Faculty and Staff Notes

"How to Navigate an 'Upside-Down' World: Using Images in the History Classroom," a publication by Steven S. Volk, director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence and professor of history, has been published in New Directions in Teaching and Learning, Volume 2015, Issue 141, pp. 53-65, Spring 2015.

Of 733 applicants, Bernard Matambo '07, assistant professor of creative writing, is one of six finalists for the Brunel University African Poetry Prize.

Randal Doane, assistant dean of studies, will deliver the keynote "Hitsville, USA: How The Clash Broke America and WPIX Broke Our Hearts" at the WIOX Community Radio and Spillian: A Place to Revel event Stealing All Transmissions: An Evening of Local Celebrity, Subversive Commentary, Community Radio, and Fancy Cuisine on Saturday, March 21.

Doane offers this preview of his keynote: "At the heart of this talk is a love story. It’s the story of how The Clash fell in love with America, and how America loved them back. The romance commenced in 1977 when select deejays in New York at WNEW and WPIX aided the band’s quest to depose the rock of indolence that dominated American airwaves. In this talk, I review the rise of free-form radio through the early 1970s, the punk scene flourishing in New York at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, and the culmination of The Clash’s September 1979 performances at the Palladium in New York City. The September 21 concert marked one of the last opportunities for fans to see The Clash as a punk band, teetering between conviction and uncertainty, before they became a seriously brilliant rock group. In March 1980, WPIX management abandoned the 'Elvis to Elvis' format, and thereby broke the hearts of 'PIX listeners, only because they dared to fall in love. This talk concludes with a consideration of the key differences between musical fandom in the analog and digital eras."

On March 8, Professor of Mathematics Jim Walsh gave a talk in a special session on conceptual mathematical models in climate science at the 2015 American Mathematical Society Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting at Georgetown University. The talk, "New Budyko-type models of a Slushball Earth," recounted recent work with Christopher Rackauckas '12 in which two new mathematical models were developed that each reproduce ice sheet behavior known to have occurred in the extensive glacial epochs of the Neoproterozoic Era, during which time continental ice sheets flowed into the ocean near the equator.

“Transfer: Learning in and Through the Academic Museum,” co-authored by Liliana Milkova, curator of academic programs of Russian and East European studies, and Steven S. Volk, director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence and professor of history, has been published in Advancing Engagement: A Handbook for Academic Museums, Volume III, edited by Stefanie S. Jandl and Mark S. Gold. (Edinburgh, UK and Cambridge, MA: MuseumsEtc, 2015), pp. 8-43.

Sabine Marina Jones, faculty-in-residence and German lecturer, attended the Foreign Language Housing Symposium at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT March 5-6, 2015. There, she presented her paper "Foreign Language Housing (FLH): Engaging Students of World Languages Beyond the Classroom." She and other symposium participants will contribute to an edited volume on Foreign Language Housing.

Kazim Ali, director of the creative writing program and associate professor of creative writing and comparative literature, will be lecturing and reading his poetry at Interlochen Academy; Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Sonoma State University; San Jose State University; the Ohio State Poetry Out Loud Championships; the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Conference; and the Ohioana State Library Literary Festival.

His poems will soon be appearing the New England Review, Colorado Review, Iowa Review, and Volt. His essay, "The Killer Will Remain Free: On Pat Parker and the Poetics of Madness," is forthcoming in the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Other essays on translation and pedagogy will soon appear on the website VOLTA.

Crystal Biruk, assistant professor of anthropology, presented a paper at the Africanizing Technology Conference at Wesleyan University on March 6. The paper was titled "Standards and gifts: Soap as improvisational technology in Malawian survey research worlds."

Assistant Professor of Physics Robert Owen has been granted a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. The award will help support Owen's research on a project entitled, Spin and Horizon Multipoles in Numerical Relativity, and the Visualization of Dynamical Spacetimes.

In February, T.S. McMillin, professor of English and member of the environmental studies program committee, participated in the symposium "Navigating the Changing Nation: The River and Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Art" at the Saint Louis Art Museum. McMillin lectured on the topic "'Strangers Still More Strange’: The River, the Steamboat, and The Confidence-Man."

The symposium was part of the exhibition Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River, which explores the life along the rivers of the new frontier through the masterworks of Missouri's most famous artist.