cas : fellows 2001-2002 CAS Fellows are untenured UIUC faculty members whose proposals are selected in an annual competition. These appointments, to pursue an individual scholarly or creative project, are generally for one semester. With the Professors and Associates, they form the core of the Center for Advanced Study community, meeting monthly for informal lunches and scholarly presentations. Fellows also participate in a yearly roundtable discussion of research interests and are invited to deliver a future noon hour presentation. Tim Dean associate professor, english, criticism and interpretive theory MODERNISM AND THE ETHICS OF IMPERSONALITY During his Center appointment Professor Dean will complete work on a study of twentieth-century poetry and the idea that poetry is not a means of self-expression. Rather, the doctrine of impersonality insists that poetry is a means of giving voice to the other. This idea reaches back to classical conceptions of poetic voice such as those found in Plato's Ion. The theory of impersonality reemerged with particular force during the early decades of the twentieth century for reasons that Professor Dean is investigating. The doctrine of impersonality is part of the history of theories of poetic voice, and it also forms part of the history of the notion of selfhood. The idea that other voices can-and should-speak through the poet entails an understanding of selfhood or personality that raises fundamental questions about vocal responsibility and poetry's social role. His planned book intends a full-scale reevaluation of the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of literary modernism by reexamining the philosophy of "impersonality" articulated in the work of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Hart Crane, and, to a lesser extent, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, and Virginia Woolf. dean@uiuc.edu Gary Ebbs associate professor, philosophy DISQUOTATION AND DISCOVERY In his research Professor Ebbs focuses on issues in the philosophy of language, including rule-following, realism, and truth. He is developing a new account of truth inspired by a simple disquotational pattern: (T) "___" is true if and only if ___. Although applications of the pattern are dispensable (instead of saying, for instance, that "Socrates lived in Athens" is true, it is easier and more direct to say that Socrates lived in Athens), sometimes there is no way to say what we want without using a truth predicate. We need a truth predicate, for example, if we want to say that every sentence of the form "p or not p" (where "p" is replaced by a sentence) is true. In the 1930s, Alfred Tarski showed how to construct definitions of truth for formalized languages that capture the spirit of the disquotational pattern (T). There is no controversy about Tarski's technical results, but it is unclear exactly how to apply them to languages that we actually use. During his Center appointment Professor Ebbs will complete a book manuscript showing how to apply Tarski's results in a way that fits with our practical confidence that we can make discoveries and that the truth is independent of what we believe. He will argue that our familiar practice of taking other speakers' words at face value, which extends across time from moment to moment and, in some cases, for centuries, is integral to our understanding of discovery and of a piece with our pursuit of truth. garyebbs@uiuc.edu Michael R. Goldman assistant professor, sociology THE NEW SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF THE WORLD BANK Could it be that the power of the World Bank lies not just in its capital but in its science? As one of the world's most powerful transnational institutions, the World Bank's impact has been studied primarily through its financial investments and policies in borrowing countries. Based on extensive research inside the World Bank's headquarters and in select borrowing countries, Professor Goldman argues, by contrast, that a significant source of the World Bank's power lies in its knowledge-production capacities. Moreover, the bank's success in lending capital has in large part resulted from its ability to reinvent its knowledge paradigms and the vehicles for institutionalizing the knowledge it produces through its loan programs, policy recommendations, methodological tools, and impact assessments within borrowing countries. Professor Goldman's study examines changing society-nature relationships in concrete social contexts (e.g., the Mekong region of Southeast Asia) by asking: What effect has the World Bank's new paradigm of "environmentally sustainable development" had on these patterns? What impacts do the global frameworks and norms emanating from this new epistemic paradigm have on the complex and contrasting interpretations of nature within borrowing countries where the Bank has its greatest influence? How are people's relations with environments being transformed as a consequence? mgoldman@uiuc.edu Dianne Harris assistant professor, landscape architecture, architecture THE POST-WAR HOUSE: DESIGN, DESIRE, DOMESTICITY Professor Harris is an architectural and landscape historian specializing in studies of the built environment in eighteenth-century Italy and in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. Currently she is developing a book manuscript on U.S. post-war domestic environments, which will be her focus during her Center appointment. The study examines post-war domestic environments in the United States between 1945 and 1965 using an interdisciplinary approach and a wide