Faculty Activities
Washington College professors are practicing artists, scientists, economists, historians, and writers who enjoy sharing their scholarly interests on campus, at national conferences, and on the international stage.
Faculty Research
- Professor George Spilich recruits students to work in his eye gaze lab, where they track eye movements to help them better understand perceptual and cognitive processes.
- Biology professor Martin Connaughton is interested in fish bio-acoustics and behavior, focusing on the anatomy and physiology of the sonic muscles, characterization of the sounds produced by these muscles, and the behaviors in which sound production play a role.
- By radio-tagging, tracking, and mapping different turtle populations, Aaron Krochmal and his students have made some interesting discoveries about these humble, ecologically critical animals.
- In Mindy Reynolds’ toxicology lab, students study the effects of heavy metals such as cadmium and nickel on human lung cells.
Faculty Achievements
- February 2013
Stewart Bruce has received some new grant/contract funding as follows:
- The Maryland Highway Safety Office has provided $188,331 to fund a detailed longitudinal study of factors related to impaired driving in Maryland and to support a special Maryland State Police DUI Detachment with weekly analysis reports. Ten student interns will be employed on this project. The project is expected to be funded for the next three fiscal years.
- The Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention has increased our existing Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis Program funding of $379,0000 by an additional $81,000 to implement the IBM i2 IntelliShare spider map linkage analysis program to connect multiple disparate criminal justice database as a tool to aid law enforcement in solving both violent and property crimes. Three additional student interns will be employed.
- The MapStory Foundation has awarded two small contracts to GIS. The first contract will have us create a time series study of Alexandria from the first George Washington survey to modern aerial images with a timeline story to be developed on MapStory. Two students will be employed on this project. Another small contract was also awarded to have our student marketing team assist the MapStory Foundation utilize social media to market MapStory. Four students will be employed on this project. In addition the MapStory Foundation is providing assistance to help us secure funding for the George Washington Atlas and Letter project.
- The Queen Anne’s Conservation Association has provided cost-basis funding approval to develop a unique time series to show the explosive growth in residential development in Queen Anne’s County. Three students will work on this to develop the GIS time series, create a videography of change, and score the video with a music track.
- As part of Dr. Levin’s MSDE funded project with the Queen Anne and Kent County School Districts, three students at GIS will be working with the Chesapeake Commons to upload various geospatial and environmental data from the Chester River.
- The GIS Program will be distributing free ESRI GIS software to schools throughout Maryland as part of new Enterprise License Agreement signed between MSDE and ESRI. The web site for this is found at http://www.washcoll.edu/centers/ces/gis/esri-k-12-software.php.
- The Washington College Alumni Development Office has awarded a small contract to have two of our student interns map every donor plaque on college- owned property and develop an interactive database and map to show who the donors are and where their recognition plaques are located. This has resulted in substantial savings to the College versus what outside vendors would have charged for similar services.
- A small contract from the Town of Centreville was awarded to assist the Planning Commission complete their park and recreation planning effort.
- Stewart was invited to be a guest blogger by the Office of Justice Programs Diagnostic Center. The first blog on The Importance of Data and Training for Situational Awareness can be seen at https://ojpdiagnosticcenter.org/blog/importance-data-and-training-situational- awareness.
- As part of the StartUp Maryland Pitch across Maryland contest, Stewart’s Pandion5D pitch was selected as one of the fan favorites and he gave a presentation pitch on the early stage spin-off idea at the Maryland Entrepreneur Awards ceremony in Howard County. The elevator pitch can be seen here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md_kKObqIuA.
Kevin Brien presented his paper on “Confucian and Humanistic Marxist Ethics: Convergences” at an International Conference of the Society for Indian Philosophy and Religion held in Kolkata, India in January 2013; and he also chaired sessions of this conference. In addition, he made a two-day formal visit to the Indo-International Culture School, a grammar school serving poor Indian children, located in Mahapura, Rajasthan.
Cristina Casado Presa published her article “La bruja como paradigma de poder femenino en dos dramas españoles contemporáneos ” in Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica XXVII: Lo oculto en la literatura Hispánica.
Jeff Chaffin has been invited by Jeremy Wilson, T.E. Lawrence’s authorized biographer, to moderate the T.E. Lawrence Studies online scholarly discussion group. Jeff succeeds Mr. Wilson in this position.
Ryan Kelty’s article (with Alex Bierman, Univ. Calgary) entitled “Ambivalence on the Front Lines: Perceptions of Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan” based on data collected from military and Dept. of Army civilians working in each theater of operation appears in the latest volume of the journal Armed Forces & Society.
Upon being contacted by NASA, Anne Marteel-Parrish agreed to review a proposal submitted to the South Carolina NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
This fall, Jon McCollum completed a set of arduous juried performance exams and was awarded the level of Jun Shihan (associate master performer and teacher’s license) of Kinko-ryu (in the Dokyoku/Chikushinkai style) for the shakuhachi, a Japanese Zen Buddhist flute. To this end, he was given the honorific performance name (natori), “Shinzen,” which means, “having an open spirit/heart for continued growth without preconceptions.” In December, Jon was invited by the Ambassador John Malott to perform for the Japan-America Society’s annual Dinner/Meeting in Washington, DC. In January, Jon utilized Washington College enhancement funds to travel to Norway where he conducted research and did some intense writing for his forthcoming peer-reviewed book, Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology (Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books). In addition to working on the book, he was invited by Bergen University College Music to guest lecture for a graduate seminar in musicology and give a recital performance for the university.
Kate Moncrief gave an invited paper,“‘Then let them anatomize Regan’: The Reproductive Body, Performance, and King Lear,” as part of the “‘A little world made cunningly’: Generative Bodies and Early Modern Natural Philosophy” roundtable special session (sponsored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women) at the Modern Language Association conference, Boston, January 3-6, 2013.
Andrew Oros contributed an essay, “Who’s the Most Charming in Asian Regional Diplomacy,” to a book review roundtable in the journal Asia Policy (January 2013); he also was an invited speaker at the Dokkyo University International Forum in Tokyo in December on a panel entitled, “Japan and International Society after 3/11”.
Janet Sorrentino has been awarded a one-month research stipend from the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Byzantine Studies for January 28-February 23. The fellowship will allow her to maintain residence in Washington DC while using the Dumbarton Oaks library and museum collection for her sabbatical project, “Places, Prayers, People: Descriptions of Ritual in Pre-modern Muslim Travel Accounts.” She has also been asked to deliver a lecture for the Byzantine Studies fellows and staff during her tenure there.
- December 2012
Benjamin Bellas has presented his work in solo exhibitions in Chicago and Washington DC. His exhibition at slow gallery in Chicago was recently reviewed in Newcity, while his exhibition at Flashpoint Gallery has been written about in the Washington CityPaper. Benjamin has also recently lectured on his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Luce Center, and been interviewed for a radio feature on WAMU regarding his exhibition at Flashpoint Gallery. In September, he was named the recipient of a Franklin Furnace Fund award.
John Boyd and Moriah Purdy offered a presentation titled “Shifting Focus: Addressing the Knowledge Domains of Writing Expertise in a Peer Tutoring Seminar” at the International Writing Centers Association conference in San Diego, California, on October 25.
