Laurence Cooper, associate professor of political science, has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a new freshman seminar, "Cosmos or Chaos: View of the World, Views of the Good Life," which addresses the question of what it means to live well. Students in the course will consider key visions of the character of the world and of how to live a good life, as developed though extensive reading, discussion, and writing about Homer, Plato and Aristotle, the Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, and the Gospel of Matthew, Augustine's Confessions, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and other notable thinkers.

Steven Schier, Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, has been appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of a new journal, Geopolitics, History and International Relations. The journal publishes geopolitical analyses of international and American politics.

Chérif Keïta, professor of French, had his film "Cemetary Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa" (2009) reviewed in the Italian daily newspaper, La Stampa, in the section "Jambo Africa: Leggere, Vedere, Ascoltaire" (May 29, 2009).

Larry Cooper, associate professor of political science, was awarded a Fulbright Grant to teach at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, in winter and spring of 2010.

Deborah Appleman, Hollis L. Caswell Professor of Educational Studies and chair of educational studies, recently gave an invited talk on adolescents and literary theory at Teachers College, Columbia University, presenting a paper on her work in prisons at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego. She also presented a paper at the International Reading Association, held in April in Minneapolis.

Jerome Levi, professor of anthropology, recently attended the United Nations Eighth Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues as a World Bank delegate.

Kathleen Galotti, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, made a presentation entitled "Changes Over Time: How Consistent are People in Making Important Real-Life Decisions?" at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in San Francisco, CA on May 22, 2009.

Arjendu Pattanayak, Associate Professor of Physics, co-authored a paper, "Persistent patterns and multifractality in fluid mixing" with Bala Sundaram (University of Massachusetts, Boston) and Andrew Poje (College of Staten Island-City University of New York) which has been accepted for publication in Physical Review E.

Raka Mitra, Assistant Professor of Biology, gave a talk on "The bacterial wilt disease of plants – getting to the root of the problem" at Macalester College.

Roger Lasley, Registrar, has released “Flatpick Vacation,” his 8th CD of acoustic guitar instrumentals. "fRoots" magazine (no.274 - April 2006) says of his last CD: "Ace Minnesota guitarist and his big ol' Martin show that a good flatpicker can match fingerpicking any day in a set of excellent original pieces ranging from the laidback to the seriously rocking..." If you’d like to learn more about Roger’s music and hear free samples, visit www.cdbaby.com/all/rlasley. “Flatpick Vacation” is available in the Carleton Bookstore.

Jay Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Percussion & African Drum Ensemble, recently had his composition for solo marimba and bass drum, titled "Risas Tambien," published by HoneyRock Publishing.

Angela Curran, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, and Carol Donelan, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, co-authored a chapter on "Gender" in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga (2009).