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Director (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu) Letters to the Editor Click on the above link to let us know what you think (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu)! |
Upcoming Events
Lunch Colloquiums begin January 22
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Contact Other Members
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find out about a travel destination or find other EUEC members who would like to travel with you, send an email to:
Find other members to get together for shared interests, whether it is forming a book club or a photography club, or getting together to take a hike. Send email to the following link to contact member who would like the same activity!
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This issue of our newsletter is sent to members and friends of the Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC). I hope the newsletter will help keep you informed about our activities and help you feel connected with our members throughout the U.S. On the left are links to our website and links to contact either me or the EUEC office.
With best wishes,
Gray
Gray F. Crouse Director, EUEC
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 Message from the Director
As we begin the New Year, I wish you all a very Happy New Year! We have much to look forward to this year, including the National AROHE Conference we are hosting here in October. Many EUEC members have been working for months already in preparation for the Conference.
There are two items I would like to highlight in this issue. The first is the report of this past fall's Interdisciplinary Seminar. Everyone I have talked to who participated thoroughly enjoyed it. Such seminars highlight the interdisciplinary intellectual activities that are possible in retirement, but are very difficult to achieve beforehand when the pressures of one's primary activities tend to be all-consuming.
The second is the report of some of our faculty's activities. It is inspiring to see the many ways our members stay active. Of particular note is the article on Nanette Wenger that appeared on the front page of the AJC Metro Section on December 25. The fact that the article was published on that particular day I think suggested that Nanette's work has been a gift to Atlanta! I hope you will take the opportunity to read the entire article to which there is a link in the report below.
I am very grateful to John Bugge, Herb Benario, and Gretchen Schulz for help with proofing and editing.
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Fall Interdisciplinary Seminar Report
The EUEC Interdisciplinary Seminars represent a highlight of EUEC Membership for those who are able to take part. What could be better than discussing an important topic with colleagues from across the University, each contributing from his or her own particular knowledge and expertise? That is true interdisciplinarity which is almost impossible to achieve before retirement!
Below is a report on last fall's seminar. As you read the report, consider what topics you might like to explore (or perhaps help others explore) in the next seminar.
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Faculty Activities
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We note the passing of EUEC Member Zuher Naib.
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You may remember Allan Levey's Lunch Colloquium of March, 2015. In his talk, he mentioned the Emory Healthy Brain Study. This is an ambitious project to enroll 100,000 participants. An annual report has just been released on this study, which can be read by clicking here.
The leaders state:
In 2017, we made some amazing strides towards understanding the effect of aging. We want to thank our volunteers, researchers, donors, and those who made it all possible by showcasing what we've done this year.
Although a lot has been accomplished, there is still more to do, as only 14,500 participants have been enrolled! The organizers encourage your participation:
We hope you'll feel empowered to register. On average, it only takes our participants 22 minutes to complete the Health History Questionnaire and help change the world. What are you waiting for? Join the study today. |
Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Faculty Activities
Ruth Pagell
Goizueta Business School Librarian Emerita
EUEC Member Ruth Pagell writes:
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library recently sponsored my trip to Asia to speak to faculty, administrators, librarians, and students about university rankings and bibliometrics. While in Hong Kong, I also had a lively conversation about rankings with the Language and Linguistics faculty of City University of Hong Kong. After Hong Kong, I presented a similar talk in Singapore to a similar audience. The seminar, with a Singapore flavor, was presented by the National University of Singapore and the Library Association of Singapore. The talk is based on "Ruth's Rankings," a series of articles I have been writing about bibliometrics and rankings since 2014 ( http://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-1/). I have been researching this topic since 2008, when I was working at Singapore Management University. My talk to HKUST, "World University Rankings: How to be Number One," together with the PowerPoint presentation is streamed here:
Note: Ruth is one of our distant members. After retiring from Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University. She now lives in Hawaii, where she taught in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii from her arrival in Honolulu in 2011 through 2014.
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Katherine Mitchell, The Lone Tree 2017
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EUEC Member Katherine Mitchell reports on her various activities for this year and next.
She has a solo exhibition,Hearing the Trees, at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, October 3, 2017-February 3, 2018; and she gave an ArtTALK on October 1, 2017. She received an Emory University Emeritus College Bianchi Award for the exhibition. She is part of a group exhibition, Small Things, at the Swan Coach House Gallery, Atlanta, GA, November 16-December 30, 2017.
Upcoming exhibitions and projects include,Nature Speaks, a two-person exhibition with Diane Kempler at the Circle Gallery of the University of Georgia's College of Environment and Design beginning in mid-October 2018.