Stewart Bruce gave two presentations in November at the Technology and Engineering Education Association of Pennsylvania (TEEAP) 60th annual conference. The first was Trends in 3D Community Visualization and Virtual Worlds with Google Sketch-Up, 3DS Max, and Unity and the second was Utilizing an Online Moodle Environment to Teach Geospatial Technologies and Support STEM Education. In addition, The City of Cambridge, in partnership with the Center for Environment and Society, was awarded a grant for $34,982 from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to do an urban tree canopy assessment and develop a community master forest plan as well as plant a lot of street trees. The GIS portion of this grant is worth $16,321 and these funds will support five student apprentices and a part-time staff person in the lab over the next year.
Bridget Bunten published an article: “Becoming ELL teachers: The learning trajectory of two preservice teachers and their implications for teacher education curriculum,” which appeared in the recent volume of The Curriculum and Pedagogy Series: Excursions and recursions through power, privilege, and praxis.
Alex Castro has accepted a position on the board of the Maryland Council for the Humanities.
Tom Cousineau was a moderator at the “René Girard, lecteur de Shakespeare,” colloquium organized by L’Association Recherches Mimétiques and hosted by the L’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3.
Elena Deanda published the book chapter, “Percances de la memoria: Tensiones entre el sujeto y la colectividad en La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo” [“Memory Mishaps: Tensions Between the Subject and Colectivity in La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo”] in Literatura de tradición oral en México: formas líricas y narrativas. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2012 [Mexico’s Folk Literature: Poetry and Narrative. Xalapa: UV, 2012]. She also presented the paper “La fatalidad del poder: La muerte como rey e inquisidor en Las Cortes de la Muerte de Lope de Vega y Micael de Carvajal” [Power’s Fatality: Death as King and Inquisitor in The Deathly Court by Lope de Vega and Micael de Carvajal”] in the 2nd Congress of Golden Age and Colonial Theater organized by Universidad Iberoamericana in México in October of 2012.
Nicole Grewling gave a presentation on “Blood Brothers? Germans and Indians in Friedrich Gerstäcker’s Fiction” at the Symposium on ‘The Legacy of Friedrich Gerstäcker: Arkansas and the Wild West’ in Fayetteville (AR) in October 2012.
Jon McCollum chaired the panel, “Cultural Authority and Music: Historical Questions from the Middle East and Central Asia,” sponsored by the Historical Ethnomusicology Section, at the American Musicological Society/Society for Ethnomusicology/Society of Music Theory Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in November 2012. He also presented the paper (with Hermann Hudde of Brandeis University), “Pan-Americanism in Action: Serge Koussevitzky, Aaron Copland, and Latin American Music and Composers at Tanglewood from 1941 to 1965.” During the meeting of sections, Jon was voted Chair-elect of the Historical Ethnomusicology Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology. On November 11, 2012, Jon, along with Ken Schweitzer, brought fifteen Washington College music students to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Myerhoff for a stunning performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and the east coast premier of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3.
Sean Meehan has been invited to review books for a new digital publication of the national Phi Beta Kappa Society called “Life of the Mind.” He has published two reviews to date: “Debates in the Digital Humanities,” edited by Matthew Gold (University of Minnesota, 2012) and “Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing,” by Peter Elbow (Oxford, 2012). The reviews are available here: http://keyreporter.org/BookReviews/LifeOfTheMind/
Robert Siudzinski presented at the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative’s Place-based Education Conference at Michigan State University. His interactive workshop and paper entitled A Canoe Trail to Every Classroom: Cultivating School Administrator Buy-In to Collaborative Place-based Service-Learning highlighted the potential for this pedagogical and curricular model, connected to Common Core State Standards, to alleviate the increasing disconnection of students and teachers from their cultural, historical, and natural environments.
Piloted this semester in collaboration with the Sassafras Environmental Education Center and the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, senior Washington College education interns used Captain John Smith’s historic expedition as the unifying theme to co-design and co-teach interdisciplinary language arts, social studies, science, and math lessons to 30 Radcliffe Creek School students and their teachers. In reaction to the successful collaboration, the National Park Service asked Robert to establish a partnership with Washington College and the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail to encourage pre-service and in-service teacher use of the Trail as a multi-sensory, multi-disciplinary learning environment for K-16 students.
Karen Smith attended the 33rd World Congress on Dance Research - Dance Therapy Panorama - in Athens, Greece, where she presented a lecture, Dancing Longer, Dancing Stronger: Health Interventions & Alternative Therapies to Maximize a Dancer’s Career- and two workshops - Pilates: Prevention & Rehabilitation Therapy and Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF): Practical Applications for Dance Therapy.
Hui-Ju Tsai presented her paper “Optimal Consumption and Portfolio Choice for Long-Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income When Asset Returns Are Predictable” in the annual conference held by the Southern Finance Association in Charleston, South Carolina in November 2012. She also served as a discussant in the conference.
Susan Vowels was invited to an Item-writing Workshop held by APICS, The Association for Operations Management, in late October. At this two-day event, she joined other certified APICS volunteers in creating draft items destined for the APICS Certified Supply Chain Practitioner (CSCP) exam. The APICS CSCP designation is a globally recognized certification in operations and supply chain management.
Peter Weigel presented a paper on “Conversations with the Dead: Why Study the History of Philosophy?,” at the (October) 2012 Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference at Villanova University.
Lansing Williams has been appointed to a three-year term on the Kent County Ethics Commission by the Kent County Commissioners. Lansing has also been elected to the Board of Directors of the Rock Hall Yacht Club Sailing School (RHYCSS). Affiliated with the Rock Hall Yacht Club, the RHYCSS is an independent 501(c)(3) organization, which runs a summer sailing program for youth through adults, in addition to sponsoring a youth racing team. In 2012, the RHYCSS had 110 youth sailors, as well as several adult classes. The sailing team competed in regattas throughout the Chesapeake Bay region.
- November 2012
Aaron Amick along with faculty members at the University of Delaware contributed to, and received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant for the purchase of a new GCT Mass Spectrometer. This instrument will be housed at the University of Delaware, but will be open to Washington College students and faculty for use in research.
Kevin Brien’s paper, “Free and Easy Wandering: After Zhuangzi” was published in Chinese translation in the fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Yibin University, Yibin University, Yibin, China.
Stewart Bruce received a contract from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) for $9,995. In collaboration with Maryland State Archives, CBMM will undertake original research concerning impressment, slavery and African American experiences during and following the war. The Archives will document ten slave case studies highlighting individual agency and choice during the conflict. CBMM will also partner with the GIS Program at Washington College to generate 3D and 2D maps highlighting the cultural landscapes of the area. These will be designed so the viewer can interact with the maps and learn more details about given subjects. Stew also presented at the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s GeoInt Symposium in Orlando on 3D Visualizations and Virtual Worlds. If curious, you can watch this presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p118DZiV3kA&feature=plcp. And the GIS Program was officially awarded the USGIF Academic Achievement Award for 2012 at the Symposium. Due to external funding raised by the GIS Program, along with financial assistance for one student from the Douglass Cater Society of Junior Fellows and the Dean’s Office, nine WAC students were also able to attend the GeoInt Symposium where in addition to attending various presentations, they also helped staff our exhibit booth.
