For at least a decade, suburban Milwaukee pastor Matthew Trewhella, a founder of the radical anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn, has been building a movement drawing on 16th-century resistance theory to justify and promote disobedience toward certain state and federal laws on Biblical grounds.

Anna Rosensweig, an associate professor of French and of visual and cultural studies, and an expert on early modern French literature and political theory, is the author of Subjects of Affection: Rights of Resistance on the Early Modern French Stage (Northwestern University Press, 2021), which examines the ways in which French dramatists during the 17th-century absolutist reign of King Louis XIV continued to explore the idea of droit de résistance (right of resistance) through invented characters on the stage.

In a recent essay in the Modern Language Quarterly (MLQ), Rosensweig considers Trewhella’s “central argument … that the US government has amassed too much power over the lives and livelihoods of the people and has thus become a tyrannical force,” she writes. “The government’s tyranny, he laments, has gone unchecked by the clergy and other religious officials.”

Such far-right interpretations, she says, raise important questions about how we read texts from the distant past, interpret them in the present, and potentially borrow from them as inspiration for our own actions and outlook.

So, in spite of the gulf between Rosensweig’s notion of the collective good and someone like Trewhella’s, Rosensweig believes her background in resistance theory enables her to understand Christian nationalism in ways that many secular, liberal Americans don’t.

“I feel like I have a responsibility to help other people understand,” in order to join the conversation—and to prevent Christian nationalists from claiming a rich tradition as exclusively their own.

“The objects that we study don’t have an inherent moral or aesthetic good. There are a lot of possibilities about how they can be used,” she says.

Centuries of history and literature make for a deep well to draw on. Having some understanding of them “is important and useful in ways that we can’t always anticipate.” Learn more.

The University has been awarded a three-year grant for the new Beckman Scholars Program, which provides undergraduates majoring in biology and chemistry the opportunity to conduct independent laboratory research under the mentorship of select Rochester faculty over a 15-month period.

The program is administered by the departments of biology and chemistry and will be guided by three core values: research excellence, mentorship, and inclusion.

Two undergraduates will be selected each year, and will each receive $21,000 in funding over 15 months in support of their research efforts.

Students can apply until February 24.

The Rochester faculty members who applied for and were awarded the grant are Shauna Paradine, assistant professor of chemistry; Jennifer Brisson, professor of biology; and Sina Ghaemmaghami, professor of biology.

Rochester is one of 14 American institutions that will receive more than $2.1 million in total funding for 84 undergraduates.

Left to right, top to bottom: Peter Christensen, David Higgs, Yukun Liu, Jiebo Luo, and Joyce McDonough.

Five University faculty members were appointed to named professorships in the second half of 2022. An honor designed to recognize the national stature of a professor’s work, the named positions are part of a long-standing tradition to celebrate the work of Rochester’s faculty as researchers, scholars, and teachers.

• Peter Christensen, a professor of art and art history, has been jointly appointed as the Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities. He retains his joint appointments as a professor of visual and cultural studies and as the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center. Christensen specializes in the modern architectural and environmental history of Europe and the Middle East. The professorship is among several humanities professorships named for the late Arthur Satz ’51, a music major and the late president emeritus at the New York School of Interior Design.
• David Higgs, a professor of organ and chair of the Department of Organ, has been jointly appointed as the Minehan Family Professor. One of America’s leading concert organists, Higgs performs extensively throughout the United States and abroad and he performs, teaches, and adjudicates at festivals and competitions throughout the world. The endowed professorship was created by a gift from University Trustee Cathy Minehan ’68, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
• Yukun Liu, an assistant professor of finance, has been appointed as the William H. Meckling Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Liu’s primary research fields include asset pricing, labor and finance, and fintech. The professorship, which is named for the late William Meckling, dean emeritus of the Simon Business School, supports a professorship in business administration at Simon.
• Jiebo Luo, a professor of computer science, has been jointly appointed as the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering. Luo retains his joint appointment as a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Luo’s research covers computer vision, machine learning, data mining, social media, and biomedical informatics. The engineering professorship honors the late Albert Arendt Hopeman, president of A.W. Hopeman and Sons, the general contractor of the River Campus from 1927 to 1930. The company also built Eastman Theatre and the Eastman School of Music.
• Joyce McDonough, a professor of linguistics, has been jointly appointed as the Richard L. Turner Professor. McDonough’s research focuses on the phonetic and phonological structure of endangered or under-resourced languages and dialects. The professorship was established in 1988 by Nancy Turner in honor of her husband, Richard Turner, former president and chief executive officer of Schlegel Corp. It supports humanities faculty in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University who exemplify Turner’s broad view of scholarship and the world.

The Office of Clinical Research has rolled out a new, free feasibility assessment that University researchers can use to assess what it will truly take to run a proposed clinical trial as well as any risks involved.

The three-step process can help investigators and departments make informed decisions about which clinical trials to invest time and effort into. Learn more.