PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Richard Amesbury participated in a workshop Sept. 8-10 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany on the theme “Sovereignty, Religion, and Secularism: Interrogating the Foundations of Polity.” He also gave a paper, “The Politics of Depoliticization,” on Sept. 14 as part of a panel on “Law and Human Rights” at the Center for Religion, Conflict, and Globalization at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
HISTORY – On Sept. 14, Vernon Burton moderated the question and answer session for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at Clemson University. Most newspapers in South Carolina covered the story of the first visit to Clemson by a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice. On Sept. 26, Burton spoke on the topic of race and Southern identity at the Oconee/Pickens County Lion’s Club Zone meeting at the Duke Energy’s World of Energy. Burton was also the first among the 10 historians of United States history who filed an amici curiae brief in support of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, et al., respondents in the Husted v. Randolph case in the Supreme Court on voter registration suppression. Burton and Dixie Goswami, professor emeritus of English, will receive the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities from the South Carolina Humanities Council on Oct.19.
PERFORMING ARTS – Paul Buyer was invited to attend the Yamaha Marching Percussion Summit Sept. 25-27 in Buena Park, California. Marching percussion educators and artists met with designers from Yamaha Japan to discuss Yamaha’s marching percussion products, the future of marching percussion and current trends in product development and market needs. Attendees included college and high school marching band drumlines; Drum and Bugle Corps (DCI); and Winter Guard International (WGI).
ART – Andrea Feeser attended the Aug. 25 opening of artist Jimmie Durham’s exhibition “God’s Children, God’s Poems” at the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zürich. She spent several days with the artist – the subject of her book in progress – and his colleagues, discussing and documenting the show. Feeser visited Durham’s Berlin studio in March, where she and two of her former Clemson art department students documented Durham’s creation of the work for the Zürich exhibition.
HISTORY – H. Roger Grant has been elected to the board of directors of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library in St. Louis.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Steven Grosby’s article “Nationen lever” appeared in Swedish in the September issue of Axess Magasin, pp. 30-33. The Swedish news magazine published in Stockholm focuses on liberal arts and the social sciences.
ENGLISH – Walt Hunter gave a poetry reading Sept. 28 and led a workshop for young people at the 10th annual Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, Kenya.
CONSTRUCTION SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT – Chair Mike Jackson announced that his department will host its second Construction Industry Symposium on Oct. 12 in Greenville, South Carolina. Last year’s event in Charlotte was so well received, the department decided to make the symposium an annual event. The event sponsor is BB&T/BB&T Insurance Services.
HISTORY – When Ken Burns and Lynn Novick were making the documentary series “The Vietnam War” for PBS, a member of their staff consulted Edwin Moise on several issues. Professor Moise’s name appears in the credits for Episode 3 of the series, “The River Styx.”
ENGLISH – Lee Morrissey’s essay, “Milton, Modernity, and Periodization of Politics” was published in Modern Language Quarterly, and his essay “Transplanting English Plantations in Aphra Behn’s ‘Oroonoko’” was published in The Global South.
LANGUAGES – Salvador Oropesa published the article “‘El Quijote’ en la trilogía de la frontera de Cormac McCarthy: Neobarroco del Southwest” in the Colombia-based journal Lingüística y Literatura 72 (2017): pp. 135-55. In his abstract, Oropesa said: “We read Cormac McCarthy as a novelist of the Baroque of the Southwest paying special attention to syntax, vocabulary, and intertextuality. The bulk of the critical attention on McCarthy is anglocentric. We cover the influence of Spanish literature, mainly Cervantes, in the Border Trilogy.”
CITY PLANNING AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT – Elora Raymond presented the paper “Corporate Landlords, Institutional Investors and Displacement: Evictions in Single Family Homes” at Leeds University in the UK for the annual RC21 Sociology of Urban and Regional Development conference Sept. 11-13. The paper is available from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Community and Economic Development Paper Series.
ENGLISH – Jillian Weise is on book tour for the 10th anniversary edition of “The Amputee’s Guide to Sex.” She read in New York City at The Kitchen with Eileen Myles and at the KGB Bar with Natalie Shapero. Readings in September and October take her to Charleston, Asheville and the Chippewa Valley Book Festival. An interview with Weise appears in BOMB magazine. New poems appear in Granta.