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, younger sister of Britney, and the movie Juno, a film about a pregnant high school girl and the couple that wishes to adopt her child, was released. “I got home from seeing the film and wondered why there was more ‘media buzz’ about Jamie Lynn Spears than about the movie dealing with the same situation. I followed that question through literature on performance theory and celebrity and gathered and examined data, including newspaper and magazine articles and tele-vision transcripts.” She found that entertainment news publications “did not treat Jamie Lynn Spears and her pregnancy as differently from mainstream news as the literature and our contemporary media debates would suggest.” Celebrity news and hard news converged. She presented her findings at the Konstanzer Meisterklasse in Konstanz, Germany, in the summer of 2008 and at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale, where

Two pregnant teenagers, one fictional and the other real,

got Elizabeth Breese (Sociology) thinking about the con-

nection between the news media and celebrity during her

first year at Yale.

Celebrity Gossip or Journalism?Sociology

New York Times. She discovered that “shock-ing, surprising, and scandalous news about film stars were regular features of both ‘fluffy’ and ‘serious’ news sources in the Golden Age of Hollywood.” Her analysis of the material led her to realize that the media are “regulated by a binary code of civil attributes and ideals and their anti-civil opposites. This code is larger than the ideal of objectivity, which has thus far been the focus of much of the socio-logical scholarship on the news. It is through this code that journalists, media critics, and scholars describe and interpret the news

“Our model used sand, moving plastic sheeting, and a vacuum in place of crustal rock, tectonic plates, and eroding glaciers, and we recorded this model mountain belt’s evolution through glass side walls. With the equation verified, we applied it to the Andes and found that a high but plausible erosion rate is needed to drive the observed decrease in size of approximately three millimeters per year.” The American Geophysical union honored him with an Outstanding Student Presenta-tion Award for his talk on this topic at the annual conference in San Francisco last year.

They began to shrink when a cooling climate allowed ice to form at lower elevations, thus enlarging the glaciers. Keith Ma (Geology & Geophysics) wondered what the connection was between the ice and the size of the mountains. Might a phenomenon known as “efficient glacial erosion” be causing the mountain belt to shrink? To test the idea, he derived an equa-tion for the height and width of a mountain belt with known plate velocities and erosion rates and then built a computer-controlled analog model to verify it.

The patagonian andes have been getting

smaller for the past eight million years.

Watching mountains ShrinkGeology & Geophysics

His paper, in the Tectonophysics section, was titled “Response of a thrust belt to the onset of glacial erosion in the Patagonian Andes.” Keith earned his b.a. from Brown, where he became interested in geology through what he describes as “a fantastic introductory course co-taught by Jan Tullis and Karen Fischer. I was strongly interested in glaciology [the study of ice and glaciers], but over time become more excited about the evolution of mountain belts that host glacial ice. I decided to pursue a ph.d. that combined both interests.” Keith went to Argentine Patagonia in the spring of 2009 with two field assistants, nat Wilson (an undergraduate geology major, now a graduate student at Simon Fraser uni-versity) and Pei Pei Ma, his wife. “Our goal was to measure erosion rates at the crest of the Patagonian Andes from about 10 million years ago to the present. During this period there was major global cooling, and we expected to find that glacier ice increased substantially. Because glaciers erode the mountains more quickly than rivers, larger glaciers can effectively saw off the top of the mountains. In this way glaciers can limit the height of mountain belts, an idea people in our field call the ‘glacial buzzsaw.’” They collected granite cobbles from glacial moraines (sediment left by a glacier after it recedes) and tills (sedi-ment that melts underneath the ice and stays in place). “These sediments are now tens of kilometers from the front of the mountain

belt, deposited by tongues of ice that receded thousands to millions of years ago,” Keith explains. “The field work is mostly at low elevations, on the eastern flank of the moun-tains. This area is extremely dry and has only scrubby vegetation—very nice for walk-ing! We generally camp in one of the town campsites and make trips out to the nearby deposits. These can be up to 10 kilometers away from and 1000 meters above any roads, so we end up carrying a lot of rocks!” “We know that the granite cobbles we picked up were originally plucked off the crest of the mountain belt. Radioactive decay of uranium in a few trace minerals in our granite samples—apatite and zircon—can be used to tell us the erosion rate at the range crest, and since we have samples from moraines and tills at many different ages, we can track the erosion rate over time. This method is called detrital (u/th)He ther-mochronology. I have been working on this first set of samples, both at Yale and with a

collaborator at uc Santa Cruz, for roughly one year now with the help of a senior undergraduate student, Chelsea Willett.” Keith returned to the field to finish his collections during spring break. His advisor is Mark Brandon.

The Vaughn-Lewis icefall as seen from the Gilkey Trench, where keith spent two summers with the Juneau icefield research program in Alaska.

and judge it as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for the profession of journalism and for society.” She found, in fact, that “the vocabu-lary and the ideals we use to describe, inter-pret, judge, criticize, and defend the news as a vital part of society are relatively constant over many decades in the united States.” Elizabeth’s work not only sheds light on the role of the media in American culture, but also adds to the methodologi-cal and theoretical tools of the discipline of sociology.

“Because glaciers erode the mountains more quickly than rivers,

larger glaciers can effectively saw off the top of the mountains.

in this way glaciers can limit the height of mountain belts, an

idea people in our field call the ‘glacial buzzsaw.” k E i T h m A

VO L. 13, N U m B E r 5 , m A r C h /A p r i L 2 011

Yale Graduate School News is a publication of the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Thomas Pollard, dean; Gila Reinstein, editor; Bjorn Akselsen, design/production; Yale P&P, production supervision; Michael Marsland, Harold Shapiro, photography.