Leadership Studies: The Dialogue of Disciplines, co-edited by Michael Harvey and Ron Riggio (Edward Elgar, 2011) was honored at the 2012 annual conference of the International Leadership Association for its “significant contribution to the field of leadership.” The edited collection, for which Michael wrote the concluding chapter, was one of three books recognized at the event. The book competition and recognition is administered by the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences. As one of the competition’s reviewers put it: “Harvey and Riggio have given us a book that reflects the true character of leadership. With scholarly chapters that honor the tradition of literature in the field, they have brought together a dialogue that offers a multidisciplinary perspective on how we can better understand leadership. What may be the true strength of this offering is how they manage to make the work both accessible and ambitious. It is easily a book that will be well received by the informed practitioners as well as students of leadership at all levels.”
Mike Kerchner attended the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans where he presented a poster co-authored with Jean Hardwick (Ithaca College) and Jan Thornton (Oberlin College) entitled “Undergraduate Neuroscience “Core Competencies” and their Effective Use in Design and Assessment of Undergraduate Neuroscience Curricula”. A detailed summary of the results of their survey of undergraduate neuroscience faculty and programs has been published in the fall 2012 special issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (JUNE) in their article Identifying and Using ‘Core Competencies’ to Help Design and Assess Undergraduate Neuroscience Curricula.Lauren M. Littlefield is the first author of, “An experimental evaluation of the effects of using training sentences to aide young children’s word recall” published in Effective Education. This manuscript is co-authored with Evelyn R. Klein of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Science at LaSalle University and Stephanie Coates, a Psychology major alumnus who helped assess elementary school students as part of her Washington College summer research experience. The article is available in print and at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19415532.2012.712840
Donald McColl finished a limited edition of “Second Nature: Masterpieces of 19th- Century Landscape Painting,” a catalogue of the exhibition of the same name he organized in the fall of 2009 at Kohl Gallery. This past spring, Donald taught in “Picturing the Past,” a national program educating Maryland teachers about American History through art and visual culture, in Washington, DC, administered by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and volunteered to provide a lecture for four at the Walters Art Museum, as part of “Art without Borders,” the recent Arts Dinner and Auction, held by St. Martin’s Ministries, Ridgely, Maryland, in support of homeless women and their children.
Ken Miller’s article, “‘A Dangerous Set of People’: British Captives and the Making of Revolutionary Identity in the Mid-Atlantic Interior,” appears in the Journal of the Early Republic (Winter, 2012), 565-601. Produced by the University of Pennsylvania Press, the Journal of the Early Republic is “committed to publishing the best scholarship on the history and culture of the United States in the years of the early republic (1776-1861).”
Elka Porter attended the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society Meeting, October 11- 13, and her presented work, “Measuring valve gape using strain gauges attached to bivalves and gape responses of Crassostrea virginica to low oxygen conditions.”
Gary Schiff’s new book, In Search of Poland: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today’s Poland, has been published by Peter Lang Publishing. It is part of the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, of which Joseph Prud’homme is the series editor. The book is based in part on Gary’s slide/lecture of the same name delivered at Washington College in 2009.
Karen Smith was the Keynote Speaker for dance at the MD Assn. for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance annual convention in Baltimore; her topic was From the Studio to the Stage: Dancing Healthy & Healthy Dancing. She also presented a workshop for convention participants - Re-Educating & Reforming the Body Through Pilates. At the 22nd conference of the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science, held in Singapore in October, she presented a workshop, Pilates: Adjunctive Training for Dancers.
Michele Volansky served as a Visiting Artist at Washington University as part of the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival from Sept 15-30th, where she dramaturged three plays written by student playwrights, one of which will be produced at Washington University in March 2013. In addition, she sat on a panel entitled, “Freelancing and Beyond” for the Philadelphia-area chapter of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas on Sunday, October 14 at the University of the Arts.
- October 2012
Kevin Brien presented his paper “Historical Materialism and Psychology” at an
International and Interdisciplinary Marxism and Psychology Conference held in
August 2012 at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, located in
Morelia, Mexico.Stewart Bruce presented on Geographic Information Systems to the 7th grade classes
at the Centreville Middle School in September. The GIS Program has also recently
received the following grants/contracts in September:
• Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment Phase Two 3D visualization for $50,000. This
project is funded by the Somerset County 2012 Historic Preservation Grant
Program and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities through the Friends
of the Jacobus Vandeerveer House. Dr. John Seidel did his PhD research on
this site and will be advising on the project.
• Curriculum updates to the GT-301 Spatial Analyst and GT-302 3D Analyst
Moodle-based courses by the Dover Area School District for $5,000. Both of
our Washington College-developed courses have been accepted for
undergraduate credit under an articulation agreement between the Dover Area
School District and the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. All
of our Moodle-based courses are now available to anyone under the Open
Educational Resources Movement using Creative Commons licensing.
• Two Phase One 3D visualization projects for the Cloister Development and the
Four Seasons Development on Kent Island from the Queen Anne’s
Conservation Association for $6,500.
• Nutrient Trading Moodle-based curriculum development project funded by the
Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Upper Shore Regional Council
for $4,000.
• GIS Development project for Andelot Farms in Kent County for $500 from Dr.
Wayne Bell with funding from Mrs. Louisa Duemling.Tom Cousineau has submitted his commissioned book-manuscript, An Unwritten Novel:
Fernando Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet”, to the Dalkey Archive Press. The expected date
of publication is Spring 2013. This will be his fifth book of literary criticism, in
addition to an edited volume entitled, Beckett in France. The web page related to his
current research project entitled, The Daedalus Complex, is at
https://sites.google.com/site/thedaedaluscomplex/home.Michael Harvey was interviewed on leadership, in in the September 17 edition of The
Washington Post. The article, authored by Tom Fox and entitled, “Leadership is a Walk
in the Dark,” can be seen here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/onleadership/
leadership-is-a-walk-in-the-dark/2012/09/17/e3121a94-00f4-11e2-b257-
e1c2b3548a4a_story.htmlRebecca Jayne was selected as a Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching)
fellow for the 2012-2013 academic year. Project NExT is a professional development
program of the Mathematical Association of America for new or recent Ph.D.s in the
mathematical sciences who are interested in improving the teaching and learning of
undergraduate mathematics. It addresses the full range of faculty responsibilities in
teaching, research, and service. In August, she traveled to Madison, Wisconsin to
participate in the first of three Project NExT workshops and to attend MathFest.Mike Kerchner participated on a team of external reviewers for the decennial review
of the undergraduate neuroscience program at Smith College and also an external
consultant for the program at Simpson College in Indianola, IA. This fall he was
tapped by the Society for Neuroscience as one of their noteworthy scientific abstract
evaluators for the upcoming annual conference. His contribution to the seven volume
set Student Handbook to Psychology, Volume 1: Brain and Mind, has been published by
Infobase Publishing: Facts On File.Anne Marteel-Parrish attended the 16th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering
conference in Washington, DC on June 18 and 20. She also attended the 22nd Biennial
Conference on Chemical Education, The Pennsylvania State University, University
Park, PA, and presented two talks on August 1, 2012: “Transforming chemistry education through the Green Chemistry Commitment,” and “Teaching green and sustainable chemistry through a one-semester course: An exciting challenge.”
