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Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded the 2006 W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association for best book in biological anthropology written for a wide audience.

Kathryn Davis, the Fannie M. Hurst Senior Fiction Writer in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, has won a $150,000 Lannan Foundation Literary Award. Presented annually, the Lannan Literary Awards honor “both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional quality.”

Photo by Robert Boston

Cynthia White has been selected to receive The National Council of University Research Administrators 2006 Distinguished Service Award. The award is way to recognize members of NCURA who have made sustained and distinctive contributions to the organization.

Coach Larry Kindbom’s Playbook of Champions inspires student-athletes for life.

The following are among the new faculty members at the University. Others will be introduced periodically in this space. Anca Parvulescu, Ph.D., joins the Department of English and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. Parvulescu earned a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Her teaching and research interests include 20th-century American literature, literary and cultural theory, feminist theory and women’s literature, Eastern European cinema and the history of the university. She is writing a book titled Laughter’s Burst: Seriousness, Manners, Feminism. The book traces the emergence of the modern subject as a serious subject formed by and through a prohibition on laughter. It argues that the spirit of the subject’s seriousness permeates modernity’s projects, lending them a certain gravity and immutability. As a result, the deployment of laughter becomes a crucial strategy for philosophers, writers and artists who hope to challenge modernity and its projects. Laughter offers the promise of a new kind of subject and another kind of community. Yan Mei Wang, Ph.D., joins the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. She earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002 and spent the next four years as a postdoctoral researcher in biological physics at Princeton University. In her research, she applies quantitative experimental methods pioneered in physics to address fundamental biological questions at the molecular level. At Princeton, she performed the first single-molecule imaging of LacI repressor protein and observed that LacI diffuses along DNA, thereby resolving a decades-old puzzle in DNA targeting by this protein. She will continue to explore gene regulation mechanisms by real-time tracing of single-gene regulator proteins in vitro and in vivo. Derek Pardue, Ph.D., joins the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor, with a joint appointment in International and Area Studies. Pardue earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004, and a bachelor’s in German literature and music from the University of Massachusetts in 1991. He also holds a master’s of music in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas. For the past two years, he has been a visiting assistant professor at Union College. His research focuses on the representation of hip-hoppers as social and cultural agents. For the past 10 years, he has worked with with rappers, DJs and graffiti artists in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Pardue employs strategies of methodology and epistemology from urban anthropology, critical race theory, discourse theory, cultural studies and ethnomusicology to his analyses.

School of Medicine researchers found that a malaria drug eased many symptoms of metabolic syndrome in mice. Study findings were published in the November issue of Cell Metabolism, and senior author Clay F. Semenkovich, M.D., professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology, says funding for a clinical trial has been received.

Seven finalists for the Olin Cup Competition were selected from a pool nearly twice as large as last year’s. At stake in the January finals is a total of $75,000.

Kenneth F. Kelton, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, has been named the first Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences. John F. McDonnell, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees and retired chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corp., with JSM Charitable Trust, endowed the new professorship.

Results from School of Medicine research suggest that a drug could save millions in health-care costs by preventing immune attacks following kidney transplants.