LANGUAGES – Professor Yanming An published a Book chapter, “Liang: The Moral and Social Philosopher” in Dao Companion to Liang Shuming’s Philosophy (pp. 181-198).
HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton and Peter Eisenstadt’s interview for Walter Edgar’s Journal (SCETV) about their edited book Lincoln’s Unfinished Work—the New Birth of Freedom from Generation to Generation (2022) was broadcast on radio stations on February 3-5. On February 6, Burton appeared on the Professor Buzzkill History Podcast to talk about Civil War hero and Black Reconstruction leader Robert Smalls. Burton also presented the Black History Month lecture at Greenville Technical College on the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. He and Armand Derfner, his coauthor of Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court sparked discussion with their op-ed in theMiami Herald, on February 19, “Who Else is Responsible for these Mass Shootings? Don’t Let the Supreme Court off the Hook.”
HISTORY – Assistant Professor Joshua Catalano participated in a panel discussing “What’s in a Re-Name” at Furman University on February 6.
LANGUAGES – Multilingual magazine incorporated Assistant Professor Jody Cripps’ work on signed music in a column titled Music to My Eyes: Rihanna’s ASL interpreter and a brief history of signed music which was published on February 13. On February 16, Cripps gave a presentation titled American Sign Language: State of the Art to the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of South Carolina. He has been an ASL consultant for USC’s new ASL program for a year. Cripps and his colleagues published an article in the Journal of Festive Studies titled “Signed Music in the Deaf Community: Performing The Black Drum at Festival Clin d’Oeil.” Their study was sponsored by the Canadian Council of the Arts, the Canadian Cultural Society of the Deaf, and the Clemson University Humanities Hub.
PERFORMING ARTS – Assistant Professor of Music Lauren Crosby was a featured guest on the Star Wars Music Minute Podcast Season 4, Episode 14 hosted by Chrysanthe Tan. In the episode, which aired on February 13, Crosby and Tan discuss the music and sound design of minutes 66–70 of “The Empire Strikes Back” with an emphasis on the musical structure of John Williams’s theme for the character Boba Fett.
HISTORY – Professor H. Roger Grant presented a podcast, “Railroad Station Agents: A Legacy of Local Leadership,” on February 25, for Roundhouse Crosstalk, a semi-monthly production of the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.
PERFORMING ARTS – Assistant Professor Lisa Sain Odom was invited to give a master class and recital at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois. The recital, Sehnsucht/Longing, is part of a series of performances Sain Odom is giving this semester. The first recital was in Greenville in January, the next will be in the Samuel J. Cadden Chapel at Clemson University on March 16, and the final performance will be at Jacksonville State University on March 30. Sain Odom held a master class at Millikin University on the day following her recital, coaching students of the Millikin voice program on art songs and arias.
LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt co-edited, for the fifth time, with Rainer Godel (German National Academy) the Herder Yearbook. Volume 16 (2022) is in print and features six full-length articles, two reviews, and the International Herder Bibliography. The tri-lingual Herder Yearbook — published every other year — is the academic journal of the International Johann Gottfried Herder Society.
PERFORMING ARTS – Professor and Director of Bands Mark Spede received the Richard Floyd Distinguished Service Award from the College Band Directors National Association at the conclusion of the 2023 National Conference in Athens, GA. Spede served as the CBDNA’s president 2019-2023.
LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Jae DiBello Takeuchi was awarded a faculty research development program grant for her project titled “Intersections of Accent and Identity for Second Language Speakers of Japanese.” She also received a CU SUCCEEDS Program 1 grant for her project titled “Japanese Dialect in Contemporary Japan: Identity, Native Speaker Bias, and L2 Speakers of Japanese.” Takeuchi was also invited to join the editorial advisory board of the open-access Journal of Education, Language, and Ideology.
ENGLISH – Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas presented the paper titled “Remembrance and Reconciliation: Nurturing Collaborations with the Descendant Community for the Cemetery Project and Call My Name” on the panel “Interdisciplinary Research on the History of African American Life at Clemson University” with Marquise Drayton, community engagement assistant for the Woodland Cemetery and African American Burial Ground Historic Preservation Project, and Clemson University Historian Otis Pickett Sr. on February 3 at the Universities Study Slavery in South Carolina Symposium hosted by Francis Marion University in Florence, SC.
PHILOSOPHY— Professor Daniel Wueste presented “Reasonableness: the Holy Grail of Practical and Professional Ethics” in an author-meets-critics session on The Importance of Sentiment in Promoting Reasonableness in Children by Michael Pritchard at the 32nd Annual International Conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics in Portland, OR, March 2-5. At the same conference, Wueste and co-editor of Teaching Ethics, Senior Lecturer Edyta Kuzian, presented a panel session, organized by Kuzian titled “Publishing Journal Articles from an Editors Perspective.” Teaching Ethics, the journal of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum, is housed in Clemson’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. Also, at APPE 32, Wueste presented an interactive panel session, “The Ethics of Doing Ethics,” in collaboration with Christopher Meyers (emeritus director of the Kegley Institute for Ethics, CSU Bakersfield), laying the groundwork for an edited book with that title as a follow-up on a special issue of Teaching Ethics on “The Ethics of Ethics Centers,” guest edited by Meyers.
ART – Professor and Chair Valerie Zimany’s solo exhibition “Stand long enough among the flowers” was on view at the USC Upstate Gallery at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, SC from January 19 – February 24 with an opening reception and artist lecture on January 19. The exhibited works explore the transculturation that produced intricate floral designs in 18th and 19th-century Asian and European export wares through digital technology in ceramics, drawing and mixed media. Zimany’s work utilizes both virtual sculpting software and hand-crafting techniques to render densely ornamented surfaces that speak to cultural mixture, conjuring temporal as well as technological incongruencies.