PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Richard Amesbury gave a lecture on “Populist Religion as a Secular Phenomenon” May 25 at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
ENGLISH – Katalin Beck presented “How ESP Pedagogy in Virtual Online Collaboration Contributes to the Authenticity of the Learning Process – A Case Study” May 12 at the International GlobELT Conference in Belgrade, Serbia. The GlobELT conference explores the teaching and learning of English as an additional language. She discussed how participants of international collaborative writing projects benefit from understanding and anticipating the influence of cross-cultural variables and the resulting rhetorical considerations.
ENGLISH – David Blakesley was named to the inaugural class receiving the University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAAA) at Clemson University. President James P. Clements announced the awards May 9 at the 2018 Research Symposium.
ENGLISH – Maria Bose published “Immaterial Thoughts: Brand Value, Environmental Sustainability, and WALL-E” in the Summer 2018 issue of Criticism (59.2). Bose received a $4,000 Global Learning Seed Grant from the Office of Global Engagement to develop five interrelated courses in “Global Security Studies,” a curricular initiative designed to encourage students to engage with existing academic and policy debates surrounding “security” in its current political, economic, technological and cultural formations. In addition, Bose presented the talk “Postracial Formation in Recent U.S. Fiction” at the annual Society for Novel Studies conference at Cornell University.
HISTORY – On May 4, Vernon Burton spoke on the “Origins of the 14th Amendment” and participated in a roundtable at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society Reconstruction Symposium in Washington: “Reconstructing the Constitution, Remaking Citizenship, and Reconsidering a Presidential Succession.” His lecture was broadcast June 2 on C-SPAN 3. Burton’s “In Memoriam: Charles Joyner, 1935-2016, Historian of the U.S. South” appeared in the American Historical Association magazine Perspectives on History (56:5, May 2018, p. 35). On May 8, he presented a lecture on Southern identity, “The South as Other, The Southerner as Stranger” for the Clemson Osher Lifetime Learning Institute in Patrick Square. Burton was named to the URSAAA inaugural class at Clemson.
ENGLISH – The Advanced Writing Committee’s project “Advanced Writing for Global Perspectives” received a $4,000 Global Learning Seed Grant from the Office of Global Engagement. The grant will allow Cameron Bushnell, principal investigator, and Katalin Beck, Christopher Benson and Mike Pulley, co-principal investigators, to develop innovative learning modules with a focus on global competency outcomes. These Canvas modules will be pilot tested and offered for implementation in business, technical and science writing classes in the fall semester. The goal of this project is to infuse global competencies in advanced writing courses, helping students prepare for global citizenship by applying the acquired knowledge, skills and behaviors in their lives and careers.
ENGLISH – Professor Emeritus Wayne Chapman was invited to lecture at the “Historicizing Modernism / Modernist Archives” conference May 17-19 at the University of York, England. His book “W.B. Yeats’s Robartes-Aherne Writings: Featuring the Making of His ‘’Stories of Michael Robartes and His Friends’” (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) is considered a flagship volume of the Modernist Archives Series, the conference subject. Chapman presented the lecture “Yeats Now and in the Next Generation: The Legacy of the Archives.” He also participated in the concluding roundtable discussion on “The Future of Archival Studies in Modernism.”
CITY PLANNING AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT – John Gaber has been appointed to the selection committee for the Associate of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Rising Scholar Award. The annual award recognizes early-career scholars with the potential for a meritorious impact in the planning field.
HISTORY – Astrid Joehnk, a producer for ARD German Radio, interviewed H. Roger Grant about the Illinois Central Railroad’s City of New Orleans passenger train and rail passenger service in the United States.
ENGLISH – Cynthia Haynes received The Thomas Green Clemson Award for Excellence (faculty), the English Department Holman Research Award and was inducted into the URSAAA inaugural class at Clemson University. She received The Rhetoric Society of America 2017 Annual Book Award, which was presented May 31 at the society’s 50th anniversary conference. In addition, Haynes had the book chapter “Fort Worth by Day, Cowtown by Night, It’s All West of Adios” published in the edited collection “Inventing Place: Writing Lone Star Rhetorics” (Southern Illinois University Press 2018).
