The Academic Minute for 2019.03.25-03.29 – Hartwick College Week

The Academic Minute from 03.25 – 03.29

Monday, March 25th
Diane Paige – Hartwick College
On The Power of Play
Diane M. Paige received her B.M. in Music Education from Colorado State University where she minored in Slavic Studies.  Her master’s degree in Musicology was awarded by Iowa State University where she wrote a master’s thesis entitled Dvorak in Spillville.  She received her Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Her dissertation, entitled The Women of Leoš Janáček’s Operas, explored the archetypes and female roles of the Czech composer’s mature operas.  She has published in The Musical Quarterly, with Princeton and Cambridge (forthcoming) Presses, and is currently at work on a book about music and war from the American Revolution to present.  She has presented her research at a wide variety of venues including BBC Radio 3, Lincoln Center for the Arts, and the Bard Music Festival.

At Hartwick she teaches the three-semester music history sequence, an introductory world music course, and courses on specialized topics such as Music of the African Diaspora, Music and World Wars I and II, and Music of the Roma (Gypsies).  She has led off-campus courses to Anguilla, B.W.I. (student practica), Brazil (carnival and its music), and Ghana (dance, drumming, and oral history).

Tuesday, March 26th
Laurel Elder – Hartwick College
Public Opinion and Presidential Spouses
Laurel Elder is Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of Women’s & Gender Studies at Hartwick College where she teaches a range of courses about American government focusing on elections, voting, public opinion, gender, ethnicity and race. She is the coauthor of two books. Her most recent book, American Presidential Candidate Spouses: The Public’s Perspective (Palgrave 2018) explores Americans’ views and expectations for an increasingly important political role, the presidential candidate spouse. Her earlier book, The Politics of Parenthood: Causes and Consequences of the Politicization and Polarization of the American Family (SUNY Press 2012), explores how and why parenthood and the family have become politicized in contemporary U.S. politics. She is also the author of numerous scholarly articles exploring the dynamics behind women’s continued underrepresentation in political office.

Wednesday, March 27th
Stanley K. Sessions  – Hartwick College
Heart Disease
For the last 30 years, Dr. Stanley K. Sessions has worked in the Department of Biology at Hartwick College where he teaches Animal Development, Vertebrate Zoology, Genetics, and Evolution. S.K. Sessions began his career and life-long passion for salamanders at the University of Oregon, where he was an undergraduate and also worked as a laboratory technician in a developmental biology lab. Expeditions to Mexico and Costa Rica to search for Neotropical salamanders reinforced his interest, which he followed up with graduate work in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California Berkeley. After earning his Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley, Dr. Sessions worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leicester in the U.K. to learn molecular techniques, followed by another research position at the University of California-Irvine in order to study limb regeneration in salamanders.

Thursday, March 28th
Steff Rocknak – Hartwick College
The Cult of the New
Dr. Steff Rocknak is Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Hartwick College. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University in 1998. She specializes in David Hume and the philosophy of art. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and books, including Brain and Mind, Hume Studies, The Journal of Scottish Philosophy and The Humean Mind. Her book, Imagined Causes: Hume’s Conception of Objects, was published with Springer; The New Synthese Historical Library in 2013. She has given over 50 national and international talks on her work in philosophy and has served as a reviewer for multiple academic journals and conferences.

Friday, March 29th
Ryan Ceresola – Hartwick College
The Curious Case of Correcting Corruption
Ryan Ceresola is an assistant professor at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York who researches white-collar crime, political corruption, and the sociology of the environment. His work has been published by Crime, Law and Social Change; Rural Sociology; and Sociological Perspectives, among others. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a B.A. in Sociology and in English from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA.