| SAS
Journal
Hitting the Pavement
Doctoral student Kyle Farley, G’01, Gr’04, always
knew his love of history would take him far; he just didn’t
know he would be traveling on foot. That was before Farley
co-founded Poor Richard’s Walking Tours in 1998. Named
after Benjamin Franklin’s irreverent
almanac, the company’s diverse walks examine Philadelphia
history from the ground up. The erstwhile side project has
since become one of the city’s most notable travel
organizations, thanks to a team of history doctoral students
who double as tour guides.
Poor Richard’s is a personalized alternative to run-of-the-mill
tours that appeal to the musket-and-fife set. Instead, Farley’s
company relies on graduate students’ enthusiasm, research,
and classroom knowledge to create tours that showcase Philadelphia’s
rich historical tapestry. They have developed more than 30
different tours so far, including “Life & Liberty:
Struggles for Human Rights,” and “When Philadelphia
Was the Capital of Jewish America.”
Not only do the
walks allow students to interact with the community, they
create a popular venue through which the latest historical
scholarship can be conveyed in
a meaningful way to those outside the university. For their
part, the guides use the tours to improve their knowledge
base and sharpen their presentation skills. And they are
always happy to craft a new tour if asked, Farley says.
Their
diligence has paid off in glowing reviews from travel experts.
Burt Wolf, host of the PBS series Travels and Traditions,
calls Poor Richard’s Walking Tours “the most
interesting and comprehensive city tour in the series.” Gary
Lee of the Washington Post commends the scholars
for “an
impressive knowledge of Philadelphia history! In a couple
of hours, I had the feeling that I knew the history of the
city and its nooks and crannies intimately.”
Call Poor
Richard’s Walking Tours at 215.206.1682 or
visit them online at www.phillywalks.com. Congrats, Jack
Jack Nagel, the Steven F. Goldstone Endowed Term Professor
of Political Science, was appointed in July to the position
of SAS associate dean of graduate studies. His new duties
include overseeing the School’s doctoral programs—made
up of roughly 2,000 students in 34 graduate groups—and
being responsible for the master’s programs in governmental
administration and organizational dynamics. Nagel has been
at Penn since 1971 and succeeds Walter Licht, who will return
to teaching and research in the history department.
MusiQologY
Meets Candombe
Assistant professor of music Guthrie Ramsey is doing his
part to strengthen cultural ties between Uruguay and the
United
States. At the request of the U.S. embassy
in Montevideo, Ramsey and his band, MusiQologY,
spent a week in Uruguay last March, sharing their talents
and love of music through concerts, lectures, and workshops.
Ramsey
combined lectures with perform-ances to give his Uruguayan
audience insight into popular American music and jazz as
well as the culture and history of black music. To help them
understand how musicians create the sound of jazz, Ramsey
explained that “[jazz] musicians are supposed to present
a musical personality that only belongs to them.” MusiQology
members then demonstrated his point through their solos.
Ramsey’s
schedule also allowed him to jam with local
musicians, including Ruben Rada, one of Uruguay’s best-known
performers. Rada blends pop and jazz with candombe, the traditional
African-derived
music of Uruguay. Candombe was originally a dramatic and
religious dance performed to drumming by slaves in Uruguay.
Today, candombe is best described as a dialogue between the
chico, repique, and piano drums. “What’s interesting
about culture is that it can fuse with another culture,” Ramsey
notes. “With music, this is also the case.”
Uruguay’s
music has infused Ramsey’s teaching
and is being felt throughout the music department. Rada already
has traveled to the United States to work with Ramsey’s
jazz class, and one of Ramsey’s doctoral students now
has the chance to enhance his dissertation on Latin music
through newfound Uruguayan contacts. Natural Wonder
Doctoral candidate Kelly
George knows that trees, flowers, and other plants hold the
keys to combating illness. Natural
compounds carried by flora can calm a cough, speed healing,
and even shrink tumors. They are highly effective, George
says, but hard to find and even harder to extract. That’s
why the organic chemistry student is focused on “natural
product total synthesis,” the creation of healing agents
normally found in nature from commercially available molecules.
George’s
success in synthesizing an anti-ulcer compound found in the
Chinese Schizandra vine has earned her a major
science prize. She is one of five promising scholars to receive
a $20,000 grant from the L’Oréal USA for Women
in Science Fellowship Programme.
The red berries of the Schizandra
vine have been used for centuries in Chinese and Japanese
medicine to treat asthma
and chronic fatigue. Components of the extract are even thought
to stimulate liver repair and treat arthritis. George was
able to synthesize (+)- isoschizandrin—a compound found
in the Schizandra extract—through an elegant chemical
reaction.
“
Kelly is an outstanding individual, capable of chemistry
at a very high level, but it is her more intangible qualities
that really set her apart,” says Gary Molander, George’s
advisor and the Allan Day Term Professor of Chemistry. “She’s
a natural leader who really knows how to bring people together.” To
that end, the blossoming organic chemist has led the transformation
of the Penn Women in Science caucus into a social and professional
support network. The group performs service to the community
and hosts women scientists from the academic and professional
arenas. George’s goal is to become a synthetic organic
chemist in the private sector, where she can develop new
pharmaceuticals.
Dreaming
of Sleep
Countless Penn students in the midst of
a late-night cram session have wished they were conducting
sleep research instead.
This professor does. Exploring the mechanisms of sleep is
the focus of
Hans P.A. Van Dongen, research assistant professor of sleep
and chronobiology in the medical school’s psychiatry
department. Van Dongen is also the topic director for Sleep
and Dreams, this year’s theme for the Penn Humanities
Forum.
The functions of sleep and dreams are mostly unknown,
Van Dongen says, because scientists long believed the brain
was
inactive during slumber. While a good night’s rest
leads to increased health, clear thinking, and overall well-being,
researchers have yet to understand why. In today’s
24-hour society, a debate is raging in political and academic
circles over how much and when people should sleep.
With events
planned throughout the academic year, the Humanities Forum
encourages painters, philosophers, architects, musicians,
and researchers to exchange ideas about what happens while
we sleep and dream. This semester’s highlights include
the following:
- former astronaut Jay Buckey, who will discuss
the challenges of sleeping in space;
-
the music of sleep and dreams performed by the acclaimed
duo of pianist Marc-André Hamelin and
soprano Jody Karin Applebaum;
- psychiatrist Robert Stickgold, who will analyze how
sleep affects learning and memory;
- a presentation by sleep expert Mark Rosekind about ways
to improve sleep that can significantly boost productivity,
safety, and
health;
- philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear, who will
explain the enduring significance of Freud’s method
of dream interpretation; and
- Waking Dreaming, a discussion about how exceptional
mental states are linked to creative writing.
Call the Penn Humanities
Forum at 215.898.8220 or log on at www.humanities.sas.upenn.edu/topics04.htm |
