Assistant Professor of Business Raji Kunapuli presented a solo-authored paper, titled “Effect of Abstract Language on Critics’ Selection of Referents for IPOs” at the Southern Management Academy Conference in San Antonio, TX.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer was the American Institute of Mathematics’ Invited Speaker at the Modern Mathematics Workshop at the SACNAS NDiSTEM conference in Phoenix, AZ on October 30. She presented “Unique Equilibrium States for Geodesic Flows.”

Professor of Education Michael Kamen was an invited presenter, along with Retired Project WILD State Coordinator Kiki Corry and Leander ISD Elementary Science Coordinator Jennifer Kaszuba, to lead “Hike Through the Guide” for the first of the WILD Webinar series, a professional development webinar for Project WILD facilitators.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala and Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Jaishikha Nautiyal received the Monograph of the Year Award for their co-authored article “Queer desi kinships: Reaching across partition.” The article appears in the Tier-1 journal QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, and articulates non-Western, and specifically South-Asian, queer praxes. The award is from the National Communication Association’s GLBTQ Division. The article can be read here.

Director of Study Abroad and International Student Services Monya Lemery facilitated the “Member Mingle: Solo/Small Office Social” for the Forum on Education Abroad virtual networking series on October 18.

Director of Study Abroad and International Student Services Monya Lemery presented “ Funding Strategies and Scholarships” at the Texas International Monthly virtual meeting on October 9.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper presented the keynote lecture at the inaugural concert of the 2024 Corcoran Music Festival, hosted by George Washington University. The centerpiece of the concert was the previously unheard “Five Spiritual Songs in High and Low Keys” of Margaret Bonds, which Cooper published in August 2024 ([Ann Arbor]: Videmus).

Assistant Professor of Biology Kim McArthur co-authored a research article recently accepted in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, presenting the results of her Spring 2023 sabbatical (funded, in part, by the Sam Taylor Fellowship). The article, titled “Structure and topography of facial branchiomotor neuron dendrites in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio),” uses a combination of single-cell labeling, in vivo fluorescence microscopic imaging, and 3D tracing to provide evidence that early synaptic input to motor neurons may be determined by the relative location of their dendrites in the developing hindbrain. This work contributes to our growing understanding of the importance of early spatial organization for the development of neural circuits.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez presented preliminary insights from her project, “Teaching Christianity and Whiteness in Turbulent Times,” at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) conference in Pittsburgh from October 17–20.

Assistant Professor of Education Marilyn Nicol had her essay, “Disrupting epistemology and coalescing community: Disability activism on social media,” published in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Trends in critical disability studies have taken issue with the absence of representations of disability beyond images of heroism or charity cases. In addition, an absence of representation in cinema and literature reinforces an existing bias that individuals with disabilities are uninteresting and have less value than nondisabled people (Beckett et al.; Hodkinson). The article explores the frontier of disability activism on social media as a space where new onto/epistemologies grapple among existing biases of disability. The article is available here.

Sam Irizarry ’23 was an invited panelist at the Texas Communicators Network meeting focused on the topic “Connect & Conserve Through Social Media.” He represented Hill Country Conservancy, where he enhances the organization’s online presence through content strategy, social media management, and digital storytelling. More information about the panel can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz published the manuscript “Solidarity in labor organizing: The alliance between the Black Panther Party and the United Farm Workers,” in the Black History Bulletin (BHB), volume 87, issue 2. The manuscript examines the collaborations between the Black Panther Party and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and 1970s and includes a project-based lesson on solidarity in labor organizing for a high school U.S. History course. This manuscript is part of a special issue on African Americans and Labor.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Bonnie Sneed has been re-elected to a three-year term as the National Treasurer for the College Music Society (CMS). She has been instrumental in creating best accounting practices for the organization. She also chaired the Oversight Committee for the External Consultant to look at the structure and processes for CMS. She also successfully encouraged the organization to apply for ERC funding, which earned CMS a significant governmental return of monies to be used for financial needs of the Society. Her new term will expire at the end of 2027.

Dante Medina ’26 presented a poster titled “Using Molecules to Store Energy” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander.

Dominic Mashak ’26 presented a poster titled “Finding Molecules with Large Hyperpolarizabilities” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander during the summer of 2024.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma presented his forthcoming paper, “‘Critical but stable’: Agricultural Propaganda, Politics and Hunger in Zimbabwe,” at the Young Scholars Initiative, Exploring the Dark Side of the Moon: The History of Economics in the Global South workshop on October 17.

Jodi Glenn-Millhouse ’25, Kaiden Salaz ’26, Annalina Slover ’26, and Carolyn Waldie ’26 presented posters on their research on how photosynthetic diatoms adapt their light-harvesting under light and magnesium stress at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. Their presentations resulted from research done with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey.

On October 18-19, Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin, one of the founding members of the Resistance Studies Network, presented a chapter in progress at the 20th Anniversary meeting of the Resistance Studies Network at the University of Göteborg, titled “Why do We Say “Resistance” When We Mean Struggle? An Entangled Anarchival Approach.”

On October 16, Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin presented a pedagogical chapter in progress at Umeå University’s Department of Political Science Pedagogy and Practice Seminar, “everythingisconnectedtoeverything: People as the Makers of His/Her/Theirstory and his/her/theirstory.”

Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin attended the Living Democracy Symposium at the University of Maryland on October 10 and participated in the Decentering Whiteness Workshop, inspired in part by his co-authored book with Meghana Nayak ’97, Decentering International Relations.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Bonnie Sneed recently judged the All-State Region auditions at Stony Point High School. Senior music education student Emma Duncan ’25, recommended by Dr. Sneed, was also asked to serve as a judge for this competition. Hundreds of students sang to be selected for All-Region, and less than 100 will continue on to the next level of All-State auditions. Every year, more than 70,000 students audition for instrumental and vocal ensembles across the state, and fewer than 2,000 are chosen to perform in February at the state music educators conference.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson was an invited participant in the Third Coast Central America Collaborative at Texas Christian University from October 17-18, where she presented “The Flowers’ Story: Emerging Racial Categories and their Socio-ecological context on the British Coast of Central America in the late 1700s.”

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano published an article with several current SU undergraduates, including Georgia Micknal (first author) ’25, Samantha Gonzales ’26, Lauren Levee ’27, Gabrielle Fullard ’27, and Kalista Esquivel ’26. The article is titled “(Don’t) hit me up: The effects of initiator gender and setting on perceptions of date initiation” and will be published in the December issue of the North American Journal of Psychology.