Katherine is currently mentoring a young artist through Wonderoots' Walthall Fellowship Program, an organization that promotes and encourages a younger generation of artists; and she will participate in an exhibition titled TEASE (Transatlantic Exhibition of Art in the Southeast). Besides her, this exhibition will include two artists from Germany and another artist from this region. It will open in Atlanta on October 1, 2018. Her contact with the project has come through the Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, who is based in Charlotte, NC. She also continues her involvement with Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Nanette Wenger, MD, MACC, MACP, FAHA
Professor Emerita of Medicine
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Photo by Jason Getz for the AJC
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On December 25, the Atlanta Journal Constitution published a long article about EUEC Member Nanette Wenger's work, entitled "Cardiologist changed views of heart disease." The article begins:
In 1958, when a young Dr. Nanette Wenger became the chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital, patients were separated by race...For Wenger, a native of New York City, this way of doing things needed to change immediately.
Needless to say, things did change, in other important ways as well. The article continues:
Wenger, one of the first women to graduate from Harvard Medical School, would become a giant in the field of cardiology. Wenger's game-changing research has led to new medical treatments and changed a major paradigm in cardiology: the assumption that heart disease affects only men.
And at age 87, Wenger is still a rock-star physician. She continues to treat patients, research heart disease, and fly around the world to give lectures. She was recently in New York to receive a Legacy Award from the Association of Black Cardiologists:
The entire article is well worth reading, as it has much more to say about Nanette's career, the gender differences in heart disease that she explored, and the impact her work has had on so many people. You can read the entire article by clicking here.
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Photo by Jason Getz for the AJC
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In October, Nanette authored a Perspective in Nature that begins:
A heartfelt plea: Heart disease is different for women. Researchers must investigate, educate, advocate and legislate to decrease the risks, says Nanette Wenger.
The entire Perspective may be read by clicking here.
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In Memoriam
EUEC Member Zuher Naib died on December 23, 2017. He was born on December 10, 1927, in Aleppo, Syria, and attended the University of Geneva Medical School, graduating in 1952, before coming to the United States in 1955. Zuher joined Emory University in 1965 and was a professor at the Emory School of Medicine for over 40 years. He was a prominent educator and research physician in the field of Cytopathology. In 1994 he received the Papanicolaou Award in Cytopathology, named after the inventor of the Pap smear, with whom Dr. Naib worked. His complete obituary may be read by clicking here.
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Fall Interdisciplinary Seminar Report
Coming together around a fertile suggestion from Gretchen Schulz, more than a dozen members of the Emeritus College gathered each Thursday afternoon this last fall for the sixth in an ongoing series of Interdisciplinary Seminars, this one based (again) on a remarkable blockbuster book, in this case Robert M. Sapolsky's Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017). In The New York Times Book Review Richard Wrangham called the book "A quirky, opinionated and magisterial synthesis of psychology and neurobiology that integrates this complex subject more accessibly and completely than ever, . . . a wild and mind-opening ride into a better understanding of just where our behavior comes from. Darwin would have been thrilled." Darwin, perhaps, but not everyone in the seminar: while admiring Sapolsky's achievement, a number of the Emory scientists in the group had mild but always very cogent objections to the way Sapolsky sometimes skates blithely over vast stretches of the complicated terrain of brain-and-behavior. The format called for each seminar participant to choose a topic treated in Behave and then relate it to his or her own academic discipline or specialty, supplying additional readings that would expand or further illuminate that topic. A total of eleven members led discussions, one per week, and the company of respondents was enriched by six more or less regular auditors: Selden Deemer, Woody Hickcox, Linda Hubert, Charlotte Keller, Delia Nisbet, and Jim Roark. Additionally, in our second session, on September 28, two invited guests who were personally well acquainted with Sapolsky talked about how their professional careers had intersected with his: Paul Plotsky, recently retired from the Yerkes Primate Center, and Mel Konner, still an active member of the Department of Anthropology - to whom, in fact, Sapolsky dedicates the book. Most of the eleven "presenters" prepared short synopses of the discussions they led; what follows are these accounts, mostly in their own words and only slightly edited for consistency. A copy of the course syllabus follows; it provides more detail on the readings assigned. On September 21, Don McCormick (Biochemistry) covered the topic of "Genes and Behavior: Molecular Foundations." Because Sapolsky's Behave is subtitled "The Biology of Humans - ," and since he maintains that "Genes are relevant to everything in this book," it seemed reasonable to begin with Chapter 8, which is about progress in finding "the gene for that"; and with Appendix 3, which entails the role of DNA in genes leading to the formation of proteins - which latter become not only the matrix of our body but essential operational components such as enzymes, hormones, neurotransmitters, messengers, and