COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND HUMANITIES – Faculty promotions and tenure were announced over the summer. Michael Silvestri of the Department of History and Geography; Kelly Smith, Interim Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion; and Jillian Weise, from the Department of English, all achieved the rank of professor. Dustin Albright, Hyejung Chang and David Franco became associate professors in the School of Architecture. David Coombs and Gabriel Hankins advanced to associate professors of English. And in the Department of Languages, Stephen Fitzmaurice (American Sign Language), George Palacios (Spanish) and Gabriela Stoicea (German) are now Associate Professors. Congratulations to all!
COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND HUMANITIES – Winifred Elysse Newman has been named the Acting Associate Dean of Research in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. She agreed to assume the role after James Spencer was named Vice Provost and Dean for the Graduate School at Louisiana State University. Newman holds the Homer Curtis Mickel and Leona Carter Mickel Endowed Chair in the School of Architecture and is Director of the Institute for Intelligent Materials, Systems and Environments.
ENGLISH – Chris Benson retired from 25 years of service to Clemson University as a lecturer and senior lecturer in the department, and a research associate in the Strom Thurmond Institute.
ENGLISH – David Blakesley edited “Reinventing Rhetorical Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America,” with Roxanne Mountford and Dave Tell. The paperback, copyrighted in 2020 by Rhetoric Society of America, was issued by Parlor Press, the independent publisher of scholarly books Blakesley founded in 2002.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – The National Park Service interviewed Vernon Burton in May about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and Fort Sumter. Part 1 and Part 2 of his interview are posted online. He was interviewed for three recent Greenville News articles: “Who Was Ben Tillman: South Carolina’s Racial Demagogue,” one about the push to rename Wade Hampton High School, and another story about John Lewis’ death. On June 18, Burton gave a videoconference lecture about Juneteenth to nearly 500 scientists, engineers and other staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. On June 19, he served on a webinar panel about “Reparations and World Change” for the Thurgood Marshall Law School at Texas Southern University in Houston. Burton has two podcasts, “Lincoln’s Lifelong Learning” and “Lincoln’s Potent Politics,” posted online as part of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources series “Combahee: The Last Rice River.” In July, he was interviewed by Latisha Catchatoorian from WRAL-TV for a Forward Justice story about felony disfranchisement in North Carolina. The reporter also quoted from his expert witness report for Forward Justice. Burton also was scheduled to deliver the keynote address for a canceled conference at the California Technical University about the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
ENGLISH – Cameron Bushnell’s essay “Designing a Racial Project for WAC: International Teaching Assistants and Translational Consciousness” appeared in the online journal Across the Disciplines, Volume 17, Issue 1 / 2, published July 16, 2020. Her essay argues that international teaching assistants are acutely sensitive to complexities of language and the struggle to write well, and advocates that practitioners of writing across the curriculum offer instruction that is both culturally and racially aware.
ARCHITECTURE – Hyejung Chang published “Propositions for the Urban Aesthetics of Continuity” in Sage Open 10 (3): pp. 1–13.
LANGUAGES – Jody H. Cripps was one of the invited plenary speakers for a presentation titled “Signed Music and the Deaf Musicians” at Partition/Ensemble 2020 Conference hosted by Canadian Association Theatre Research and Société québécoise d’études théâtrales. Also, he and his colleagues delivered the virtual presentation “Signed Music in the Deaf Community: Performing ‘The Black Drum’ at Festival Clin d’Oeil” as part of the Music Festival Studies Conference at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As part of his service, he was appointed to be on the scientific committee for the International Deaf Academics and Researchers Conference 2021 at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
ENGLISH – Will Cunningham’s article “Silent Spaces in Jesmyn Ward and Natasha Trethewey” was published in the peer-reviewed College Language Association Journal in May 2020.
ART – David Detrich’s sculptural work, “Me, myself and I think” was selected for the nationally juried art exhibition “Reflections” at the Arc Gallery and Studios in San Francisco. Online exhibition dates were May 16-June 27 with gallery exhibition dates: June 6-June 27. The juror for the exhibition was Shelley Barry, principal partner and managing member at Slate Contemporary Gallery in Oakland, California.
PERFORMING ARTS – Linda Dzuris has been named Acting Department Chair. Becky Becker, who has led the department since 2018, will continue to serve on the faculty.
