CAS Department Updates September 2014

Anthropology

Assistant Professor Parker VanValkenburgh has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant— a highly-competitive funding opportunity that archaeologists rarely receive. It's great news for Parker and the UVM students who will participate in his fieldwork, not to mention further evidence that the Anthropology department is moving in exciting directions.

The NEH award was also mentioned in the Burlington Free Press: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2014/07/22/duck-decoy-preservation-among-grant-winners/12998493/

Art and Art History

Assistant Professor Anthony Grudin has a new book that has been accepted with the University of Chicago Press. 

Associate Professor Jane Kent will have a one-person show as part of the 2014 International Print Biennale held in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

Judy Natal will present a public lecture, Illuminating the Present, Imagining the Future, on Wednesday, October 8, at 7:00 p.m. in 301 Williams Hall at the University of Vermont.  The lecture is hosted by the Department of Art & Art History and is supported by the Mollie Ruprecht Fund for Visual Arts. Natal is a Chicago-based artist, Professor of Photography and Coordinator of the Graduate Program at Columbia College, author of EarthWords, published in 2004 by Light Work, and Neon Boneyard Las Vegas A-Z, published in 2006 by Center for American Places.

During her visit to UVM, Natal will meet with classes and conduct individual critiques with advanced Studio Art Majors.
Since 1997, Judy Natal's photographs have explored the visual narratives landscapes and alterations to those landscapes hold. By 2006, her focus had progressively shifted toward interpreting landscapes that have been altered by scientists, engineers, designers, and utopians. Most recently, she has ventured into the world of robotics to examine our complex relationship to machines built in our own image, which ultimately raises questions of what it means to be human. .

English

Professor Emily Bernard’s upcoming book, "Black is the Body: Essays," was awarded a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council.

Lecturer Elaine Harrington reports: “Just sharing this good news that my journalism student and English major, Ayla Yersel (from northeastern Vermont), will be the VPR intern this fall. This one slot is very competitive—with the journalism students from Saint Michael's and other colleges. Ayla did excellent work in two of my courses and in earlier internships—with Vermont Business Magazine and a Massachusetts newspaper.”  

Tony Magistrale was invited by Ashland University in Ohio to deliver the Keynote Address at the university and town's celebration of the 20th anniversary of the release of the film, The Shawshank Redemption.   A story on Tony’s lecture can be found here.

Recently published and forthcoming books: 

Geography

Pablo BoseAssociate Professor Pablo Bose has started a new three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation entitled "Refugees in Vermont: Resettlement in a Non-Traditional Destination," which asks why the federal government and the voluntary agencies that help resettle refugees have over the past decade increasingly placed them in small and mid-sized cities and not in the traditional gateway metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles.  Beginning with an ethnographic study of Burlington, Vermont and expanding to parallel sites in the South, Midwest, and Northwest, the project will examine the motivations of federal and state officials as well as resettlement agencies in this strategy of placements in smaller cities.  The study will also follow a cohort of refugees over a three-year period to see what their resettlement outcomes have been in key areas such as housing, employment, education, transportation, civic integration, and healthcare, and measure their initial expectations against such outcomes.  Finally, using a variety of visualization and mapping techniques, the study will explore the impact of refugee resettlement in specific resettlement neighborhoods.  This community-based and participatory project hopes to provide important data and recommendations for strengthening and improving refugee resettlement policies in the US and in peer countries.

Assistant Professor Rashad Shabazz has been awarded a scholar in-residence fellowship at the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture in New York City.  The Schomburg is the largest research archive on Black history and life in North America.   The fellowship will give him access to the archives of the entire New York City Public Library, including the resources of the Schomburg center.  The National Endowment for the Humanities supports this fellowship.  This fellowship was awarded to Rashad to complete part of the research for his second single authored monograph on the spatial politics and identity of Black festivals.  During his time at the Schomburg he will perform research on Black gay pride parades.  Recently, Rashad had a book accepted with the University of Illinois Press.

Geology

The Geology Seminar Series for this fall got off to a great start on September 15th with a lecture by John Hughes on “The Many Facets of Apatite.”  A PDF of additional faculty presentations can be found here.

German and Russian

Professor Wolfgang Mieder has a new book on the rhetoric of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

History

Sean Stilwell's book Slavery and Slaving in African History was published by Cambridge University Press as part of their New Approaches to African History series.

Philosophy

The Philosophy Department Colloquium with Elizabeth Barnes of the University of Virginia will be held on Friday, October 17, 2014, at 4:00 PM, at 70 South Williams St., Room 109.  Contact phildept@uvm.edu for more information.

