ENGLISH – Susanna Ashton traveled to Charleston, S.C. in January to be interviewed for a four-part documentary series on migration being produced by Nutopia, a British television company. This series will feature one episode devoted to her work on those who suffered the consequences of forced migration or kidnapping from Africa during the era of the global slave trade. In particular, the documentary will feature Ashton’s original research on John Andrew Jackson, a man who escaped bondage on a plantation labor camp in South Carolina to become an author, abolitionist and agitator. This film series is anticipated to air on the History Channel in early summer 2017.
LANGUAGES – Luca Barattoni gave a lecture at the Department of Cinema and Television Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul on Dec. 7. His topic was “The Relevance of the Neorealist Debate to Contemporary World Cinema.”
HISTORY – Stephanie Barczewski was invited to Paris-Sorbonne University to present her work at the conference “Mythology and “Nation Building: N.F.S. Grundtvig and His Contemporaries,” which took place on Jan. 24 and 25. The conference focused on the role played by pre-Christian mythologies in the formation of national identities in the nineteenth century. Barczewski’s paper was entitled “The Arthurian Legend and the Construction of an Imperial Vision for the Late Victorian British Nation.”
PERFORMING ARTS – Anthony Bernarducci was invited to guest-conduct the Southeastern United States Choral Festival hosted by Troy University. The honor choir consisted of 130 high school students. A public concert was presented on Jan. 14th.
ENGLISH – David Blakesley published two hypertext articles at the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative hosted by the University of Michigan. He was interviewed by Brian Gaines (RCID) for “The Wrench in the Gears: How Independent Academic Presses Can Disrupt the Publishing Model.” 28 Nov. 2016. The second, “The Future of Digital Publishing, Circa 2003” (2 Dec. 2016), reflects on the emergence of digital books and the making of one of the first digital books ever cataloged in the MLA International Bibliography in 2003. Parlor Press, the scholarly publishing company founded and edited by Blakesley, announced on Jan. 11 that one of its recent publications in poetry, Go On by Ethel Rackin, was named a finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award by the National Jewish Council.
HISTORY – Vernon Burton had two essays, “Age of Lincoln: Then and Now,” pp. 11-26 and “Edgefield Reconstruction Political Black Leaders, pp. 161-172, published in Michael Bonner and Fritz Hamer (eds.) South Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras: Essays from the Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association, (University of South Carolina Press, 2016). On Dec. 5, in Washington, D.C., he served on a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) panel to evaluate applications to the NEH Humanities Connections, a new grant program. In Denver, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) he presented a paper, “On Historians as Expert Witnesses.” He was also interviewed at the AHA for C-SPAN TV to be broadcast later this year. As a member of the Clemson University MLK, Jr. committee, he helped organize and lead a discussion on Dr. King’s book, Why We Can’t Wait. On Jan. 12, he spoke on voting rights and discrimination at a luncheon meeting of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Burton has appeared on SCETV and other public stations in three different programs during December and January.
COLLEGE AND PERFORMING ARTS – On Jan. 7, 2017, Richard Goodstein, Eric Lapin (performing arts) and Ron McCurdy (University of Southern California) presented “The Artist Entrepreneur: Unlocking and Nurturing the Creative Process” at the Jazz Education Network conference in New Orleans.
ENGLISH – Jan Holmevik’s article, “Where creativity meets academics, Using digital media to enhance core curricula,” appeared in the Adobe Education Exchange.
ENGLISH – Walt Hunter’s article on finance and the history of the ode, “Planetary Dejection: An Ode to the Commons,” appears in the current issue of the journal symplokē.
ENGLISH – Steve Katz, Pearce Professor of Professional Communication, had three poems about rhetoric/science/technology published in Elohi Gadugi: “Three Articles of Faith;” “Posthumanistic;” Divorce in the Cosmos: A Complaint.” He reviewed an article (written as a short story) for Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. And he was invited to be a discussion leader for the Research Network Forum (RNF) at the Conference of College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in March. These all-day sessions, facilitated by scholars recognized for their expertise in their fields, are dedicated to the working with and improving the research of doctoral students nationwide in rhetoric, composition and technical/scientific writing.
ENGLISH – Wittgenstein and Modernism, a book Michael LeMahieu co-edited with Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé (Tulane University), was published in January by the University of Chicago Press. LeMahieu gave two papers at the MLA Convention in Philadelphia, one on “Modernism and Civil Rights” and another on “Wittgenstein and Literary Studies.”
HISTORY – Pamela Mack published a reflection in the History of Science Society January 2017 newsletter.
HISTORY – Steven Marks gave a public lecture Jan. 6 titled “The Global Legacy of the Russian Revolution” at the Mining Institute in Newcastle, UK, in connection with the annual meeting of the British Study Group on the Russian Revolution. His article, “Cultural Migrations between Spain and Russia,” was published in Cuadernos de Historia Contemporanea (Universidad Complutense Madrid), vol. 28 (2016).
