Newsletter Volume 8 Issue 8 - January 19, 2022 |
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Zoom Updates
Newsletter Editors Needed
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Lunch Colloquium - Monday, January 24 - 11:30-1:00 pm
Robert McCauley
“The Cognitive Basis of Similarities in the Forms of Religious Representations and Mental Abnormalities"
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, February 7 - NOTE TIME CHANGE - 12:15 am - 1:45 pm
Annabelle Singer
"Decoding Memory in Health and Alzheimer’s Disease: From Deficits in Neural Codes to Neural Stimulation that Boosts Immune Function”
Writing Group
Looking for emeritus members interested in joining a writing group
Upcoming Spring Events
Sheth Lecture
Interdisciplinary Seminar 2022
Interesting News
Age-Friendly Universities
Faculty Activities
Corinne Kratz
Ron Schuchard
Nanette Wenger
Joyce Flueckiger
Jonathan Goldberg
Vernon Robbins
Ron Schuchard
Jagdish Sheth
New Members
Robert Gaynes
Charles Moran, Jr.
Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Reminder to check for Zoom updates. The most recent, as of this writing, is 5.9.1.
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If you have any problems in getting the update, please contact Dianne at dianne.becht@emory.edu for more information.
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Newsletter Editors Needed
Do you have good proof-reading skills? Enjoy editing?
We're looking for individuals who would like to assist with proof-reading the newsletter before publication. It takes less than an hour twice a month and gives you an opportunity to flex your editing muscles as well as get a chance to see the newsletter first!
If you are interested please contact Ann Rogers (ann.e.rogers@emory.edu) or Dianne Becht (dianne.becht@emory.edu).
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Lunch Colloquium - Monday, January 24, 2022 |
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“The Cognitive Basis of Similarities in the Forms of Religious Representations and Mental Abnormalities”
Robert McCauley
William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor of Philosophy
and founding Director of Emory's Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture
Zoom Lunch Colloquium
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Fast, mandatory, automatic intuitions come in two varieties. They possess either a maturational or a practiced naturalness. By-product theorists in the cognitive science of religions hold that the forms of many religious representations turn on cuing the operations of maturationally natural dispositions of mind. Such origins imbue those representations with various cognitive advantages (beyond speed and automaticity). They render them readily recognizable, memorable, and communicable as well as inferentially rich. Alterations or impairments in the operations of many of those same maturationally natural cognitive systems stand behind features (symptoms) of many mental abnormalities that closely resemble religious forms—from such things as hearing voices (in schizophrenia) to feelings of urgency about carrying out ritualized behaviors (in obsessive compulsive disorder). In the light of these analyses, one question that arises is whether religious representations might be said to cause (in the sense of eliciting) such mental abnormalities. Emory’s own Bob McCauley, an expert in this fascinating field, will raise this and related questions—and entertain our questions, as well.
About Robert McCauley:
Robert N. McCauley, PhD, is the author of Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not and of Philosophical Foundations of the Cognitive Science of Religion as well as the co-author with E. Thomas Lawson of both Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms and Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. His most recent book, Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us about Religions (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-authored with George Graham, has been reviewed as “a book of great wisdom and grace in the tradition of Soren Kierkegaard and William James. A book that really makes one think."
McCauley is also the editor of The Churchlands and Their Critics and the co-editor with Harvey Whitehouse of Mind and Religion. In addition, he is the author of more than 100 articles, chapters, and reviews in a variety of publications in philosophy, religion, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science. He has taught courses at Emory University in all of those fields as well as in linguistics and neuroscience and behavioral biology. He has lectured at colleges and universities as well as national and international conferences and professional meetings in more than a dozen countries across four continents. He served as president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (1997-98) and as president of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (2010-2012) and was invited to be a Gifford Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in 2021. He is William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor of Philosophy and was the inaugural Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University (2008-2016).
