PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION — David Antonini’s book, “Public Space and Political Experience: An Arendtian Interpretation,” was published by Lexington Press on April 15. Reviews and publication information can be found here.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Abel Bartley was selected as the Commissioner of the Year by the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission during its annual meeting, held virtually on April 9.
ENGLISH — David Blakesley edited “Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2020” with Jessica Pauszek, Kristi Girdharry, Charles Lesh, and Steve Parks. The paperback was issued by Parlor Press, the independent publisher of scholarly books Blakesley founded in 2002. Blakesley also presented “The Commonplaces of Book Publishing” at the 2021 annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Vernon Burton on April 15 presented a virtual lecture at Iowa State University on the Voting Rights Act. On April 23, Burton presented a virtual lecture at Furman University on Reconstruction. His interview “Southern History, Influence and Tradition” with James Howell aired this month on the series “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Burton served as a commentator on the “Last Rice River,” a half-hour experience examining the rise and fall of the Rice Kingdom on South Carolina’s Combahee River. (It can be viewed here). Burton wrote the foreword for Clemson Emeritus Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate School Frankie Felder’s new book, “OURstory Unchained and Liberated from HIStory,” just published. Burton’s co-authored book, “Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, Charleston, SC: Administrative History,” was just released by the National Park Service. The book was the result of a three-year grant to Burton at Clemson from the National Park Service.
ENGLISH — Cameron Bushnell was named CAAH Faculty Member of the Year. CAAH students nominate faculty members for the honor, and the recipient is chosen by a panel of CAAH ambassadors.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Joshua Catalano gave an invited talk, virtually, about digital public history at Northern Arizona University on April 1. He also participated in a virtual panel discussion about career paths for graduates of digital humanities centers at George Mason University on April 12.
LANGUAGES — Jody Cripps created a lyrical signed music piece in American Sign Language (ASL) called “Larry the Lion” in honor of his family friend, Larry Opperman, who recently passed away. The two had a close relationship, though Cripps, when growing up, feared Opperman based on his appearance. In order to follow the lyrical song in ASL, Cripps suggests the viewer learn some signed vocabularies, such as beard, good, heart, mom, lion, scared, sorry, still, and mine. Handspeak.com is a reliable ASL dictionary online. Cripps’ signed song can be seen here.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — Caroline Dunn participated in a virtual roundtable event reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the international Kings and Queens conferences series, the fifth of which was hosted by Clemson University. Dunn also recently presented “The Fourteenth Century Plague” at the First Clemson TIDE (Tigers for Inclusion, Ethics, and Diversity) conference, held virtually on March 30.
ENGLISH AND WORLD CINEMA — Maziyar Faridi was named the co-recipient of the Charles Bernheimer Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association. The Bernheimer Prize goes to the best dissertation in the field of Comparative Literature. Faridi’s dissertation, “On an Aporetic Poetics of Relation: Translation, Difference, and Identity in Modern Poetry and New-Wave Cinema of Iran (1920s-1970s),” was nominated for the award by Northwestern University. In awarding Faridi the Bernheimer prize, judges said Faridi’s dissertation “develops an elegant narrative arc about an understudied corpus of modernist Iranian literary and cinematic texts. … This is a richly compelling contribution to comparatist global modernist studies.”
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY — H. Roger Grant participated in the St. Louis Mercantile Library-Barriger Zoom seminar, “The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad,” on April 17. One of three presenters, Grant spoke on “Building the Rock Island System” and responded to questions and comments.
ENGLISH — Walt Hunter was selected as the 2021 recipient of the Dr. Ted G. Westmoreland Award for Faculty Excellence at Clemson University. A student, staff member and faculty member each nominated Hunter for the award. Established in 2013 through an endowment funded by the late Dr. Ted G. Westmoreland, the award is presented annually to honor a distinguished faculty member who has made exemplary contributions to undergraduate student success at Clemson University.
ARCHITECTURE, PERFORMING ARTS — Anjali Joseph and Linda Li-Bleuel are recipients of the 2021 Clemson University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement awards.