Staff Instructor in Spanish Noelia Cigarroa-Cooke and Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro presented the paper “Monstruosidad y poder: Alegorías de la injusticia en Sin señas particulares y La llorona” at the 77th annual convention of the Rocky Mountains Modern Language Association in Las Vegas, NV, on October 10-12.

On October 15, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Amy Rebecca King spoke at the book launch for Critical Acting Pedagogies: Intersectional Approaches. The book launch was held at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in London and online, broadcast in America and the UK. Her chapter, “Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students,” was one of 10 academic writings highlighted at the event.

Professor of Communication Studies Valerie Renegar presented a paper at the 9th meeting of the Nordic Rhetoric Association in Copenhagen, Denmark. The University of Copenhagen has distinguished itself as one of the finest rhetoric programs in Europe and is making a worldwide impact in rhetorical studies. The conference theme was “Technology in Transition,” and Dr. Renegar, along with her co-authors Dr. Stacey Sowards from UT Austin and Dr. Kristi Cole from NC State, presented a new piece on digital collaboration in research and teaching, and explored ways that these collaborations can function as mentoring opportunities. They focused on building and engaging in digital collaboration and the importance of horizontal mentoring and developing vulnerable relationships outside of an individual institution.

Part-time Professor of Creative Writing Chelsey Clammer ’05 recently had a personal creative essay published in Under the Gum Tree. Her essay, “Growth,” looks at the experience of a tumor extraction and the end of a relationship. The essay is the featured piece for the journal’s Fall 2024 issue. The issue can be purchased (print or digital) here.

Biochemistry major Samantha (Sam) Hazen ’26 has been selected as a finalist for the American Chemical Society (ACS) Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division (AGFD) Undergraduate Poster Competition. As part of the award, Sam will receive $1,000 in travel expenses to attend the spring ACS National Meeting in San Diego, CA, where she will present her poster, titled “Comparison of phenolic composition, flavonoid content, and antioxidant properties among cacao nibs sourced from different origins.” The poster is based on research that Sam is completing with Professor of Chemistry Emily Niemeyer. The ACS AGFD competition was created to showcase the research talents of undergraduate students, and all finalists participate in a poster symposium with the possibility of winning additional cash prizes.

Mathematics and biochemistry major Brian Armijo ’25 presented “A Hidden Markov Model for Parkinson’s Disease Progression” at the Texas-Louisiana Section Meeting of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). His poster presents preliminary work on his mathematics capstone under the supervision of Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton. Armijo is also a Dixon Scholar and Southwestern’s first Goldwater Scholar in 30 years.

Senior Research and Instruction Librarian Katherine Hooker and Instruction and Student Success Librarian Emily Thorpe spoke at the 2024 Texas Library Association’s Library Instruction Round Table Summit on October 11. Their presentation was titled “Pirates, Puzzles, and Pathways: Gamifying Library Instruction for First-Year Success” and discussed scavenger hunts, breakout kits, and digital escape games that SLC has been designing and implementing since 2021 to successfully enhance traditional library instruction methods.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira has published the article “Invoking ethnic identity in the service of right-wing rhetoric: an analysis of 2022 Latina republican candidates in South Texas,” with Dr. Arthur Soto-Vásquez of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in Communication, Culture, and Critique. The essay examines campaign ads from three Latina GOP candidates in South Texas, in which Moreira and Soto-Vásquez identified the strategic deployment of conservative ethnic identity that disavows racialized identity through anti-immigrant rhetoric. Instead of moderating anti-immigration discourse, as has been suggested by observers on how to attract Latine voters, these candidates instead redirect the immigrant threat narrative towards other subgroups of Latines. The article can be found here.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth participated in the 48th annual conference of the German Studies Association from September 26-29 in Atlanta, GA. Berroth’s research paper, “Marica Bodrožić und Deniz Utlu’s ‘Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten’ – Reflections on the Curated Virtual Audio Archive Dichterlesen.net,” contributed to a series of panels organized around the topic of literary kinships in contemporary German literature. Berroth also served as a commentator for panel presentations in this series.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth hosted the annual fall conference for the Texas Chapter of the American Association for Teachers of German at Southwestern University. The conference brought together German educators across instructional levels and institutions, which is important for developing cohesive curricular pathways to success from middle and high schools to college, especially with focus on IB and AP programs that can earn participants college credits. The conference program included teaching and learning with AI, networking among programs, support for new colleagues, and publicly engaged humanities initiatives at the state and national levels. Participants earned continuing education credits.

Garey Chair and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr, along with colleagues she met while presenting on a panel at MathFest 2019, published an article titled “Domino Antimagic Squares and Rectangles” in Recreational Mathematics Magazine. The article can be found here.

Chemistry major Jodi Glenn-Millhouse ’25 gave a talk titled “Investigating the Effects of Decreased Magnesium Concentrations on Phaeodactylum tricornutum F710 Fluorescence” at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium (FURS) at the University of Texas at Austin on October 5. She was awarded the Best Presentation Award in Chemistry. Her talk resulted from research done with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Bonnie Sneed delivered the pre-concert lecture for the Waco Symphony Orchestra performance on October 3. She led concertgoers in a discussion about Mexican composer Arturo Márquez and American composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland.

The Communication Studies Department was well-represented at the 2024 Biennial Public Address Conference. This is a highly-selective, invitation-only conference that showcases scholarship and responses from leading scholars in Rhetoric and Communication Studies. The University of Texas at Austin hosted this conference September 22-25. Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala (LB) was one of the eight invited plenary speakers to the conference. She delivered an address, titled “Caste is not a metaphor,” as a call to the field to grapple with its ignorance of caste, and to reckon with how caste bolsters “model minority” and white supremacist discourses. Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira responded to Dr. Angela Aguayo’s plenary, “Youth Production as Public Address,” in which she articulated a series of questions regarding the potential of networked space to produce liberatory content. Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Jaishikha Nautiyal participated in a panel titled “Anti-DEI legislation in Texas” and presented her work on “anaerobic rhetoric,” in light of the anti-DEI legislation in Florida, based on a forthcoming publication in Quarterly Journal of Speech.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music Jeanne Hourez released her third CD, dedicated to “Quartet of the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen. The album was recorded under the Ladoga Records Label, with Hank Landrum, Zongheng Zhang, and Bobae Lee. It can be heard here.

Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Jeff Doyle was interviewed for the Higher Ed Demand Gen podcast on “The Secret To Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn for Higher Ed.” The episode was released last week and can be found here. 

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long published a chapter titled “The Coloniality of Climate Apartheid” in the Routledge reader, Confronting Climate Coloniality. Long’s contributions were also highlighted by the editor, Dr. Farhana Sultana, in promotional materials and he will be serving on upcoming panels in which this work will be featured. More information is available here.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez published her first monograph, “Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States: Faith, Race, and Feminism” (2024, Lexington Books). Based in content analysis, interviews, and survey data, Hernandez problematizes the view that Christianity and feminism are contradictory identities. More information is available here.

Garey Chair and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura presented at the 2024 Fall Central Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Marr presented her talk, “Domino Antimagic Configurations,” in the Special Session on Enumerative Combinatorics, and Dr. Futamura presented her talk/workshop, “Drawing in Geometry Students with Drawing Puzzles,” in the Special Session on Inquiry Oriented Learning in the Mathematics Classroom.

Regional Associate Director of Admission Jaime Gonzalez recently co-presented “Beyond Translated: Shared Bilingual Resources” at the National Association of College Admission Counseling’s national conference, alongside Shana Castillo from Rice University and Katie Ascencio from the Achieve Program. Their session provided shared admission counseling resources to better serve Latinx and Spanish-speaking bilingual families throughout the college search process.

Assistant Professor of English Sonia Del Hierro presented at the fourth annual La Chola Conference at East Los Angeles College on September 27-29. This conference centers Chola identities and communities, bringing together activists, artists, and scholars. Dr. Del Hierro’s talk, “Las Cholas’ Sartorial Scripts: A Chicana Feminist Analysis,” presented part of her research on the ways fashion has constituted political and cultural tools against racism, sexism, and colonialism. The program can be found here.

Professor of English Michael Saenger published an essay titled “Shakespeare and Multilinguistic Affairs: A Strategy for Reading Across Borders” in Contemporary Readings in Global Performances of Shakespeare, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin. The book is published by Bloomsbury Academic as part of The Arden Shakespeare series.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer co-organized the hybrid conference, Big Ideas in Dynamics and Geometry. The event was held at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and on Zoom on September 27-29, and was co-organized with Benjamin Call and Laura Schaposnik at UIC. Big Ideas in Dynamics and Geometry focused on the intersections of dynamics and geometry and exposing early career mathematicians to future research directions. Additionally, the conference served as the kickoff event for the fourth semester of the reading program for early career mathematicians, Big Ideas in Dynamics, also organized by Benjamin Call and Noelle Sawyer.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed the scenery and stage properties for I’m Proud of You  by Tim Madigan. This production is a staged adaptation of Madigan’s novel, I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers. The play chronicles the true and extraordinary bond between Tim Madigan, a Texas author and reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Fred Rogers, the iconic TV host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This production will be the inaugural production in Penfold Theatre’s new and permanent theatre venue in Round Rock, TX. Roybal also served as a theatre consultant on the new venue, which will be the first professional theatre in Round Rock. The production showcases Professor Emeritus Rick Roemer and SU alumnus Zac Carr ’11 as actors. SU Scene Shop Manager Monroe Oxley is the Technical Director for this production. Additionally, the stage and seating risers were designed and constructed by Oxley using a build crew that included Connor Bustos ’26 and Ash Zunker ’25. The production runs October 4-26.

Professor of English Michael Saenger published a blog post at the Times of Israel, titled “How to Spot Antisemitism.” It can be read here.

Associate Professor of Art History Allison Miller gave a virtual invited presentation on “Purple in Early China” to a Chinese art history class at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on September 23.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony attended the 21st International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering in Valencia, Spain, in September. She presented a paper co-authored with Mark Mueller ’24 on “Course scheduling made easier: A user-friendly web-based timetabling tool using PyGLPK,” which is available here. The article details how, using ideas from operations research, it is possible to develop an integer linear program capturing constraints on course schedules, use Python and PyGLPK to find a solution, and package that within a more user-friendly and publicly available web interface.

Professor of English Eileen Cleere delivered a paper at Baylor University’s Armstrong Browning Library as a part of EVENT 2024, a hub conference sponsored by the North American Victorian Studies Association on September 19–21. Her paper was titled “Laugh Track: Pregnancy and Pronatalism in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.”

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long was featured in an article appearing in Texas Monthly, titled “Is America Ready for More Than One Kind of Weird?” The article can be read here.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long presented a poster titled “The Right to Retreat? Interrogating the xenophobic politics of urban climate retreat,” and co-presented a lecture on the topic of “Climate Havens” at the RC21 Common City Conference in Uppsala, Sweden from September 10–13.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published “Two Moon Songs for Women’s Chorus and Piano” by Florence B. Price (Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan). The volume comprises two songs – “The Moon Bridge” by Mary Rolofson Gamble and “The New Moon” by Liza Lee Follett – that may be described as loving maternal musical reflections on the magic of moonlight in a young daughter’s imagination. Price published both works separately in 1930, “The New Moon” with a dedication to her friend Estella Bonds (mother of Margaret Bonds), but those editions are long out of print. Cooper’s edition hopes to help them find a new place in modern musical life.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Tatiana Zhuravleva, along with her colleagues from Southwestern University and New Mexico State University, published an article titled “A Holistic Focus of Attention Enhances Vertical Jump Performance Among Inexperienced Individuals” in the Journal of Motor Behavior.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse virtually presented a working draft of a book chapter titled “The Interlocking Nature of Apartheid Praxis” at a workshop on “Apartheid as Method for Worldmaking after Empire: Encountering histories, presents, and continuities of Apartheid in South Africa,” held at the University of the Witwatersrand on September 17. The workshop aims to provide authors with feedback towards an edited volume on Critical Apartheid Studies.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Ariel Wood exhibited their work in a group show in Dallas. The show, titled “Sculpture School: Concrete,” was the culmination of a summer residency based on the theme of concrete. Their work will be on view at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park until November 16. View documentation images of the exhibition and accompanying catalog at sweetpasssculpturepark.com.

