UT is known as a research institution, but how often do students really delve into what their professors have published? The UT faculty has a wealth of publications that for the most part goes unnoticed among the student population and often among professors in other specializations as well. Here is just a sample of the work the university’s faculty has published within the past year, but these publications merely scratch the surface. Visit each college’s website to explore more publications and cultivate an awareness of the variety of research occurring on campus each day.
1. Kristi Maxwell, lecturer in English, published a book of poetry called “That Our Eyes Be Rigged” in October of 2014. The poems center around the life contained within language itself. They often explore a single word by revealing all that it contains and by drawing inner connections between seemingly incongruent words. It evokes elaborate imagery and links the linguistic to the physical.
2. Tricia Hepner, associate professor in anthropology, published a book along with four of her colleagues titled “African Asylum at the Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony and Refugee Rights.” The publication complies essays about African refugees seeking asylum, and discusses the role of legal experts in guaranteeing refugee rights. It also examines the role and importance of testimonies of experts.
3. Ernest Freeberg, professor in history, published a book analyzing the history and impact of the electric light revolution on American society called “The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America.” Freeberg discusses how Edison’s bulb, more so than any other 19th century invention, ushered America into the modern age. The book transforms Edison into a mythic figure that changes the course of history.
4. Rosalind Hackett, professor and head of religious studies, co-authored a work, “The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism,” which explores the globalization of the Pentecostal and Evangelical movements and the far-reaching impacts these ideologies possess outside of the religious realm. It offers an argument that the movements themselves cause reflections on politics, materiality, morality and law.
5. Alison Buchan, associate professor in microbiology, and her associated researchers recently published a paper titled “A multitrophic model to quantify the effects of marine viruses on microbial food webs and ecosystem processes.” In other words, Buchan is looking into the effect that viruses can have on microbial communities in the upper level of the ocean when they infect certain microbes and burst the cell from the inside. When they burst the cell, all of the nutrients previously contained within the cell are open to the surrounding microbes in the community to consume. They discovered that viruses can stimulate community productivity and increase the recycling of organic matter.
