The College of Arts and Sciences will present the faculty and teaching awards for the past year on April 22 from 4:00-5:30 in the WT Young Library Auditorium. A reception will follow.  

The recipients of this year's College faculty awards are:

• Beth Guiton, chemisty - Undergraduate Mentoring
• Shaunna Scott, sociology - Distinguished Service or Engagement
• Joseph Straley, physics & astronomy - Distinguished Service or Engagement
• Christia Brown, psychology - Diversity and Inclusion
• Joseph Brill, physics & astronomy - Graduate Mentoring
• Thomas Janoski, sociology - Graduate Mentoring
• Linda Worley, modern & classical languages, literatures & cultures - Graduate Mentoring

The recipeints of this year's College teaching awards are:

• Renee Fatemi, physics & sstronomy - Outstanding Teaching Award
• Moisés Castillo, hispanic studies - Outstanding Teaching Award
• Charley Carlson, psychology - Outstanding Teaching Award
• Anna Voskresensky, modern & classical languages, literatures & cultures -  Outstanding Teaching Award
• Michelle Sizemore, English - Teaching in Large Classes
• Ruth Brown, hispanic studies - Innovative Teaching

Writings composed to reveal and denounce the defects and crimes of women was a recognized genre in the Middle Ages, and it generated both amusement and dismay. While the intertextual richness of misogynous writing has long been established, these texts don’t just faithfully parrot each other—they often play on each other to subversive effect. I’ll look at several French and Italian texts that aren’t so well known even in medieval French and Italian studies, and show how they interact in unexpected ways to nuance their misogynous claims. I’ll also spend some time on modern misogynous genres, surprisingly (if unintentionally) faithful to their medieval antecedents. 

F. Regina Psaki is the Giustina Family Professor of Italian Language and Literature at the University of Oregon. She publishes on Boccaccio, Dante, and medieval courtly genres, translating chivalric romances from French and Italian: Il Tristano Riccardiano (2006),Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole (1995), and Le Roman de Silence (1991). With Gloria Allaire she co-edited The Arthur of the Italians (2014); with Thomas C. Stillinger she co-edited Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism (2006).

Her current project, The Traffic in Talk About Women: Misogyny and Philogyny in the Middle Ages, explores the lively medieval genres of anti-woman diatribes and defenses of women and shows the range of opinion in medieval writers on the nature and behavior of women (and, in some cases, of men). 

Title:  Homogenization of Elliptic Operators with Random Coefficients

Abstract:  In this talk, we mainly consider the homogenization problems of elliptic equations with rapidly-oscillating random coefficients. The homogenization theorem is proved for this case. We  also prove the general theorem of individual homogenization when the bounded coefficients are ergodic.

Title: Unimodality Questions in Ehrhart Theory

Abstract: An interesting open problem in Ehrhart theory is to classify the lattice polytopes having a unimodal h*-vector. Although various sufficient conditions have been found, necessary conditions remain a challenge. Some highly-structured polytopes, such as the polytope of real doubly-stochastic matrices, have been proven to possess unimodal h*-vectors, but the same is unknown even for small variations of it. In this talk, we will mainly examine the h*-vectors for two particular classes of polytopes, with special attention given to methods for proving unimodality.

Title:  Deletion-Induced Triangulations

Abstract:   Let $d > 0$ be  a fixed integer and let $\A \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ be a collection of $n \geq d+2$ points which we lift into $\mathbb{R}^{d+1}$. Further let $k$ be an integer satisfying $0 \leq k \leq n-(d+2)$ and assign to each $k$-subset of the points of $\A$ a (regular) triangulation obtained by deleting the specified $k$-subset and projecting down the lower hull of the convex hull of the resulting lifting. Next, for each triangulation we form the characteristic vector outlined by Gelfand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky by assigning to each vertex the sum of the volumes of all adjacent simplices. We then form a vector for the lifting, which we call the compound GKZ-vector, by summing all the characteristic vectors. Lastly, we construct a polytope $\Sigma_k(\A) \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{| \A |}$ by taking the convex hull of all obtainable compound GKZ-vectors by various liftings of $\A$, and note that $\Sigma_0(\A)$ is the well-studied secondary polytope corresponding to $\A$. We will see that by varying $k$, we obtain a family of polytopes with interesting properties relating to Minkowski sums, Gale transforms, and Lawrence constructions, with the member of the family with maximal $k$ corresponding to a zonotope studied by Billera, Fillamen, and Sturmfels. We will also discuss the case $k=d=1$, in which we can outline a combinatorial description of the vertices allowing us to better understand the graph of the polytope and to obtain formulas for the numbers of vertices and edges present.