Buoyed by the momentum built on sabbatical, Garey Chair of Biology Romi Burks continued her work on the intersection between chocolate and liberal arts education by sharing her knowledge as the featured STEM kick-off speaker at Schreiner University on September 4 with a talk titled “Chocolate Covered Science: Connect what you love to eat with what you love to study.” Following that event, Burks attended the Dallas Chocolate Festival on September 7, where she contributed to a panel discussion on the crisis in the chocolate industry, along with entrepreneur Kate Weiser of Kate Weiser Chocolates and Jimmy Steward of Guittard Chocolate. Afterwards, Burks gave a solo presentation titled “Educated by Chocolate: How to build your chocolate knowledge one bite at a time.” Burks has also been invited to give this talk again at the Northwest Chocolate Festival, along with a second presentation titled “Separating Fact from Fiction in the Science of Chocolate.” These lectures will take place the first weekend of October.

Supported by a sabbatical leave, Garey Chair of Biology Romi Burks recently published the first paper out of the lab on environmental DNA in the journal Management of Biological Invasions, in collaboration with several undergraduate researchers and colleagues. The paper, titled “Snail slime in real time: Challenges in predicting the relationship between environmental DNA and apple snail biomass,” describes how extrapolations can fail between snail abundance and the amount of genetic material produced by apple snails under cold conditions. The results have implications for estimating the size of non-native invasive populations. Student co-authors include Cassidy Reynolds ’24, Esmeralda Rosas ’24, Cynthia Bashara ’23, and Lillian Dolapchiev ’23, along with alumni collaborator Dr. Matthew Barnes ’06 from Texas Tech University and Dr. Chris Jerde from UC Santa Barbara, who provided assistance in data analysis. The open access paper can be read here, as #6 in the table of contents of the journal issue.

History and biology alumna Katherine Montgomery ’23 presented a paper, titled “A Crafty Woman in a Mangled World: The Intersection of Art and Facial Reconstruction in Anna Coleman Ladd’s Mask Making,” at the Virtual Graduate Conference of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine held on September 13. Katherine originally worked with Chair and Associate Professor of History Joseph E. Hower on this project during her history capstone course. After graduation, she worked with Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones to turn her project into a piece for publication. Her presentation explored the intersections of gender, disability, surgery, and military history to highlight the innovative work in the field of prosthetics of Anna Coleman in the late 1910s.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Political Science Alisa Gaunder gave a virtual talk titled “Women in Executive Office: Constraints and Opportunities for Success” to students at Centro Universitario Anglo Mexicano (CUAM), a preparatory high school in Mexico, on September 11.

Kudos to Director of the Center for Career and Professional Development Adrian Ramirez and Sr. Associate Director of the Center for Career and Professional Development Alexandra Anderson. The Princeton Review ranked the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) as #2 in the nation for “Best Career Services,” up from our #5 ranking last year. The CCPD remains #1 in the State of Texas.

On July 31, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Jeff Doyle, Ph.D., presented “What’s Missing from Student Success Analytics?” to 3,300 members of the Future of Higher Education community.

Art history and theatre graduate Gabriella Gonzalez Biziou ’12 starred in and associated-produced a beautifully executed short film titled Foolhardy Love. Gabriella is returning to Texas this month to promote the film, which follows a couple confronted with two very different desires for their future. An official selection for the Beverly Hills Film Festival 2024, Foolhardy Lovescreens in Austin at the Austin Under the Stars Film Festival on Thursday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m., and at the Austin Spotlight Film Festival on Saturday, September 14 at 7:00 p.m. The film has been nominated for Best Narrative (at both festivals), Best Director, Best Actress (at both festivals), and Best Actor. The trailer can be viewed here.

Seth Sagen ’26 was recently awarded the Assistant Concertmaster position with the Central Texas Philharmonic, a professional orchestra in the Austin area. He is a violin major and student of Assistant Professor of Violin and Viola Jessica Mathaes. Seth won an audition in order to receive this highly competitive violin leadership spot with the orchestra.

Professor Emeritus of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa was invited to edit and expand the 2024-25 Prescribed Music List (PML) for solo pianists participating in the annual Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest of the University Interscholastic League (UIL). Hundreds of high school pianists from across the state participate in this event, which culminates in a final audition before an expert adjudicator in Austin in late May of every year. They earn a rating and a possible designation of Outstanding Soloist. Tamagawa’s revisions, which are now in effect, substantially increased repertoire choices for participants, including for the first time many works by women composers and composers of color.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper, titled “New Bounds on the Performance of SBP for the Dial-a-Ride Problem with Revenues,” that was presented on September 5 at ATMOS 2024, the Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modeling, Optimization, and Systems. The paper, published in the Dagstuhl Open Access Series in Informatics, has co-authors Christine Chung of Connecticut College, Ananya Das of Middlebury College, and David Yuen.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music and Artist in Residence Hai Zheng Olefsky is excited to share this season’s release of the Amazon documentary “The Story of Art in America,” where she is featured in season 3, episode 2. This episode highlights Georgetown artists, including painter and art instructor Carol Light, textile artist Gary Anderson, muralist and portrait artist Devon Clarkson, and concert cellist Hai Zheng Olefsky. “The Story of Art in America,” an award-winning docuseries created by acclaimed film director Christelle Bois and produced by executive producer Pierre Gervois, explores the art scenes in various American cities and towns. The series features in-depth interviews with artists and art historians, highlighting the role of the arts in American society and its historical significance. The documentary is now available on Amazon Prime, offering a glimpse into Georgetown’s vibrant arts scene. Georgetown Arts and Culture Program Manager Amanda Still remarked, “It’s been an unforgettable experience to participate in this project… We are so proud of the members of our arts and culture community for the eloquent way they have demonstrated the impact of arts, culture, and history in Georgetown.” The episode can be viewed here.

