VISUAL ART — Todd Anderson has begun a relationship with Round Weather art gallery in Oakland, California. Along with this new venue in the Bay Area, you can also see Todd Anderson’s artwork in person at Kai Lin Art gallery in Atlanta, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Mezzanine Gallery Store (main lobby) in New York City, and at Old Main Gallery in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Amit Bein presented a talk, “Not So Distant Neighbor: Turkey and the Middle East in the 1930s,” at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom on March 25. Bein’s talk can be viewed here. The March 25 presentation, taking place via Zoom, was hosted by the University of Cambridge’s Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — On March 5, Vernon Burton chaired the CAAH Humanities Hub virtual book launch discussion of Peter Eisenstadt’s new biography, “Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman.” Eisenstadt is an affiliate professor in History. On March 25, Burton spoke at the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce Induction (posthumous) of Benjamin E. Mays into the Greenwood Hall of Fame. On 29 March, Burton presented a virtual lecture, “Lincoln’s Unfinished Work: Race and Memorialization in South Carolina,” for the Modjeska Simkins School in Columbia, S.C. Burton was interviewed by Charleston CBS-affiliate WMBF News for a segment with Live 5 on S.C. Senate Bill 534 which calls for using the 1776 Commission Report recommendations for teaching U.S. history in the public schools. The interview aired March 31. Burton has been invited to join the Board of Advisors for the Atlanta History Center as it plans for a broader and more diverse exhibit of the American South.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Joshua Catalano gave an invited talk titled “Digital History and Graduate Education” at University of Washington (virtually) on March 1.
ENGLISH – Luke Chwala presented “Gothic Manifestations of Contagious Cultural Conflicts in ‘American Horror Story’, Seasons 7-8” at Simon Fraser University’s virtual conference, Gothic in a Time of Contagion, Populism, and Racial Injustice, co-sponsored by the International Gothic Association, held March 10-13. He also presented “Queer Ecologies and Colonial Resistance in James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’” at the 42nd International (virtual) Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Climate Change and the Anthropocene, held March 18-21.
LANGUAGES — Jody Cripps was the interviewer for the “The Black Drum Performance Documentary,” focusing on signed music, an emerging visual performance that has developed from within the Deaf community using a variety of performance practices. In addition, there were two talkback discussions with the cast and crew. In this one, cast member Yan Liu at 40:10 talks about acting and the research conducted by Cripps and his colleagues. In the second talkback, at 40:18 producer Joanne Cripps explains how the process of signed music began with the cast of “The Black Drum.” In this video, Cripps and others discuss other aspects of signed music.
VISUAL ART — Provost Pathways Fellow in Art Rachel de Cuba was invited to show work in “Distant Neighbors: Artists from the Tiger Strikes Asteroid Network at Eckert Art Gallery” in Pennsylvania. This exhibition celebrates the idea that meaningful conversations and creative communities can thrive between artists in far-flung places. The show runs until May 1. “Distant Neighbors” includes paintings by Carl Baratta, Mark Brosseau and Sun You, photographs by Yael Eban, collages by Holly Cahill and Kara Mshinda, sculptures by Alexis Granwell and Sun You, and video by Rachel de Cuba.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — H. Roger Grant has been honored by the Board of Trustees of the State Historical Society of Iowa for his book “A Mighty Fine Road: A History of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company” (Indiana University Press), which was selected for the 2021 Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award. This annual award recognizes the author of the most significant book published on Iowa history during the previous calendar year.
RHETORICS, COMMUNICATION, AND INFORMATION DESIGN — Cynthia Haynes gave the keynote address to the North Texas Gaming Symposium (NTX) hosted by Texas Christian University on March 20. Her talk, “End Game Racism: MMORPG’s ‘Crusader’ Narrative, the Walkthrough,” focused on how the crusader narrative in video games has been taken up by white supremacists and become fodder for racist gamers. Through an analysis of the Norwegian massacre of 2011, and Anders Behring Breivik’s use of World of Warcraft to stimulate his theorycraft for playing the game as well as for planning the Oslo bombing and massacre on the island of Utøya, Haynes concludes that her own gameplay is called into question as a potential game “walkthrough” itself and sets about to re-write an endgame that recalibrates the potential reduction of racist values.
