Faculty in the News, December 2012 - January 2013

December was a short month on campus but there was no shortage of news stories featuring the work and expertise of Franklin College faculty. A sampling:

Linguistics professor Bill Kretzschmar was quoted in a Fox News article on Google Books study on how language changes over time. Kretzschmar was also quoted in a Florida Times-Union story about Jacksonville’s disappearing Southern accent.

 

Professor and senior associate dean Hugh Ruppersburg was quoted in a New York Times story on the death of noted scholar and Faulkner expert Joseph Blotner.

 

Professor of anthropology Stephen Kowalewski, who studies Mayan culture, was quoted in an Athens Banner-Herald article on the Mayan calendar apocalypse hysteria.

 

Articles at Wired.com and Stuff, New Zealand on tool-using orangutans quoted psychology professor and director of the Primate Behavioral Laboratory Dorothy Fragaszy

 

Regents Professor in the department of genetics Andrew Paterson was quoted in Science Daily in an article on the effects of genome sequences on fiber improvements

 

Discovery of a 36,000-year-old whalebone off the coast of Georgia by geology professor Ervan Garrison and others is reported widely including by the Huffington Post, Associated Press and numerous other outlets

 

Hugh Hodgson School of Music tuba professor David Zerkel was quoted in a Battle Creek Enquirer story on the secrets to making good sounds

 

Record-high December temperatures were the focus of an Athens Banner-Herald article that quoted geography professor John Knox

 

Red and Black article on memories of the Pearl Harbor attack quoted history professor and department head John Morrow

Sociologist David Smilde was quoted by Bloomberg News in an article about the political dynamics surrounding the declining health of Venezeulan president Hugo Chavez

National Geographic highlighted work by (and photos of) psychology professor Dorothy Fragaszy of her field research on bearded capuchin monkeys

And of course no such roundup would be complete without a few words from our estimable professor of history, Spalding Distinguished Professor James Cobb, here quoted by Time.com on the fan-fed t-shirt controversy surrounding the national title football game between Notre Dame and Alabama:

Kari Frederickson, chair of the University of Alabama’s history department, and a specialist in U.S. southern history, says she’s “dismayed” by the shirts. “The characterization is tired, inaccurate, and playing on stereotypes of ignorance and lack of cultural sophistication,” Frederickson says. “It’s not only ignorant, it’s wrong.” Jim Cobb, a history professor at the University of Georgia, and former president of the Southern Historical Association, says such ridicule is one of the reasons why so many fans of Alabama’s rival teams in the Southeastern Conference, like his own Georgia Bulldogs, are pulling for the Crimson Tide. “Southern loyalties in games like these trump intra-regional hostilities,” says Cobb. “The SEC is more than a football conference. It’s a manifestation of regional identity.”

“I’m used to it,” Cobb says of the ribbing. “Though I find Yankees just as amusing as they find us.”