receptors. Our discussion focused on alterations in the structure of DNA or the proteins (histones) to which it is attached, leading to mutations, polymorphisms, and so-called epigenetic changes, all of which can affect our behavior. Next up, on October 5 (after the previous week's session with Messrs. Plotsky and Konner), was John Juricek (History), whose presentation's title, riffing on a title of one of Sapolsky's chapters, was "Us-ing and Them-ing in America: White over Black." John began with Sapolsky's demonstration that discriminating in favor of one's own group and against outsiders is biologically based and essentially automatic (though reversible). From the very dawn of American history, the most troubling such us-them dichotomy has been whites v. blacks. The Civil War abolished slavery and gave freed Negroes the rights of citizenship, but the next eighty years did little to advance racial equality. In fact, "Jim Crow" and "Social Darwinism" pushed in the opposite direction. Dramatic change finally came after World War II: the Nazi death camps forced Americans to see how dangerous racial discrimination could become. Accordingly, opinion and government leaders began a campaign to discredit "racial" theories of discrimination in favor of more remediable cultural theories ("Nurture" rather than "Nature"). The popular 1949 song, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught [to discriminate]" - from South Pacific - epitomizes the new approach. The most influential postwar theory of anti-black discrimination was - and remains today - that it was (and is) almost entirely due to slavery. On October 12, Marilynne McKay (Medicine) held forth on the topic of "Asymmetrical Communication: A Male-Female Dichotomy." Basing her views on several different sections of the Sapolsky book, and assigning the seminar members readings in the linguist Deborah Tannen's 1990 book, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Marilynne suggested that the way men and women talk to each other is yet another instance of the Sapolskian framework of "Us vs Them." She developed several themes in line with the author's findings: that (a) aggression isn't based entirely on levels of testosterone or estrogen; (b) culture has a profound effect on how humans interact with one another; and (c) both male and female primates (including humans) are very conscious of even subtle status hierarchies within their groups. Because all these factors tend to produce "asymmetrical communication," it is notoriously difficult for men to hear what women are saying - but not (usually) vice versa! The next week, on October 19, Tolly Williamson (Medical Ministry), presented on the topic of "Metaphors We Kill By," the actual title of Chapter 15 of Sapolsky's Behave, itself an allusion to a classic linguistic work by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980). Focusing on the use and misuse of metaphor, Tolly helped the group explore the neurobiology of some of the most interesting outposts of symbolic and metaphorical thinking. Accepting Sapolsky's point that human capacities in symbolic thinking have evolved so recently that our brains are basically still only "winging it," he noted that we are still constantly challenged to distinguish between the metaphorical and the literal - specifically, failing to see the literal in the figure of speech, the actual human being residing "behind" the figural designation of "vermin," for example. Moreover, people are all too willing to kill or be killed over a cartoon, a flag, a piece of clothing, a song. And finally, following Lakoff and Johnson, it is clear that we are constantly susceptible to this misrepresentation of reality because, in fact, all human language is built on metaphor. Rudi Makkreel, (Philosophy) led the next session, on October 26, and took reasoned issue with what he describes as Sapolsky's overuse of the Us-and-Them dichotomy in setting philosophers over against biological anthropologists. He saw Sapolsky as dismissing Kant's moral philosophy as a "mathematics of morality" - which erroneously suggests that Kant's appeal to reason calculates consequences the way utilitarian philosophers do and ignores the role of feeling in deciding what is the right thing to do. Instead, Rudi maintained, Kant uses reason to examine our motives in light of a rationally informed duty to treat all human beings equally and fairly. From that universalist perspective we need to make sure that actions done out of sympathy do not favor those who are most like us. The challenge of morality is not to extinguish the inclination of sympathy in deciding how to act, but to broaden it into a feeling of respect for the moral law and the dignity of all human beings. On November 2, K.V. Thrivikraman ("Thrivi") took us back to basic neurobiology with a presentation on "The Neuroanatomical Substrate of Behavior." He posited that behavior, defined as the cognitive response to a stimulus, is the outcome of assessment and interpretation of the signal arising from a stimulus by the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind, along with short- and long-term memory components. Stimuli impinging upon sense organs - skin, eyes, ears, nose and tongue - are communicated to the brain via cranial nerves; in the brain, they terminate in specific sensory regions/lobes where the stimuli are processed for appropriate motor response. Repeated presentation of a stimulus can reinforce the cascade and facilitate signal transfer and the response (Hebb's Postulate). Studies of patients with brain injury -- Gabby Giffords, Phineas Gage, Henry Molaison, and others - provide convincing evidence that regions of the cortex are associated with different behavioral functions. In the case of Molaison, who underwent a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy in an attempt to cure his epilepsy, there was failure to convert immediate memory into long-term memory; but his ability to recollect events before his brain surgery suggested that short- and long-term memory