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Lunch Colloquium - Monday, February 7, 2022 |
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"Decoding Memory in Health and Alzheimer’s Disease: From Deficits in Neural Codes to Neural Stimulation that Boosts Immune Function”
Annabelle Singer
McCamish Foundation Early Career Professor,
Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering,
Georgia Tech and Emory University
Zoom Lunch Colloquium
PLEASE NOTE TIME CHANGE - 12:15 am - 1:45 pm
We don’t often hear of promising developments in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but in this talk Annabelle Singer will describe how she and her fellow researchers have discovered new neural stimulation approaches that do offer great promise in treating the disease. After examining how neural codes fail in the transgenic mice that are the primary animal model of AD, they have learned how to stimulate specific frequencies of activity lacking in the mice, discovering that a non-invasive “flicker treatment” (using light and sound) mobilizes the immune system and reduces pathogenic proteins. They are translating their discoveries from rodents to humans, and Dr. Springer will describe how the human feasibility studies are going. The very good news? It’s already clear that this work could lead to new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease by driving specific patterns of neural activity to impact the disease at the cognitive, cellular, and molecular levels. It may also be broadly applicable in the treatment of other neurodegenerative diseases.
About Annabelle Singer:
Annabelle Singer is an Assistant Professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, newly named a McCamish Foundation Early Career Professor. Her research aims to understand how neural activity produces memories and controls brain immune function. Dr. Singer’s research has shown how coordinated electrical activity across many neurons in the hippocampus represents memories of experiences and fails in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Singer has found that driving particular patterns of neural activity, like gamma, reduces Alzheimer’s pathology and alters brain immune function. Using non-invasive sensory stimulation to control neural activity, she is translating her discoveries from rodents to humans to develop radically new ways to treat disease. Dr. Singer completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Ed Boyden’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT and she received her PhD in Neuroscience from UCSF, performing research in the laboratory of Loren Frank. She is a Packard Fellow, Kavli Fellow, and recipient of the Society for Neuroscience’s Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award and the American Neurological Association’s Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award.
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Are you looking for some help to put some momentum behind your writing projects?
The Center for Faculty Development and Excellence invites all faculty to participate in a semester-long program of remote writing support structures. Each semester, the CFDE coordinates writing groups in which participants read and discuss one another’s work. A writing group can offer support, accountability, structure, and camaraderie for faculty in terms of both the process and the product, for writing across the range of types, lengths, stages of development, and goals. It can supply a welcome antidote to the professional isolation that often comes with the task of writing and, if desired, provide a source for constructive critical feedback on work in progress. Any writing project, whether it’s a book, a journal article, or a grant proposal, can benefit from a writing group. The CFDE serves as scheduler and convener, provides support, and sends reminders and online group prompts. The CFDE associate director Allison Adams also sets up email lists for each group to facilitate planning and communication between group meetings. She will meet once with each Zoom-based group during the semester. Participants will decide their own schedule of meetings.
Depending on the level of interest, Allison could put together a group of emeriti writers or integrate individuals into other groups.
Since we have missed the deadline for the spring writing groups, the next cycle would begin either in the summer or the fall. Several people reached out in response to the preliminary announcement of this opportunity, and they will be kept in the loop. If you are interested and haven't already done so, please contact Denise Raynor at braynor@emory.edu.
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The 2022 Sheth Distinguished Lecture
We are delighted to announce that Jamil Zainaldin, President Emeritus of the Georgia Humanities Council, has accepted our invitation to offer the 2022 Sheth Distinguished Lecture. We know he will prove a worthy successor to such recent Sheth lecturers as Robert Franklin, Rosemary Magee, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nai’im, and Dana Greene. We will provide more information closer to the date of the event, scheduled for Monday, April 11, an event that will be handled via Zoom this year, As always, thanks are due to Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhuri Sheth, whose generous gift has made it possible for us to schedule a Sheth Distinguished Lecture every year since the first, offered by James Laney, in 2004.
