School Notes: Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
November/December 2013

Wilbur Lucius Cross medalists

The Graduate School honored four extraordinary alumni with Wilbur Cross Medals in October: cultural critic Fredric Jameson ’59PhD (French), biologist Alan M. Lambowitz ’72PhD (molecular biophysics & biochemistry), political theorist Theodore Lowi ’61PhD (political science), and editor/publisher Annette Thomas ’93PhD (biology). Jameson is the William A. Lane Jr. Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University and founding director of Duke’s Institute for Critical Theory. Lambowitz heads the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas, Austin. His lab explores gene expression, RNA splicing, mobile self-splicing introns, and retroviral-like genetic elements. Lowi is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University and former president of both the American and the International Political Science Associations. Thomas, former president and managing director of Nature Publishing Group, is now the CEO of its parent company, Macmillan Publishers, Ltd. 

Reaching out to the community

Many graduate students volunteer in and around New Haven. PhD student Mitra Miri (neuroscience) studies brain cells and how they interact to inhibit seizures. Outside the lab, she works to make that information available to the public, through the Yale Neuroscience Outreach Program and Brain Education Day—an annual event she coordinates (with fellow student Nikki Woodward) that brings public school students to campus for a day-long immersion in state-of-the-art neuroscience. “I believe it is my duty to be a science educator and take an active role in helping create a brain-science-literate population,” Mitra says.

Master and slave in Colonial New England

Allegra di Bonaventura ’02JD, ’08PhD (history), assistant dean at the Graduate School, has received high praise from scholars and critics for her recently published book, For Adam’s Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England. The Wall Street Journal described it as “incomparably vivid,” and historian William S. McFeely called it “a great story; great history.” The book explores life in early New England and exposes the surprisingly deep legal, religious, and familial interconnections among New Englanders of every social caste. At the core are Joshua Hempstead (1678–1758), a Connecticut shipwright and farmer who kept a diary documenting his daily life, and Adam Jackson (1700–1764), who was his slave for more than 30 years.