events are processed differently. In similar fashion, Broca's and Wernicke's areas have been identified as the language centers of the brain. The application of neuro-imaging techniques in normal subjects is a great stride towards the precise mapping of brain structure and function. On November 30, Jim Keller (Medicine) led a discussion based on portions of Sapolsky's Chapter 12, which is entitled "Hierarchy, Obedience and Resistance"; Jim focused on what has become a personal concern of his, the relationship between poverty and health (and health insurance). First, he challenged Sapolsky's hypothesis that two-thirds of the problem of poverty is related to feeling poor, i.e. to the psychological baggage of socioeconomic status, and only one-third related to environmental factors that might be alleviated through economic reforms. Second, he turned our attention specifically to black poverty in the United States and included a discussion of the well-known Moynihan Report of 1965. Then he urged us to consider global healthcare in light of Sapolsky's treatment of the relationship between socioeconomic status and health in high-income countries: we reviewed dollars spent per capita in these countries and asked why the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy of the eleven countries listed. This led into the history of health care in the U.S. up to the Affordable Care Act. The final issue we dealt with was whether health care is a human right, and, if so, whether we as a nation recognize it as such. On December 7, John Bugge (English) turned to human behavior and literature. Focusing on an issue raised in Sapolsky's Chapter 14 and elsewhere - the possibility of human empathy - he tried to demonstrate that of all the literary genres available, the novel is best equipped to promote psychological identification with, or the vicarious experiencing of, the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. To that end, he assigned a section of a book by Suzanne Keen, Empathy and the Novel (2007), which explores in great detail the general question of whether novel-reading can and does influence human behavior, ultimately by altering the neurobiology of the reader. John provided a passage from Virginia Woolf's famous modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway as a test case of whether a group of elderly American academics would find their own brains ever so slightly rewired by reading an artful account of a fifty-two-year-old London socialite's uneventful May morning. Perhaps fewer were willing to agree to this proposition than were happy to answer yes to Frans de Waal's question in a Scientific American piece, "Do Animals Feel Empathy?" The question of empathy-and-literature thus remained open, in anticipation of the next, and last, seminar. On December 14, Gretchen Schulz (English, Oxford) used the last chapter of Sapolsky's book ("War and Peace") as a matrix within which to discuss both The Iliad and The Odyssey vis-à-vis Simone Weil's assertion that "The Iliad [is] The Poem of Force" (the title of a 1941 essay we read). In fact, Gretchen urged us see the two Greek epics as epitomizing, each in its turn, the hyper-masculine aggressive behavior that dominates in time of war, and the more affiliative and empathetic behavior that needs to prevail in peacetime. She had us read a short section of The Iliad that featured some of the most bloody and testosterone-soaked behavior ever recorded in poetry, and then longer sections of The Odyssey, in which the hero is to be seen (she maintained) as unlearning his warlike behaviors under the tutelage of female instructors - Calypso, Nausicaa, and, of course, Athene. Gretchen allowed Mel Konner to add a coda to her discussion when she invited us to consider the controversial subtitle to his recent book, Women After All - which is Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy. In other words, she asked us to read The Odyssey as a first, halting step in literary history toward the end of male supremacy and toward the valuation of what might be called "androgynous" behavior, as the most necessary to our survival as a species. In retrospect, the 2017 Interdisciplinary Seminar proved a heterogeneous grab-bag of strikingly different "takes" on a book that will likely assume its place as a classic work of synthesis, an irreverent modern-day Summa of what we as a species have discovered - so far - about why we behave as we do.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
Happy New Year to everyone! I hope your holidays were fun and relaxing and left you with energy to resume walking the campus with me.
Did you figure out where the painting in our last photo was and who created it?
The beautiful bird's creator is our own Woody Hickcox, who has treated us to many of his wonderful paintings in the last two Emeritus College Art Shows. The beauty below can be found in the Math and Science Building in a stairwell between the 4th and 5th floors. When exiting the stairwell on floor five, you are greeted with another one of Woody's creations, which is shown below in photo 2. Woody's talents can actually be found in many places throughout the halls of the Department of Environmental Sciences. There is even a small hallway filled with many of his watercolors. Definitely visit the area if you can.
Fun Note: Some of Woody's creations are signed not with his name, but with a special little symbol (photo 3 below).
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Let's continue with the theme of finding visual evidence of our Emeriti on campus. . . During one of my walks in Autumn 2017, I stopped to admire my surroundings and looked down to find I was inches away from standing on two of our Emeritus Members! Well, rather, standing on the names of our Emeriti. . .
Where will you find these on the Emory campus?
 
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Emory University Emeritus College The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206 Atlanta, GA 30329 |
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