Recent graduate Ian Klepcyk ’24 and Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci published one of two submitted entries in the Encyclopedia of Sexual Psychology and Behavior, published by Springer. This entry also includes videos Ian filmed in the lab as a companion to the written submission. The entry can be read here.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz attended the International Migration Research Network (IMISCOE) annual conference in Lisbon, Portugal in July. She presented, with Melina Bountris ’22, “Culturally responsive instructional strategies for immigrant-origin youth in Austria,” based on research conducted while Melina was completing a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Austria. She also presented, with Zehra Çolak of Utrecht University, “Co-constructing a pedagogy of radical belonging: Pláticas on teaching for social justice,” which is based on a chapter that has been accepted to be published in the Handbook of Social Justice in Education. In addition, Dr. Sáenz Ortiz co-led a workshop, titled “Towards decolonial futurities: On reimagining the university,” along with Zehra Çolak of Utrecht University, Zakia Essanhaji of VU Amsterdam, Dounia Bourabain of Hasselt University, and Leila Mouhib of Université libre de Bruxelles and Université de Mons.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz published the manuscript “Radical Love: Liberatory Pedagogical Praxis for Black and Latinx Youth in an Alternative School,” in the International Journal of Learner Diversity and Identities. The manuscript highlights a case study conducted by Dr. Sáenz Ortiz in an alternative school in the northeastern United States where most students were Afro-Caribbean. The article is available here.

Assistant Professor of Economics and Business Raji Kunapuli presented a paper, titled “Leveling the Playing Field: Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Modify Language and Accent Expectancies in High-Stakes Pitching,” at the annual Academy of Management Conference in Chicago.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and his Faculty-Student-Project student, Sydney Jackson ’27, virtually presented a poster, titled “Successful Play-Based Programs: Case Studies,” at the International Society of Cultural-historical Activity Research Conference 2024: Inclusiveness as a Future Challenge, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. They reported on their analysis of twenty interviews with teachers, parents, and administrators from three play-based programs in New York City, Oxford, UK, and Billund, Denmark.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the first edition of Florence B. Price’s three-movement trio titled Moods for flute, clarinet, and piano. A number of fragmentary manuscripts for this important late work – a series of “moodscapes” that reflect the compositional and stylistic diversity Price had achieved by the mid-1940s – have long been known, but they did not permit reconstruction of the complete work. Cooper’s edition is based on two previously unknown autographs that were found in an apartment in Chicago and donated to the University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, in 2023.

Visiting Professor of Theatre Amy Rebecca King, along with her colleague Robert Torigoe, published a chapter entitled “Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students” in Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches. The chapter, which examines the history of multiracial representation and offers practical inclusive pedagogical approaches, can be found here.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen is one of seven co-authors of the recently published chapter “Teacher Educators’ Perspectives, Beliefs, and Practices,” in the book Re-Exploring Play and Playfulness in Early Childhood Teacher Education: Narratives, Reflections, and Practices. His section is titled “Playing to Learn and Teaching with Play in a Science Methods Course at Southwestern University.” The book can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Tatiana Zhuravleva, along with her colleagues, presented research on “A Holistic Focus of Attention Enhances Vertical Jump Performance Among Division 1 Football Players” at the annual North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity.

Professor of Mathematics and John H. Duncan Chair Fumiko Futamura signed a book contract with Princeton University Press for a general audience book tentatively titled Projecting Spaces. The book is primarily about 2D art and how artists set the stage for their visual stories by playing with oblique and linear perspectives (this is where she sneaks in a little mathematical analysis), enhanced and impossible realities (more math), flatness and depth (math), and movement and still snapshots (physics?). The artwork explored in the book ranges from Renaissance paintings to 3D billboards and Radiohead t-shirts, and artists range from Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer to Hokusai and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The book will likely come out in 2027.

In July, Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music and Artist in Residence Hai Zheng Olefsky was invited to serve as a guest judge for the 2024 Colburn-Pledge Music Scholarship Competition by Musical Bridges Around the World (MBAW), a nonprofit organization dedicated to multicultural arts and social impact. MBAW’s mission is to celebrate our shared humanity by making global arts accessible to everyone. The Colburn-Pledge Music Scholarship offers college tuition assistance to young string players aspiring to careers in classical music.

Director of General Chemistry Labs Dilani Koswatta and Director of Organic Chemistry Labs Carmen Velez presented a poster on their collaborative project titled “Fostering STEM Interest Through Chemistry Connections with the Community” at the 2024 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, held on July 29 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. This community-engaged learning (CEL) project connected chemistry and biochemistry senior capstone students, general chemistry lab students, and 5th graders from Georgetown’s Annie Purl Elementary in an outreach activity designed to spark curiosity about chemistry in young students.

Director of Organic Chemistry Labs Carmen Velez presented a workshop titled “Fueling Education Transformation: The Dynamic Chemistry of Community-Based Learning” at the 2024 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, held on July 29 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. The workshop focused on community-based learning (CBL), an educational approach that connects students with community partners to enhance academic learning, civic engagement, and empathy. Participants explored best practices using the Chemistry for the Community (CFTC) curriculum, reviewed examples of CBL implementation, and developed personalized CBL plans by mapping community assets and defining student outcomes.

English major and Associate Editor at Penguin Random House Lydia Gregovic ’19 recently published her first novel, titled The Monstrous Kind. The novel, a fantasy retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, is set to release in early September and can be pre-ordered here.

Associate Professors of Business Gaby Flores and Hazel Nguyen, along with colleagues, published an article titled “The only  daughter effect: Examining the impact of child gender on a CEO’s hiring decisions” in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. The paper, which examines gender bias in top management hiring, can be found here.

The Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America recently held officer elections and finalized positions for the Executive Committee. Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr has been elected to serve in the three year Chair role (Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past-Chair). Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross has also been appointed as the Digital Media Editor.

Four faculty members were active at MathFest, the national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), on August 7-11, in Indianapolis, IN. Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Turning a Geometry Project into a Geometry Festival” in the contributed paper session on “Building Community in Mathematics Departments.” Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Difference Distance Magic Oriented Graphs” in the MAA invited paper session (aligned with an MAA invited address) on “Matching and Labelings in Graphs.” Marr also served on the panel “Creating Successful Study Abroad Programs in Mathematics” to discuss the mathematics courses she offered as part of Southwestern’s London program. Professor and Lord Chair of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a workshop, “Geometric Puzzles and Brain Teasers in Perspective Art,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College and Marc Frantz of Indiana University. This was sponsored by the MAA special interest group “Mathematics and the Arts.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Student Modeling Projects in Sports” in the contributed paper session on “Math and Sports.” She also co-organized the contributed paper session “Differential Equations Student Activities and Projects, Big and Small” with Brian Winkel of SIMIODE, Rosemary Farley and Patrice Tiffany of Manhattan College, and Pushpi Paranamana of St. Mary’s College.

Professor of Political Science Bob Snyder presented his paper “The US and Iran: Understanding the Breakdown in Relations” at the International Studies Association’s conference at the University of Rijeka in Rijeka, Croatia in June.

