Faculty and Staff Notes

Alberto Zambenedetti, visiting assistant professor of cinema studies and Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow, delivered the lecture “A Proud Immigrant: Renegotiating FIAT’s ‘Ethnicity’ Question” on May 9 at the 2015 Toledo Automobile Film Festival and Academic Conference.

Qiusha Ma, associate professor of Chinese; Steven Wojtal, professor of geology and associate dean for curriculum; and Barbara Sawhill, director of the Cooper International Learning Center, presented “Oberlin’s Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) Grant: Connecting Languages with the Study of the Environment in Asia” at the Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum Annual Conference at Denison University on April 16, 2015.

Eve Sandberg, chair of the politics department, was a speaker for World Press Freedom Day, an event hosted by the U.S. Embassy Information Resource Center. Sandberg's talk, titled "Zambian Voices in a Globalizing World," was delivered May 4 in Lusaka, Zambia.

The book Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of The Clash by Randal Doane, assistant dean of studies, has received a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award (silver) in the popular culture category. (See No. 65 on this website.)

Eric Estes, vice president and dean of students and assistant professor of comparative American studies, was invited to present on a panel of out LGBTQ chief student affairs officers at the recent annual American College Personnel Association conference in Tampa, Florida. In addition to discussing opportunities and challenges for LGBTQ-identified professionals in higher education administration, he and other leaders in the field hosted a social gathering for LGBTQ-identified professionals attending the conference. These events continue to foster a conversation about organizing by and mentoring for LGBTQ-identified administrators in higher education.

Crystal Biruk, assistant professor of anthropology, delivered an invited lecture titled "Cooking and Cleaning Data: Embodied Enumeration in a Malawian Research World" on April 30 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies.

Professor of Psychology Nancy Darling was interviewed on Capetown South African radio by Abongile Nzelezele about her work on adolescent lying.

Darling has done research on adolescent lying and their decisions to share information with their parents in the U.S., Chile, Italy, Uganda, and the Philippines. She recently blogged about this work for Psychology Today in her piece “Why You Lied to Your Parents (and Whether They Believed You).” This work caught the eye of Nzelezele, who interviewed Darling about how accurate parents are at detecting lies, why and when adolescents lie, and what kind of parenting helps teens open up.

Professor of Psychology Cindy Frantz, currently a visiting scholar at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, has given two invited talks at her host university.

The first talk, titled “Environmental Dashboard: Combining public displays of real-time resource use with community voices to engage, empower, and celebrate stewardship” was given at University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability's seminar series on April 16. The second talk, titled “Why do humans benefit from nature? An argument for the need to belong.” was given at the University of Otago’s Psychology Seminar series on April 20.

Frantz—along with Paul Thibodeau, assistant professor of psychology; John Petersen, director of environmental studies and Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of environmental studies; and Rumi Shammin, associate professor of environmental studies—has also been awarded a National Science Foundation grant from the Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences program for $329,325.

The grant focuses on systems thinking, a way of conceptualizing reality and making decisions that emphasizes relationships and interdependencies. Their research will empirically test the contention that systems thinking improves decision making. It will also test whether mental models, such as metaphors, can induce a systems thinking mindset and whether decision makers must value the system in question for systems thinking to have beneficial effects on decision making.

Eve Sandberg, chair of the politics department, has given two talks regarding her book Moroccan Women, Activists and Gender Politics: An Institutional Analysis while in London. The book was co-authored with Kenza Aqertit and published in September 2014.

The first talk took place April 20 at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and was titled “Altering a National Institution: the Moroccan Case of Changing Gendered Norms, Procedures, and Practices." The second talk took place April 22 at City University London and was titled "Overcoming Constraints: Successful Women's Organizing in the Moroccan Case."

Associate Professor of Sociology Greggor Mattson was invited to present at the European Union-funded prostitution policy network conference Troubling Prostitution: Exploring Intersections of Sex, Intimacy, and Labour in Vienna, Austria, on April 18. Conference attendees, who included researchers, sex workers rights activists, and journalists from 52 countries, were welcomed in the town hall by representatives of the mayor and city council.

Mattson presented his paper, entitled "States of Vulnerability: Prostitution Reform as a Symptom of EU Integration," which was taken from his forthcoming book on the cultural politics of European prostitution reform. The book argues that the European Union funding mechanisms to create a European-wide civil society laid the groundwork for competing networks of prostitution policy advocates, polarizing reforms around two options and leading to a scramble of national reform proposals during the period of European expansion 1998-2004.

The contemporary struggle between advocates of prostitution legalization and those who support the criminalization of buying sex crowds out alternative policy solutions, obscures the national differences among those policies, and yet reflects the success of EU efforts to build a continental civil society.