Faculty and Staff Notes

Karl Offen publishes book review of On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden by Elizabeth Hennessy in the Journal of Latin American Geography. 

Dustin Evatt-Young, Associate Director in the Career Development Center, presented a session titled "Disrupting White Scripts in Higher Education" at the NASPA National Conference for student affairs administrators in higher education in March 2021.

Marc Blecher, James Monroe Professor of Politics and of East Asian Studies, published “The Political Economy of Working Class Re-formation” in Lowell Dittmer, ed., China's Political Economy in the Xi Jinping Epoch: Global and Domestic Dimensions, World Scientific, 2021. 

Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis was a featured speaker at the University of Rhode Island. She presented about the significance of using Caribbean archives and multilingual sources in writing about Charlemagne Péralte’s life and legacy.

Professor of Medieval Art History Erik Inglis published an article, "Inventing Apostolic Impression Relics in Medieval Rome," in the April 2021 issue of Speculum.

Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber has published a new book. Exhuming Franco: Spain's Second Transition (Vanderbilt University Press) explores what is left of Francisco Franco's legacy in Spain today. For some, the recent exhumation of the dictator's remains from the massive monument in which they'd been buried since his death in 1975 confirmed that Spain is a modern, consolidated democracy. Yet in reality the country is still deeply affected—and divided—by the dictatorial legacies of Francoism.

Oberlin Conservatory jazz saxophone professor Gary Bartz, with producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, has just released his first album in eight years titled, "Gary Bartz JID 006" on the Jazz is Dead label.

“He’s a luminary that has contributed so much to music culture, for decades,” says Younge about Bartz. “His musical ability is expanding with age and we’re honored to be a part of his world.”

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista presented his choreographic work in "Performing Public Histories" at the National Council on Public History Annual Meeting. In this roundtable, scholar-artists examine what the inadequacies and excesses of performance get right about history and what is made knowable about archival materials through embodiment.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman presented a talk, “Race, Language, and Global Belonging” on the panel "If Not Now: Jewish Poets and Racial Justice" at the 2021 Association of Writers and Writing Conferences.

Renee Romano, the Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and Professor of Comparative American and Africana Studies, published the chapter, “The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality” in the new collection, Heterosexual Histories (New York University Press, 2021), edited by Michele Mitchell and Rebecca Davis. She recently spoke at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas about the musical Hamilton, and gave the Harrison Lecture at the University of Western Kentucky on the topic, “Can the Past Save Us?: The Role of History in the Struggle for Racial Justice and Multiracial Democracy.”