range of primary sources. The manuscript is divided into four sections: (1) new and increasing concerns for personal and family privacy and their impact on the design of houses; (2) the impact of material consumption in the development of post-war domestic environments; (3) the impact on house design of new technological developments such as high-fidelity sound systems, modern electronic devices such as intercoms, and new materials applied for indoor and outdoor use; and (4) the influence of the popular press and other communications media on residential design. Unlike the numerous extant studies of post-war architecture that focus on high-style architects and elite design trends, this book begins to fill a substantial gap in the scholarship by focusing on the ordinary, middle-class house and garden. In addition to architectural archives and examples of built works, this research is based on new forms of evidence such as corporate trade journals and previously unexamined aspects of serial publications. The book aims to reveal the richly varied texture of post-war, middle-class domestic design, and seeks to provide an explanation for trends in house design and construction that persist today. harris3@uiuc.edu Michèle Koven assistant professor, speech communication BILINGUALS' VERBAL ENACTMENTS OF IDENTITY IN FRENCH AND PORTUGUESE Professor Koven has an interest in the role of culture in verbal interaction, especially how speakers perform and infer cultural identities in their own and others' talk. She is involved in a long-term ethnographic project that addresses relationships between identity and language practices of the Portuguese migrant community in France. Most people participate in a range of multiple cultural and linguistic contexts; within each, they may assume distinct identities. This multiplicity of contexts is particularly apparent for bilinguals, who routinely function with two or more sets of linguistic and cultural norms. The French-Portuguese bilinguals in this research often reflect on the impact of their multiple codes on their subjective experiences of self. As one reported, "I feel like that when I speak Portuguese, automatically, I'm in a different world-automatically, it's different—it's a different color." During her Center appointment Professor Koven will complete a book manuscript exploring consequences of the notion that there is no simple correspondence between person, language, and culture in contemporary, complex societies. The book provides a theoretical account for the relationships between language(s) and self, within the context of a methodologically innovative study, in which she explores bilinguals' self-presentations in their two languages. The project contributes to scholarship in several disciplines that explores the role of linguistic and cultural norms in local experiences and expressions of identity. mkoven@uiuc.edu Jordana Mendelson assistant professor, art history program CONTESTED USES OF MASS MEDIA IN SPAIN, 1929-1939 During her Center appointment Professor Mendelson will complete a project addressing definitions of modernity through the lens of Spanish culture and politics during the turbulent decade of the 1930s. Taking as her case studies some of the most recognized artists and events of the early twentieth century, including such artists as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and such events as the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona and the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, she examines the critical role that artists played in negotiating the nation's dual fascination with rural culture and technology. Because these negotiations took place visually through the media of photography and film, one of the goals of her project is to assess the function of documentary in understanding the relationship between institutional and avant-garde practices in ethnography, culture, and politics. Rather than understanding modern artists as artistically and politically distanced from the local concerns of nationalism, she demonstrates that some of their most provocative and difficult works were meditations on the complexities and contradictions of modernity itself. jmendels@uiuc.edu Barbara Minsker assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION FOR LONG-TERM GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT Professor Minsker's current research investigates improved methods for modeling complex environmental systems so that informed management-level decisions can be made under conditions of uncertainty. During her Center appointment she will develop a methodology for using knowledge-discovery techniques to integrate all available data and models and improve methods for guiding long-term monitoring, operations, and stewardship of hazardous waste sites. The methodology will be developed and demonstrated through in-depth collaborations with Argonne National Laboratory, DHI Water and Environment, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. minsker@uiuc.edu Kevin T. Pitts assistant professor, physics MEASURING PROPERTIES OF THE BOTTOM QUARK Using the ultra-high-energy Fermilab Tevatron collider located in Batavia, Illinois, Professor Pitts and his group study the production and decay properties of the bottom quark, seeking generally to better understand the origins of the universe and mechanisms responsible for its evolution. The Fermilab particle accelerator, known as the Tevatron, collides ultra-high-energy protons and their antimatter counterparts, known as antiprotons. The Tevatron collider allows physicists to