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Interdisciplinary Seminar
The Interdisciplinary Seminar (IDS) will rise, like Atlanta from the ashes, this spring beginning in mid-February and ending sometime in April. Ninety-minute Zoom sessions will be arranged among the participants, most likely on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. The topic will be “Atlanta” and all EUEC members are eligible to participate.
With support from emeritus member and IDS enthusiast Marilynne McKay, each seminar participant will choose a subtopic, share readings, and take responsibility for informally chairing one of the seminar sessions and leading the lively discussion that inevitably follows. Topics already on tap include the 1913 Leo Frank lynching case, the 1962 Orly plane crash and subsequent founding of the Woodruff Arts Center, and other Atlanta events and situations that have defined our city through its history.
Please contact Marilynne at mmckay@emory.edu to be put on the mailing list for topic selection and discussion of dates and times. Questions are welcome, but please recognize that we encourage seminar participation rather than auditing. Previous participants have greatly enjoyed these discussions and some of the presentations have later appeared as Colloquium topics.
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The Atlanta City Seal shows its founding date of 1847
with a Phoenix rising (“resurgens”)
from the ashes of the Civil War in 1865.
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Age-Friendly Universities
There are now 51 colleges and universities around the world that are part of what’s known as the Age-Friendly University Global Network. They range from mammoth Arizona State University to tiny Williams James College in Newton, Mass. in the United States, and include schools in Europe, Asia and Canada.
To read more about Age-Friendly Universities and Arizona State University, please click the links below:
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Ron Gould
Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
Ron Gould gave an online talk January 16, titled "On the Saturation Spectrum of Odd Cycles." This talk was part of the Series on Exploring Combinatorics and Number Theory IV Conference at Cedar Crest College.
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Corinne Kratz
Professor Emerita of Anthropology
We recently received news from Professor Kratz that she co-edited a piece for an issue of the Journal of African Cinemas titled "The Filmic and the Photographic". Corinne writes, "I co-edited the issue with one of the conference organizers, Pamila Gupta, at University of the Witwatersrand, and I also wrote the introduction with an overview of that topic and the five case study papers included in the issue."
Also, an image of the cover of an issue and a shot of the first page (shown above) is of Corinne's pieces, called “From Mugshots to Movie Stars: Orchestrating Attention and Constituting Visual Cultures through Film and Photograph.”
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Ron Schuchard
Professor Emeritus of English
The eight-volume Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot: The Critical Edition (Johns Hopkins University Press) edited by Ron Schuchard was recently selected as one of the best scholarly books by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
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Nanette Wenger
Professor Emerita of Medicine
Emeritus College member Dr. Nanette K. Wenger, MACC, MACP, FAHA, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, will receive both a national and an international honor.
At the 71st Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology in Washington, DC, April , 2022, Dr. Wenger will receive the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the field of cardiovascular disease.
In May of 2022, the World Heart Federation at its World Heart Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, will confer on Dr. Wenger the WHF Lifetime Achievement Award “to recognize her contribution to the WHF and the entire CVD community over the entirety of her illustrious career.”
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Annual Feast of Words
Five of our Emeritus faculty were highlighted in this annual event.
Joyce Flueckiger
Jonathan Goldberg
Vernon Robbins
Ron Schuchard
Jagdish Sheth
Please read below for more information.
In a typical year, the Emory Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE), Emory Libraries, and the Emory Barnes and Noble Bookstore host an annual event to celebrate the Emory faculty who have written or edited books in the prior year. University leaders attend to offer brief remarks and toast the honorees.
In lieu of an in-person gathering this year, the following video celebrates Emory faculty books published in the prior academic year, 2020-21, between September 1, 2020, and August 31, 2021.
A FEAST OF FACTS AND FIGURES
- This year’s list totals 88 titles.
- A total of 73 faculty authors are represented.
- A total of 26 faculty edited or co-edited volumes or scholarly editions on the list.
