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Faculty News Recap in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities – April 2022

May 23, 2022

ARCHITECTURE – Lecturer Bryan Beerman was elevated to Associate Principal and shareholder with his firm at LS3P. Beerman joined the firm in 2015, has been licensed since 2016, and has worked extensively in the civic, faith, education, and commercial market sectors with an emphasis on urban design, master planning, conceptual design and community-centered projects. Founded in 1963, LS3P is an architecture, interiors, and planning firm with regional roots and national reach.

HISTORY – The Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) lead a roundtable session on Professor Vernon Burton’s book, “Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court” at their 79th annual meeting in Chicago on April 10.  Burton also chaired and commented on sessions on April 8 on “Turnout and Voting” and on April 9 on a panel on “Courts in the International Political and Institutional Context.”  On April 18, his interview with the Obehi podcast aired about “The American Struggle to be a Fair State: Equal Rights for all Americans.” On April 19, Burton spoke on “Critical Race Theory and Why it is Under Attack” as part of Greenville Tech’s Courageous Conservations Series. On April 21, he spoke on “Justice Deferred” at Furman University.  On April 28, Burton gave the Annual Stonecipher lecture at Tennessee Tech University on “Digital Humanities: The Future is Now,” and consulted on their new Digital Humanities emphasis.

HISTORY ­– Assistant Professor Joshua Catalano (History and Geography) and Lecturer Briana Pocratsky (Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice) published a chapter, “From Ken Burns’s ‘The Civil War’ to History’s ‘Ancient Aliens:’ Lincoln’s Unfinished Work on Cable Television,” in Vernon Burton and Peter Eisenstadt’s “Lincoln’s Unfinished Work: The New Birth of Freedom from Generation to Generation.” Catalano and Assistant Professor David Markus (Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice) received the Excellence in Historic Preservation Award from the Seneca Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution for their work at the sites of Fort Rutledge and the Battle of Esseneca. Catalano and Markus were also the recipients of an internal MRI grant of $124,038 in support of their project entitled “CU-MRI: Acquisition of Common-Use Geophysical Equipment for Locating, Researching and Protecting Archaeological and Cultural Resources on Clemson University Landscapes.” Catalano, Markus, and Associate Professor Andrea Feeser (English) also received a CAAH Faculty Research Development Program Collaboration grant to purchase equipment for processing archival artifacts and analyzing clay samples.

LANGUAGES – Senior Lecturer William “Bo” Clements, Assistant Professor Jody Cripps, and Associate Professor Stephen Fitzmaurice of the American Sign Language (ASL) faculty worked on the South Carolina Department of Education’s World Languages ASL panel, providing feedback on public school ASL standards. They also oversaw and amended the South Carolina Department of Education world languages requirements for second languages, notably the ASL component.

LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Jody Cripps and seven of his Creative Inquiry students (Keyanna Clanton, Jaylin Dillard, Rhys Gerrish, Jayla Nelson, Pressley Pollard, Allison Schippert, and August Vincelette) traveled to Martha’s Vineyard from April 10 to 17 to interview island residents. Their effort, written about in more detail here, aims to bring the island’s signed language back to its former glory as a shared signed language community during colonial times. Their project will also be published in the Creative Inquiry’s Decipher magazine at the end of the Spring semester. Assistant Professor Cripps and his colleagues also co-authored an article in “Canadian Theatre Review” about universal accessibility while planning a language barrier-free conference that includes signed languages.

HISTORY –  Professor H. Roger Grant recently was interviewed for the History 605 Podcast by Dr. Ben Jones on South Dakota Public Broadcasting on “Railroads and South Dakota.” It will become available in early June.

ENGLISH – Associate Professor Walt Hunter published an essay titled “’A Little Room in a House Set Aflame’: American Poetry and Globalization in the Twenty-first Century” in “A Companion to American Poetry” (Wiley-Blackwell). An essay on Ali Smith and Muriel Spark titled “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” appeared in “Ali Smith Now,” a cluster organized by Contemporaries at Post45. Hunter read from his forthcoming poetry collection, “Some Flowers,” in London in early April.

ARCHITECTURE – Professor Anjali Joseph, Director of the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing (CHFDT), co-authored an article along with the Realizing Improved Patient Care through Human-Centered Design in the Operating Room (RIPCHD.OR) Study Group, that was recently published in HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, titled “Understanding ‘Work as Done’: Using a Structured Video-Based Observational Method to Understand and Model the Role of the Physical Environment in Complex Clinical Work Systems.” The study concluded that video-based observation is an effective complement to the traditional observational method for in-depth study of the built environment in health systems, enabling researchers to employ quantitative approaches to data collection and analysis, in addition to qualitative interpretations.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Assistant Professor of Philosophy Claire Kirwin was an invited discussant for Alex Horne’s paper “Too Many Cooks” at the Bernard Williams workshop, Cambridge University. The event took place via Zoom on April 19

PERFORMING ARTS – Professor Linda Li-Bleuel has been named Chair of the newly formed Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Commission. She also performed a solo piano recital on the SPG Live! Series at the Steinway Gallery in Greenville and was a piano soloist at the Men of Color National Summit reception in Greenville. She also had collaborative performances with the Kim-Lee-Sun Pianists and violinist Reiko Watanabe in honor of Clemson University APIDA Heritage Month.

