Faculty notebook - September 2021

Publications

Yasemin Akbaba, Professor of Political Science, with co-author Filiz Baskan, published “Engaging with Diversity through Technology” in Teaching International Relations, edited by James Scott, Ralph G. Carter, Brandy Jolliff Scott, and Jeffrey S. Lantis (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2021). Prof. Baskan and I have been connecting our courses, offered at Gettysburg College (GC) in the United States and Izmir University of Economics (IUE) in Turkey, since the spring of 2011. Our students work in pairs on various assignments across two continents using information technology. In this study, we reflect on our decade-old collaboration with the help of student performance and survey data to locate our work in the larger pedagogical research on the benefits of diversity and internationalization.

Megan Benka-Coker, Assistant Professor of Health Sciences, with co-authors Bonnie N. Young, Joshua P. Keller, Ethan S. Walker, Sarah Rajkumar, John Volckens, Nicholas Good, Casey Quinn, Christian L’Orange, Zachary D. Weller, Sebastiano Africano, Anibal B. Osorto Pinel, Jennifer L. Peel, and Maggie L. Clark, published “Impact of the Wood-Burning Justa Cookstove on Fine Particulate Matter Exposure: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Trial in Rural Honduras” in Science of the Total Environment 767.1 (May 2021): 144369. We used a randomized intervention study to explore the impact of a cookstove intervention on levels of air pollution in the homes of women in Honduras. We find that improved biomass cookstoves have the potential to reduce both kitchen and personal exposures that may lead to beneficial health outcomes.

Kathy Berenson, Associate Professor of Psychology, with alum co-authors Jill Glazer ’18, Tommi Oleson ’20, and Cindy Campoverde ’20, published “Effects of Affirming Values on Self-Compassion and Mental Health Treatment Stigma” in Stigma and Health (2021, advance publication online). In an experiment that replicated and extended the independent research project designed and conducted by Jill Glazer, we found that asking people to reflect on their personal values increased their self-compassion and decreased their stigmatizing attitudes towards mental disorders. Moreover, among individuals for whom perceived public stigma was a treatment barrier, affirming values reduced internalized treatment stigma and increased willingness to seek help.

Michael Birkner, Professor of History, published “The Warrior as Priest: Edmund Herring and the ‘Call to the People of Australia’” in Victorian Historical Journal 91 (December 2020): 345–369. Led by a prominent World War II hero and Chief Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court, and other members of the conservative elite, the “Call to the People of Australia” sought to revive morality and social harmony through religion-fueled rallies and renewed devotion to the British monarchy. It enjoyed a brief surge of support, but ultimately faltered.

Birkner published “Dwight Eisenhower and Civil War Legacies” in The Long Civil War: New Explorations of America’s Enduring Conflict, edited by John David Smith and Raymond Arsenault (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2021). A lifelong student of Civil War history, Dwight Eisenhower found as president that navigating the sectional divide on issues relating to slavery, race, and Lost Cause icons like Robert E. Lee could be vexing. This article provides the context for understanding Eisenhower’s support for “Lost Cause” history while simultaneously working to advance African American civil rights.

Scott Boddery, Assistant Professor of Political Science, with co-author Graig R. Klein, published “Presidential Use of Diversionary Drone Force and Public Support” in Research & Politics 8.2 (2021): 1–7. This study evaluates the comparative difference between diversionary drone force and traditional uses of diversionary force. We find that a successful drone strike produces a significant increase in presidential approval despite a poor economy, and the approval increase produced by drone use is substantially larger than the modest improvement produced by traditional uses of force.

Alice Brawley-Newlin, Assistant Professor of Management, with co-authors Sergio Miguel Marquez and Jo M. Alanis, published “Making It Happen: Keeping Precarious Workers’ Experiences Central during COVID-19” in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice 14.1–2 (May 24, 2021). We highlight the responsibility of our field to support precarious workers by conducting worker-centric research that draws on their unique experiences during COVID-19. We provide concrete guidelines and resources to help researchers connect with workers, conduct this type of research, and help drive government policy.

