Editor’s note: While some academic meetings have moved to online formats, many events remain canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We include news about scheduled appearances because that peer-reviewed scholarship deserves recognition alongside publications and honors that have gone forward.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – Vernon Burton was reappointed associate editor of the Social Science Computer Review (SSCR). He faced multiple canceled appearances: Burton was to chair a session on Reconstruction at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting April 2-5 in Washington and tape an interview for its Distinguished Lecturers speaker series. He was slated to induct new members at the annual meeting of the South Carolina Academy of Authors planned for April 17-18 in Aiken. Burton was selected to be the keynote speaker for a ribbon cutting ceremony at the North Carolina Civil War and Reconstruction History Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina and also an event marking the addition of Reconstruction to a Civil War study center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He was scheduled to introduce historian Eric Foner at the Penn Center 1862 Circle Gala lifetime achievement awards planned for April 25 in Hilton Head. Burton also was scheduled to give the keynote for a conference at the California Institute of Technology about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And, as executive director of the College of Charleston’s Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program (CLAW), Burton was scheduled to welcome participants to the 2020 Port Cities in the Atlantic Conference.
PERFORMING ARTS – Paul Buyer presented a Zoom workshop about his book “Working Toward Excellence” for the Music Honor Society Pi Kappa Lambda at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Buyer and the Clemson University Steel Band released their new CD, “We’re Steel Here.” The album will be available on Clemson Marketplace in the fall and digitally through CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay and Gracenote MusicID.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – Caroline Dunn was the 2020 recipient of the Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship. The fellowship honoring a prominent medievalist was designed to bring greater prominence to female scholars in that academic specialty. This grant will provide funds for research travel and release time to assist Dunn with completion of her monograph “Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England.”
CITY PLANNING AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT – John Gaber’s book “Qualitative Analysis for Planning and Policy: Beyond the Numbers” was published in a revised and updated second edition by Routledge.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – H. Roger Grant’s book “Transportation and the American People” (Indiana University Press, 2019) won a Gold Medal in the 2020 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards in the category of Transportation.
PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian “Mickey” Harder reports that The Lysander Piano Trio concert on January 17, 2019 at the Brooks Center was broadcast April 20, 2020 on the American Public Media radio program “Performance Today.” The trio’s performance of the Debussy Piano Trio in G Major was part of the Utsey Chamber Music Series. The musicians were violinist Itamar Zorman, cellist Michael Katz and pianist Lisa Stepanova. The Utsey Series was created by Lillian and her husband, Dr. Byron Harder.
ENGLISH – Cynthia Haynes was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the NTX Gaming Symposium at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. The symposium has been rescheduled for Fall 2020. She was also scheduled to deliver a conference paper at the Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Portland, Oregon. The title of that talk was “Hospitality Is a One-Way Street.” The conference was postponed and later canceled.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – Tom Kuehn, Professor Emeritus of History, published “Justice in Renaissance Philosophy,” in the “Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy,” edited by Marco Sgarbi (New York: Springer, 2020) before his retirement in May.
ARCHITECTURE – Anjali Joseph led a panel presentation on May 19, “Using Simulation-Based Evaluations of Physical and Virtual Mock-Ups to Design Safer Hospital Environments,” at the virtual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Healthcare conference May 18-20. This panel was originally meant to take place in March in Toronto. She co-presented with speakers from the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Health Quality Council of Alberta, Canada. Joseph also published a paper with Roxana Jafarifiroozabadi, Rutali Joshi and Deborah Wingler from the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing, “Evaluating Care-Partner Preferences for Seating in an Outpatient Surgery Waiting Area Using Virtual Reality” in HERD: Health Environments Research and Design Journal.
ENGLISH – Michael LeMahieu’s article “The Self-Erasing Word: Tautology and Unspeakability in Don DeLillo’s ‘End Zone’” appeared in the March 2020 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Poetics Today.
LANGUAGES – Arelis Moore de Peralta received an honorable mention on April 18 for the Zenobia Lawrence Hikes Woman of Color in the Academy Award. The award recognizes a woman of color with a distinguished career in higher education, demonstrated by scholarly endeavors or administrative and professional accomplishments. The award criteria also specify “an engaged member of her campus and community, with a history of advancing the development of young women of color as they pursue their education and prepare for careers in the academy and beyond.” In addition, Dr. Moore and co-authors Julie Smithwick and Myriam E. Torres published “Perceptions and Determinants of Partnership Trust in the Context of Community-Based Participatory Research” in the Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice.
LANGUAGES – Kelly Peebles was scheduled to present “Renée de France, Jeanne de Navarre and Anne d’Este: Kinship, Faith, and Rivalry” at the canceled annual convention of the Renaissance Society of America, planned for April 2-4 in Philadelphia.
ENGLISH – Elizabeth Rivlin presented a paper in a virtual seminar as part of the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting on April 17. The event was originally scheduled to be held in-person in Denver. The seminar was titled “But Is It Any Good?: Evaluating Shakespeare Adaptation” and Rivlin’s paper was titled “Using Shakespeare’s Life: Marchette Chute’s ‘Shakespeare of London’ (1949).”
PERFORMING ARTS – Shannon Robert was scheduled to be the chair of a panel at the United States Institute for Theatre Technology conference in Houston, Texas, sharing research and moderating a group discussion on “Realities in Production and Design in Regional Theatres across the Industry.” She designed the scenery for The Warehouse Theatre’s canceled production of “Appropriate” in Greenville and Aurora Theatre’s production of “Cinderella” in the Atlanta area (currently postponed until January). Robert is currently teaching a free online painting class geared to novices (inspired by the paint-and-sip model) as an outreach activity sponsored by The Brooks Center for Performing Arts at 7 p.m. every Tuesday.
ARCHITECTURE – Thomas Schurch published an article in the American Society of Landscape Architects’ online blog “The Field.” His article titled “Urban Villages, Town Design, New Urbanism: Where Does Landscape Architecture Stand?” addresses landscape architecture’s historic and contemporary accomplishments in providing leadership in shaping urban form. This work is a continuation of his role as past co-director of the ASLA’s Professional Practice Network on urban design.
ENGLISH – Rhondda Robinson Thomas received the “Preserving Our Places in History Project Award” from the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission for her Call My Name Project. She also received the Holman Research Award from Clemson’s Department of English for outstanding and extraordinary achievement during past three years. Thomas was scheduled to present a talk at the Harrington Symposium on Race and the University on April 16 at the University of Delaware and give a presentation titled “Reconstruction, Public Memory, and the Making of Clemson University on John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation” on April 22 at Wofford College in Spartanburg. Both events were canceled and will be rescheduled during the 2020-2021 academic year.
LANGUAGES – Eric Touya was invited to read a paper titled “Voix politiques, transcendantes, et transgressives dans l’œuvre de Véronique Tadjo et d’Isabelle Eberhardt” at the canceled international conference “Africana. Figures de femmes et formes de pouvoir” at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. Touya and Col. Lance Young were scheduled to lead a group of Clemson students to London, Paris and Normandy in May (program canceled). The aim of the course is to revisit the journey of the American soldiers during World War II from a French perspective. Through this journey, the students analyze and reflect on the meaning and purpose of the GIs’ actions and experiences, and on the current roles of France and the United States in the world.
PERFORMING ARTS – Bruce Whisler produced a recording titled “British Brass Works: A Historical Sound Document of the New York Brass Quintet.” The work was published by the International Trumpet Guild. Whisler was also scheduled to give a presentation on recording studio acoustics at the Audio Engineering Society Midwest Region meeting in St. Louis. The conference was canceled.