Political Science

Political Science Professor Anthony Gierzynski writes about his research on millennial generation voters for Slate.com. Gierzynski, who recently authored a book entitled Harry Potter and the Millennials, explains how consumption of entertainment media can affect political views. In the case of people who grew up reading the Harry Potter series, he found that, among other things, they tended to have “less predisposition to authoritarianism, greater support for equality and greater opposition to the use of violence and torture.” Read the story…

Faculty publications:

Debashish Munshi, Priya Kurian, and Robert V. Bartlett:  "Sustainable Citizenship for a Technological World: Negotiating Deliberative Dialectics," Citizenship Studies 18 (3-4): 435-451.

Patrick Neal: “Rawls, Abortion and Public Reason,” Journal of Church and State, 56 (2): 323-346; and “Habermas, Religion and Citizenship,” Politics and Religion 7 (2): 318-338.

Alex Sager and Alex Zakaras:  “The Hanford Advisory Board: Participatory Democracy, Technology, and Representation.”  Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 4:142-155.

Panel Discusions:

The Crisis in Ukraine - A Panel Discussion supported by the Louis Rakin Foundation
Friday, October 10, 2:00-4:00PM in the Fleming Museum, Room 101

In cooperation with the program in Global and Regional Studies and Russian and East European Studies, the Political Science Department will present a roundtable discussion on the crisis in Ukraine. Supported by the Louis Rakin Foundation, the roundtable will be moderated by UVM Professor of Political Science Michele Commercio and include internationally recognized experts on Ukraine, Henry Hale (George Washington University), Oxana Shevel (Tufts University), and Jennifer Dickinson (University of Vermont). Together they will discuss the socio-historical background to the crisis, the dynamics surrounding recent elections, the prospects for generating political stability, and the role of Russia in the conflict. UVM Professor Adrian Ivakhiv will provide closing commentary on the discussion.

October 11, 2014 - 10:30AM The 2014 Election and the Second Obama Administration
John Dewey Lounge, Third Floor Old Mill Building

A panel discussion on the current American political scene with Department of Political Science senior professors (Garrison Nelson, Anthony Gierzynski, Eileen Burgin, Lisa Holmes), will be moderated by department chair, Robert Bartlett.

Psychological Science

Professor Betsy Hoza is the lead author of a study that explores seeking alternatives to the use of drugs to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in children and takes a closer look at exercise as a prescription. The study found that regular, half-hour sessions of aerobic activity before school helped young children with symptoms of ADHD become more attentive and less moody.  The study was recently featured in an article in The Wall Street Journal, one of the Top Health Stories on Google, and also got a brief mention on the NBC Today Show and on a Good Morning America segment.

NPR and other media report on the work of Associate Professor Hugh Garavan, senior author of a study published in the journal Nature that examined the underlying causes behind teenage binge drinking by taking brain scans of approximately 700 14-year-olds and then following up on behavior two years later. The study identified a variety of factors that can cause a propensity towards alcohol abuse, from having a thrill-seeking personality to brain structure type. While more research is needed, we’re “one step closer to understanding the roots of addiction,” according to Garavan. Read the story…

Religion

The Religion department has recently added a Twitter account and a new blog to its web page (as well as its ongoing Facebook page):

http://blog.uvm.edu/religion/
https://www.facebook.com/uvmreligion
https://twitter.com/REL_UVM

Sociology

Beth Mintz UVM sociologist Beth Mintz has been awarded the Jackie M. Gribbons Leadership Award from Vermont Women in Higher Education (VWHE), an organization affiliated with the Office of Women in Higher Education at the American Council on Education. This award is presented to a woman who has demonstrated leadership ability, served as a model and mentor, developed innovative programs, and contributed significantly to the institution and profession.
Says one colleague of Mintz: “I cannot think of a person at UVM who has done more for faculty,” while making the institution “a more humane one.” Mintz spearheaded the efforts for same-sex domestic partner benefits at UVM in the 1990s, leading to the university extending these benefits long before civil unions and same sex marriages were legalized. She was a founder of the Faculty Women’s Caucus, and under its auspices helped to create a thriving mentorship program for junior faculty. Mintz helped to found the Women's Studies Program (now the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program) at UVM, which has “infused gender issues into the curriculum,” and provided “an important support to women faculty,” according to one colleague. She is also an internationally recognized scholar, and the author or editor of five books and dozens of articles in leading academic journals.
Click here to learn more about Jackie Gribbons, the late UVM professor and administrator for whom Mintz's award was named.