ENGLISH — Walt Hunter gave the guest lecture for the Transhistorical Anglophone Literary Studies group at the Universidad de Alicante on March 18. He spoke on the topic of “The Place of Poetry.”
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION — Elizabeth Jemison was interviewed by the New Books Podcast Network in connection with her recent book, “Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South.” The March 31 podcast can be heard here. Jemison also was interviewed by The Anxious Bench on Patheos.com in a March 11 article, “Christian Citizenship in Black and White.”
ARCHITECTURE — Anjali Joseph, David Allison, and doctoral student Rutali Joshi, along with other researchers from the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing, published an article in HERD: Health Environments Research and Design Journal: “Emergency Physicians’ Workstation Design: An Observational Study of Interruptions and Perception of Collaboration During Shift-End Handoffs.”
PEARCE CENTER — On March 31, the Pearce Center hosted for selected faculty a virtual workshop presented by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. “The Essentials!” workshop focused on strategies and techniques to help faculty presenting their research to non-specialist audiences, including grantees, collaborators in other fields, and public audiences. Aimed at research scientists and practitioners who want to help others explore science and its significance, attendance was limited to 16 participants who self-nominated or were nominated to apply by their department chairs and/or associate deans for research. At least one faculty member from every college on campus attended the workshop, including Anjali Joseph, Director of the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing. Other Clemson faculty who participated in the workshop and their colleges include: Aby Sene Harper (CBSHS), Amy Scaroni (CAFLS), Barbara Campbell (COS), Carl Blue (COB), Christopher Eck (CAFLS), Faiza Jamil (COE), Jane DeLuca (CBSHS), Jessica Larsen (CECAS), Karen High (CECAS), Kumar Venayagamoorthy (CECAS), Lea Jenkins (COS), Lesly Temesvari (COS), Rhys Hester (CBSHS), Scott Husson (CECAS) and Shanna Hirsch (COE).
ENGLISH — Amy Monaghan presented a paper at the 2021 Society of Cinema and Media Studies virtual annual conference, “The Commercial Sofia Coppola: Advertisements for Herself and Others,” on March 18 via the SCMS conference platform.
PERFORMING ARTS — Lisa Sain Odom won the 2021 National Association of Teachers of Singing Foundation Pedagogy Award. The award will support Odom’s attendance at the 2021 Voice Pedagogy Institute at Rider University this July. Odom was also selected as a master class clinician for the Mid-Atlantic National Association of Teachers of Singing Region Workshop where she worked virtually with two students from the region, providing feedback and suggestions for improved performance. (See her working with students via Zoom here and at 53:15 here.) Also in March, Odom presented a conference session, “Making the Cut: Your Perfect Musical Audition Cut” for the 2021 Southeastern Theatre Conference (virtual) and held a live Q&A on the subject on March 3rd.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE — Original research (three projects) by Mary G. Padua, and Xiaotong Liu, recent graduate of the Planning, Design and the Built Environment Ph.D. program, who also received her Clemson Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 2016, were selected out of around 250 submissions for virtual delivery at the 2021 annual conference of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), March 16 -19. For the “History, Theory and Culture” conference track, Padua presented her sole-authored paper titled, “The ‘Sacred’ and ‘Profane’: Contemporary Gaze of South Carolina’s Vernacular Landscape,” part of her larger ongoing research project called the “American Experiment: Through the Lens of South Carolina’s Cultural Landscape,” funded by the Clemson Architectural Foundation. For the “Landscape Architecture for Health” track, Padua, with Liu as second author, presented “Health-based Axioms: Postulating Adaptive Strategies for Universal 21st Century Outdoor Environments” and in the same track, Padua was second author to Liu who presented “Nature As Restorative Resource for Pre-School Children: A Comparative Case Study in Childcare Centers.”