Anne also reviewed an article submitted for publication in the Journal of Chemical
Education and she reviewed a National Science Foundation proposal in the Major
Research Instrumentation category.Matthew McCabe presented a paper titled “The Moral Education Theory of
Punishment Revisited” at the 10th International Conference on New Directions in the
Humanities in Montreal, Canada.Kate Moncrief was an invited speaker at a symposium, “Reading the Mother from
Antiquity to Shakespeare,” at King’s College, Cambridge University, July 6-7
2012. Her lecture was “‘Then let them anatomize Regan’: The Reproductive Body,
Performance, and King Lear.” She was also invited to present a staging session, “Thou
bearest a woman’s face”: Staging Lavinia in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus 3.2” for
the Utah Valley University Honors Program, Orem, Utah, September 20, 2012.John Seidel recently completed five monographs in a series on archaeology at a
Revolutionary War site that also served as the nation’s first military academy: The
Continental Artillery at Pluckemin & Middlebrook, 1778-1779: History & Archaeology; Trash & Tea: Gleanings from a Revolutionary War Refuse Dump; Patterns on the Ground: Surface Archaeology at the 1778-1779 Pluckemin Cantonment; Barracks “on an Elegant Plan”: Excavations in the Artificers’ Quarters; and Arming the Troops: the Gunsmith’s Shop at Pluckemin, 1778-1779. John and Stewart Bruce were just awarded two grants in support of a 3-D virtual reconstruction of the Revolutionary War cantonment: $45,000 from the Somerset County (NJ) Cultural & Heritage Commission and $10,000 from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. The project will involve students in the GIS and Archaeology Labs, as well as historians, archaeologists and other experts from MD, NJ, and Colonial Williamsburg. This project builds on a first-generation 3-D model completed during the summer.Rick Striner’s latest “Disunion” essay for the New York Times is now posted on-line,
and it’s the feature article on the Emancipation Proclamation, issued 150 years ago, on
September 22nd.Aileen Tsui gave invited lectures at Peking University in Beijing, China and at Sophia
University in Tokyo, Japan this past summer. Her lecture at Peking University was
entitled “Chinese Porcelain and Modern Painting in Nineteenth Century Britain: The
Case of James McNeill Whistler’s Art.” At Sophia University, the subject of her
lecture was “Whistler’s Golds: Classicism, Japanism, and Modernist Authority.”
Michele Volansky served as the dramaturg for Jonathan Norton’s new play, My Tidy
List of Terrors, inspired by the Atlanta child murders of 1980, as part of the 2012
PlayPenn National New Play Conference in July. Kristen Hammond ‘14 served as a
conference intern with Michele, thanks to the generosity of the family of Charlie
Glowacki. In August, Michele participated in the Association of Theater in Higher
Education’s Leadership Institute for department chairs, deans and provosts and
presidents; she also presented a paper entitled “Kenneth Tynan: Activist Critic.”
Christine Wade presented a paper entitled, “Non-alignment 2.0: FSLN Foreign Policy
in a New Era,” at the 2012 International Congress of the Latin American Studies
Association in San Francisco, California in May. She was the invited keynote speaker
at Wake Forest University’s Project Nicaragua (Nicaragua Nexus) Symposium On
September 13.Kate McCleary recently co-authored a chapter with Michael Paige and Tara Harvey
entitled, “The maximizing study abroad project: Toward a pedagogy for culture and
language learning,” was recently published in a new book – Student Learning Abroad:
What Our Students Are Learning, What They’re Not, and What We Can Do About It. Please see the information below if you are interested in learning more about the publication: http://www.amazon.com/Student-Learning-Abroad-Students-Theyre/dp/1579227139 Michael Vande Berg (Editor), R. Michael Paige (Editor), Kris Hemming Lou (Editor). - September 2012
Erin Anderson recently published a review of the book “Papa PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy,” edited by M.R. Marotte, P. M. Martin, and R. J. Savarese. The book review appears in the most recent volume of the journal Men and Masculinities.
Kevin Brien presented a paper on “Internal Relations and Historical Materialism” at an International Congress on Historical Materialism held in May, at York University, Toronto, Canada. Also in July, he conducted two summer classes on Hinduism at Maryland’s Jessup Correctional Institution in association with the “Partners in Philosophy” program initiated by James Schelberg ’12.
Stewart Bruce presented at the Pennsylvania GIS Conference in Harrisburg in May, 2012, on Trends in 3D Community Visualization and Virtual Worlds. In addition, the GIS Program was awarded the 2012 Academic Achievement Award by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation. The GIS Program has recently received the following grants or contracts:
- Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis Program and Maryland Offenders Management System, $379,810 in May 2012.
- Maryland State Police, Gang Intelligence Analysis Project, $46,000 in July 2012.
- Town of Easton, Stormwater Mapping, $20,000 in June 2012.
- Maryland Agriculture Education and Rural Development Assistance Fund, Upper Shore Harvest Directory, $19,000 in August 2012.
- Chester River Association, Switchgrass Predictive Modeling in the Chester River Watershed, $4,200 in June 2012.
- Upper Shore Regional Council, Web Redesign and Social Media Campaign, $1,900 in August 2012.
Melissa Deckman wrote a chapter in the edited volume, Steep, The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party, called “Of Mama Grizzlies and Politics: Women and the Tea Party.”
Ryan Kelty (with Darcy Schnack (U.S. Military Academy) published, “Attitudes on the Ground: What Soldiers Think About Civilian Contractors.” In Christopher Kinsley and Malcolm H. Patterson (Eds.), Contractors in War: The Transformation of US Expeditionary Operations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ryan also attended the American Sociolgical Association meeting Aug 17-20 (Denver) at which he organized the Peace, War & Social Conflict section roundtable session and presided over the session on “Utopias and Dystopias: Conflict and Resolution”.
Aaron Krochmal served as a North American delegate to the 7th World Congress on Herpetology (8-14 August, Vancouver BC). While at the congress, Aaron served on the resolutions committee of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and delivered a paper entitled “Habitat Familiarity Drives Successful Terrestrial Navigation in Eastern Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta picta).”
Kitty Maynard had an article published: “’Avec la terre on possède la guerre’: The Erasure of Place in Ronsard’s Franciade.” In Usher, Philip J. and Isabelle Fernbach, eds. Shield and Field: Virgilian Spaces as/and Early Modern Identities. Suffolk, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2012. 237-256. Kitty also presented a paper: “’Feints souspirs’: Du Bartas and the Poetics of Love.” The Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Washington, D.C., March 23-25, 2012.
