Neuroscience and Philosophy double major Sofia Eisenbeiser published the article, "Gills Just Want to Have Fun: Can Fish Play Games, Just like Us?" in the journal Animals last June. Previous research had established that the instinct to play is found in both mammals and birds, prompting Eisenbeiser to ask, "We were fish once, in a manner of speaking. Is it possible that this requirement for enriching environments has existed from the time we had gills?"
To test her hypothesis that fish engage in play, Eisenberger shined laser beams into fish's tanks and observed their reactions. She tested fish belonging to 66 different species and observed behavior suggestive of play, but she could not conclude definitively that fish were playing. Eisenberger called for additional research into this question.
White-spotted cichlid oriented toward the red laser dot.
Photo by Sofia Eisenbeiser in Great Lakes Echo.
Professor Leslie Atzmon's new anthology Design and Science (Bloomsbury 2023) addresses the inter-relationship, in both historical and contemporary contexts, between design thinking and design processes and scientific and medical research methods. Atzmon explains, "I had been thinking about doing a project on design and science for a long time. Before I studied design, I got an undergraduate degree in biology and spent several years working in a lab testing polluted water. The relationships between design and science are not obvious; most people consider design and science to be distinct fields that function in very different ways. Having experienced both worlds has given me a unique perspective on design and science together."
Design and Science features a critical introduction and sixteen historical and contemporary essays—in four themed sections—that consider various approaches to the relationships between design and science. The essays in the first section, "Visual Metaphor, Conceptualization, and Modeling Ideas in Design and Science," examine how both science and design use visual metaphor, visual thinking, and modeling to help unveil tacit processes and obscure concepts. Visual thinking, visual metaphor, and modeling in design and science can suggest the sorts of interrelationships that are discussed in the second section, which is devoted to biodesign and biomimicry. In the former, biological organisms are integrated with design in solutions to real-world issues, while in the latter design is inspired by living systems.
Most of the work that is presented in this volume, including biodesign and biomimicry projects, necessarily engages both makers and users. In the third section, "Maker and Users in Design and Science," the essays consider user-focused biodesign projects. Other essays in this section consider biodesign projects that are devised by "citizen scientists," non-scientists who collaborate with scientists. Finally, scientific data that is fashioned by design can reveal aspects of scientific systems to makers and users. In the fourth section, "Data Manifestation in Design and Science," the essays contend with the visualization and communication of scientific data. Data manifestation commonly utilizes "reverse engineering" or "reverse design"—in which a "picture" of real-world systems that are not yet well understood emerge from renditions of data sets.
Dr. Leslie Atzmon
Cover of Design and Science, designed by EMU Graphic Design student Jocelyn Snell.
Alumna Haluthai "Thai" Inhmathong (BA Communication 2018) and her mother Vasanna Inhmathong began their business Basil Babe in 2020, making dumplings for folks stuck at home during the depths of the pandemic. The venture grew into a popular pop-up serving a variety of Thai dishes, and now the Inhmathongs have opened a full restaurant in the former location of Tower Inn at 701 W. Cross Street.
Speaking of the Tower Inn owners, Thai told the Echo, "They want us to succeed like how they succeeded and how they fed the community and how their kids grew up in this space too. It's a homecoming story. I was born and raised in Ypsi and my mom owned a restaurant in Ann Arbor, feeding Ypsi and Ann Arbor and I just wanna do the same."
Haluthai "Thai" Inhmathong and Vasanna Inhmathong
Photo from Basil Babe social media.
Alumna Nicole Marroquin (BFA and BA, K-12 Art Education, 1999) will speak and exhibit her art at the University of Michigan this winter. Marroquin will give a talk, "With Care," in the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series at 5:30 pm on February 16 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. The Institute for the Humanities Gallery at the University of Michigan will host an exhibition of Marroquin's ceramics, printmaking, and installation art from February 16 to March 22.
Marroquin is a teacher, educator, and an artist whose work explores belonging and spatial justice through histories of student rebellions in Chicago Public Schools 1968-1980. Through research and creative practice, she aims to recover and re-present histories of Black and Brown youth and women’s leadership in the struggle for justice in Chicago. Recently she has presented projects at Printed Matter, the Annual Conference of the American Association of Research Librarians, the University of Maine, The New York Archivist Round Table, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, DePaul Museum of Art, and on WLPN, Lumpen Radio. Her essays are included in the Visual Art Research Journal, Counter-Signals, Chicago Social Practice History Series, Revista Contratiempo, Where the Future Came From, and Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements. She is a member of the Justseeds and the Chicago ACT collectives and chair of the Department of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Nicole Marroquin
Photo by Diana Solis.