Professor of English Michael Saenger was flown to Toronto to participate in a video documentary on his little brother, Mohan Govindasamy, aka Launders. Govindasamy was matched with Saenger through the Toronto office of Big Brothers / Big Sisters, and he is currently a major figure in e-sports. The video can be seen here.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez served as an invited panelist for “Where There Is Oppression: Doing Sociology in Challenging Times and Places,” at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Montreal.

Assistant Professor of English Sonia Del Hierro co-presented “Rasquachismo: A Chicana Digital Humanities Praxis” on August 9 at DH2024, the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.

Professor Emeritus of Biology Ben Pierce was appointed to the Bell and Coryell Counties Biological Advisory Team, which will assist in the development of a regional habitat conservation plan for these two Texas counties.

Professor Emeritus of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa performed a recital on the TGIF Concert Series at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, NM in June. His program was a reflection on the intertwined personal and musical relationships of Robert and Clara Schumann and their protégé and friend Johannes Brahms and included music of all three composers.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez, Assistant Professor of Sociology Adriana Ponce, Assistant Professor of Political Science Alexander Goodwin, Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma, and Assistant Professor of English Sonia Del Hierro had their abstract “Teaching With Color: Thematic Hires and the Politics of Teaching in Texas” accepted as a special feature for the 10 Year Reflection Special Issue on pedagogy and hope in the Journal for the Sociology of Race & Ethnicity. The article will be both a pedagogical reflection on hope in the classroom and on thematic hires. The issue will be available in early 2025.

Associate Professor of Art History Allison Miller gave the presentation, “The Form-Matter Nexus in the Early Chinese Intellectual Tradition and its Implication for the Genealogy of Chinese Art” on the panel, “Rethinking the Form-Matter Nexus after the Material Turn” on June 25 at the CIHA (Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art) conference in Lyon, France.

This summer, Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon participated in the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) Publishing Workshop to support her Mellon Publicly-Engaged Humanities project, Malflora, a forthcoming multimedia platform dedicated to publishing and preserving Latina/e lesbian stories. In the workshop, she learned from a wide range of speakers who work in book, magazine, and multimedia publishing and helped produce Issue 7 of the online magazine, PubLab. As an art director for the magazine, she curated a portfolio of Anel I. Flores’ paintings focused on lesbian intimacy, bodily autonomy, and queer liberation, which you can access here.

Assistant Professor of Violin Jessica Mathaes performed as a soloist with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra in Jackson, WY this summer. She also led the orchestra as concertmaster. Named “one of 2024’s top US Classical Music Festivals” by BBC Music Magazine, the Grand Teton Music Festival is an eight-week concert series that draws from top orchestra musicians throughout the world, and is led by music director Sir Donald Runnicles.

Professor of English Michael Saenger has been invited by Old Dominion University’s Institute for Jewish Studies and Interfaith Understanding to take part in their new series, “The Nosh: Taking a Bite Out of Hard Conversations.” Saenger will co-facilitate discussion on the current Israel-Palestine conflict and its impact on American academics.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira has published the essay “Working for the miracle: A critical, visual analysis of Disney’s Encanto,” along with co-authors Raisa Alvarado of California State University, San Bernardino and Carlos Flores of California State University, Sacramento, in the International Journal of Communication.The essay proposes a visual analysis of Encanto, with particular attention to the cultural tensions and ideologies that surround the film, including paratexts produced by Encanto fans via the streaming platform TikTok. Although the film remains notable for its stylistic displays of Latine identities and experiences, its visual choices remain situated in western, settler-colonial ideologies of oligarchical governance, mestizaje, and postracism. The visual analysis of Encanto and its related paratexts contributes to scholarship on the labor of cultural translators on behalf of Disney, expanding it to include unaffiliated Disney audiences who digitally articulate histories of imperialism, displacement, and their contemporary counterparts for public audiences. The International Journal of Communication is an open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is consistently among the top quartile of journals in communication with highest citation metrics worldwide. The essay can be read here. 

This summer, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Amy King directed Cats at the Georgetown Palace Theatre. Recommended by SU’s Ride the Cyclone  director Kristen Rogers, King collaborated with Evelyn Hoelscher of the Spaces of Fontana Dance Company and music director Michael Rosensteel on a contemporary take on the classic production. The production runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. from August 2 through September 8. Tickets can be purchased here.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson presented “Lucy’s Story: The Surprising Tale of an Enslaved Black Woman in British Central America in the 1770s” as the inaugural webinar for the Government of Belize’s Institute of Social and Cultural Research-National Institute of Culture and History Research Lab Series 2.0 on July 24. It was well attended and is posted on the ISCR-NICH YouTube channel, available here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper’s work in editing and publishing previously obscure music by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds was the subject of an interview article published in the August 2024 issue of American Music Teacher. The article can be read here.

Director of Admission Rebecca Rother and Regional Associate Director of Admission Jaime Gonzalez served as faculty co-chair, higher education and operations team, for the Admission and College Counseling Institute, a program run by the Texas Association of College Admission Counseling. They helped to engage new professionals on the high school and college sides of the enrollment process. The conference was held at Schreiner University in Kerrville, TX from July 15–18.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth participated in a collaborative event, “Tree Cultures ad Kew,” co-convened by Interdisciplinary Research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the University of Derby. Bringing together researchers and practitioners from the humanities and from arboriculture, participants explored how we understand and regard the value of trees in both historical and cultural contexts. The symposium showcased emerging literary and environmental history scholarship on trees and tree spaces, and fostered discussions around how the arts and humanities can contribute to debates on trees, past, present, and future. The symposium was held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a UNESCO World Heritage site of immense arboreal, botanical, and conservation interest. Kew’s treescapes foregrounded the symposium’s discussions, and participants had the opportunity to engage in guided tree walks of Kew’s tree collections and of Kew’s Wood Xylarium.

Scene Shop Manager Monroe Oxley’s 10 minute play Overduewill be performed at the Tumbleweed Festival in Lubbock, TX, presented by The Lubbock Community Theatre, on August 9 and 10.