ENGLISH – Building the British Atlantic World, a book to which Lee Morrissey contributed an essay, won the 2016 Allen G. Noble Book Award. This award is given by the International Society for Landscape, Place and Material Culture and recognizes the best-edited book in the field of North American material culture. Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600-1850, was published in 2016 by the University of North Carolina Press
ENGLISH – Angela Naimou’s book, Salvage Work: U.S. and Caribbean Literatures amid the Debris of Legal Personhood (Fordham 2015), has received honorable mention for the William Sanders Scarborough Prize awarded by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or culture. The Modern Language Association of America is the oldest and largest association for the study and teaching of languages and literature. The William Sanders Scarborough Prize was established in 2001 and named for the first African American member of the MLA, a scholar of classical philology and languages who was brought up in the South. Naimou’s book also won the 2016 ASAP book prize for best study of the arts of the present. In December, she was an invited speaker at “A Mobile World Literature and the Return of Place: New Diasporic Writing Beyond the Black Atlantic,” a conference hosted by the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt (Germany), where she presented her current work on refugee timespaces and contemporary literature.
ENGLISH – Barton Palmer’s most recent books are:
Palmer also published “John Huston and Postwar Hollywood: The Night of the Iguana in Context” in Douglas McFarland and Wesley King, eds., John Huston as Adaptor (SUNY Press), 125-138.
PERFORMING ARTS – Shannon Robert is working with Salt Lake City Acting Company as the scene designer of the world premiere of Harbur Gate, a new trilogy by Kathleen Cahill, directed by Tamilla Woodward. Robert was nominated for the Broadway World Atlanta Regional Theatre Award for Best Professional Scenic Design for In The Heights at Aurora Theatre and Theatrical Outfit (at The Rialto).
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING & REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT – Tom Schurch was invited to serve as a visiting professor at the Architecture and Building Institute at Kazakh National Research Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. During an intensive two-week period this past December Professor Schurch presented daily lectures on urban design to graduate and undergraduate students in architecture, in addition to directing them in a studio project focused on campus master planning.
ARCHITECTURE – On Jan. 11, in Orlando, Fla., the National Association of Home Builders announced a house in Clemson, designed and detailed by Rob Seel, as the Best in American Living, Remodel of the Year. Seel and local builder, Ken Berry, were recognized for the renovation, additions and remodeling of a 1950 Cape Cod-style house for two sisters who grew up in the house and have returned to Clemson for retirement. “Cape Cod Revisited / Riggs Renovation” also received a Best in American Living Platinum Award for Remodel over $250,000. Through Blurb, Seel has published a photography monograph entitled Core Construction: an Artist-Architect’s View of the Job Site for the Clemson University Core Campus Project. The book presents a collection of 150 photos from the nearly 27,000 progress shots Seel took while serving as a local resource architect on the project for two years. Also through Blurb, Seel has published Central Focus: a Photographic Exploration of the Town of Central, South Carolina. The book presents the photographs included in a 2014 exhibition plus photos taken since.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – In December, Kelly Smith presented “Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology” to the engineering and medicine working panel of the National Academy of Sciences.
CITY PLANNING AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT – Jim Spencer has been invited to give a keynote and lead a discussion on his 2014 book, Globalization and Urbanization The Global Urban Ecosystem, at Cleveland State University’s College of Urban Affairs.
PERFORMING ARTS – Richard St. Peter directed a short film, The Truth and Nothing But the Truth, for the Romanian National Theatre, Marin Sorescu. It premiered online on Jan. 18 and will be screened throughout Europe and the United States as part of a transatlantic theatre festival known as the Plurality of Privacy Project. (The film will be screened at the College of William and Mary’s 10th Global Film Festival Feb. 23-26.) St. Peter is teaching at the University of Craiova in Romania this year as a Fulbright Scholar.
ENGLISH – Rhondda Robinson Thomas participated in a roundtable on “The Civil War and Memory” at the Modern Language Association Conference in Philadelphia on Jan. 6.
LANGUAGES – Eric Touya read a paper entitled “Claudel diplomate, poète, et exégète” on the panel “(Re)-presenting Claudel Today” at the Modern Language Association Conference in Philadelphia Jan. 6. The program was arranged by the Paul Claudel Society.
ENGLISH – The New York Times published Jillian Weise’s essay, “The Dawn of the ‘Tryborg,’” on Nov. 30. Her video, “How to Write for The New York Times,” appeared across the NYT social media platforms on Dec. 2. Weise was invited to an empathy event and profiled in New York Magazine on Dec. 26. She is featured in the documentary Guns & Empathy, which was nominated for a 2017 Ellie Award – the national magazine awards for print and digital media – in the video category.
HISTORY – Lee B. Wilson published “Worlds of Violence,” Reviews in American History 44 (2016): 532-38.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Daniel Wueste has been elected to a three-year term on the Executive Committee of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. The society holds an international conference annually in the fall (Clemson has hosted two of them: 2002 and 2015), and publishes the peer reviewed journal Teaching Ethics. Wueste served two terms as SEAC’s president (2007-2012).