2022-23 McAndless Professor Petra Kuppers will give a talk on "Arts-Based Methods, Archives and Futures" at 6:00 pm on January 31 in the Student Center Ballroom. The lecture will be preceded by a reception at 5:00 pm reception. Guests may attend in person or register for the Zoom webinar at tiny.emich.edu/kuppers. ASL and CART will be provided.
In her talk, Kuppers will take audiences into her search for disabled dance ancestors at the New York Public Library Dance Archives. She looks for disabled and mad people in the archive, for the ways that labels like handicapped, disabled, crip, psych, and mad travel and intertwine, shift and change in library cataloguing systems, in the words of people describing one another, and describing themselves. She also looks at stigma, and why some disabled dance artists are not part of this disability history: sometimes because they personally chose not to, sometimes because others (families, publicists, librarians) chose on their behalf. Through video and images, Kuppers will introduce audiences to a range of international disabled dance artists. She also will share innovative and creative arts-based methods with which contemporary artists/activists embrace their lineage(s), widen the archive, and engage in embodied transmissions of knowledge. Ultimately, Kuppers argues for the value of opening up our understanding of ‘archives,’ ‘history,’ and ‘knowledge’ for all of us, no matter what our heritage(s) are: we can look to the past and re-shape it, in order to create more accessible futures for us all.
Dr. Petra Kuppers is an internationally recognized scholar, performer, and creative writer whose work is both interdisciplinary and community-engaged. She is a professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies and the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, where she also holds appointments in Art and Design and Theatre. She is also the director of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. In 2021, she was the recipient of the New York Public Library’s Dance Division’s dance research fellowship, for which she created dances that bridge the archive and public performance. A leading scholar of disability performance, Dr. Kuppers has published seven monographs. Her latest book, Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), brings together her scholarly interests in ecocriticism, speculative fiction and performance, community performance, and disability culture.
Dr. Petra Kuppers
The biggest Dance concert of the year at EMU, the Annual Faculty and Guest Artist Dance Concert will be held in Pease Auditorium on Friday, January 20 and Saturday, January 21 at 7:00 pm. The concerts feature choreography by EMU Faculty and distinguished guest choreographers performed by members of Company E, the official performing company of EMU Dance.
For more information, contact Prof. Sherry Wilkinson.
Company E members in performance
Several CAS speakers will present at the MLK Academic Programs Conference on Sunday, January 15, and Monday, January 16. The MLK Academic Programs Conference is a central component of EMU's annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration. CAS presenters will speak on these topics:
"The H. P. Jacobs Family, EMU Civil Rights Heroes" with Matt Siegfried, Alumnus in History and Historic Preservation
"Mentoring for Success Initiative Roundtable Discussion" with Dr. Sadaf Ali, Associate Professor of Electronic Media and Film Studies, and Dr. Dyann Logwood, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies
"From Negative Peace to Positive Peace: Insights from Martin Luther King Jr." with Dr. John Otieno Ouko, Lecturer of Philosophy
"Mrs. Coretta Scott King Expanded the Dream" with Dr. Toni Pressley-Sanon, Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies
Some events will be on Zoom and others will be in person, and registration is required.
CAS will also be represented by Forensics team members Louise Engohang, Diontae Threats, and Cedrick Charles, who will perform at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Kickoff on Friday, January 13.
"Remembering the Dream" is the theme of the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration.
CAS's Civil Rights and Social Justice Center will present the second event in its three-part speakers’ series, "60 Years of Civil Rights: From the Church House to Social Media, the Struggle Continues," Wednesday, January 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the EMU Student Center (Ballroom B).
Leroy Clemons, community organizer and activist, will offer insights and lead discussion on the 1964 Ku Klux Klan murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Miss., supported with clips from the documentary film "Neshoba: The Price of Freedom." The murders went unpunished for 40 years until Clemons led a movement that resulted in the reopening of the investigation.
Schwerner and Goodman, both White New Yorkers, and Chaney, a Black Mississippi native, met as volunteers during "Freedom Summer," while working to register Black voters in the state. The three were chased, harassed, and shot to death by KKK members from the local community, a group that included the county sheriff, his deputy, and Edgar Ray Killen, a Baptist minister.
Leroy Clemons
Banner photo: Biological lecture hall, Michigan State Normal School, circa 1892. University Archives.