Eliot Circular

Professors’ Corner

Lena Lencek

Prof. Lena Lencek [Russian 1977–]

Prof. Lena Lencek [Russian 1977–] presented a paper, “P.P. Muratov in American Scholarship,” at a conference on the writer and art historian Pavel Muratov in Rome in October. She also exhibited a new body of work, landscape paintings in India ink and tempera on paper, in a solo exhbition, Geochromes II, at the Artspace Gallery in Bay City, Oregon. And if that weren’t enough, she and Stephanie Snyder ’91 collaborated on an installation of Soviet graphic arts and photography at the Cooley Gallery. The exhibition, Reality Principle: Construction of a New Life, accompanied Prof. Lencek’s seminar, The Soviet Experience. Students contributed  research papers and explanatory texts for the photographic images on display. 

Prof. Darius Rejali [political science 1989–] is back at Reed after a sabbatical year in Spain, where he studied the politics of torture thanks to a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Prof. Sarah Schaack [biology 2011–] is a 2013–14 Fulbright Scholar working in East Africa through May. Prof. Schaack is one of approximately 662 faculty traveling abroad through the Core U.S. Scholar Program, which is intended to increase understanding between the people of the United States and host countries. This opportunity was also made possible as part of Reed’s faculty sabbatical policy that grants leave to tenure-track faculty. While in East Africa, Schaack will teach a series of workshops on how to use freely available genomic data and bioinformatic tools to conduct biological research. She will also coordinate a whole genome sequencing project with collaborators at various research institutions in Nairobi, Kenya. This project will focus on sequencing the genome of the destructive moth Busseola fusca, which is wreaking havoc on the sub-Saharan Africa maize crop. Finally, she will consult and mentor students and researchers on ways to enrich their research by harnessing the vast quantities of data now available in the public domain.

Prof. Tamara Metz [poli sci 2006–], Prof. Josh Howe [history 2012–], and Prof. Marat Grinberg [Russian 2006–] have all published books—Metz on politics and the family, Howe on global warming, and Grinberg on Woody Allen.