Mindy Reynolds along with faculty members from Loyola University, Towson University and Mount St. Mary’s University co-wrote and received a $273,698 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund the acquisition of a laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM). The microscope will be housed at Loyola University, however, faculty and students from Washington College will have direct access to the machine for teaching and research purposes. The new technology offers researchers and students the ability to image cells and tissues in 3D, and the ability to follow the movement and changes of molecules in cells in real time. Mindy, along with Eshan Patel ‘13, was invited to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, MD to give the talk entitled “Cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of co-exposure to cobalt and nickel chloride, an in vitro study.” Eshan was presenting work he completed during the Summer of 2011 in Mindy’s lab. Mindy also attended the 34th Annual Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE) conference at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Robert Siudzinski continues his research and leadership in place-based service learning through his ongoing involvement with the national Trail to Every Classroom (National Park Service and Appalachian Trail Conservancy) and Forest for Every Classroom (US Forestry Service) educational programs. These award-winning professional development models focus on providing educators with the tools and resources to create multi-disciplinary programs for K-12 students using experiential learning and sense of place development. As Advisory Council member and curriculum design consultant, Robert attended the Summer 2012 TTEC/FFEC Alumni Workshop at Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. While there, he collected qualitative data from among the 50 alumni (teachers, administrators, and center directors) who attended the workshop to share best practices and lessons learned over the last seven years. He has been invited to contribute to and revise the programs’ second edition of the Educator Training Manual (2013).
To date, these programs have prepared over 300 English, math, social studies, art, music, drama, and science teachers from 14 states in the innovative use of place-based education. This educational approach uses all aspects of the local environment, including cultural, historical, and socio-political situations and the natural and built environments as the integrated context for learning. Robert’s research pioneers ways this model can be accomplished earlier and more effectively with pre-service teachers through teacher education programs such as Washington College’s. Piloting this front-loaded approach on the Eastern Shore, WAC’s Secondary Education Program continues its second year of collaborative service learning with the Sassafras Environmental Center (Kent County, Maryland) by having our senior education students design multi-disciplinary curricula for veteran teachers who bring their classes to the Turner’s Creek site.
Coordinating the Education Department’s Global Teaching Experience (EDU 215), Robert led another successful teaching expedition to Tanzania, East Africa (May – June, 2012). Seven Washington College students lived and student-taught at two school sites while Robert and Education Department colleague, Michelle Johnson, conducted three faculty development workshops for teachers in the schools around Arusha. To gain a global perspective on comparative education, seven school sites were visited by students and faculty during the trip. Two new WAC student placement partnerships were established with schools in the region.
Last May, in recognition of his global education efforts, the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International named Robert a Paul Harris Fellow, “in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.”
Karen Smith presented a workshop on Core Concepts: strengthening & stretching with Pilates at the Southwest District convention of the American Assn for Health, PE, Rec, & Dance in Kahuku, Hawaii, in June and sessions on Nutrition for the Dancer and Pilates for Conditioning the Dancer at the National Dance Assn. Pedagogy conference in Norfolk, VA, in August. In July she presented a paper, Hula: the Heartbeat of the Hawai’ian People, in the Republic of San Marino for the 32nd World Congress on Dance Research as well as a Pilates workshop and two master classes of Dance for Musical Theater.
Shawn Stein delivered a paper entitled “Representações brasileiras da ficção futebolística” at the 30th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in San Francisco, California, May 23-26; and also delivered his paper entitled “La presencia de la sátira en la ficción futbolística contemporánea: el legado de Bustos Domecq” at the 10th Jornadas Andinas de Literatura Latinoamericana at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, July 30-Aug 3.
Philip Walsh represented Washington College’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at the Society’s 43rd Triennial Council in Palm Beach, Florida (August 2-5). At the conference he was elected to the PBK South Atlantic District Board.
Peter Weigel published an article on “Singular Cognition” in Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Vol. 9 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). A second article from the 2002 SMLM proceedings, “Simplicity and Explanation in Aquinas’ God,” was reprinted in Categories, and What is Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and a book review of Biblical Ethics and Social Change by S. Mott, in Politics and Religion (August, 2012).
- May 2012
Rich De Prospo has recently published three articles. The first, “Before/Beyond Multiculturalism; the ‘less common idiom’ of Père Isaac Jogues’s Novum Belgium,” appears in When the French Were Here: Proceedings of the Samuel De Champlain Quadricentennial Symposium, edited by Nancy Nahra. The second, “Designing the Early American Literature Component of the Undergraduate American Literature Survey Course,” appears in The CEA Forum, Vol. 39:2. The third, “Whose/Who’s Ligeia”, appears in Poe Studies, Feb 2012. Rich has also recently delivered two conference papers. The first one, “Raising the Dead in the Precolonial Southwest: Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca’s “Marvelous” Walk Across North America, 1528-1537,” was given at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture/American Studies Conference, in Albuquerque, Feb 9-11, 2012. The second one, “ ‘lighting out for the Territory ahead of the rest’: Beyond the Borders of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” was delivered at the College English Association Annual Conference, in Richmond, Mar. 28-30, 2012.
Colin Dickson (Professor of French, Emeritus) delivered an invited, illustrated lecture titled “Michel de Montaigne’s Singular Essays: The Man, The Book, The Legacy” at St. John’s College - Annapolis on February 24, 2012. Together with St. John’s Tutor Tom May, he mentored a follow-up discussion in that College’s Conversation Room.
Adam Goodheart’s 1861 has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. The book has just been published as a Vintage paperback. In late March, Adam was awarded an honorary short-term Poynter Fellowship at Yale University, where he lectured, visited classes, and met with faculty and students. He has also lectured this semester at Harvard University, Franklin & Marshall College, the National Archives, the Hathaway-Brown School (Shaker Heights, Ohio) and the Hopkins School (New Haven, Conn.). The History Book Club honored 1861 as the Book of the Year for 2011.
Alisha Knight has published her first book, Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream: An African American Writer’s (Re)Visionary Gospel of Success (Univ. of Tennessee Press). Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was the most prolific black female writer of her time. Between 1900 and 1904, writing mainly for Colored American Magazine, she published four novels, at least seven short stories, and numerous articles that often addressed the injustices and challenges facing African Americans in post–Civil War America. In this book, Dr. Knight provides the first full-length critical analysis of Hopkins’s work. Scholars have frequently situated Hopkins within the domestic, sentimental tradition of nineteenth-century women’s writing, with some critics observing that aspects of her writing, particularly its emphasis on the self-made man, seem out of place within the domestic tradition. Dr. Knight argues that Hopkins used this often-dismissed theme to critique American society’s ingrained racism and sexism. In her “Famous Men” and “Famous Women” series for Colored American Magazine, Hopkins constructed her own version of the success narrative by offering models of African American self-made men and women. Meanwhile, in her fiction, she depicted heroes who fail to achieve success or must leave the United States to do so. This study will be of particular interest to literary scholars, historians of African American culture, and students of women’s studies.
Aaron Krochmal delivered two invited seminars to the faculty and students of Kenyon College on 30 and 31 March. His first seminar, entitled “Overland Movements in The Eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta picta): Behavioral, Ecological and Management Perspectives,” summarized the last 2.5 years of work on the landscape ecology of Eastern Painted turtles, and included contributions from research designed and conducted by undergraduate students Hannah O’Malley, ’12, Emily Broomell, ’12, Tyler Brice, ’13 and Brendyn Meisenger, ’13. His second talk, “From Physics to Phylogenetics: An Integrative Look at the Facial Pits of Pitvipers” united physical, physiological and behavioral aspects of the unique infrared detection organ of pitvipers.