ARCHITECTURE — Elements of a new operating room design, developed by Anjali Joseph, David Allison, Scott Reeves and other researchers with the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing at Clemson University have been incorporated into the R. Keith Summey Medical Pavilion at the Medical University of South Carolina. The New York Times recently covered the implementation of the new design developed by this multidisciplinary team.
ARCHITECTURE — Anjali Joseph, Sahar Mihandoust, and doctoral student Rutali Joshi, along with other researchers from the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing (CHFDT), presented work virtually April 15 for the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care — “Understanding Challenges in the Home Environment and Technology Preferences for Home Assessments and Modifications Among Older Adults Undergoing Joint Replacement Surgery: A Qualitative Feasibility Study.” Joseph delivered a presentation for the event — “Using Flow Disruptions to Study System Interactions in Healthcare.” She also participated in a virtual panel discussion — “Methodologies and Challenges Associated with Exploring Flow Disruptions in Hospital Environments.”
LANGUAGES — Arelis Moore de Peralta published a peer-reviewed manuscript titled “A Contribution to Measure Partnership Trust in Community-Based Participatory Research and Interventions with Latinx Communities in the United States” in Health Promotion Practice, with co-authors Prieto Rosas, Smithwick, Timmons and Torres. In addition, Moore was a second author in two published peer-reviewed manuscripts. The first one titled “Faculty Perception of the Contribution of Start-Up Packages to Professional Development” in Innovative Higher Education Journal with co-authors Höfrová, Rosopa, Small, Steele Payne, and Rymesova; and the second one titled “How Partnership Trust can Facilitate and Result from CBPR: An Assessment of Situational, Organizational, and Institutional Related Factors” in the Epidemiology International Journal with co-authors Charles, Prieto-Rosas, and Smithwick.
ENGLISH — Chelsea Murdock presented “4Rs at the Center: Relations in Writing Center Praxis” at the virtual International Writing Center Association Collaborative held April 7. She also presented “Standing Peachtree: Storying Places” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication held April 7-10.
CITY PLANNING AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT — Luis Enrique Ramos-Santiago’s first solo-authored paper was accepted for publication in the Journal of Public Transportation. JPT is an international peer-reviewed specialist journal. His paper titled “Does Walkability Around Feeder Bus-Stops Influence Rapid-Transit Station Boardings?” assesses the influence of built-environment and land-use attributes around feeder bus stops on rapid-transit patronage, and discusses policy implications related to promoting more sustainable travel in the United States using multimodal transit systems. The Los Angeles metropolitan area, a decentralized and dispersed mega-city considered an archetype of automobile-dependency, served as case study in Ramos-Santiago’s investigation. Ramos-Santiago is also working on two other parallel investigations focusing on the intersection of mass transit, urban design, and transit planning demand modeling. The first extends his work in Los Angeles by developing predictive models for bus-to-rail transfers. The second investigation is supported by an international research collaboration with colleagues from Universidade da Coruña where the team compares the performance of two light-rail systems from Spain (Granada, Tenerife) and three light-rail systems from the U.S. (Charlotte, Norfolk, Cleveland). The results from these two investigations are expected to be published this fall.
ENGLISH — Elizabeth Rivlin presented a paper, “(En)Listing Shakespeare in The Great Books,” as part of an April 1 live virtual seminar on “Reading Lists” for the 2021 Shakespeare Association of America Meeting. The abstracts for the seminar can be found here.
LANGUAGES — Satomi Saito was interviewed by Felix Shannon, the host and producer of Death of the Reader, a crime and mystery radio show on 2SER 107.3 FM in Sydney, Australia about Japanese detective fiction. The interview aired on April 11 in Sydney and the episodes on the podcast are now available: the regular episode about “The Decagon House Murders” by Yukito Ayatsuji (Saito is about 10 minutes in), and also the extended version of the discussion including Saito’s current work on Web fiction.
