Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of History Leonard Smith is writing a book for Cambridge University Press on the history of French colonialism from the Old Regime to the present. In support of the project, he received funding from Oberlin's Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) implementation grant for travel to Vietnam during winter term 2020, to study the environmental footprint left by the French.

Alice Blumenfeld, visiting assistant professor of dance, wrote "The Seeds Behind 'Making It" for Stance on Dance.

Executive Director of Integrative & Experiential Learning Tania Boster contributed a chapter, “From Pansophia to Public Humanities: Connecting Past and Present Through Community-Based Learning,” to the edited volume Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now, Edited by Hillary Eklund, Wendy Beth Hyman, Edinburgh University Press.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Comparative American Studies Janet Fiskio was awarded a Consortium on High Achievement and Success Grant. The grant will be used to support participation by students in the November 2019 HBCU Climate Consortium Conference in New Orleans. Students will present the results of their community-directed research in Africatown, Alabama and discuss their work on the Africatown Digital Archive, a collaborative community history project.

Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber was interviewed on DW News about the decision by Spain's Supreme Court to exhume dictator Francisco Franco's remains from a large mausoleum near Madrid.

Laurie McMillin's co-edited volume Spaces and Places in Western India: Formations and Delineations was published by Routledge. The volume examines how spaces are intrinsically connected to people's lived experiences. It explores how spaces in Western India have been constructed over time and how these are reflected in both historical and contemporary settings—in the art, architecture, political movements, and in identity formation. McMillin's chapter explores the history of and conflict at a site in Maharashtra, where an ancient Buddhist rock-cut temple and an active Hindu goddess temple sit side by side.

Professor of Politics Eve Sandberg and Seth Binder ‘07 coauthored Mohammed VI’s Strategies for Moroccan Economic Development (London and New York: Routledge Press, 2020), which is available in hardback. 

Alice Blumenfeld performed Labyrinths as part of Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations at Case Western Reserve University's Kelvin Smith Library.

Professor of Politics Eve Sandberg's and Kenza Aqertit's coauthored book Moroccan Women, Activists, and Gender Politics: An Institutional Analysis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) has been released in paperback.Sandberg and Aqertit analyze how, over the course of 25 years, dedicated, smart, and politically effective Moroccan women, working simultaneously in multiple settings and aware of each other’s work, altered Morocco’s entrenched gender institution of regularized practices and distinctive rights and obligations for men and women.

Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Caroline Jackson Smith directed a reading of a new play by local playwright Margaret Lynch at Playwrights Local in Cleveland.