COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND HUMANITIES – More than 20 professors in the College have contributed to a series of essays in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s reckoning with racial injustice. The “Clemson Humanities Now” project was initiated by Lee Morrissey, founding director of the Humanities Hub, to foster meaningful academic inquiry and dialogue during a time when the Hub’s in-person public discussions and events have been paused. Morrissey wrote an introduction to the series, which features pieces on The Insurrection Act of 1807 and The Georgia election and Voting Rights Act, among other topics.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – On Aug. 4, Vernon Burton, a board member of President Lincoln’s Cottage, participated in the first virtual Lincoln Cottage’s Scholar Session along with his former graduate student at the University of Illinois, Edna Greene Medford, now an Associate Provost at Howard University. Medford and Burton discussed the lasting meaning and impact of Confederate iconography. A recording of the session is available online. Burton also was reappointed as the associate editor for history at the journal Social Science Computer Review.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – Joshua Catalano and Aby Sene-Harper from the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson received a grant worth $55,689 from the National Park Service for a two-year oral history project. As part of this grant, they will conduct oral histories focusing on the establishment of the Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort, South Carolina, and in Alabama, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument and the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston.
LANGUAGES – Jody Cripps, editor-in-chief of the Society for American Sign Language Journal, has just released a new issue, Vol. 3, No. 1. Two Clemson professors contributed work to the issue. W. Alton Bryant, a professor emeritus of American Sign Language, wrote a book review about a scholar who, like himself, is a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA). That scholar, R.H. Miller, wrote the memoir “Deaf Hearing Boy” about experiencing an identity crisis on whether he was a deaf or hearing person. Cripps, along with his journal colleagues Andrew P. J. Byrne and Samuel J. Supalla, wrote the article “Teaching Literature to Deaf Students and the Challenge of Bilingualism.” This article described the challenges as well as proposed future directions for teaching American Sign Language literature and written English literature to deaf students.
ENGLISH – Jonathan Beecher Field presented on Pilgrim kitsch at the Mayflower 400 conference in Leiden, Netherlands. He reported that he delivered his talk “Pilgrims, Natives, & Settler Kitsch” remotely from the comfort of his own living room.
ENGLISH – Jordan Frith published “It Is All About Location: Smartphones and Tracking the Spread of COVID-19,” with Michael Saker of the University of London, in Social Media and Society 6 (3). Frith also published “Pushing Back on the Rhetoric of ‘Real Life’” in Present Tense, a Journal of Rhetoric in Society 8 (2).
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – H. Roger Grant was awarded a John H. White Jr. Research Fellowship for his book-length manuscript “The Station Agent and the American Railroad Experience.” The $2,500 research fellowships are presented by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, Inc.
ARCHITECTURE – Anjali Joseph presented “Architecture and the Choreography of Healthcare” for the Columbia Museum of Art’s ArtBreak series. Her virtual presentation on Aug. 25 shared examples of the dynamic interactions between the built environment, care providers and those receiving care, tasks performed, and the tools and equipment used. Her presentation demonstrated the importance of understanding these complex interactions when designing human-centered health care environments. Joseph is director of the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Two faculty members from the department were nominees for the Researcher of the Year Award at Clemson University. Todd May, the Class of 1941 Memorial Professor, was nominated in the category of senior researcher and Mashal Saif, an assistant professor of religious studies, was nominated as a junior researcher.
ARCHITECTURE – Winifred Elysse Newman presented a paper, “The Neuroscience of Beauty and Gorillas,” for Psychology and Epistemology at the Ninth International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), hosted online by the Centre for the History of Universities and Science at the University of Bologna (CIS) and by the Italian Society for the History of Science (SISS), Aug. 31-Sept. 3.
PERFORMING ARTS – Lisa Sain Odom, along with Greenville actor Phyllis Henderson, performed the two-person play “’night, Mother” by Marsha Norman on Aug. 22. The play was performed on stage (without audience) at Centre Stage in Greenville. The production was filmed and is to be released by Centre Stage in the coming weeks. The play was staged so that both actors were at least 6 feet apart at all times; it was rehearsed mostly in masks; and the in-person rehearsal-to-performance period lasted less than two weeks.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY – Michael Silvestri was scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Irish republican leader and future Irish Prime Minister Éamon de Valera’s visit to Charleston in 1920. The event was part of the Irish Consulate’s Dev100! Commemorations, which marked de Valera’s travels in the American South that year. The event, jointly hosted by the Irish Consulate in Atlanta and the College of Charleston, was originally scheduled in April and rescheduled for August before its ultimate cancellation.
LANGUAGES – Jae DiBello Takeuchi was a guest speaker at the August meeting of the Colorado Japanese Language Education Association’s social salon series. The theme was biases and prejudices regarding non-native speakers. The event was conducted on Aug. 22 via Zoom.
ARCHITECTURE – Berrin Terim’s essay “Dreaming the Body: Filarete’s ‘Disegno’” was published in the Routledge book “Ceilings and Dreams: The Architecture of Levity,” edited by Paul Emmons, Federica Goffi and Jodi La Coe.
ENGLISH – Caitlin G. Watt published “The Speaking Wound: Gower’s ‘Confessio Amantis’ and the Ethics of Listening in the #metoo Era” in “Critical Confessions Now,” a special issue of postmedieval, a journal edited by Abdulhamit Arvas, Afrodesia McCannon and Kris Trujillo.
ART – Valerie Zimany was the resident artist at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art July 29-Aug. 4 in Columbia. Her residency offered the opportunity to complete new work for her upcoming solo exhibition “Valerie Zimany: And I was covered in blossoms,” which opens on Sept. 10 and is the culmination of her 2020 South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship. As a non-profit art organization dedicated solely to the advancement of contemporary art, 701 CCA hosts exhibitions all year in a 2,500-square-foot gallery that are national and international in their scope.
Welcome to New Faculty
COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND HUMANITIES – In August, CAAH welcomed some new faces to the faculty. The School of Architecture hired lecturers Brian Durham and Taylor Schenker. The department of art has added Brooks Harris Stevens as a lecturer and promoted Dustin Massey to a full-time lecturer. City planning and real estate development hired assistant professor Yujin Park and lecturer Brian Reed. In English, Maziyar Faridi and Clare Mullaney are new assistant professors, Sheila Lalwani is a new lecturer, Jamie Rogers has shifted from a visiting faculty member to a lecturer and La’Neice Littleton will work with the Humanities Hub as a postdoctoral fellow. In history and geography, Douglas Seefeldt came to Clemson University as an associate professor, while Ryan Hilliard and Archana Venkatesh joined the department as assistant professors. In the Nieri Family Department of Construction Science and Management, Bryan Malone is a new instructor. In performing arts, Matthew Anderson has rejoined the department as a lecturer. In philosophy and religion, Claire Kirwin and Pascal Brixel are new assistant professors. Briana Pocratsky joined the women’s leadership program as a lecturer. We are pleased to have these individuals in the College, and wish everyone a successful academic year.
In Memoriam
ART – Professor Emeritus Ireland G. Regnier died Aug. 15 at the age of 95. A World War II veteran and Renaissance man, he taught at Clemson University from 1962 until his retirement in 1988. His paintings are held in private collections in England and the United States, and one is part of the permanent collection of the Greenville County Museum of Art.