LANGUAGES — Anne Salces-Nedeo pioneered Clemson University’s virtual reality (VR) language classroom on April 21-22 with her French 3050 students. With the help of Kyle Anderson and his team of student designers, Salces-Nedeo’s project successfully came alive in the VR Mondi Paris space. In the VR space, the students were able to apply their knowledge and soft skills acquired over the semester with Salces-Nedeo by presenting and discussing (in French) architectural, cultural, and historical facts about France and Paris (especially such locations on Ile de la Cité as Notre-Dame de Paris, Sainte-Chapelle, and Conciergerie; kings Louis IX, Charles V, Henri IV, Louis XVI; the wars of religion and the French Revolution). Salces-Nedeo will continue to develop the VR Mondi Paris space with Anderson’s team to eventually offer this learning experience to all levels of French students.
LANGUAGES — Johannes Schmidt gave a virtual talk on “Universal Beauty and Particular Ugliness: Herder’s Concept of ‘That Which Is Good’ After the ‘Ideen’” at the annual meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. In addition, he helped organize the panel discussion “Women in German Romanticism,” which he co-chaired with Elizabeth Millán.
PERFORMING ARTS — Mark Spede was nominated and selected as the Ball State University School of Music Alumnus of the Year. Spede is also the co-author of the International Coalition Performing Arts Aerosol Study, which is undergoing peer review for publication. That study recently was honored by the American Academy of Teachers of Singing with an inaugural AATS Award for COVID-19 Response. The report provided vital information to bands and choruses as they sought to establish protocols for safely performing during the pandemic.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION — Charles Starkey presented “Virtue Without Character” at the annual Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA). He also presented the paper at the annual meeting of the South Carolina Society for Philosophy. Both conferences were held online this year in April. In addition, Starkey presented “Literary Style and the Moral Psychology of Leopold’s Land Ethic” at the meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics, held in conjunction with the Pacific Division meeting of the APA in April.
LANGUAGES – In April, Jae DiBello Takeuchi began a one-year term as president of the Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese (SEATJ). SEATJ serves the Southeastern region (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida) and holds an annual conference attended by Japanese-language scholars and teachers from across the United States and Japan. As part of her role, Takeuchi will coordinate the 2022 conference, which will be hosted by Clemson University. Takeuchi’s first task as president was to organize a meeting for SEATJ members to discuss the recent increase in anti-Asian racism. The event, titled 「茶和会」 (or “sawakai,” a play on words of the term “tea party” that aims to share a feeling of peacefulness) was held on April 28 via Zoom.
LANGUAGES — Pauline de Tholozany published a book chapter titled “Narrative as Legal Precedent: Thoughts on Flora Tristan’s ‘Impatience’” in “Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain” (Vernon Press, 2021). The book explores the encounter of Hispanophone culture and the law. In her chapter, Tholozany investigates 19th-century activist Flora Tristan’s plea for divorce laws in France and Peru.
ENGLISH — Rhondda Robinson Thomas was named senior Researcher of the Year at Clemson University. Thomas has garnered national and international recognition for her interdisciplinary, multifaceted Call My Name Project. The project documents and shares the stories of African Americans in the history of Clemson University and surrounding communities. In addition, Thomas participated in a roundtable featuring Black female historians at the “History of Slavery at the University of Georgia: Virtual Symposium on Recognition, Reconciliation, and Redress” sponsored by the University of Georgia on April 30, and was a panelist for “Telling Truer Stories: Restorative Stories Beyond the COFC” at the Virtual Critical Conversations about Racial Healing Series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, College of Charleston on April 7.
LANGUAGES — Graciela Tissera presented a research paper, “Cursos de español para profesionales de la salud: el cine y la representación de traumas psicológicos,” at Terceras Jornadas de Español para Fines Específicos de Viena (III JEFE-Vi), April 23-24. The virtual conference was organized by Universidad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales de Viena (WU), Consejería de Educación de Suiza y Austria, and Asociación Austriaca de Profesores de Español (AAPE). The research analyzed “La casa muda” (Uruguay, 2010) by Gustavo Hernández and “Paranormal Xperience” (Spain, 2011) by Sergi Vizcaíno to explore the perspectives of these filmmakers on multiple personality disorders involving disruptions of memory and identity.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION — Benjamin White has joined the editorial board of The Journal of Theological Studies, founded in 1899 and published by Oxford University Press.