Category: atavist-organization-21949

Look at a map of roads or railroad tracks—the winding lines suffuse the terrain like veins in a body. That’s no accident, because “they are the stuff of life,” writes Peter Christensen, an assistant professor of art history. Trained as an architect as well as a scholar, Christensen is the author of a new book—Germany… Continue reading Finding roots of globalization in Ottoman Empire’s railway

When Alexander Laing was 14, his teacher showed him a magazine article about Robert Lee Watt. The first African-American French horn player to be hired by a major US symphony, Watt joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1970. “I remember being excited and inspired that there was someone who looked like me, who identified as… Continue reading A Musical Feast

When Henry David Thoreau was born, 200 years ago this July 12, he arrived in the wake of a calamity. In 1816, known around the world as the “year with no summer,” ash, dust, and sulfur dioxide choked the atmosphere, spewed there by the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s volcanic Mount Tambora. Crops failed in New… Continue reading Walking in Thoreau’s Footsteps

Studying at the University of Bristol last fall, Laura Lockard ’17, a microbiology major and an accomplished track and field athlete, found herself with no suitable track to train on. The school’s athletic center required her to purchase a six-month membership that would cost her an estimated $1,000. Moreover, the small track there was nothing… Continue reading A Sprinter’s Marathon

The 125th anniversary of poet Walt Whitman’s death came at the end of March. His is one of the most influential voices in American—and world—literature. Ed Folsom ’76 (PhD), the Roy J. Carver Professor of English at the University of Iowa, has devoted his professional life to understanding Whitman’s work. He’s the author of 10… Continue reading Walt Whitman is ‘More Important Now than Ever’

After finishing her second book, The Needle (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), poet and literary translator Jennifer Grotz went to the Monastère de Saorge in the French Alps. Completing the book had given her a “clean slate,” she says. “My idea was just to see if poems came. But I was going to work on translations. I… Continue reading Opening a Window

Pack lightly, seasoned travelers advise. Take only what you need. And Gregory Heyworth, an associate professor of English, does. A scant collection of clothes makes it into his bags when he flies to Italy, or the former Soviet republic of Georgia, or Wales. He pares his wardrobe to make room for the camera, light-emitting diodes,… Continue reading The Future of the Past

by Karen McCalley, Rochester Review. Photos by J. Adam Fenster. Video by Matt Mann.Drone footage by Keith Walters. Early last spring, John Kessler invited five undergraduate students and a master’s degree candidate on a research venture of the type usually conducted by advanced scientists. An associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, Kessler introduced the… Continue reading Lake Effect

‘It has been a dull week’ On December 4, 1941, the Campus, the newspaper of the College for Men, declared a state of boredom on the University of Rochester’s River Campus. “Beside the muddy, turbid Genesee, it has been a dull week,” the paper reported. “Nobody spoke out of turn, nobody won unusual honors, nobody… Continue reading Pearl Harbor: When war came to campus

The doctor who discovered AIDS In the spring of 1981, a Rochester-trained physician made a discovery that would launch a new chapter in medical history, and set the course of his career. by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD) Michael Gottlieb was just a few years out of his internal medicine residency at the University of Rochester… Continue reading “I remember the courage with which they faced the unknown.”