Assistant Professor of Music Ruben Balboa had the distinct privilege of performing at the 2024 American Viola Society Festival and Primrose International Viola Competition in Los Angeles, CA, where he gave the world premiere of “Tejano Suite for Viola and Piano,” a piece he commissioned by Alex Molina Shawver. The suite is an exploration of both genre and identity, delving into the Tejano or Conjunto genre, which includes folk music developed in the Texas-Mexico border region over centuries of cultural conflict, fusion, and synthesis. Each movement of the suite incorporates characteristic rhythmic material from common conjunto dances, while the harmonic and formal idioms remain true to the composer’s unique style.

Assistant Professor of Music Ruben Balboa and colleagues Ames Asbell, Kathy Steely, Martha Carpetyan, and Tim Washecka, had the honor of presenting and performing together at the 2024 American Viola Society Festival and Primrose International Viola Competition in Los Angeles, CA. Their presentation, entitled “AVS Festival Ensemble Commissions Retrospective: Works by Bunch, Colberg, and Vanderveer,” featured a retrospective with brief, recorded interviews with each composer and a performance of their works.

Former Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha, Catherine Hiebel ’22, and Linsey Jensen ’23 co-authored an article, titled “Turning to the Radical Right: Examining Subnational Variation in Radical Right Support after Ethnic Minority Success in East Central Europe,” which has been accepted for publication in Electoral Studies.  This article started as a 2021 SCOPE project. Jensen is currently in a dual M.A./M.Sc. program, recently completing a M.A. in European History, Politics, and Society at Columbia University, and starting a M.Sc. in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe at the London School of Economics in the fall. Hiebel will be starting a M.Sc. in International Politics at Trinity College Dublin in the fall.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma attended the 29th Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) at the University of Johannesburg on June 26-27, where he presented fieldwork notes from Mellon PEH Summer Fellowship-supported research on commodities, trade, and pre-colonial African society.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma attended the Institute for Global Law and Policy Global Scholars Academy in Stellenbosch, South Africa on June 28, where he presented his paper titled, “‘Put it in their food’: Food, Power, and Control in southern Zimbabwe.”

Professional Academic Advisor Hayley Harned has been elected as one of the twelve National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Emerging Leaders for 2024-2026. The Emerging Leaders Program provides a structured platform that aims to build an inclusive and sustainable community of strong NACADA leaders. The program is a cohort of professionals focused on building leaders for the next generation of NACADA engagement. We are proud of Hayley’s accomplishment and excited for her continued growth and development in the field of advising!

On June 23, Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon led a community teach-in at Alienated Majesty Books entitled “No Pride in Genocide: A Teach-In on Zionist Pinkwashing.” The teach-in focused on defining and dismantling pinkwashing, or the process of promoting LGBTQ+ rights to appear progressive while simultaneously upholding oppressive systems that directly harm LGBTQ+ people, such as settler colonialism and occupation. The teach-in was part of a larger series of educational events in Austin focused on Palestinian liberation, which enabled a broader public to engage in critical dialogue informed by activist-oriented scholarship.

Associate Professor of Business Debika Sihi published an article titled “Sustainability and Marketing: Examining the Digital Impacts” in the book Advances in Digital Marketing and eCommerce  by Springer. She virtually presented this work examining the developing standards, measurement, and disclosure of environmental impacts related to the advertising industry at the Digital Marketing and e-Commerce Conference held June 26-28 in Barcelona, Spain.

Sierra Rupp ’23 had her Senior Seminar paper, “From Fields to Frontlines: The Relationship Between Drug Trafficking & Armed Conflict,” directed by former Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor, published in The Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics.  Rupp is currently in Kyrgyzstan on a Critical Language Scholarship for Russian and this fall will be on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Spain. Her generous acknowledgements recognize the role of the political science department in general and her various professors in this process. You can find the article here.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby co-authored “Endometrial decidualization status modulates endometrial microvascular complexity and trophoblast outgrowth in gelatin methacryloyl hydrogels” in the journal npj Women’s Health  with Dr. Samantha Zambuto and the Harley Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The work was published open-access and can be downloaded here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper gave an invited presentation for the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library’s Summer Educator Institute, “It’s Tricky: American Music and Culture.” Titled “Teaching American Classical Music in Color: Stories, Journeys, and Portraits Old, New, and Yet to Come,” Cooper’s presentation was about the ethical and moral imperative of challenging both the perception of a Black/White color line in classical music and the de facto creation of said color line via endless reiterations of canonical compositions by mostly-long-dead-canonical composers, most of whom are European and/or male, and about ways in which today’s educators can liberate themselves from the fetters of canonical domination.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Stokes recently published the “Anatomy and Physiology Student Accommodations Handbook” through the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS). Serving as Chair of the Curriculum and Instruction-Accommodations Subcommittee, Stokes, in collaboration with 16 HAPS colleagues, researched, vetted, and produced a 64-page guide to assist instructors in meeting student accommodations by identifying meaningful alternatives to existing protocols in anatomy and physiology laboratories based on best practices supported by current research and the concepts of universal design. The goal is to make anatomy and physiology laboratories as inclusive and accessible as possible, allowing all learners to achieve their desired level of success. This new HAPS publication was also featured in a workshop, “Implementing Inclusive Teaching Practices in Anatomy and Physiology Labs,” led by Stokes, at the HAPS Annual Conference in St. Louis from May 25-29.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez published a feature article in the Summer edition of the magazine Conscience,  titled “Are There Christian Feminists? How White Supremacy Impacts Our Assumptions About Identity.” In the article, Hernandez highlights the role that white supremacy plays in the common assumption that feminism and faith are at odds.

Professor of Theatre Sergio Costola published an essay entitled “Lucrezia Borgia Triumphal Chariot: Notes on Performance Documentation” in Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies,  10.1 (2024): 61-80, Memory and Performance, Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals. The Monographic Section was edited by Francesca Bortoletti, Giovanna Di Martino, and Eugenio Refini. The essay can be read here.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Alexander Goodwin was the keynote speaker for the Georgetown Juneteenth Celebration on June 15. This was the 72nd Annual Celebration of Juneteenth in Georgetown sponsored by the Georgetown Cultural Citizen Memorial Association (GCCMA). Juneteenth is a recognition and celebration of June 19, 1865 as the day that the enslaved people in Texas were informed that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed on January 1, 1863 to free them from slavery. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law making Juneteenth a national holiday.

