Conferences and Presentations, Outside Awards

Chemistry graduate students make impressive showing at American Chemical Society’s poster competition

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The Philadelphia Younger Chemists Committee (of the American Chemical Society) held its 15th annual student poster session at the University of the Sciences on March 31st. Two graduate students from Dean Burgmayer’s lab, Doug Gisewhite (M.A. 2014) and Ben Williams (PhD candidate), co-presented their work, “Molybdenum Pyranopterin Dithiolene Complexes: Synthetic Models for Pyran Cyclization in the Molybdenum Cofactor,” and tied for first place in the graduate student/post-doc division. Sarah Burke, a recent graduate of the PhD program in chemistry from Professor Bill Malachowski’s lab, was also in attendance and took third prize in the same division for her poster titled “Boronic Acid Analogs of Anti-HIV Therapies.” Burke is currently at the University of the Sciences working under Dr. John Tomsho.

Also participating in the evening’s festivities were Nissa Abidi (2nd-year graduate student) and other undergraduates from Professor Jason Schmink’s lab.

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Congratulations to all!

Conferences and Presentations, Current Students, Report from the Field

Report from the Field: Maggie Beeler co-organizes timely conference on cultural heritage preservation

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The tragic news of the violent destruction of ancient artifacts and cultural heritage sites in the Middle East by Islamic State militants has prompted widespread condemnation and outrage from around the globe. Maggie Beeler (PhD candidate in Archaeology) and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University have organized a conference that, in light of recent world events, has taken on added urgency.

The conference, The Future of the Past: From Amphipolis to Mosul – New Approaches to Cultural Heritage Preservation in the Eastern Mediterranean, convenes April 10th-11th at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Dr. Morag Kersel (DePaul University) will deliver the imperative keynote address: “Go, Do Good! Responsibility and the Future of Cultural Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 21st Century.”

As Beeler explains:

“We organized the conference in order to foster a dialogue among emerging scholars on the topic on cultural heritage preservation. The conference is timely, though, because it serves to underscore the urgency of cultural heritage preservation efforts in light of the recent rash of destruction of ancient artifacts, both the intentional destruction of archaeological sites and antiquities in museums at the hands of militants and unintentional destruction resulting from violent conflict in the region.”

The two-day conference will also host three sessions of papers by young scholars exploring new and better ways to preserve and protect the past while contending with contemporary political considerations.

Current Students, Report from the Field

Report from the Field: Amy Wojciechowski Talks Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Amy Wojciechowski has been working with the Philadelphia Museum of Art Spotlight Educators program since August 2014.  This is her second position with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, having previously held a curatorial internship from September 2012 to November 2013 to work on the 2013-2014 exhibition Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis. The Spotlight Educators program is open to all visitors to the Museum, and focuses on having a conversation around a single work in the permanent collection selected by the Spotlight Educator.  Amy has previously led discussions on Henri Rousseau’s 1906 The Merry Jesters, Viggo Johansen’s 1887 My Friends, and Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 work Rain.  She will be leading a March talk on Édouard Manet’s 1873 Le Bon Bock. At Bryn Mawr, she is busy studying for her PhD preliminary exams and preparing to go abroad to pursue archival research for her work on Polish modernism.

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Current Students, Outside Awards, Report from the Field

Report from the Field: Katherine Rochester’s Animated Year in Germany

Photo by Constance Mensh

­­Before Pixar, before Looney Tunes, before Disney, there was Lotte Reiniger.

“Who?” you might ask and we wouldn’t blame you for the Weimar-era director and pioneer of animation has been all but forgotten, particularly in U.S. histories of film.

But, today, a Bryn Mawr doctoral student, Katherine Rochester M.A. ’12 is aiming to write Reiniger back into the history books.

Born in Berlin in 1899, Reiniger was the first woman—the first person­­—to direct a feature-length animated film. Called Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed), this long-neglected masterpiece knit together stories from the classic One Thousand and One Nights. A critical and popular success in its day, the film employs a silhouette animation technique reminiscent of wayang shadow puppetry.

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Rochester is spending the academic year as a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. Using Berlin as a launching pad, she is visiting museums and archives throughout Germany to conduct research for her dissertation, which focuses on experimental animation and the conventions of its display.

Recently, she reported back from Tübingen, where she happily sifted through a treasure trove of artist Reiniger’s exquisite work. Next up: visits to the silhouette museum in Vreden and the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf.

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A fourth-year Ph.D. candidate, Katherine has worked as a curatorial internship for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2012 Whitney Biennial and as the curatorial assistant for the exhibition Jason Rhoades, Four Roads, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. In addition, she has written for Art in America, Artforum, and other publications.

Archive spread

Photo credits: Katherine Rochester, Stadtmuseum Tübingen.

Current Students, Events, Professional Development

The Graduate Group in Science and Math: The Road to Tenure

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Graduate students in Chemistry, Math and Physics have organized two professional development workshops for the Spring 2015 term. The first of these workshops focused on the tenure process. Bryn Mawr’s own Professor of Math Lisa Traynor presented a revealing look at a process that can often seem obscure, even to graduate students training for academic careers.

Beginning with a brief history of the tenure system, Professor Traynor then carefully defined its many terms and explained in detail each of the steps leading up to becoming a professor with tenure. In addition, she also offered advice about balancing the various demands of a teaching career, research and departmental service and offered strategies for how best to stay on track throughout the reappointment process and on through tenure approval. Throughout, Professor Traynor entertained questions from the graduate students, maintaining the frank and open dialogue that is a hallmark of graduate education at Bryn Mawr.

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Professor Traynor has been teaching at Bryn Mawr since 1993 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2006. She also serves on the Committee on Appointments at Bryn Mawr College and so was able to offer a look at the tenure process from the administrative side.