Nathifa Greene, Assistant Professor of Philosophy , published “Stereotype Threat, Identity, and the Disruption of Habit” in An Introduction to Implicit Bias: Knowledge, Justice, and the Social Mind, edited by Erin Beeghly and Alex Madva (New York: Routledge, 2020). This is a critical analysis of how stereotype threat is construed in social and political philosophy, arguing that this concept should be understood as a disruption of habitual experience rather than as a problem of self-concept or self-efficacy. This argument builds on conceptions of embodiment in phenomenological psychology and social philosophy, with a concern to prioritize the significance of social context among other things. By proposing that disruptions to the flow of habitual action are a more compelling explanation than other possible causes or situational factors, this description of stereotype threat points to distinct moral and political implications in the problems of implicit bias.

Julie Hendon, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, with co-author Calogero M. Santoro, published "Editing Latin American Antiquity in the Context of Global Changes / Edición de Latin American Antiquity en el contexto de los cambios globales” in Latin American Antiquity 31.3 (September 2020): 451–454. My coeditor and I outline our plans as the new editors of the journal Latin American Antiquity, published by the Society for American Archaeology and Cambridge University Press.

Hendon, with co-author Santoro, published “Si la educación, las artes y la cultural fueran cuerdas principales de los tejidos socio-ecológicos ¿cantaría otro gallo en el planeta? / If Education, Arts, and Culture Were the Main Threads of the Socioecological Fabric, Would Another Rooster Sing on the Planet?” in Latin American Antiquity 31.4 (December 2020): 659–663. My coeditor and I celebrate the signing of a bilateral agreement between Chile and the United States to project Chilean cultural property under the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Hendon, with co-author Santoro, published “Diferencias de género de autores y revisores antes y después del inicio de la pandemia / Gender Differences of Authors and Reviewers Before and After the Onset of the Pandemic” in Latin American Antiquity 32.2 (June 2021): 229–238. My coeditor and I review submission trends to the journal Latin American Antiquity during the pandemic shutdown of field research, access to labs and libraries, and the shift to remote teaching by universities and colleges in 2020. We look at the gender of authors and reviewers, and since Latin American Antiquity is an international journal, we also look at where our authors and reviewers are located. We received a record number of submissions during the year reviewed, and did not see a decline in submissions by women. We express concern, however, for research and publication trends as the pandemic continues to affect researchers worldwide.

Alvaro Kaempfer, Professor and currently Chair, Department of Spanish, published “Chile, 1833: debate mediático, relato político y continuidad institucional” in Sensibilidades conservadoras: el debate cultural sobre la civilización en América Latina y España durante el siglo XIX, edited by Kari Soriano Salkjelsvik (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2021). From 1811, the first constitutional text adopted by Chile, as well as other post-colonial political units in Latin America, and 1812, time of the first Constitution approved by a liberal congress in Spain, the political and cultural debate across Latin America about the constitutional framework and text for the newly independent country led in Chile to the 1833 Constitution. This was a longstanding response to the initial liberal projects not only in Chile but also throughout the Hispanic world.

Kaempfer published “Paris, the End of the Party in Alberto Blest Gana’s Los Trasplantados” in Open Cultural Studies 5.1 (2021): 27–39. This article explores a fictional account of traveling to Europe by Latin American elites, and the role of women/daughters in the trading process to access to European decadent nobilities by families/fathers.

Ryan Kerney, Associate Professor of Biology, with co-authors Sten Anslan, Maria Sachs, Lois Rancilhac, Henner Brinkmann, Jörn Peterson, Sven Künzel, Anja Schwarz, Hartmut Arndt, and Miguel Vences, published “Diversity and Substrate-Specificity of Green Algae and Other Micro-Eukaryotes Colonizing Amphibian Clutches in Germany, Revealed by DNA Metabarcoding” in The Science of Nature 108 (June 28, 2021, online). We discovered that a symbiotic algae known from North American and Japanese amphibian embryos is also in European frogs.

Kevin Lavery, Program Manager, Eisenhower Institute, published “‘Youth of the World, Unite So That You May Live’: Youth, Internationalism, and the Popular Front in the World Youth Congress Movement, 1936–1939” in Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research 46.3 (July 2021): 269–285. The World Youth Congress Movement, launched by liberal internationalists in the mid-1930s, presented itself as a cross-section of youth speaking for an entire generation on the world stage. Because of the significant influence of Communist participants, the WYCM became known as a Communist front movement, but it is better understood as a new arena of ideological contact between liberal and Communist internationalisms.

Jae-In Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, with co-authors Gihwan Gu and Myoungjin Lee, published “Work Environment and Workers’ Smoking: The Impact of Affect and Social Support Among Korean Workers” in Journal of Asian Sociology 50.2 (June 2021, online). This article investigates the links between work environment and smoking behaviors among employees in South Korea. We found that social support mediates emotional workload, and that greater social support in the workplace reduces the chances of smoking.

