Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Allegra Hyde received a Pushcart Prize for her story "The Future is a Click Away." First published in BOMB and then in her speculative collection, The Last Catastrophe, the story imagines a near-future community grappling with the seductive power of a corporate algorithm. Recently, Gabrielle Bellot wrote about "The Future is a Click Away" in an article about AI and literature for LitHub, noting that the story shows how "artificial intelligence is already deeply embedded in our culture, yet all too many of us seem to think of it as something new."

"The Future is a Click Away" will appear in the 2024 edition of The Pushcart Prize anthology.

A translation of a poem by contemporary Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Kocharyan by Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Anna Lordan was shortlisted for the Ukrainian Institute London's Translation Prize and published in a special edition of the London Ukrainian Review dedicated to Victoria Amelina.

Joshua Davidson just published a paper in Sustainable Cities and Society titled "A Socio-Spatial Approach to Define Priority Areas for Bicycle Infrastructure Using Covid-19 Data" that develops new methodologies to more equitably plan bicycle infrastructure. The article will appear in a special issue on the "People-Environment-Infrastructure Relationship in Future Cities."

Associated Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón’s book, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence, was published in June by Vanderbilt University Press. Mexico, Interrupted studies the post-independence elite’s obsession with the labor and idleness of the population between in their attempts to create a wealthy, independent nation. 

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista is one of three dance artists whose work is being supported in 2023 through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. Evangelista's project, developed in partnership with Daring Dances (Ann Arbor, MI), is part of NCCAkron's Dancing Labs residency program.

Associate Professor Ellen Wurtzel published an article in the August 2023 issue of French Historical Studies, entitled "Passionate Encounters, Public Healing. Medieval Urban Bathhouses in Northern France." Using medical treatises, trial records, literary sources, and archival documentation, the article argues that, far from being sites primarily associated with crime and prostitution, bathhouses encouraged sociability, brought disparate groups together, and were in fact essential to the circulation and well‐being of people in medieval cities as places of emotional community.

Charis Stanek ’18 and Greggor Mattson published the results of her Sociology Honors Project in Deviant Behavior. Her mixed-methods study investigated if individuals in high-resource, low-stigma environments experience any benefits from disclosing their mental illness. Data included a survey (N = 384) and 50 in-depth interviews about stigma on campus, mental illness disclosure, and students’ social capital. Charis is the Clinical Research Coordinator at Nationwide Children's Hospital and is starting the Joint MSW-Ph.D. Program in Social Work at The Ohio State University in the Fall.

In June, Jill Greenwood and Ellis Lane from the Education Department at the Allen Memorial Art Museum presented at the national conference for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG). Greenwood and Lane partnered with Yale University for a panel on museum accessibility and creating pathways for student involvement. In late August, Lane will present again at the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference in Boston.

Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith published two articles continuing his research on the history of international law: “State Sovereignty,” in Peter Jackson, William Mulligan, and Glenda Sluga, eds., Peacemaking and International Order After the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), and “International Law and the Greek-Bulgarian and Greek-Turkish Population Exchanges,” in Jonathan Conlin and Ozan Ozavci, eds., They All Made Peace—What is Peace?: The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the New Imperial Order (London: Ginko Library, 2023).

Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber has coauthored an analysis of Spain's parliamentary elections, which took place on July 23, for the Nation magazine. He also appeared on CNBC International and was quoted in articles on the topic in Vox, the Miami Herald, Montréal's La Presse, and the Dutch venue Nu. The second, revised edition of Prof. Faber's book Exhuming Franco: Spain's Second Transition is due out with Vanderbilt University Press in November.