ENGLISH – At the Rhetoric Society of America conference May 30-June 3 in Minneapolis, Steve Katz served as a featured speaker on the roundtable “Rhetorical Temporalities,” along with Diane Davis, Michelle Ballif and Thomas Rickert. Katz discussed “Rhetorical Poiesis and Temporality.” Katz organized, chaired and presented on the panel “Re-Inventing ‘Disclosure:’ Confessional, Spiritual, Mystical, and Ethical-Artificial Experience as a Personal Basis of Rhetorical Scholarship.” He also presented “Can a Sophist Believe in G/d?: Psychagogic and Magical Experiences in Writing on Mysticism and Language.” Finally, Katz was a panelist for the business meeting of Klal Rhetorica, a national association of scholars from rhetoric and Jewish Studies.
ARCHITECTURE – Dave Lee authored “Design Instrumentation in an Immersive Virtual Environment,” which was presented at the 34th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student at the University of Cincinnati, and “Implementation of Synchronous Collaborative Design in Immersive Virtual Environments,” presented at the Fifth International Conference on Architecture and Built Environment in Venice, Italy. Lee received a 2018-20 Creativity Professorship from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. The designation recognizes faculty members engaged in exemplary teaching and/or research activities. Two students in Lee’s architecture design studio received awards in an international student design competition, the Lyceum Fellowship. William ‘Wilson’ Marshall received a citation award and Cody Blevins received a merit award.
ARCHITECTURE – Amalia Leifeste was selected to participate in the Jewish National Fund’s 2018 Summer Faculty Fellowship Program in Israel. She is one of 23 professors from universities and colleges across the United States who will travel throughout the country May 26-June 7, meeting Israeli professors with similar research interests. The program’s goal is to develop collaborations, initiate research projects and establish exchange programs between faculty and students.
LANGUAGES – Tiffany Creegan Miller presented at the annual congress hosted by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) May 23-26 in Barcelona, Spain. Her presentation “‘Xib’e pa El Norte’: Ethnographic Encounters With Kaqchikel Maya Transnational Migration From Lake Atitlán, Guatemala” was part of a seminar on the theoretical and methodological challenges in studying migrations.
LANGUAGES – Salvador A. Oropesa read the paper “Fantasías Neoliberales en la Serie Procedimental de Eva Sáenz de Urturi” at the XIV Congreso de Novela y Cine Negro: Clásicos y Contemporaneos at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. His article “Mitología y terrorismo en la Trilogía del Baztán de Dolores Redondo” appeared in the collection “Clásicos y Contemporáneos en el Género Negro,” edited by Álex Martín Escribà and Javier Sánchez Zapatero (Santiago de Compostela: Andavira, 2018, pp.121-27).
LANGUAGES – Kelly Peebles published “Renée de France’s and Clément Marot’s Voyages: Political Exile to Spiritual Liberation” in a special issue of the journal Women in French, “Les femmes et le voyage (Women and Traveling),” edited by Catherine R. Montfort and Christine McCall Probes.
PERFORMING ARTS – Shannon Robert designed scenery for Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” at the Serenbe Playhouse near Atlanta, which received rave reviews from Playbill.com and Broadway World. She is designing Lauren Gunderson’s new play, “The Taming,” for Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta, “Newsies” for Aurora Theatre and The Lyric Theatre in Atlanta, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and Lorca’s “Doña Rosita” for The Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts, directed by David Kaplan for Texas Tech University Theatre. Robert will be doing devised theatre creation in Marfa, Texas with Doug Wright (“Quills,” “I Am My Own Wife”) and Rich Brown, also for Texas Tech. She is developing a devised performance project with colleagues and students that will be performed during the next academic year at an international theatre festival in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
PERFORMING ARTS – The National Alliance of Acting Teachers accepted Kerrie Seymour into its two-week physical theatre intensive in Los Angeles. She studied movement approaches and pedagogy with world-renowned instructors, including Stephen Wangh, Joanna Merlin and Alexandra Billings.
PERFORMING ARTS – Be The Match presented Mark Spede with a 2017 Leadership Award as part of its “Banding Together to Be The Match” campaign to enlist band members to join a national registry of potential bone marrow donors.
ENGLISH – Rhondda Robinson Thomas was invited to be one of four panelists for the opening session “Slavery and the University” May 5 at the “Race, Memorialization and Memory” conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
ENGLISH – Alex Lu interviewed Jillian Weise alongside Keah Brown and Esmé Weijun Wang in the literary journal Electric Literature. Her poem “The Responsibility of the Poet in the Voice of Ray Bradbury as Channeled by the Cyborg Jillian Weise” begins episode two of the Faber Poetry Podcast.