Devin McKinney, Archives Assistant, Musselman Library, edited The Unfinished Sermon: A Tribute to Rev. John Vannorsdall (Gettysburg, PA: Musselman Library, 2021). Vannorsdall, chaplain of Gettysburg College from 1962 to 1976, was the campus’s most visible advocate for peace, civil rights, women’s liberation, and the environment. Using excerpts from his sermons and other writings, contemporary news reports, remembrances from colleagues and former students, and a specially-written reflection by his son, this volume paints a portrait of the man, the College, and the era.

Salma Monani, Professor and currently Chair, Department of Environmental Studies, with co-authors Renata Ryan Burchfield (Cherokee), Danika Medak-Saltzman (Chippewa Turtle Clan), and William Lempert, published “Indigenous Media: Dialogic Resistance to Climate Disruption” in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, edited by T.J. Demos, Emily Eliza Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee (New York: Routledge, 2020). Spotlighting Indigenous artists from geographies as far apart as the North American Arctic to Australia, and covering a variety of media from hip-hop and multimedia installations to machinima and two types of virtual reality (a room-scale visual installation, and a haptic experience created on a personal computer), the co-authors provide vignettes that consider how contemporary Indigenous artists express resilience, adaptation, and survivance, and imaginatively help us rethink notions of climate disruption in specifically Indigenous terms—i.e., as scenarios that are all too familiar to peoples who have survived centuries of colonially induced violence to their environments and life-ways.

Yoko Nishimura, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, published “Doing Archaeology Outside of the Trench: Energizing Museum ‘Diaspora’ Collections for Research” in Archaeological Research in Asia 24 (December 2020): 1–21. This paper highlights archaeological research utilizing “diaspora” collections—artifacts excavated in homeland sites far away from the museums where they are currently stored. Embedding the diaspora collection within its homeland dataset facilitates development of meaningful research questions, and leads to solid archaeological research despite the lack of detailed excavation information. A case study exemplifying this approach is drawn from Jomon-period pottery data originally excavated near Tokyo and currently stored in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.

William O’Hara, Assistant Professor, Conservatory of Music, published “The Composer as Master of Development” in Antoine Reicha and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Composer, edited by Fabio Morabito and Louise Bernard de Raymond (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2021). This chapter looks at Reicha’s distinctive way of theorizing and teaching sonata form: he recomposes an existing work by Mozart, adding a development to the “Overture” from The Marriage of Figaro. From this example, I extrapolate the central importance of the development—often the least-theorized section of a sonata—to Reicha.

Patturaja Selvaraj, Assistant Professor of Management, with co-authors Nobin Thomas and Rajesh Kaduba Mokale, published “(mis)Management of Multiple Tensions and Coexisting Conflicting Dualities during Restructuring: A Paradox Theory Perspective from an Emerging Economy” in Journal of Organizational Change Management 34.5 (2021): 860–873. The objective in this paper is to investigate how organizations create multiple paradoxical tensions, and how the combined effect of such tensions can constrain organizations during restructuring. The authors thus aim to help managers think reflectively, and plan interventions to deal with issues arising from restructuring through the lens of paradox theory.

Selvaraj, with co-authors Agrata Pandey, Ranjeet Nambudiri, and Ashish Sadh, published “A Temporal Study on Subordinates’ Response to Destructive Leadership: Voice Withdrawal as a Conflict Coping Mechanism” in International Journal of Conflict Management (August 12, 2021, online). This study aims to integrate research on destructive leadership and subordinates’ voice behavior as a conflict coping mechanism.

Tim Shannon, Professor of History, published “Introduction: Ruminations on the ‘F’ and ‘B’ Words” in Pennsylvania History 88 (Summer 2021): 281–286. This essay serves as an introduction to a special issue of Pennsylvania History, for which I served as guest editor. It evaluates recent works on the early Pennsylvania frontier by using the “borderlands” paradigm now current in early American history.

Steve Siviy, John McCrea and Marion Ball Dickson Professor of Psychology, with co-authors Heidi M.B. Lesscher, E.J. Marijke Achterberg, and Louk J.M.J. Vanderschuren, published “Individual Differences in Social Play Behaviour Predict Alcohol Intake and Control over Alcohol Seeking in Rats” in Psychopharmacology (August 2, 2021, online). Individual levels of playfulness were found to predict the sensitivity to alcohol-directed behaviors. Highly playful rats were found to be more prone to alcohol intake, yet showed greater control over alcohol-seeking. These findings increase our understanding of the relationship between social development and vulnerability to alcohol-use disorder.

