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Editor: Seth Ford,
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Web pages maintained by pricel@grinnell.edu
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Student Talk
Catherine
Nisbett, ‘01, gave a biographical
account of Annie Jump Cannon's professional life. Annie Jump
Cannon was a "computer" at the Harvard College Observatory at
the turn of the twentieth century, and became famous for codifying
the system of stellar spectral classification we use today.
The main point of Ms. Nisbett's talk was to give an account
of how Annie was able to wade through the male-oriented professional
world and the male-oriented scientific world and come out on
top. Ms. Nisbett concluded that in order for a woman to succeed
she has to remain a woman doing science. That's a limitation
in the physical sciences where women's participation is so understudied.
Still, understanding how science the profession and science
the philosophy work to limit female participation has worked
in the life sciences to increase female participation and expand
scientific inquiry. Ms. Nisbett advocated more study.
Faculty News
Dan Kaiser
says that his return to teaching after a one-year sabbatical
has not been as traumatic as he had feared - and he is learning
a ton in "Cultural Encounters!" Still, he has had some time
to pursue scholarship.
In January,
he traveled to DC for the initial meeting of the editorial board
of the Encyclopedia of Russian History, a 4-volume work to be
published by Macmillan Reference in 2003 under the general editorship
of James Millar. He is one of 5 associate editors, bearing responsibility
for all entries on pre-Petrine Russia.
He also
received news recently that his 1992 article on "Urban Household
Composition in Early Modern Russia" will be reprinted in a new
book on The Family and Population History, one of four volumes
published this year by MIT Press as "the best of thirty years
of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History."
In March,
he traveled to UCLA for a one-day workshop on Medieval and Early
Modern Slavic Studies, where he presented a digested version
of a paper he gave last summer on "Deathbed Charity in Early
Modern Russia." Then, he took part in a conference at Harvard
University on "Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change
in Seventeenth-Century Russia." His paper is a revised version
of a talk he presented to a department colloquium just over
a year ago on individualism in gravestones. As time allows,
he will continue to work on the final chapter of his book on
family life in early modern Russia.
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