H&SS eNews, July 2006

Greetings from H&SS.

Whether you are a member of the media looking for a faculty expert on deadline, a student who wants to learn about the latest H&SS events, or an alumni who wants to catch up on campus news, this is a one-stop shop for H&SS news and events.

The H&SS eNews is a monthly electronic publication of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. The eNews is compiled and edited by Kelli McElhinny, director of media relations for H&SS. She can be reached at 412-268-6094 or kellim@andrew.cmu.edu. Contact Kelli to submit news about yourself and your fellow alumni, and to sign up for our newsletters.

For past eNews publications, please visit the H&SS eNews archive.

For news about the entire university, be sure to check out the university’s home page or the Carnegie Mellon Today website.

Alumni News

--Judi Hoffman (B.A. English, 1984; B.F.A. Drama, 1985) is a psychic living in New York City, and she appears regularly on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Shade 45. Hoffman writes for two teen magazines: M, Movies, Music and More; and AstroGirl. She also teaches at The Learning Annex. For more information, go to http://www.judihoffman.com.

Student News

--Thirteen Carnegie Mellon students are working in Washington D.C. this year as recipients of Milton and Cynthia Friedman Internships. The internships were created in 2000 through a generous gift from Cynthia Friedman, currently a trustee of the university, in memory of her husband, Milton (B.S., M.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1947, 1949). The grants aim to encourage and support the participation of undergraduate and graduate students in policy-related internships located in the nation's capital. They are designed to foster significant work experiences that complement students' academic work and assist them as they make career and graduate education decisions. The students and their majors are:

Gerrit Betz – Ethics, History and Public Policy
Ashley Brown - Political Science/Hispanic Studies
Jennifer LaCoste - Political Science/International Relations
Max Martinelli - History & Policy
Liz Mullen - Policy & Management/Decision Science
Aditya Nagarajan - History & Policy/Political Science
Jonathan Perry - Decision Science
Karl Sjogren - Decision Sciences /Human-Computer Interaction
Staci Steinberger – Bachelor of Humanities and Arts (Material & Visual Culture and American Studies)
Asa Watten - Political Science
Oliver Lim - Political Science/International Relations
Rashi Venkataraman - Biological Sciences/Ethics, History and Public Policy
Adam Schloss - Physics/Political Science

College/Faculty News

--Silvia Borzutzky, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, is the co-editor of a new book, “After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market.” Borzutzky and co-editor Lois Hecht Oppenheim bring together several American and Chilean scholars to assess the impact of the coalition government of Chile’s Socialists and Christian Democrats. With a special emphasis on the presidency of Ricardo Lagos, the contributors measure the impact of three consecutive administrations on the crucial issues of human rights, civil-military relations, the nature of a political party system, the transformation of church-state relations, foreign and economic policies, social security, and health policies. Borzutzky directs Carnegie Mellon’s Political Science Program, and she is the author of “Vital Connections: Politics, Social Security and Inequality in Chile.” For more information, go to http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=BORZUF06.

--This summer, Michael D. Rectenwald, a postdoctoral teaching associate in the Department of English, is teaching “Counter/Mass Culture: The Beats to Hip-Hop” for Pittsburgh-area high school students. The class is exploring radical or countercultural forms from the mid-20th century to the present, including the Beats, punk rock and hip-hop. Through readings, recordings and performances, the class is considering the subversive themes of counterculture, as well as how those themes are appropriated and commercialized by the mainstream. Rectenwald offers the unique perspective of having studied under the late Allen Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. “I grew up in the era of punk and my children grew up in the age of hip-hop. My oldest son, John-Michael, is a hip-hop artist. I wanted to understand what my kid and his friends and others saw in hip-hop rap,” Rectenwald said. For more information, go to http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060616_culture.html.

--Statistics Professor Larry Wasserman has won the 2006 DeGroot Prize for his textbook "All of Statistics." The prize is awarded every two years by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for "textbooks or monographs concerned with fundamental issues of statistical inference, decision theory and/or statistical applications, and will be chosen based on their novelty, thoroughness, timeliness, and importance of their intellectual scope."

Events

--H&SS will once again host a Homecoming reception for all alumni and friends of the college. The reception is scheduled for 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. October 13 in the H&SS Coffee Lounge in Baker Hall. Refreshments will be provided. More information about Homecoming is at http://alumni.cmu.edu/homecoming/index.html. We look forward to seeing you there. For a complete list of upcoming alumni events, go to http://alumni2.tepper.cmu.edu/cmuEvents/find-event2.asp.

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