Beatriz Trigo, Associate Professor of Spanish, published “Investigar en el contexto de las humanidades digitales y del español LE/L2” in e-Research y español LE/L2: Investigar en la era digital, edited by Mar Cruz Piñol (New York: Routledge, 2021). This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to how research is conducted in the digital era, especially in relation to Spanish as a second language.

Mercedes Valmisa, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, published Adapting: A Chinese Philosophy of Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency—what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin ¿). Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems.

Kerry Wallach, Associate Professor of German Studies, published “Visual Weimar: The Iconography of Social and Political Identities” in The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic, edited by Nadine Rossol and Benjamin Ziemann (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021). This chapter focuses on how visual representations of gendered, racialized, and political and class differences called attention to these categories in both divisive and unifying ways.

Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications, Musselman Library, with staff co-author Mary Elmquist, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Musselman Library, alum co-author Sarah Appedu ’18, and co-author Sharon Birch, published “Inequitable Impacts of Textbook Costs at a Small, Private College: Results from a Textbook Survey at Gettysburg College” in Open Praxis 13.1 (2021): 69–87. A student textbook survey conducted in the fall of 2019 showed that most Gettysburg students spent $300 on required books and materials that semester. Financial-aid awards did not cover the cost for most students receiving aid. Negative effects were more pronounced for first-generation students and Pell Grant recipients, who were more likely to not purchase required books, to not register for a course due to cost, and to struggle academically.

Commentaries, blog posts, and general-audience publications

Scott Boddery, Assistant Professor of Political Science, with alum co-author Benjamin R. Pontz ’20, posted “Don’t Eliminate the Filibuster. Reform It” at The Dispatch (February 1, 2021). This guest essay advocates for filibuster reform rather than its elimination. Instead of doing away with the governing mechanism altogether, we advocate that its use should be capped and limited to only a subset of possible legislative endeavors.

Reviews

R.C. Miessler, Systems Librarian, Musselman Library, reviewed War Stories, by Gabrielle Atwood Halko, in Digital Humanities 2.7 (July 2021). This is a review of a digital project that tells the stories of children during World War II.

Professional papers and presentations

Yasemin Akbaba, Professor of Political Science, virtually participated in two panels at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), April 6–9, 2021. She chaired “Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching IR in a Disrupted World,” and was a discussant for “IR Pedagogy in World War C.” The panels were linked by a shared theme.

Akbaba virtually presented a paper titled “On Campus and Online: Student Engagement in the COVID-19 Era” at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), April 7, 2021. This paper discusses how students’ engagement and participation changed in the spring 2020 semester as a result of transitioning to remote learning.

Akbaba, with co-authors Babak RezaeeDaryakenari and Ozgur Ozdamar, virtually presented a paper titled “Faith-Based Roles of Iran-Saudi Arabia Rivalry” at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), April 7, 2021. We presented the preliminary framework of a larger project that aims to account for the effect of faith-based foreign policy roles in Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry.

Alice Brawley-Newlin, Assistant Professor of Management, with colleagues Cynthia L.S. Pury, Shawn Saylors, and Fred S. Switzer, virtually presented a paper titled “Understanding the Structure and Nature of Work on MTurk to Guide Future Research” at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, “Work, Employment, and Society,” August 25–27, 2021. This paper reports a comprehensive description of the types of work available on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, as well as the tools and characteristics workers find necessary to effectively complete these tasks. By describing workers' ways of utilizing the platform in such depth, we provide a foundation for more focused, accurate research on these workers' experiences.

Brawley-Newlin, with colleague Courtney Bryant, virtually presented a symposium paper titled “Discrimination in the Gig Economy: Who’s to Blame for Behavior?” at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, August 3, 2021. This paper examines consumer perceptions of reports of discriminatory behavior by gig workers towards customers. We find that consumers tend to blame the gig company, even when informed that the workers are employed as contractors, whose behaviors cannot be fully controlled by their respective companies.

