Faculty + Staff News / March 5, 2013

George Bailey (English) led discussions on music films as part of the series titled "America's Music" at the Oak Park Public Library. 

Virginia Heaven (Fashion Studies) serves as the consulting costume curator for the Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair, which opens March 16 at the Chicago History Museum. Nena Ivon (Fashion Studies) is the chair of the Costume Council at the museum and spearheaded the major fundraising for the exhibition.

Anne Libera's (Theatre) book The Second City Almanac of Improvisation was listed in "The Ultimate Comedy Library: 57 Books Every Comedy Fan Should Read," which is compiled by the Splitsider comedy industry website. 

Patricia McNair (Fiction Writing) will be a featured guest reader at the March 24 "Road Trip," an event presented by the Portuguese Artists Colony in San Francisco. 

Nami Mun (Fiction Writing) was featured in an article on ChicagoNow, where she discussed her writing origins, challenges, and process, along with her emigration from Seoul, South Korea, to the Bronx in New York City. 

Audrey Niffenegger (Fiction Writing) was interviewed for the "Our Town" blog of the Chicago Sun-Times about her writing and how living in Chicago impacts it.

Sarah Odishoo (English) won the Zone 3 Nonfiction Award for her essay "Eat Me: Instructions from the Unseen." It was published in the spring 2012 issue of Zone 3, a literary journal published by Austin Peay State University. Odishoo's creative nonfiction work "The Projectionist: Show Me" will be published on Ragazine.com in April. 

Karen Lee Osborne's (English) story "Brute Force" is in the current issue of Bloom magazine. 

Louis Silverstein (HHSS) guest lectured on the topic of "Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson" to the History of Sports in the US class. He also lectured on "The Role of the Body in Ethical/Moral Decision-Making" in the Ethics and Good Life class. 

Jeff Spitz (Film + Video) was quoted in a Chicago Tribune article titled "A loaded question for you: Are you happy?" discussing the significance of two documentaries—Chronicle and Inquiring Nuns—where the question "Are you happy?" plays a pivotal role. 

Heather Minges Wols (Science + Mathematics) was selected as a recipient of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Undergraduate Faculty Travel Grant, allowing her to attend the annual AAI meeting, Immunology 2013, this May in Honolulu, Hawaii. She will present her poster "Metabolic strategies used by long-lived bone marrow plasma cells" and show that plasma cells utilize two types of metabolic strategies—glycolysis and aerobic respiration—to potentially modulate antibody secretion rates and adapt to specific niches in the bone marrow.