ARCHITECTURE –As part of the CAAH symposium on the war in Ukraine, on Thursday, April 14  Assistant Professor Andreea Mihalache  moderated the conversation with Kate Malaia, Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University, titled “Stolen History, Stolen Heritage: Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Russian Colonialism.” Also, Mihalache was the CAAH nominee for Clemson University’s Junior Researcher of the Year Award.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Clare Mullaney was announced the winner of the 2022 Rising Scholar Prize for her paper, “Textual Recovery: ‘Wildering Language’ and a Crip Editorial Practice.” The award is given by the C19 Rising Scholar Prize Committee. The committee praised Mullaneys work for adding an original and important framework to the ethics of recovery by offering a “genealogy of disability told not through biological lineages but textual transmissions.”

LANGUAGES – Professor and Department Chair Salvador Oropesa read the paper “La serie de Gracia San Sebastián de Ana Lena Rivera: del cozy al neo-noir” at the XVIII Congreso de Novela y Cine Negro: Crítica, Compromiso y Memoria en el Género Negro, at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor of Spanish George Palacios was elected World Languages Area Representative of the College Language Association. He was also recognized with the Clemson University 2022 University Research Scholarship and Artistic Award (URSAA). On April 28, Palacios was invited to lecture by the Afro-Romance Institute at the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He talked about Colombia and the African Diaspora through Manuel Zapata Olivella’s works and activism.

ENGLISH – Senior Lecturer Mike Pulley won the Pearce Center for Professional Communication’s Professional Writing and Communication Award for the 2021-2022 academic year. Pulley received the award for news and feature articles his students completed in English 2310 (Introduction to Journalism) for The Tiger, Clemson’s student-run campus newspaper. The collaboration between the class and the newspaper was part of Pearce’s Client-Based Program.

ENGLISH – Associate Professor Elizabeth Rivlin presented her research at the Shakespeare Association of America Meeting held in Miami, April 6-10. Her paper was titled “Shakespeare Novels and Fandom on Goodreads” and was part of the seminar on “Early Modern Fan Culture.”

PERFORMING ARTS – Director of Bands and Professor Mark Spede became a partner with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention through his work with the International Coalition Performing Arts Aerosol Study and is working on a new paper with a CDC team on the effects of the pandemic on music during the Fall of 2021. This spring, as president of the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA), he represented Clemson at conferences in Atlanta,  Baltimore, Columbia, and Orlando as well as Waco, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey presented “Characterless Virtues” at the 113th Annual Meeting Of The Southern Society For Philosophy And Psychology in April.

LANGUAGES – Professor of French Eric Touya published a book chapter entitled “Voix politiques, transcendantes, et transgressives dans l’œuvre de Véronique Tadjo et Isabelle Eberhardt” in “Africana: Figures de femmes et formes de pouvoirs” (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022 p. 417-428).  He also published in “Women in French Studies” a book review of Marie-Victoire Nantet’s “Camille et Paul Claudel: Lignes de partage” (Paris: Editions Gallimard).

LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Jae DiBello Takeuchi served as the 2021-2022 president and was the conference organizer for the 37th Conference of the Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese (SEATJ), held on April 2nd. Clemson University was the host institution, and the Department of Languages sponsored the virtual event. The conference included 23 individual presentations on Japanese linguistics and Japanese language pedagogy and a keynote address by Dr. Amy Snyder Ohta of the University of Washington. On April 6, Takeuchi also hosted a talk by Clemson alumnus Gregory Khezrnejat, of Hosei University, Japan. Khezrnejat’s talk, titled “Writing Between Languages,” focused on the transnational turn in modern Japanese literature. This talk was jointly sponsored by the Department of Languages, the Department of English, and the Pearce Center for Professional Communication. On April 15, Takeuchi presented a workshop on professional development for graduate students in the Japanese linguistics program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ART – Associate Professor of Photography Anderson Wrangle spoke to the Gibbes Museum of Art’s young patrons group, Society 1858, at the Garden and Gun Magazine offices on March 24. His talk centered on his Outer Banks and Savannah River Watershed projects, on the landscape tradition in American art and photography and on contemporary and regional photographic projects seeking to describe large geographic systems.

ART – Professor and Department Chair Valerie Zimany is featured in “50 Bowls, 50 States, 50 Woodfires” at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, from February 12-July 24.  Zimany is the South Carolina representative in the project, which is the culmination of a multi-year celebration of American wood-firing. The exhibit is organized by Elaine O. Henry, former editor of Ceramics: Art & Perception magazine.