Brawley-Newlin virtually presented a poster titled “Artificial Discriminant Validity Induced at Time 2: Extending Weijters et al. (2014)” at the 86th International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), July 19–23, 2021. In this presentation, I shared findings that splitting a single, unidimensional measure across time periods results in two empirically distinct measurement factors that share about 50% of their variance (as opposed to 100%). These findings suggest reconsideration of the common recommendation to split survey measures over time to control for other methodological problems.

R.C. Miessler, Systems Librarian, Musselman Library, gave a virtual talk titled “Values-Based Communities of Practice in the Digital Humanities” as part of the panel discussion “Possibilities for DH Social Justice Pedagogy in the Library” at the Annual Conference of the Association of Computers in the Humanities (ACH), July 21, 2021. This talk focuses on the evolution of the development of local, values-based DH communities of practice that transcend typical administrator/undergraduate hierarchies, and how those values are transmitted and reinforced via experimentation, mentorship, and pedagogy. Past student projects created during the summer programs that have focused on the local community and issues of social justice are highlighted to show how the values have carried on in student research activity.

Miessler gave a virtual lightning-round presentation titled “Project Management as Core DH Skill for Undergraduates” as part of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) 2021 Project Management in the Humanities, June 9, 2021. This is an introduction to how the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship (DSSF) at Musselman Library situates project management as a core skill of Digital Humanities, and describes the structure of the various workshops used to support project management in the DSSF program. Additionally, the talk shows how students have found value in applying project management skills and techniques to their independent research projects.

Miessler, with staff colleague Kevin Moore, Research, Instruction, and Online Learning Librarian, Musselman Library, conducted a poster and digital demonstration session titled “All Your Basecamp are Belong to Us: Managing Undergraduates to Create a DH Toolkit” as part of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) Conference and Colloquium, June 18, 2021. Adapting Digital Humanities instruction to meet the needs of students and faculty members working remotely became a priority as COVID-19 canceled plans for on-campus, in-person classes at our small liberal arts college. The eventual solution was to develop an online resource to provide asynchronous DH support or to flip synchronous DH instruction. This project, the DH Toolkit, is a collection of tutorials and documentation open to anyone working on digital projects. Specifically, it covers how to use key digital tools, develop accessible user experiences, and navigate copyright concerns.

Miessler and Moore gave a virtual lightning-round talk titled “The DH Toolkit: A Collaborative, Open, and Extensible Experiment in Pedagogy” as part of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum, November 9, 2020. In the summer of 2020, librarians and undergraduates at Gettysburg College collaborated virtually to develop the DH Toolkit, a collection of digital learning objects for Digital Humanities tools and concepts. This lightning talk discusses the collaborative framework for creating the toolkit and its future in DH pedagogy at Gettysburg.

Miessler and Moore conducted a webinar titled “‘Shut Up and Take the Mellon Money!’: Adapting a Library-Led Digital Humanities Program to Accommodate Grant Funding” as part of the “Constructing Digital Humanities Grant Proposals as a Librarian” virtual conference, June 29, 2020. This presentation discusses how the team of librarians who facilitate Musselman Library’s Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship program have negotiated the shift from local to grant funding, focusing on how we have organized our team and adapted program outcomes, assessment, and reporting to fit the requirements of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Presidential Leadership Grant. We review some unexpected challenges encountered when working with grant funding, and how we have successfully worked within the parameters of the grant to fit our needs locally.

William O’Hara, Assistant Professor, Conservatory of Music, gave a virtual talk titled “Phrase Extension in Haydn’s String Quartet Minuets: A Preliminary Corpus Study” at the Future Directions of Music Cognition conference, March 6–7, 2021. This short paper, available online as part of the conference proceedings, describes a corpus study of phrase extension techniques used by Franz Joseph Haydn in his string quartet minuets.

Beatriz Trigo, Associate Professor of Spanish, gave a virtual presentation titled “Epistemic Transmediality or the Porosity of Novel and Film: Reflections on Soldiers of Salamina” at the 52nd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), March 10–14, 2021. This presentation explores the novel Soldados de Salamina and the film of the same name as a transmedial text.

Trigo conducted a webinar titled “Indagaciones: Exploring Hispanic Cultural Studies in Multimodal Formats” as part of the Books for a Better World Series, Georgetown University, December 3, 2020. This webinar explores the role of multimodal formats in relation to the teaching of cultural production.