LANGUAGES — Salvador Oropesa recently published the book chapter “De Lisbeth Salander a la Ertzaintza: Fantasías neoliberales en la serie procedimental de Eva García Sáenz de Urturi” in “Cosmic Wit: Essays in Honor of Edward H. Friedman,” edited by Vicente Pérez de León, Martha García and G. Cory Duclos. (Juan de la Cuesta, 2021, pp. 182-99).
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Michael Silvestri gave a virtual talk on March 25 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison titled “Spies, Sailors and Revolutionaries: Bengali Revolutionary Networks and British Imperial Intelligence Between the World Wars.” Silvestri’s presentation, which can be viewed here, was part of the 2021 Spring Lecture Series hosted by the UW-Madison’s Center for South Asia. On March 20, Silvestri presented a virtual talk at the Southern Regional Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies. His presentation was titled “‘A Country that has Served the World Well with Police’: The Royal Irish Constabulary and the Policing of the British Caribbean.”
LANGUAGES – Jae DiBello Takeuchi presented her research in a talk titled “バカにしなくても大丈夫です [You don’t have to treat me like I’m stupid]: Linguistic Microaggressions and L2-Japanese Speaker Legitimacy” at the annual Spring conference of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese, held on March 25-27. The conference was held virtually and all sessions were presented live. In addition, recordings of sessions will be made available on the AATJ website for additional viewing. Takeuchi was also invited to contribute an article to the “JSP Class in the Spotlight” column of the March 2021 issue of the Japanese for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group Newsletter (American Association of Teachers of Japanese). This article introduces Takeuchi’s Japanese for Business classes and Clemson’s Language and International Business program to Japanese language teachers around the country.
ENGLISH — Rhondda Robinson Thomas’s book “Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community” was awarded honorable mention in the 2021 book competition sponsored by the National Council on Public History.
LANGUAGES — Graciela Tissera presented a research paper, “El individuo y los sistemas en la filmografía de Antonio Hernández y Miguel Cohan,” at the XXVII CILH Virtual Conference, March 4-6, 2021, organized by Congresos Internacionales de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos. The research explores the impact of systems on individuals to analyze social, philosophical, political, and economic issues in two films: “En la ciudad sin límites” (Spain, 2002) by Hernández and “Betibú” (Argentina, 2014) by Cohan.
LANGUAGES — Eric Touya organized a panel session titled “COVID-19 and the New Normal in France and Beyond” at the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium organized online through Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Papers included topics on COVID-19 and public humanities, the Paris Opera Ballet, virtual activism, flânerie, and intimate-partner violence. He read a paper on this occasion entitled “Political Ramifications of COVID-19 in France: Sovereignty, Sustainability, and the Future of Democracy.”
ENGLISH — Jillian Weise‘s memoir, “Common Cyborg,” garnered attention from multiple major publishers and went to auction. It was bought by editor Jenny Xu at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It will be published in Spring 2023.
PERFORMING ARTS — Bruce Whisler was a panelist in immersive audio at the Audio Engineering Society Midwest Region Summit on March 20. The meeting was hosted virtually by Webster University in St. Louis and featured presentations by audio educators and professionals nationwide. Whisler’s particular focus on the panel was ambisonic audio for 360-degree video.
VISUAL ART – Valerie Zimany’s artwork is featured in “A Handful of Life Water,” an international online exhibition, on view at the Sille Sanat Art Center in Konya, Turkey from Feb. 6–Aug. 6, 2021. The exhibition was organized by Zehra Özkara Çobanlı, Professor Emerita of Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey and member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Zimany is featured with 54 other artists from the International Society of Ceramic Arts Education and Exchange, including China, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom, Kenya, Mexico and Turkey. More info on the exhibition is available at: https://sergi.sillesanat.com/.