ENGLISH – Jordan Frith published “The Pedagogical Opportunities of Technical Standards: Learning from the Electronic Product Code” in the journal Technical Communication, 67 (2), pp. 42-53. An article he co-authored with Michael Saker, “It Is All About Location: Smartphones and Tracking the Spread of COVID-19,” appeared in Social Media and Society.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – H. Roger Grant is the author of “Ohio Railroad Crossroads,” which appeared in the August 2020 issue of Trains, pp. 20-29. This piece served as the capstone essay for a series of articles on railroading in the Buckeye State.
PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian “Mickey” Harder reports that Debussy’s Piano Trio in G Major, performed by The Lysander Piano Trio at the Brooks Center on Jan. 17, 2019, was rebroadcast on June 25, 2020 on American Public Media’s radio program “Performance Today.” The musicians were violinist Itamar Zorman, cellist Michael Katz and pianist Liza Stepanova. Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, performed on Nov. 4, 2019 by pianist Anna Polonsky and cellist Peter Wiley, was broadcast on June 11, 2020. The Utsey Series was created by Lillian and her husband, Dr. Byron Harder.
ENGLISH – In late May, Walt Hunter published four new poems in the journal Literary Imagination. His recent book, “Forms of a World,” received reviews in Contemporary Literature and Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature. In July, Hunter presented a writing workshop at Cornell University about his forthcoming article on race, genre, and contemporary poetry.
ARCHITECTURE – Anjali Joseph, Sahar Mihandoust, doctoral students Rutali Joshi and Roxana Jafarifiroozabadi, along with other researchers from the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing (CHFDT), authored several papers that were published in Health Environments Research & Design in May. The published articles include “Using Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) to Conduct Environmental Design Research: A Primer and Decision Framework,” “The Fit Between Spatial Configuration and Idealized Flows: Mapping Flows in Surgical Facilities as Part of Case Study Visits” and “Evaluating Care-partner Preferences for Seating in an Outpatient Surgery Waiting Area Using Virtual Reality.”
LANGUAGES – Arelis Moore de Peralta presented on her community-based research projects at Clemson during a workshop on May 26 for residents and faculty of the Prisma Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. She also assisted South Carolina state epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell and other DHEC leaders in a virtual call on July 22 that was designed to inform Latinx faith, business and community leaders about the statewide impact of COVID-19 and provide up-to-date information on prevention and control. She organized and led a webinar on July 23, “COVID-19 and Immigrant and Refugee Communities: Challenges and Response,” in which she and three panelists shared their experiences. The webinar was one of two she organized with the Global Alliance’s Migrant and Displaced Persons Task Force. Moore and co-authors Michelle Eichinger and Leslie Hossfeld published the book chapter “Urban Health and Urbanization: Socio-Ecological Approaches to Address Social Determinants of Nutritional Health in Urban Settings” in “Public Health Nutrition: Rural, Urban and Global Community-based Practice,” edited by M. Margaret Barth, Ronny A. Bell and Karen Grimmer. And, along with co-authors Cynthia Sims and Angela Carter, she published the chapter “Advancing Gender Equity Through Mentoring and Leadership Development: A Human Performance Technology Intervention Case Study” in “Cases on Performance Improvement Innovation,” edited by Darlene M. Van Tiem and Nancy Crain Burns.
ENGLISH – Angela Naimou participated in an international online panel discussion, “Race and Social Exclusion in a Global Context: Perspectives from the US and Korea,” organized by the Asia Society-South Korea. Locally, she joined CAAH colleagues Vernon Burton and Abel Bartley for an online discussion “Independence Day: Land of the Free?” as part of the Power of Perspective series organized by DeOnte Brown and Kendra Stewart-Tillman. Naimou’s essay, “Mediterranean Returns: Migration and the Poetics of Lamentation,” has appeared in the volume “Writing Beyond the State: Post-Sovereign Approaches to Human Rights in Literary Studies.” Naimou began her term as Lead Editor of Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development.
