Wheaton News

Faculty

Delvyn Case, professor of music, was honored with a screening and discussion of his solo cantata “The Binding of Isaac According to the Elohist,” which was hosted by The University of Cambridge Faculty of Divinity in May. His interfaith musical projects also were featured at the national conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews in June.

Andrew Davinack, assistant professor of biology, wrote the article “Can ChatGPT be leveraged for taxonomic investigations? Potential and limitations of a new technology” published in the journal Zootaxa in April. He also co-wrote “First genetically confirmed report of the Japanese mystery snail, Heterogen japonica (Martens, 1861) from California more than a century after its first introduction” published in BioInvasions Records in March. Ashley Barreto ’26 was one of the co-authors. Davinack also won a General Biodiversity Research Grant from Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative in May. The research grants support projects that expand knowledge of understudied taxonomic groups and the overall biodiversity of Nantucket, Tuckernuck and/or Muskeget islands.

Claudia Fieo, professor of visual art, exhibited her artist book “a scaffolding for living” in the show “Edge of the Ocean” at the Sanford Gallery in Florence, Mass., from May 19 through June 17. Fieo’s artist book of collagraph prints folded into a sculptural interlocking pattern, “Concurrent Currents,” was accepted in a juried exhibition of works at the Cahoon Museum of American Art from April 18 through June 18. The show also included her relief print “And so it goes…”.

Tommasina Gabriele, professor of Italian studies, wrote the blog post “The Asexual Awakening: ‘Breasts and Eggs’ by Mieko Kawakami” for Oxford University Press in May.

Nancy Kendrick, professor of philosophy, co-wrote with Jessica Gordon-Roth ’04 the chapter “The Visible and the Invisible: Feminist Recovery in the History of Philosophy” published in Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). Gordon-Roth is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

Katherine Mason, associate professor of sociology/women and gender studies, wrote The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health (NYU Press, 2023).

Cheryl Mrozowski, professor of dance, was invited to conduct an external review of the visual and performing arts at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., in May and write an evaluation of the visual and performing arts curriculum.

Srijana Shrestha, associate professor of psychology, and her research team at University of California, San Francisco, and Possible Health in Nepal, were awarded a R01 research grant by the National Institute for Mental Health for a hybrid implementation-effectiveness study of BECOME (BEhavioral Community-based COmbined Intervention for MEntal Health and Noncommunicable Diseases) delivered by community health workers in Nepal. Shrestha is a co-investigator on the five-year project.

A. Javier Trevino, professor of sociology, wrote the article “Talcott Parsons on Building Personality System Theory via Psychoanalysis” published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences in April.

Alumni

Sam Kestenbaum ’09 won a third-place 2023 American Academy of Religion Journalism award for Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion. The writer’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone magazine and other media.

Ted Nesi ’07, an investigative reporter and politics/business editor at WPRI-TV in Providence, R.I., and three of his colleagues shared a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

Ret Talbot ’93, a freelance journalist who covers ocean issues, co-wrote Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark, about the resurgence of the white shark population in New England waters (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2023).