measure the properties of states of matter that do not occur naturally. During his Center appointment Professor Pitts will continue construction of dedicated, high-speed electronics that measure the properties of more than 2.5 million proton-antiproton collisions per second. In addition, he is the leader of an experimental analysis team that studies the properties of bottom quark decays. His primary interest lies in using the bottom quark to understand further how and why nature treats matter and antimatter differently. kpitts@uiuc.edu Rachel Schurman assistant professor, sociology SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE TRAJECTORY OF AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY Professor Schurman's areas of interest include environmental sociology, the sociology of agriculture, transnational studies, and the sociology of development. During her Center appointment she will work on a new project examining social resistance to agricultural biotechnology. Based on in-depth interviews with social activists, concerned consumers, firm executives, and government policymakers, the project explores organized and unorganized social activism that has challenged the use of agricultural biotechnologies on economic, environmental, cultural, and philosophical grounds and made genetic engineering in agriculture into one of the most politically contested technologies of our time. Analyzing the historical roots of this new social movement, its composition and modus operandi, and the impacts it has on biotechnology firms, the industry, and government policy, she seeks to reconceptualize the role of civil society in technological change. Her research at the Center will form the basis of a monograph complementing a book she is currently editing on the new political economy and ecology of genetically modified organisms. ras2@uiuc.edu cas : beckman fellows Beckman Fellows have submitted research proposals that fall within the guidelines of the Arnold O. Beckman bequest, administered by the University's Research Board. These appointments are essentially identical to CAS Fellows. Ruth Aguilera assistant professor, business administration, labor and industrial relations HAVE AMERICAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES CROSSED THE ATLANTIC? Professor Aguilera's project is a comparative study of European corporate governance practices from a sociological perspective. She analyzes to what extent the legitimized governance practices in so-called shareholder capitalism embodied by the United States have been exported and fully implemented in Europe's welfare-capitalism national settings. ruth-agu@uiuc.edu Christopher J. Bardeen assistant professor, chemistry TWO-PHOTON STANDING WAVE MICROSCOPY TO OBSERVE FAST DIFFUSION IN LIVE CELLS Professor Bardeen's research focuses on the interplay of local chemical properties with larger-scale structures and how this influences dynamic transport processes. During his Center appointment he will apply an optical method based on two-photon interference and standing wave microscopy to look at the motion of biologically relevant molecules in specific intracellular locations. The solvent environment seen by a molecule inside a live cell is very different from that in a dilute solution, because of the heterogeneous nature of the intracellular environment. How this complex environment affects the dynamics of biological macromolecules, like DNA and proteins, is an open question. Although it is possible to study DNA dynamics in dilute solutions or model systems, Professor Bardeen aims to study these dynamics directly inside living cells. Using near infrared photons, he will probe dynamics in the interior of a living cell without harming it. Taking advantage of interference effects between two light beams, he can be sensitive to displacements of fluorescent probes on the order of tens of nanometers within a specific location in the cytoplasm or nucleus. In this way he aims to characterize the motions of biological macromolecules in the intracellular environment, and eventually determine how molecular motions and chemical reaction dynamics are affected by the dense sea of molecules inside a functioning cell. bardeen@uiuc.edu Karin A. Dahmen assistant professor, physics WHAT MAGNETS AND EARTHQUAKES MIGHT HAVE IN COMMON Candy wrappers, magnets, earthquake faults, and many other systems respond to slowly changing external conditions with crackling noise, that is, with discrete, impulsive events that span a huge range of sizes (Barkhausen noise or avalanches in the case of magnets, earthquakes in the case of the earth). Because the behavior of these systems is regular over a very broad range of sizes, one might expect that it does not depend on the microscopic details of the system. Indeed, observations show that entire classes of systems exhibit the same behavior on long length and time scales, which can be predicted from rather simple models. During her Center appointment Professor Dahmen and her group plan to model Barkhausen noise in disordered magnets as a representative of these systems and to compute predictions for the universal aspects of the behavior on long length scales as a function of disorder, field-sweep rate, and temperature. They will use ideas and tools from disordered systems theory and the theory of phase transitions. The study is intended to lead to a better understanding of magnetic materials and also provide analysis methods that would be applicable to a much broader set of systems with crackling noise, ranging from superconductors to earthquakes. dahmen@uiuc.edu