ARCHITECTURE – Mary G. Padua’s book “Hybrid Modernity: the Public Park in Late 20th Century China” was just released by Routledge. Through a transdisciplinary “gaze,” it synthesizes the convergence of modernization theory, China’s modernity, cultural studies, local and global cultural trends, and the development of parks and the Chinese Picturesque as a new theory for understanding the spatial forms of purpose-built parks in China’s secondary cities. Case study analyses of four public parks serve as the schema for this new design language and the book reveals the significance of the discipline of landscape architecture in post-Mao China’s tremendous urban experiment.
PERFORMING ARTS – Shannon Robert co-created the Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) Teaching Theatre Collaborative. The SETC-hosted webinar sessions addressed the teaching of theatre online, targeting both secondary school and university teachers. Robert moderated two sessions and was a panelist for the Teaching Scene Design webinar. She is currently working with the United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) to form a partnership with SETC and extend the webinars as a service and resource to secondary teachers across the United States. Shannon was invited by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Summer Playwriting Intensives as a guest resource artist and presented a discussion about how designers might work with new scripts. She also has been invited by the Dramatists Guild of America Institute to work with student participants on creating environment in storytelling.
ENGLISH – Jamie Ann Rogers’ article “Diasporic Communion and Textual Exchange in Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ and Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’” appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Black Camera. Her co-authored “Organizing Precarious Labor in Film and Media Studies: A Manifesto” on the creation of the Precarious Labor Organization for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. She was scheduled to co-chair a roundtable at the 2020 Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ annual conference, “Out of the Ashes and Into Academia: Workplace Organizing by Film and Media Studies Faculty,” as well as present the paper “Affective Geographies of Blackness at the Intersection of Documentary and the Avant-Garde” during the seminar “Geographies of Race in Film” at the same conference. Instead, she moderated a podcast recording of the roundtable for the Society’s ACA-Media, which will be released in August, and presented her paper at a virtual seminar in July.
LANGUAGES – Johannes Schmidt co-edited with Eva Piirimäe and Liina Lukas “Herder on Empathy and Sympathy – Einfühlung und Sympathie im Denken Herders,” which was published by Brill. His article “Herder’s Political Ideas and the Organic Development of Religions and Governments” was included in this volume. He also published “Die methodische Differenz im geschichtlichen Denkens Herders und Nietzsches” in the conference volume “Herder und das 19. Jahrhundert / Herder and the Nineteenth Century,” edited by Liisa Steinby. He also was scheduled to deliver a presentation titled “‘[…] once such ugliness exists it endures forever.’ Herder on the Artistic Expression of Ugliness” at the Conference of the International Herder Society in Ottawa, which was postponed. In June, Schmidt attended the virtual week-long Adobe Creative Campus Faculty Development Institute.
LANGUAGES – Jae DiBello Takeuchi presented a talk titled “スピーチスタイルとネイティブスピーカーバイアス：在日L2話者から学べること (Speech Styles and Native Speaker Bias: What We Can Learn from L2 Speakers in Japan)” at the 28th Central Association of Teachers of Japanese (CATJ) Conference May 30-31. CATJ, a regional conference, was hosted by Macalester College this year and was moved online in response to concerns about COVID-19. As a result of the accessibility of the online format, the conference had a record number of attendees from across the United States and around the world, and all concurrent sessions had high attendance. Takeuchi’s paper presentation was attended by more than 70 people. Because the online format gave conferencegoers fewer opportunities to interact, Takeuchi hosted a virtual coffee room at the end of the conference to give attendees a chance to meet and make connections. The coffee room was well-received and was attended by more than 150 Japanese language educators and researchers.
ENGLISH – Rhondda Robinson Thomas presented the opening keynote “Call My Name: A Living Archive for Black Life at Clemson University” via Zoom for the annual Triangle Research Libraries Network meeting on July 30. She also made a presentation about the “Call My Name” project for a panel discussion titled “Humanities – Texts and Tools for Times of Crisis” held on Zoom and sponsored by the Association of American Universities for federal liaison officers on July 30.
In Memoriam
ARCHITECTURE – Professor Emerita Frances Chamberlain died July 2 in Boulder, Colorado. She is remembered for helping launch the landscape architecture program at Clemson. “She was tremendous,” said colleague Mary G. Padua. “In addition to the numerous Clemson students she taught, perhaps her lasting legacy is the nature-based sculpture program at our botanical garden.” A memorial scholarship fund at Clemson has been established.