At the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Lauren Littlefield presented five different posters with student co-authors. Nine of the co-authors were enrolled in her Fall, 2011 Honors Psychological Testing course and completed the projects as a course laboratory requirement. Two of the projects focused on visual working memory deficits experienced by college students after suffering concussions. The other three examined the interplay of cognitive and personality factors, such as: how divergent thinking fluency relates to sensation seeking; how impulsivity plays a role in binge drinking; and how anxiety can be a motivating factor in math test performance.
Donald McColl gave a paper entitled ”To See the Samaritan Woman in Early Modern Germany” as part of “Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany,” the most recent triennial conference of the Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär Conference, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Kevin McKillop presented two papers at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) in Pittsburgh, PA. The first, “Apology vs. Non-apology: For serious transgressions, which elicits greater forgiveness?”, was co-authored by Sal Schittino, Robert Storck, Beilin Zia. The second, “The effects of frustration on identifying potential enemies,” was co-authored by Catherine Petrick, Lisa Federowicz, Cowles Gaither, Ellen Huffman, Natalie Siciliano.
Kate Moncrief presented a paper, “‘Then let them anatomize Regan’: Women, Bodies, and the Early Modern English Stage” for the “‘A little world made cunningly’: Generative Bodies and Scientific Discourses” panel, Renaissance Society of America Conference, Washington, D.C. March 22-25, 2012.
Andrew Oros spoke about the recent Washington College student experience of service learning in the tsunami-affected region in Japan as a panelist at an event at American University entitled “the US-Japan Alliance after 3/11”, introduced by the Japanese ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki.
Tia Panfile presented a poster, Predicting adolescents’ empathy and forgiveness, at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescents in Vancouver, BC. In addition, Tia was a co-author on two paper presentations and an additional poster presentation.
Juris Pupcenoks presented a paper and chaired a panel at the Middle East Dialogue conference in Washington DC. His paper was titled, “Democratic Islamization in Pakistan and Turkey: Lessons for the post-Arab Spring Middle East.” He served as the chair for a panel, “Advancing Peace and Conflict Studies in Transitioning Democracies: The Iraq Experience as a Model for the Region.”
On February 18, Rick Striner delivered a lecture for Presidents Day at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. Rick’s latest book, Lincoln and Race, has just been published by Southern Illinois University Press.
Hui-Ju Tsai presented her paper “Optimal Consumption and Portfolio Choice for Long-Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income When Asset Returns Are Predictable” in the annual conference held by the National Business and Economics Society in Maui, Hawaii in March 2012. This paper was also presented at the annual conference held by the Midwest Finance Association in February and the conference held by the Southwestern Finance Association in March, both in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Michele Volansky’s dramaturgy work was recently seen at Azuka Theatre in Philadelphia; she worked with playwright Genne Murphy and director Kevin Glaccum for two years before the March 21st world premiere of Murphy’s play, Hope Street and Other Lonely Places. The production runs through April 1, 2012. In addition, Volansky served on the national selection panel for the 2012 PlayPenn new play development conference, selecting six works out of 600 for development at the event in July.
- March 2012
Ryan Kelty organized a mini-conference on military sociology at annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in New York City, Feb. 25–26. He presided over the five mini–conference sessions that showcased fifteen papers ranging in topics from assessment of American deaths in Vietnam by racial/ethnic group pre– and post–Tet Offensive, to the social-psychology of negotiating work & family life in a classified intelligence career field, to effect of contemporary warrior narratives in India on collective identity and geopolitics.
Sean Meehan’s review of Randall Fuller’s book, From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature (Oxford 2011), was published in Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 34.1 2012.
Kathryn Moncrief presented an invited lecture, “‘Then let them anatomize Regan’: Women, Bodies and the Early Modern English Stage” at Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah, February 14, 2014.
On July 16, Shawn Stein’s interview, “La ficción futbolera echa raíz en Ecuador: Una entrevista con José Hidalgo Pallares“, has been published in the February/March 2012 issue of Argus-a.
Michele Volansky was featured on February 13 as part of the League of Professional Theatre Women’s 30th Anniversary Blog. You can find her entry online. In addition, Michele served on the national selection committee for the 2012 National Playwrights Conference, held annually at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT.
- October 2011
Kevin Brien presented his paper “Aesthetics and Spirituality: Taoism, Chan Buddhism, Humanistic Marxism” at a specially invited event held in June 2011 at the Beijing International Studies University in Beijing, China. Also, as a member the Editorial Board of a new journal of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, called International Critical Thought, he participated in Board meetings of the journal held at this Academy in June 2011 in Beijing, Chi
Cristina Casado Presa’s book chapter, “Mother -Daughter Relationships in Contemporary Spanish Theater,” was published in Representations of Family in Contemporary Spain, by McFarland Press.
Martin Connaughton presented a poster entitled “Effects of Exogenous Steroids on Seasonally Dimorphic Changes in the Sonic Muscle of the Atlantic Croaker, Micropogonias undulates” at the 2011 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Minneapolis Minnesota, July 7-12th. The poster represents collaborative work with two Washington College students, Jess Jamrogowicz ‘10 and Joe Yates ‘11.
Melissa Deckman was interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s attitudes on faith and science. Read the story here.
Rebecca Jayne presented a research poster at a mathematics conference given by the Association for Women in Mathematics. The conference was called “40 Years and Counting: AWM’s Celebration of Women in Mathematics” and was held at Brown University.
Aaron Krochmal presented two papers and co-authored a third during the summer of 2011. The first paper, entitled “Burly and Bright! Rattlesnakes Appear to Exhibit One-Trial Learning” was presented at the 2011 Biology of the Rattlesnakes Symposium, 20-23 July 2011, Tucson, AZ. The paper included the first strong evidence for one-trial learning in a viper and was the first to interpret learning in snakes within a broad evolutionary context. . Aaron delivered the second paper, “Eastern Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta picta) Use Traditional Routes When Moving Between Aquatic Habitats” at 12th Annual Meeting of Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, 16-18 August 2011 in Millersville, MD. This paper was the manifestation of a two-year collaborative effort with Biology major Hannah O’Malley, class of 2012. A third paper, “Translocated Eastern Painted Turtles Do Not Successfully Navigate In Novel Habitats,” was presented by Ms. O’Malley at the same meeting and included the results of a related experiment designed and conducted by Ms. O’Malley as part of her Senior Capstone Experience in Biology.
Aaron Lampman published an article titled, “How Folk Classification Interacts with Ethnoecological Knowledge: A Case Study from Chiapas, Mexico” in the Journal of Ecological Anthropology 14(1). The article explores how traditional ecological knowledge is influenced by the structure of folk classification systems.
Jon McCollum presented a paper at the International Council for Traditional Music conference this past July titled “From Monophony to Polyphony: Historical Ethnomusicology and the Armenian Chant/Modal Tradition.” In addition, he just returned from Cleveland, where he took intensive shakuhachi (Japanese Zen Buddhist End-blown Flute) instruction from his sensei. After passing difficult performance exams, he attained an additional professional license.
Kathryn Moncrief has published an article, “‘Obey and be attentive’: Gender and Household Instruction in Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” in Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, edited by Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavheh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011). Her review of Kaara L. Peterson’s Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease and Social Controversy in Shakespeare’s England has also been published in Renaissance Quarterly. 64.3 (2011), 1010-1011.
