Grain & Chaff

Exporting experts

Sociology professor Jay Demerath recently received a new Fulbright Senior Specialists grant to work in India during January. The award came around the same time he was being recognized, earlier this month for his book, "Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics."

The awards program, which recently completed its first year, is designed for established scholars to bring expertise for short periods, from two to six weeks, to areas outside the U.S. Faculty apply to be "on call" with their expertise and, once approved, can be offered the opportunity to go to a country that has requested an expert in their area. These approved "candidates" can be called upon more than once over a five year period, though preference is given to candidates who have not yet received awards.

Just entering its second year, the program has made more than 200 grants for specialists to travel to nearly 80 nations and has roughly 800 approved candidates.

Economics professor Donald Katzner was a recipient during the first year, giving six lectures in Mongolia in August, including a paper at the International Conference on Optimization and Optimal Control.

Demerath will be bringing his expertise on India's caste system and violence between religious groups with him and will be studying them and India's relationship with Pakistan.

"I'll take some soundings," he said of the Kashmir region, over which India and Pakistan have been struggling.

Demerath said India also is seeing a great deal of change as the population shifts from rural to urban and many people at both the top and bottom of the caste system begin to leave it.

"There is a lot of leakage for Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam," he said. "I call it caste-ing off. People on the bottom of the system have been leaving for some time. But I'm more interested in why people who are at the top, who benefit from it, are leaving.

"People make a kind of announcement of their independence of it. Some of them feel it is an undue constraint for a democratic society.

"I'll see what kind of research is needed in that area."

Demerath's expertise also won him the Distinguished Book Award for 2002 for "Crossing the Gods," which was presented earlier this month in Salt Lake City, Utah, by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
"I'm pleased about it," he said. "It's a nice tribute."

On the shelves

Assistant professor Márgara Russotto of Spanish and Portuguese has books published this year in Spain and Venezuela. An award-winning poet in Venezuela, Russot-to's collection, "El diario íntimo de Sor Juana (Poemas apócrifos)," was published in Madrid, while her work of literary criticism, "Dispersión y permanencia: Lecturas Latinoamericanas," was issued in Caracas. ... Kluwer Academic Publishing this month published "Applied Molecular and Materials Modeling," co-authored by Chemical Engineering professor Phillip Westmoreland with Peter A. Kollmann, Anne M. Chaka, Keiji Morokuma, Matthew Neurock, Ellen B. Stechel and P. Vashishta. With detailed analysis and examples from around the world, "Applied Molecular and Materials Modeling" describes the science, applications, and infrastructures that have proven successful - and those that haven't. The book makes use of the authors' extensive experience and of specific reports on site visits and interviews with 91 companies and other organizations in the U.S., Europe and Japan, plus citations of more than 600 other company, academic, and government activities in the field.

Strictly speaking

English professor Arthur F. Kinney last week delivered the George Summer Endowed Shakespeare Lecture at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Kinney's talk, "Shakespeare's Mirrors," was based on a chapter of a book which he is currently writing. During his visit, he also taught classes in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama and theories of new historicism in the Renaissance.

Team player

Board of Trustees chair Grace Fey is serving on a 14-member group advising Governor-elect Mitt Romney on education issues. The group is chaired by Tripp Jones, executive director of MassINC.