School Notes: Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
September/October 2013

Celebrating Yale’s study of Americas

A reunion conference on campus November 7–9 will explore Yale’s contribution to the interdisciplinary study of the Americas. Hosted by the Departments of African American Studies, American Studies, and History, “Interdisciplinary Americas” will feature tours, panels, and social events for current students and faculty and alumni from all years. Moderators and speakers will include Yale professors Jonathan Holloway ’95PhD (history), Jenifer Van Vleck ’09PhD (history), and Michael Denning ’84PhD (American studies); Bryan Wolf ’77PhD (American studies) of Stanford; Francoise Hamlin ’04PhD (African American studies) of Brown; Jill Lepore ’95PhD (American studies) of Harvard; and Leigh Raiford ’03PhD (African American studies and American studies) of UC–Berkeley. See http://grad.alumni.yale.edu/americas for more information.

Alumnus wins national honor

Edward Ayers ’80PhD (American studies), president of the University of Richmond, was awarded a National Humanities Medal “for his commitment to making our history as widely available and accessible as possible.” The citation praised his “innovations in digital humanities,” allowing “broad audiences to discover the past in new ways.” One of the nation’s leading scholars on the history of the American South, Ayers has authored or edited ten books. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (2003) earned Ayers the 2004 Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association and the 2004 Bancroft Prize for a distinguished book in American history from Columbia University.

The glacial history of mountains

Elizabeth Brown (geology and geophysics) studies the glacial valleys of the Patagonian Andes to determine if they were carved relatively quickly and recently or more slowly and further back in time. “Reconstructing the glacial history of mountain ranges is critical to our understanding of how mountains grow and are eroded, and what controls their height and shape,” Liz says. “I was drawn to the field of geomorphology because we can use the presence (or absence) of landforms such as fault scarps, glacial moraines, and river terraces to determine how a landscape has evolved over time, which requires a bit of geologic history storytelling. Plus, you get to go on great field trips!”