On July 16, Ken Schweitzer presented a paper at the International Conference on Traditional Music (ICTM) at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, entitled, “The Evolution of Improvisation in Ritual Batá Drumming.”
Karen Smith presented a research paper, “‘May I Have the Pleasure’: Dancing in Colonial America,” as well as a workshop on Pilates for Dancers, and a master class in Dance for Musical Theater at the 31st World Congress on Dance Research held in Didimotiho, Greece. Karen competed in the 2011 National Senior Olympic Games held in Houston, TX, and brought home a gold medal in golf.
Janet Sorrentino gave a keynote address for the Civil War Medicine Museum conference in Frederick MD on Sunday, October 2, 2011. She presented a talk entitled: “Blood: Theory and Therapy from Medieval Bleeding through Modern Transfusion.”
- May 2011
Kevin Brien presented his paper, “Rationality, Spirituality, and Morality: Buddha versus Immanuel Kant,” at a Congress of the Society for Indian Philosophy and Religion held in April 2011 at Davis-Elkins College in Elkins West Virginia.
Tom Cousineau was a guest speaker at the semi-annual meeting of the London Bi-Logic Group, an association that does research on the work of the Chilean psychoanalyst Ignacio Matte Blanco. The title of his talk was “Keeping Open Secrets in Oedipus the King and Hamlet.”
Melissa Deckman attended the Midwest Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting where she organized a panel, “Curriculum and the Culture Wars,” and she presented a paper on the panel, “Religious Literacy in Public Schools: Teaching the Bible in America’s Classrooms.” She was also the discussant for a panel, “Religion and Political Participation in the United States.”
Mike Kerchner served as an invited reviewer for the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program.
Andrea Lange participated in the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, when she and others from the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force met Royal Mounted Canadian police representatives and federal government as well as non-government agency officials to discuss global anti-trafficking strategies.
Andrea Lange and Stewart Bruce are pleased to report that Washington College has received renewal funding of $295,799 for a third year of funding to the Comprehensive Mapping and Analysis Project (CMAP). The award amount this year reflects a 37% increase over last year’s award, especially significant during tighter financial times. The new funding will allow more student interns to work with the project, and we will be taking on new initiatives including a 3-D correctional facilities activity. Last year, the project team produced over 400 maps for various state criminal justice agencies, conducted over 70 technical assistance engagements, and trained over 200 law enforcement agents on crime mapping. Andrea and Stew are also pleased to announce that the College has been awarded an additional $86,400 by the Maryland Governor’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention for programming enhancements to the Maryland Offenders Management System grant, which was awarded to the College two months ago.
Jon McCollum represented the Society for Ethnomusicology’s “Historical Ethnomusicology Special Interest Group” at the annual British Forum for Ethnomusicology Conference in Cornwall, England. His presentation entitled “Music, Technology, and Cultural Translation across Generations” dealt with issues of ethnomusicological fieldwork, methodology, and manuscript digitization. In addition, he chaired another panel at the conference on “Auto-ethnography, Mediation, and Writing.”
Kevin McKillop attended the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) in Cambridge, MA. He presented two papers co-authored with students – the first was entitled, “Rejection of real vs. nonapologies: Does rejecting nonapologies make you look bad?” The second was entitled, “Effects of symbolic revenge and forgiveness on perceptions of a worst enemy.”
Kate Moncrief’s “Home Schooling: The English Gentlewoman” was published in Masculinities, Childhood, Violence: Attending to Early Modern Women–and Men, edited by Amy E. Leonard and Karen L. Nelson (University of Delaware Press, 2011). Her review of Geraldo U.de Sousa’sAt Home in Shakespeare’s Tragedies was published in Renaissance Quarterly, volume 64.1 (spring 2011). She also presented “‘Then let them anatomize Regan’: Women, Bodies, and the Early Modern English Stage” as an invited speaker for the Distinguished Lectures in Renaissance Studies series at Appalachian State University.
John Murray delivered a lecture, “Thoughtless Vigilantes: Media Violence and Brain Activation Patterns in Young Viewers,” at the ACCM Conference, “Scared, Sleepless and Hostile” in Sydney, Australia.
Karen Smith received a Presidential Citation from the National Dance Association (NDA) for her work on behalf of the national dance honor society, Nu Delta Alpha, and for organizing the NDAOur World, Our Dance conference in February. Karen also presented two sessions at the National Dance Association convention in San Diego: Broadway Leaps to San Diego! andStrengthening the Dancer with Pilates.
Janet Sorrentino gave a series of invited lectures to the Staff College of the Federal Drug Administration’s Medical Devices Division in Silver Springs, Maryland. April 21: History of Urological Devices; April 28: History of Prosthetic Limbs; May 5: History of Burn Care Devices; and May 12: History of Radiological Devices.
- April 2011
Ryan Kelty participated in the workshop Social Sciences and Chesapeake Bay Restorationhosted by the Chesapeake Research Consortium (March 10) focused on maximizing the use of social science to better address critical socio-environmental issues affecting the Bay.
Mike Kerchner participated in the March, 24-26 AAC&U Network for Academic Renewalconference series: Engaging STEM Learning: From Promising to Pervasive Practices. He co-chaired the pre-conference workshop: Implementing Interdisciplinary STEM Programs: Connecting Leadership to Learning. During the weekend of April 1-3, Mike served as co-leader of the final roundtable meeting in the Keck/PKAL Facilitating Interdisciplinary Learning Project. The summary report of the project has just been published by the AAC&U: http://www.aacu.org/blast/pubs/pkalworks.cfm
Anne Marteel-Parrish was one of six recipients to receive the ACS-CEI Award for Incorporating Sustainability into Chemistry Education sponsored by the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement (CEI). Anne presented her work on developing a course on green and sustainable chemistry during the ACS-CEI Award Symposium in Anaheim, CA on March 27. On that day the ACS-Student Members chapter than Anne advised until last year received an honorable mention award for the fifth consecutive year for their activities during 2009-2010.
Andrew Oros contributed a chapter on “the politics of national security” to the Handbook of Japanese Politics (Routledge, 2011) and was an invited participant at the 17th Annual Japan-US Security Seminar held in San Francisco in March.
Mindy Reynolds, along two with student collaborators, attended the 50th annual Society of Toxicology meeting in Washington, DC. Ben Longwell ‘12 presented a poster entitled “Characterization of the Molecular Mechanisms of Cadmium and Nickel-Induced Toxicity,” and Christine Lynch ‘11 presented a poster entitled “Mechanisms of Cellular Toxicity for Dual Exposure to NiCl2 and CoCl2 in H460 Human Lung Epithelial Cells.” In addition, Mindy presented a lecture on the resources for the teaching of toxicology at the undergraduate level entitled “Collection Development of Web Resources for the Teaching of Toxicology.”
Karen Smith’s article on “The Spirit of Dance” was published in the Nu Delta Alpha Journal, vol. 3, Feb. 2011
Janet Sorrentino was invited to give the Third Annual Gilbertine Lecture in Sempringham, England on March 13: “The Order of Sempringham and the Medieval English Schools.” The lecture will be published in the proceedings later this year.