Send news and notification of upcoming events togila.reinstein@yale.edu.

Outstanding Alumni For alumni news, see www.aya.yale.edu/grad

J E F F r E Y h E r B S T Jeffrey Herbst (ph.d. 1987, Political Sci-ence) became the sixteenth president of Colgate university in Hamilton, ny, last summer, after serving for five years as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Miami university in Ohio. Herbst’s research and teaching have focused on the politics of sub-Saharan Africa, with special interest in peacekeep-ing, democratic liberalization in Africa, and how the international community can further economic growth in less developed regions of the world. He is the author of several books, including States and Power in Africa (Princeton university Press, 2000; co-winner of the Gregory Luebbert Best Book Award from the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association) and New Order in Sight? The African Union, NEPAD, and the Future of a Continent (with Greg Mills of the Interna-

tional Institute of Strategic Studies), as well as articles in Comparative Politics, Foreign Affairs, ForeignPolicy.com, International Orga-nization, and International Security. Herbst has served on the faculties of Princeton university (his undergraduate alma mater) and several African universities, including the university of Zimbabwe, the university of Ghana, and the university of Cape Town.

k E N N E T h A T C h i T Y Kenneth Atchity (ph.d. 1971, Compara-tive Literature) is executive producer of The Kennedy Detail, a two-hour special about the Secret Service agents assigned to protect jfk at the time of his assassination. The documentary aired on the Discovery Chan-nel in December 2010. The film is based on the New York Times bestselling book Atchity developed with former Secret Service Agent Gerald Blaine and journalist Lisa McCubbin. Atchity also co-produced The Lost Valen-tine, starring Betty White and Jennifer Love

Hewitt, which aired on cbs’s Hallmark Hall of Fame in January. He served as executive producer of Hysteria, starring Maggie Gyl-lenhaal and Hugh Dancy, filmed in England and Luxembourg. Atchity, founder of Atchity Entertainment International, recently formed a new company, the Story Merchant (www.storymerchant.com), to provide strategic career coaching for writers.

J O A N N A W A L E Y - C O h E N Joanna Waley-Cohen (ph.d. 1987, History) presented “Banquets and Politics in China,” the first talk of the annual Franke Lectures at the Whitney Humanities Center, which will focus this year on the history of food and cuisine. Chair of the Department of History at nyu where she has taught since 1992, Waley-Cohen is an authority on early modern Chinese history. Her books include The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (1999) and The Culture of War: Empire and the Military under the Qing

On May 14, alumni all across the nation and around the

world will “give back” in the Third-Annual Yale Day of

Service. According to the Association of Yale Alumni, over

3,500 Yale alumni and friends participated in last year’s

Day of Service at nearly 250 sites in 40 states and 18

countries.Along with Yale College and professional school graduates, Yale Graduate School alumni have been very active in the Day of Service since its inception. Service is a great part of the Yale tradition, and that tradition is embraced by the Graduate School. Stephen Scher (b.a. 1956; ph.d. 1966, History of Art) reports that there are already six sites planned for new York. These include a wide range of organizations such as the Central Park Conservancy, Har-lem Junior Tennis and Education Program, and Haitian Relief Efforts. Scher stresses the importance of Graduate School alumni

to the success of these activities, citing the fact that 30% of last year’s participants were gsas alumni. Across the country in Los Angeles, alumni will join forces with the non-profit organization P.F. Arts to repaint a mural that was recently vandalized. The mural had been painted by students from the Grand View School in Mar Vista. Alumni efforts are, of course, by no means restricted to the coasts. Tim Damour (b.a. 1964), regional director of the Yale Day of Service in Colorado, Kan-sas, nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, discussed some of the projects currently planned by the Colorado Yale Associa-

Alumni Association Online: www.aya.yale.edu/grad

tion. True to the ecological spirit of their state, they have organized an electronics recycling project and will partner with Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado to clean up a trail and campground at which beetle infestations have killed numerous pine trees. In Illinois, Valerie Hotchkiss (ph.d. 1990, Medieval Studies), chair of the gsaa Community Outreach Commit-tee, plans to provide college counseling to high school juniors in urbana’s public school system. Those who have participated in the Yale Day of Service describe it as an unforgettable and highly rewarding experience. The gsaa strongly encour-ages all Graduate School alumni to take part! If you would like to know more about Day of Service opportunities in your area, consult the aya Day of Service website (http://yaledayofservice.org). If no sites are scheduled for your area, consider proposing one or serving independently. Damour suggests working with food banks since “they usually can use volun-teers on a Saturday and do not have to plan a special project just for a Yale club.”

Notes from the Yale Graduate School

Kenneth atchity Joanna Waley-CohenJeffrey herbst

© Colgate University/andrew Daddio

Dynasty (2006). She has published many articles on Chinese law, politics, foreign relations, and culinary culture, includ-ing “A Question of Balance: Taste and Gastronomy in China,” which appeared in Food: The History of Taste (2008), edited by Paul Freedman, the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale. Waley-Cohen is currently working on two books: a history of daily life in China around 1800 and a history of early mod-ern China that explores cooking, eating, and imperial dining practices. She earned her undergraduate degree from Cam-bridge university.

CommencementSUNdAY, mAY 22, 1 pm Commencement Convocation, hGS Courtyard

mONdAY, mAY 23, 8:30 Am – 3 pm University Commencement. Breakfast in hGS Courtyard. processional lineup on Cross Campus. Ceremony on Old Campus. diploma ceremony, Woolsey hall