College of Arts and Sciences

New to campus this semester, the English department’s Michael Clune created national buzz when The Daily Beast, a popular news blog, called his upper-level English seminar, Forms of Life, one of the year’s hottest college courses. The assistant professor’s Forms of Life seminar explores how writers have stopped time to infuse their subjects with immortality. He also teaches an American literature survey course.

Read more

When it comes to controlling carbon emissions, a Case Western Reserve University political scientist challenges conventional views that countries are the only ruler makers in international politics of climate change. Jessica Green from Case Western Reserve University’s College of Arts and Sciences reports that today’s gold standard for measuring the carbon footprint of firms and organizations was created by the collaborative efforts of NGOs and the private sector—not by countries forging the Kyoto Protocol.

Read more

This academic year, Case Western Reserve University has welcomed Jeremy Bendik-Keymer to the College of Arts and Sciences as the newly appointed Elmer G. Beamer – Hubert H. Schneider Professor in Ethics. The Beamer-Schneider chair was established in 1996 by the Kent H. Smith Charitable Trust, which was then known as the 1525 Foundation. The chair was the result of a 10-year exploration by the trust to determine the best way to build an ethics program on campus.

Read more

Cockroaches can skitter through a crowded under-the-sink cabinet, eluding capture or worse, making the insects a model for rescue robots that would creep through the debris of disaster in search of survivors. But learning how they use all six legs at the same time to walk, run and turn has been a difficult and time-consuming task. Until now. Using a pair of high-speed cameras and a custom computer program, researchers at Case Western Reserve University are able to simultaneously extract three-dimensional movement of a cockroach’s 26 leg joints

Read more

Thirty students from Case Western Reserve University and eight Design Lab Early College High School students participated in the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival Oct. 23-24. More than 1,500 exhibitors and 500,000 visitors were part of the celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which featured hands-on science, technology displays, live presentations and performances by the likes of Bill Nye The Science Guy.

Read more

What you see on the surface of a great work of art is just a small part of the painting’s history. “Each painting is its own mystery and is a laminate of layers,” says Edward Olszewski, chair of the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University. Olszewski acts almost as a detective, peeling back the layers of a masterpiece’s history. He uses technologies, such as X-rays and infrared reflectance spectroscopy, to reveal more than eyes alone can see.

Read more