Shawn Stein delivered a paper entitled, “Sun and Shadow: Tackling Masculinity in Football Fiction from Brazil and Mexico” at the annual meeting of the Southwest Council of Latin American Studies in San Juan, Puerto Rico on March 11, 2011.
Aileen Tsui presented a paper entitled “‘Little Games’ and Golden Guineas: Size, Price, and Value in Whistler’s Art” at the annual conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, held this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- March 2011
Jin Xiu Guo presented a paper at the 2nd International Conference of Asian Special Libraries held in Tokyo, Japan in February 2011. The paper was titled “Faculty and the Library: A Survey of Research Behavior and Library Use at Wuhan University, China,” an international collaborative research on geomatics faculty.
Charlie Kehm and Leslie Sherman received a program development award from Maryland Sea Grant of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The award funds an initial exploratory study of the distribution and sources of anthropogenic trace metals in bottom sediments of the Chester River, with use of an inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer for metal analysis.
Ryan Kelty organized a five-session mini-conference on military sociology at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in Philadelphia (Feb. 26). He also presented a paper entitled, “Ambiguity on the Front Lines: Perceptions of Civilian Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Ryan’s article (with Ruth A. Kelty), “Human Dimensions of a Fishery at a Crossroads: Resource Valuation, Identity, and Way of Life in a Seasonal Fishing Community,” appears in the current issue of Society & Natural Resources.
Juan Lin published a co-authored article: “Logic in a dynamic brain” by E. Mizraji and J. Lin.Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 73, 373-397 (2011). BMB is an international, peer reviewed journal published by Springer-Verlag.
Sean Meehan has an essay published in the current issue of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching, Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture (Duke University Press), Winter 2011: “‘You are the Book’s Book’: Robert Richardson’s Emersonian Workshop.”
During fall 2010, Ken Miller held two residential fellowships at the David Library of the American Revolution and Colonial Williamsburg’s John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Library to complete the research for his book manuscript, Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence, under contract with Cornell University Press.
Rick Striner’s latest book – Supernatural Romance in Film: Tales of Love, Death, and the Afterlife– has just been published by McFarland & Co.
Michele Volansky served as a member of the Artistic Advisory Board for the annual National Playwright’s Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. This role had her part of the selection team that will send 10 playwrights to the conference to have their work developed in July 2011.
Phil Walsh gave a Tea & Talk lecture at the Rose O’Neill Literary House entitled “A Possession for All Time: Why Ancient Greek Drama Matters.”
- February 2011
Christopher Ames’s first book, The Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction has been reissued in paperback by the University of Georgia Press, 2010.
Erin Anderson’s co-authored article, “Girlhood in the Girl Scouts” by Erin K. Anderson and Autumn Behringer, was published in the journal Girlhood Studies, Winter 2010.
Kevin Brien’s paper, “Humanistic Marxism and Buddhism: Complementaries,” was published in Fall 2010 in the Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion.
Tom Cousineau participated in the “Beckett and Theory” panel sponsored by the Samuel Beckett Society at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in Los Angeles. The title of his paper was “Deleuze and Beckett: Disguising repetitions in Endgame. ”
Lisa Daniels gave a presentation on “Careers in International Development and Graduate School Options” as part of a panel organized for Peace Corps volunteers completing their two years of service. The conference was held in Entebbe, Uganda on January 12, 2011.
On January 26,Mike Kerchner co-organized and participated as a panelist at a pre-conference workshop on Integrating the Sciences, Arts, and Humanities: Global Challenges and the Intentional Curriculum at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in San Francisco. The summary report of the 3-year Keck/PKAL Facilitating Interdisciplinary Learning project was distributed at the workshop. On the 28th Mike also chaired a panel session entitled, Implementing Interdisciplinary STEM Programs: Connecting Interdisciplinary Learning to Classroom Experiences through Meaningful Assessment. He was also one of several attendees invited to author blogs on interesting sessions at the conference and attended a College Advancement Office function with President Reiss and alumni living in the bay area. You can access the AACU blogs at: http://blog.aacu.org/
Andrea Lange and Stewart Bruce were awarded a new grant of $177,346 from the Governor’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention to enhance the Maryland Offenders Management System, an innovative information sharing tool being used by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to combat crime by tracking criminal offenders in the local community. The project employs several talented Washington College students who have responsibility for improving the data quality of the disparate databases used in the application and performing critical analysis and reporting of the information.
Julie Markin authored an article titled “The Importance of Woodstock Complicated Stamped Ceramics Fifty Years after Caldwell” published in the journal Early Georgia. Through analysis of stylistic ceramic motifs from archaeological collections across North Georgia, this article examines the timing of critical cultural developments that led to the rise of the Etowah chiefdom in the Southeastern U.S.
Adi Mayer’s article, “Do More Diverse Environments Increase the Diversity of Subsequent Interaction? Evidence from Random Dorm Assignment” (with Sara Baker and Steven Puller), has been published in the February 2011 issue of Economics Letters. A second article, “A Simple Test of Private Information in Insurance Markets with Heterogeneous Insurance Demand” (with Li Gan and Feng Huang) has been published by the National Bureau of Economic Research as Working Paper No. 16738.
Kitty Maynard’s review of François Rouget’s book “Ronsard et le Livre : Étude de critique génétique et d’histoire littéraire” appeared in Renaissance Quarterly 63.4 (Winter 2010).
Sean Meehan has an essay published in the current issue of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching, Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture (Duke University Press), Winter 2011: “‘You are the Book’s Book’: Robert Richardson’s Emersonian Workshop.”
In early January,Don Munson attended the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Salt Lake City. He delivered a paper “The Distribution of Acanthamoeba spp. in Marine and Estuarine Sediments from the Coast of France” and chaired the contributed paper session “Biodiversity in the Oceans”.
Andrew Oros contributed an opinion article on political reform in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper and an English version in the International Herald Tribune; he also published a scholarly article entitled “Tomorrow’s East Asia Today: Regional Security Cooperation for the 21st Century” in Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies (Vol. 21) produced by the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, DC.
Ricky Sears recently served as the judge for the twelfth annual art competition at Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely, Maryland. “Discovering the Native Landscapes of Maryland’s Eastern Shore” will run from February 14-March 25.
Rick Striner’s book chapter “Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and Herbert Croly’s America” is included in the new anthology Lincoln’s Enduring Legacy, published by Lexington Books.
Michele Volansky served as the adjudicating dramaturg for Region II of the Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival at Towson University January 12-15, 2011. In addition, she coordinated sessions on the critical response to works of art and on dramaturgical research.
Susan Vowels gave a brief presentation at the 8th Annual Queen Anne’s County Legislative Breakfast Exchange on January 5th at Chesapeake College. One of the speakers illustrating vibrant collaborations in Queen Anne’s County that support young children and their families, she described the partnership between the Even Start Family Literacy program in Sudlersville, Maryland and Washington College Students in Free Enterprise, as well as the contributions made by Shawn Stein and his Hispanic Studies students to the same program.
Christine Wade’s latest book (with co-author Tom Walker), Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, was published by Westview Press in January. Noam Chomsky, who provided a blurb for the book, calls this edition “a revealing case study that teaches lessons of great value for understanding the world.”
Lansing Williams has been elected to a three-year term on the Kent County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, and will be serving on the education committee