Professional distinctions and awards

William O’Hara, Assistant Professor, Conservatory of Music, received the Society for Music Theory—Popular Music Interest Group’s Adam Krims Award for Outstanding Publication by a Junior Scholar for his 2018 article “Music Theory and the Epistemology of the Internet; or Analyzing Music Under the New Thinkpiece Regime.” The award citation reads, “This piece examines the phenomenon of recent articles in the popular press that use music theory, treating it simultaneously as scientifically rigorous, and arcane and mysterious. O’Hara shows that these writings offer fascinating reflections upon music theory as it is practiced in the academy, particularly as it relates to the growing movement to engage with non-specialist audiences.”

Digital projects

R.C. Miessler, Systems Librarian, Musselman Library, with staff colleague Kevin Moore, Research, Instruction, and Online Learning Librarian, Musselman Library, student colleague Emma Poff ’22, and alum colleague Emma Lewis ’20, created the Digital Humanities Toolkit, a collection of tutorials and documents designed to provide information about common Digital Humanities tools, as well as support for issues related to digital projects such as copyright and accessibility.

Marta Robertson, Professor, Conservatory of Music, created a digital project titled “‘A Gift to Be Simple’: Japanese American Influence in Appalachian Spring.” Prof. Robertson looks at the iconic ballet Appalachian Spring (1944) through the lens of Japanese-American influences on the initial production, especially via the dancing of Yuriko [Kikuchi] and the set design of Isamu Noguchi. Having been detained in incarceration camps, Yuriko and Noguchi offer political and cultural perspectives on the frontier and Americana that contrast with those of choreographer Martha Graham and composer Aaron Copland.

Professional or creative activity

Yasemin Akbaba, Professor of Political Science, in January 2020 began her tenure as co-editor of International Studies Perspectives (ISP), a peer-reviewed journal that publishes works on theory, policy-making, and innovations in pedagogy.

Shannon Egan, Director, Schmucker Art Gallery, co-curated an exhibition titled Scatter Terrain at the John and June Alcott Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, August 23–September 24, 2021. Scatter Terrain features the work of 25 recognized national and international artists to examine issues related to the isolation of the pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis. A 40-page catalogue with curatorial essay was published to coincide with the exhibition, and the co-curators presented a virtual gallery talk.

Nathifa Greene, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, was awarded a 2021 Weeksville Heritage Center Freedom Fellowship. The Freedom Fellowship brings together community members to explore genealogy, oral history, archival practice, and collaborative performance through a series of public trainings and creative activations inspired by the founding and radical roots of the Weeksville neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY. The 2021 Freedom Fellows cohort are interested in public scholarship rooted in activism, cultural organizing, and making work that demonstrates critical exploration and deep love for Black culture and legacies of Black liberation, and that actively engage individuals, families, and the community being created through this fellowship.

Ian Isherwood, Associate Professor of War and Memory Studies, chaired a multi-institutional planning committee for the International Society for First World War Studies virtual conference, September 16–18, 2021. He was joined by his long-time comrades-in-digital-humanities, Amy Lucadamo, College Archivist, Musselman Library, and R.C. Miessler, Systems Librarian, Musselman Library, who helped Gettysburg College host the international event involving 80 participants across multiple continents. For their service, Miessler, Lucadamo, and Isherwood have been elected Fellows of the International Society for First World War Studies.

Grant awards

Jim Downs, Gilder Lehrman NEH Professor of Civil War Era Studies

National Endowment for the Humanities, “Civil War Archives: A New Social and Cultural History of the Civil War” ($161,754)

Shelli Frey, Professor, endowed Mansdorfer Chair of Chemistry, and currently Chair, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh, acquisition of two UV-vis spectrometers for curricular use in the Chemistry Department ($5,000)

Natasha Gownaris, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, and Andy Wilson, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

Pennsylvania Department of Education PA GOAL, “Developing a Comprehensive OER for Intermediate-Level Ecology Courses” ($15,200)

Jeffrey Rioux, Director, Center for Public Service

Nature’s Path Foods, Inc., Gardens 4 Good Painted Turtle Farm ($5,000)

Angel Solis, Assistant Professor of Biology

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Career Development ($10,000)

Alecea Standlee, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Pennsylvania Department of Education PA GOAL, to provide enhanced accessibility and equity of materials for Soc 204: Mass Media and Popular Culture, through the use of zero-cost materials ($2,164)

Andy Wilson, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

Pennsylvania Game Commission, “Developing Sampling Strategies for the 3rd Pennsylvania Bird Atlas” ($34,588)