[1] Samantha Dunn:

Impairments in Morphology Through the Lifespan.

An overview of how language, specifically morphology, develops and what it looks like when there is delay. Even when normal language development occurs, we are still at risk for language impairment due to brain damage. Often, a stroke can result in a language disorder known as aphasia. Aphasia results in a wide range of issues, but I will be focused on how morphology is affected following a brain injury that results in aphasia.



[2] Clare Harshey:

A Network Morphology Theory of Old Norse Nominal Inflection.

Network morphology is a framework which has proven useful and accurate for morphological analysis in a wide range of languages. Using computational notation, it models lexical information as a collection of interrelated nodes containing facts, drawing information from one another to generate the appropriate morphological forms. Using the KATR language to construct such a theory, Old Norse nouns can be modeled accurately and intuitively.

It seems perhaps unlikely that a language would maintain a single special alternative suffix, to be deployed just in case the word to be inflected has in its derivational history another particular kind of operation. Indeed such situations do arise, however, a notable case from Sanskrit being the gerund, also known as the indeclinable past participle, or the absolutive:

(1) General gerund formation:

√bhū- ‘be’: ger. bhūtvā ‘[after] having been’ or ‘[when X] had been’ (MacDonell [1927] 1986: 137)

√jñā- ‘know’: ger. jñātvā ‘[after] having known’ or ‘[when X] had known’

(Whitney [1885] 1945: 56)

√vac- ‘speak’: ger. uktvā ‘[after] having spoken’ or ‘[when X] had spoken’

(Gonda 1966: 78)

Specifically, the gerund form is created in the general case by suffixing -tvā to the so-called 'weak-grade' root. When the verb lexeme in question is the result of prefixing a(n etymological) preposition as a pre-verb (PV), by contrast, the formation of the gerund is systematically distinct, involving a potentially distinct stem and an unrelated -ya suffix instead:

(2) PV-prefixed gerund formation:

ger. nipatya ‘having fallen down’ (ni- ‘down, into’; compare √pat- ‘fall, fly’: ger. patitvā)

(Mayrhofer [1964] 1972: 103; Whitney [1885] 1945: 94)

ger. vimucya ‘having freed’ (vi- ‘apart’; compare √muc- ‘release’: ger. muktvā)

(Gonda 1966: 78; Whitney [1885] 1945: 122)

ger. pratyāgatya ‘having returned’ (prati- ‘reverse, back’; ā- ‘(un)to, at’; √gam- ‘go’: ger. gatvā) (Deshpande 2003: 122, 428; Whitney [1885] 1945: 34)

This choice among suffixes seems to depend on the presence or absence of a non-adjacent morphological boundary, and as such, the phenomenon's status between derivation and inflection, between regular and irregular, will inevitably force morphological theories into some potentially uncomfortable positions.

Of course, some frameworks are simply not up to the task, straining to minimize its theoretical significance, or playing fast and loose with fragmented stipulations that cover the facts, but miss the generalization(s). Rather than crowning one framework as uniquely suited to the descriptive task, however, the very process of rotating through the lenses of diverse morphological frameworks presents a clearer, and indeed more coherent picture of the Sanskrit gerund than any single approach can.

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Will Shafer will be presenting an exit seminar titled Investigation into the Competitive Partitioning of Dissociated H2 and D2 on Activated Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts.

Abstract: Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis is a complex catalytic process by which stoichiometric amounts of H2 and CO are converted into hydrocarbons [1]. Though the process has been known and utilized for close to 90 years, the mechanism occurring on the catalyst is still under scrutiny. While some authors prefer a CH2 insertion mechanism [2] and others claim a CO insertion mechanism [3], more draw the mechanism through an enol, by addition through condensation. Controversy has also arisen in the mechanism where certain academics have argued that if CH2 insertion was the favored mechanism, then no oxygenated material could be produced. From this controversy, Dry et al. [4] argued for a mechanism that involves both CH2 and CO as active surface intermediates. Since the rate-determining step remains a point of contention, a number of H2¬/D2 studies have been performed, unfortunately, with no clear conclusion. Most of these studies have examined replacing H2 with D2 ¬in the syngas over Ru [5, 6], Co [7, 8, 9], and Fe [7, 9] catalysts during F-T. However results for these experiments have varied with some displaying an inverse kinetic effect and others have displayed none. This work examines whether preferential partitioning of either H or D on activated FT metals occur; as this could be the reason why so much confusion has arisen in the kinetic isotopic switching experiments with H2 and D2.