- 7 individual faculty members had multiple titles published.
- There are 43 single-author books.
- There are 16 multi-author books.
- Arts & Sciences faculty are represented on the list 46 times.
- Candler School of Theology faculty are represented 17 times.
- The School of Law faculty – 11 times.
- Woodruff School of Nursing faculty – 8 times.
- Oxford College faculty – 4 times.
- The School of Medicine faculty – 3 times.
- Goizueta Business School faculty – 2 times
- Emeriti faculty are on the list 5 times.
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New members are the lifeblood of any organization.
Please make a special effort to welcome them to the EUEC!
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Robert Gaynes
Physician and Professor of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine
Robert Gaynes, MD has been a full-time faculty member with Emory University School of Medicine since 2009. He has worked as an Infectious Disease Physician at the Atlanta VA Medical Center where he was Chair of the Infection Control Committee, Chair of the Antibiotic Stewardship Committee and most recently, Chair of the COVID-19 Vaccine Planning Committee.
Robert is a graduate of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine where he did his residency and Infectious Disease Fellowship. He was also in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at CDC. After completing his training, Dr. Gaynes worked as Hospital Epidemiologist and Infectious Disease Physician at the University of Michigan Medical Center before returning to the CDC as the Chief of the Surveillance Activity in the Hospital Infection Program. He is a Fellow in the Infectious Disease Society of America. He has been a consultant with the World Health Organization and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Upon retiring from the CDC, he became a Professor in Emory’s Department of Medicine/Division of Infectious Diseases. He developed technology in the computerized patient record system to optimize antimicrobial use, reduce nosocomial infections and antimicrobial resistance. He has given numerous lectures on these topics but also developed an interest in the History of Medicine. In 2011 he published an award-winning book, Germ Theory: Medical Pioneers in Infectious Diseases. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the History of Medicine, receiving numerous teaching awards including the Dean’s Teaching Award in 2018.
As Professor Emeritus, he is writing the second edition of Germ Theory, updating it on the discovery of HIV, the discovery of the role of H. pylori in peptic ulcer disease, and the COVID pandemic. He hopes to continue to teach the history of medicine seminars and become active with the Emeritus College.
Charles Moran, Jr.
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine
Professor Moran joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory University School of Medicine in December 1982, after completing a PhD in Genetics from the University of North Carolina, and a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. His research focused on understanding how gene expression is regulated in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which like many bacteria, activates a specific set of genes in order to produce specialized cell-types that can survive long periods of harsh environmental conditions. The studies of this developmental process led to the discovery and characterization of several types of transcription regulatory factors, which also play essential roles in many pathogenic bacteria, and in bacteria used in industry and agriculture. Honors for this work include election to Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology.
In addition to his research work, Professor Moran served on and chaired the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) study sections, and served as Editor of the Journal of Bacteriology, and editorial boards of other microbiology journals. His service at Emory includes Directorships of departmental and interdepartmental graduate programs, interim Chair and Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, as well as service on numerous university committees, including Emory’s Presidential Advisory Committee. Professor Moran also taught numerous microbiology courses including those for nurses, physician assistants, medical students and graduate students. However, his favorite class was an introductory class for PhD candidates. He enjoyed, valued, and will miss the discussions with these small groups of students about how to evaluate scientific papers. However, as Professor Emeritus he looks forward to keeping up with the research progress made by the students and new faculty, as well as participating in the Emeritus College events.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne |
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Happy New Year!
Time to explore the campus again.
The weather has been warm and cold, cloudy and sunny, and just darn unpredictable for spending any time outdoors -- so, let's begin this year with a look at something inside...looking out.
If you attended our first 2022 Lunch Colloquium, you may have noticed a fancy window as my screen background. It's not a window in my home, but in a building on Emory's main campus. From this particular window you get a wonderful view of the main campus quad.
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Where will you find this 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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