Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Anna Levett published an essay, "Can Art Save Your Life?: On Revolution, Political Prisoners, Climate Activism, and Pink Floyd," in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The essay was inspired by discussions with Professor Levett's students in her CMPL 237 course, "Art of Revolution," as well as by Bakunin's Barricade, an installation by the Kurdish-Turkish artist Ahmet Öğüt that made its North American Premiere at Oberlin's Allen Memorial Art Museum last fall.

Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey has been appointed to a new Ohio-based editorial consortium for African Arts, the flagship journal in his field. Headquartered at Miami University, the consortium brings together experts in African art at Miami, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Kent State, and Ohio State.

Visiting Assistant Professor of French Nathan H. Dize has published a translation of Antoine of Gommiers, a novel by Haitian writer Lyonel Trouillot with Arizona-based publisher Schaffner Press. The author will be in conversation with fellow Haitian author Yanick Lahens and Andrew Tepper on City of Asylum on Thursday, April 27 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. as part of the International Reading Series.

The Association for Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) accepted a proposal submitted by Assistant Dean and Director Rebecca Smith and Assistant Director Victoria Colella with the Office for Disability and Access to present at the AHEAD Excellence and Equity 2023 national conference in Portland, Oregon, July 19-21. The abstract, Home Sweet Home: Responding to the Rising Requests for Housing Accommodations, was submitted in collaboration with colleagues at the disability offices at the University of Wisconsin, Colorado College, and the University of Northern Colorado and was selected out of 250 submissions for just over 100 session times.

On February 28 and April 2, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Sergio Gutiérrez delivered  invited lectures in the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and in University of Texas, Permian Basin. His talks, on figures of labor and idleness, respectively, in 19th century Mexican economic discourse are part of his forthcoming book, Mexico, Interrupted: Labor, Idleness, and the Economic Imaginary of Independence.

Emeritus Professor of History Steven Volk was interviewed for an episode of the EdSurge podcast on April 12. The topic: "Did Liberal Arts Colleges Miss a Chance to Become More Inclusive After the Pandemic?"

Yveline Alexis was a featured speaker for Brown University's Archival Voices lecture series where she gave a talk on "Haitian Voices and Multilingual Sources." She was also a guest panelist for Brown's Watson Institute's symposium on "Haiti's Overlapping Crises: Is There a Way Through?"

Assistant Professor of Dance, Al Evangelista, was one of the curators and contributors for Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Chat Vol. 1: Social Choreography in the Digital: where bodies might. The contributions center on forms of digital care, reflecting the range of innovative digital care practices that the pandemic finally made widely available. 

Jackie Oh, fourth-year sociology and biology double-major, presented a research paper with coauthor Alicia Smith-Tran, assistant professor of sociology, at the North Central Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The paper is titled, "The Physician Biography Video: A Tool for Shaping a Personal and Institutional Public Image."

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Amy Berg was interviewed about effective altruism by the NPR podcast The Indicator from Planet Money.