Faculty & Staff Newsletter
Week of August 26
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All content for weekly newsletter is due by Thursday at noon for following Monday posting. Please submit content to alfinc@vcu.edu.
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Staff Profile: Will Moran, Biology
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Will Moran wears many hats. As the office manager for the Department of Biology, Will supports the advising center, runs the main office and reception area, manages the department’s web presence, and sometimes even finds himself in the classroom giving a biology lesson. “The Department of Biology has really embraced my ideas for improvement and change, and made me feel like I’m integral to the department,” said Will. “I love being able to help so many people at once.” Will brings a unique perspective to the position as he was recently a student in the department, graduating with his B.S. in biology in 2014. Click here to continue reading.
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Brooke Newman Finalist for Frederick Douglass Book Prize
Congrats to Brooke Newman, Ph.D., associate professor of the Department of History. Her book “A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica,” is a finalist for the 2019 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most coveted awards for the study of the African American experience. This annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book on slavery, resistance, and/or abolition published in the preceding year. The winner will be announced following the Douglass Prize Review Committee meeting in the fall, and the award will be presented at a celebration in New York City on February 13, 2020.
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New Book by Sonja Livingston
Congrats to Sonja Livingston in the Department of English. Her next book, “The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion” comes out Sept. 1 from the University of Nebraska Press. The essay collection undertakes a series of journeys (including to a mobile confessional unit in Cajun Country, a search for a missing Virgin Mary statue in Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and to a holy well in County Clare) to reconsider Roman Catholicism in light of a rapidly shifting cultural landscape. The essays combine travel writing, memoir, and research to explore various facets of sacramental and personal devotion. Click here to learn more.
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2019 CIVVY Honorable Mention
Congrats to Susan Bodnar-Deren, Dingani Mthethwa, and Liz Coston in the Department of Sociology. They received an honorable mention for their project "Debate Across the Curriculum" in this year's national Civvy Awards. The American Civic Collaboration Awards (aka The Civvy Awards) highlight outstanding efforts of civic collaboration making impacts in local, national and youth communities.
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RSPI unConference Proposals Due 9/1
Proposals for the 2019 Race, Space, Place unConference are due Sept. 1. RSPI invites scholars, practitioners, artists and citizens to reflect on their ongoing research or everyday experiences: what are the root causes of the social problems that animate the ways you work, learn, build, or resist? RSPI is especially interested in reflections that incorporate the DATUM of race, space, place and their intersections. To learn more about the unConference, RSPI, or how to submit your proposal, please visit the RSPI website.
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Faculty Present at MLA International Conference
We had three faculty members present at the MLA International Symposium in Lisbon this July on the theme of "Remembering Voices Lost."
Katherine Clay Bassard, Ph.D., “(Almost) Lost Voices: Race, Gender, and the Problem of the Archives in Early African American Literature”
Mary Caton Lingold, Ph.D., “In Search of Mr. Baptiste, Composer of African Music in Seventeenth-Century Jamaica”
Cristina Stanciu, Ph.D., “Beyond Reconciliation: Indigenous Testimony, Image, and Voice Documenting the Residential School Era in Native North America"
"It was highly competitive and to have three VCU faculty all represented, on different panels, is quite a feat!" said Kathy.
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International Black Freedom Alliance Conference
New faculty member Travis Harris, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies, attended the first International Black Freedom Alliance Conference in Ferguson, MO. Travis presented on the history of the Black liberation movement and its connections to the contemporary movement. Other speakers included frontline Ferguson protesters and Ba Ba Dhati, who has been in the Black liberation movement since the 1960s. Conference attendees also protested at the Ferguson Police Department and held a memorial for Michael Brown. To learn more, visit the IBFA website.
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Sponsored Programs Faculty Seminar
Friday, September 6
9 a.m. - Noon
University Student Commons, SGA Senate Chambers
Faculty will be provided with information on how to submit research, scholarship, and fellowship proposals; how to manage those awards; and information on more university resources available to support research and scholarship. Register here.
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Events
Want to stay on top of all CHS events? Add “TheCollege” to your Google calendar.
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Forensic Anthropology in the Service of Human Rights
Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 2 p.m.
MPC Learning Commons, Rm. 2201
Speaker: Tal Simmons, Ph.D., D-ABFA, Cert FA-I
Tal Simmons, Ph.D., has been an expert who applies forensic science to human rights violation investigations since 1997, when she led the Physicians for Human Rights’ forensic monitoring project in Bosnia. She trained pathologists and crime scene investigation departments in the former Yugoslavia on how to deal with skeletal remains — basic techniques of exhumation and recovery, as well as the estimation of the biological profile and the analysis of trauma.
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VCU Faculty Convocation
Thursday, Aug. 29 at 3 p.m.
W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, 922 Park Avenue
Please join us for Virginia Commonwealth University's 37th Annual Faculty Convocation as we welcome faculty members and honor this year's distinguished faculty award recipients. Four of our own will be honored at the event:
- John T. Kneebone, Ph.D., professor in the Department of History, University Award of Excellence
- John J. Ryan, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biology, Distinguished Scholarship Award
- Karen Kester, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biology, Distinguished Teaching Award
- June O. Nicholson, professor in the Robertson School of Media and Culture, Distinguished Service Award
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Forensic Capabilities of the U.S. Secret Service
Wednesday, Sept. 4 at 2 p.m.
MPC Learning Commons, Rm. 2201
Speaker: Kelli Lewis, MS, Laboratory Director, U.S. Secret Service, Forensic Services Division
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Death by Media: The Politics of Eventocracy in the Late Eurocene
2019 Annual MATX Marcel Cornis-Pope Lecture
Thursday, Sept. 5 at 3 p.m.
Cabell Library, Rm. 303
Speaker: Rohan Kalyan, Ph.D.
Rohan Kalyan is a political theorist and filmmaker who teaches in the School of World Studies at VCU. This lecture builds on Rohan’s current research on the theory of eventocracy, or rule by event in a time of ubiquitous media. Through close readings of two violent events enabled by social media platforms in disparate locations (WhatsApp in India and YouTube in the US), he argues that the virtual events of digital media have real effects in the collective subjectivities that form a broader community of sense and sense-making. How can media events and collective subjectivities be re-worked to not only oppose fascistic ways of making sense of the present, but make space for alternative communities of sense-making that interpret events in radically different ways?
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Israeli Elections (Again!)
Thursday, Sept. 5 at 7 p.m.
Cabell Library, Rm. 303
Speaker: Arie Dubnov, Ph.D., George Washington University
In early April, Israelis went to the polls to select a new government. Prime Minister Netanyahu won the election, but failed to form a governing coalition. Now, new elections will be held in mid-September. How and why did this happen? What will happen in these second elections? And what does it all mean?
Professor Arie Dubnov, the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University, will unravel the complexities of the upcoming Israeli elections. Dr. Dubnov is a scholar of twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history, with particular expertise on the history of political thought, the study of nationalism, decolonization, and partition politics.
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