Assistant Vice President of Admission Christine Bowman presented at the Higher Education Consulting Association Annual Conference in Atlanta. She was a member of the Professional Development Institute, where she led a workshop on understanding the financial aid process and collaborated on a session regarding student transitions and support throughout the college search experience.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal served as a theatre staging and venue consultant for Penfold Theatre’s new home in Round Rock, TX. This is the first professional theatre venue in Round Rock. Penfold Theatre will open its 17th season and continues its mission of telling intimate stories of empathy and hope, curating performances by premier local artists, and nurturing theatremakers of today and tomorrow. The opening of this facility will also provide other performing artists access to affordable space at a time when venues are disappearing.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed scenery and is the scenic charge artist for Magnolia Musical Theatre’s production of Footloose the musical, running July 10 through August 10 at Hill Country Galleria Pavilion in Bee Cave, TX. This professional production is directed by Professor Emeritus of Theatre Rick Roemer, with technical direction by Scene Shop Manager Monroe Oxley. Students Connor Bustos ’26 and Em Hoover ’27 collaborated with Roybal and Oxley as academic interns in scenic fabrication and scenic art. Alumni Kyle Bussone-Peterson ’24 and Alex Cannata ’24, along with students Ashlyn Zunker ’25 and Olivia Hynes ’27 are scenic carpenters and painters.

Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones was invited to participate in a workshop of the “Seminar of the social and cultural history of health and disease in Mexico,” held at the Institute of Historical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Discussants contributed their chapters for an upcoming volume on hidden histories of health and disease in Mexico in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Hernandez Berrones’ contribution, titled “Recovering the relics of modern medicine in Mexico: Homeopathy, vitalism, and religion, 1853-1912,” examines the associations between heterodox religious and medical systems in the construction of a plural therapeutic market place in modern Mexico.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson delivered an invited presentation titled “Beautiful Writing and the Art of Living: An Introduction to Chinese Writing,” for International Chinese Language Day at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington D.C. on April 20.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson presented an invited lecture in Chinese, entitled “Translation and Cultural Communication: How a Twentieth-Century Concept of Chinese Language Transformed the Language of Western Poetry,” addressing AI in light of the revolutionary effect of Ezra Pound’s theories and translation of Chinese language, as part of the series “Professional Lecture Forum on Foreign Languages,” at the Translation Department of Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, Hubei, China on June 11.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson presented an invited lecture in Chinese, entitled “Who is Writing? Comparing Ideas of Self in Understanding Chinese Calligraphy” for the Fujian Scholar Forum, held at Fujian Normal University in Fuzhou, Fujian, China, on June 5.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson delivered an invitational keynote address in Chinese, entitled “Excellence in Teaching through Collaboration and Empathy,” dedicated to the memory of Professor of Art Star Varner and in partial fulfillment of her charge, to the “China-US College Chinese Language Teachers Association” (unofficial translation of the recently inaugurated 中美高校中文教师联) at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China, on May 31.

Assistant Director of Study Abroad and International Student Services Laura Ramsel has been selected by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and the Institute of International Education (IIE), to attend the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program Advisor Workshop, hosted by the University of Houston on July 12. Interest in the workshop was competitive.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes has been appointed as a production editor for H-France Review.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen, Retired Project WILD State Coordinator Kiki Corry, and Leander ISD Elementary STEM Coordinator and Project WILD Facilitator Mark Corry presented “Polishing the GEMS: Improving PD through Lesson Study” at the 2024 Coordinator Tri-Conference and Training for Project WILD, WET, and Learning Tree state coordinators and facilitators. Kamen and Corry were also invited facilitators for state coordinators observing and collecting observation data on combined WILD, WET, Learning Tree at a pre-conference workshop for local educators.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Associate Professor of Curriculum Instruction and Learning Sciences at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Debra Plowman published “There Are No Word Problems in Real Life–To Keyword or Not to Keyword” in the Summer 2024 newsletter of the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education. Their quarterly column tells the ongoing story of the fictional character, Ian Quiry, as he studies and struggles to learn how to be an effective elementary school STEM teacher. The newsletter can be read here.

Senior Director of Conference and Event Sales Sally Cameron, Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives Megan Firestone, and Senior Director of Marketing & Communications Kristen Paxson, have been recognized for their exceptional leadership and dedication by graduating from Leadership Georgetown’s 2023-2024 Class. This prestigious program, a nine-month community leadership initiative by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, focuses on professional development and education to empower current and emerging leaders. The program aims to deepen participants’ understanding of community dynamics and the critical role leadership plays in ensuring long-term success. On June 5, Cameron, Firestone, and Paxson celebrated their graduation, marking a significant milestone in their professional journeys and their commitment to community development.

Institutional Research Analyst Hal Hoeppner, alongside Director of Community-Based Learning at Georgia Institute of Technology Sarah Brackmann, presented “Who is doing what? Moving beyond Self-Reporting to Track HIPs” at the annual Association of Institutional Research (AIR) Forum. The presentation was about how Southwestern tracks student participation in Study Abroad, Internships, Undergraduate Research, and Community Engaged Learning without relying on student surveys.

Associate Professor of Theatre Kerry Bechtel designed the costumes for The Star Spangled Girl  at Unity Theater in Brenham, TX. This classic Neil Simon comedy required 15 distinct costumes from the late 1960s for the three main characters. Unity Theater is a professional theatre company located in beautiful Washington County, attracting theatre artists and patrons from both the Austin and Houston areas. The Star Spangled Girl  runs through June 30.

Professor of Kinesiology Scott McLean and students Kevan Kennedy ’24 and Emma Williams ’24 presented a poster entitled “Comparison of Overground, Motorized Treadmill and Non-Motorized Treadmill Gait” at the American College of Sports Medicine Annual Meeting in Boston, MA.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala presented on a featured “supersession” at the Rhetoric Society of America biennial conference. The panel focused on climate catastrophes, and Bahrainwala spoke about manual scavenging among Dalits, the framing of Muslims as “climate culprits,” and the ongoing green colonialism of Palestine.

Professor of Theatre Sergio Costola was the keynote speaker for the International Conference “RAPPRESENTARE GLI ESTE. La comunicazione del potere Estense entro e oltre i confini della signoria” in Ferrara, Italy from May 23-25.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey gave a talk titled “Fluence-dependent transient absorption reveals the functional connectivity of red chlorophyll sites in cyanobacterial PSI” at the North American Photosynthesis Congress, held June 3-6 in Atlanta, GA. She conducted the research with Lexi Fantz ’21 along with collaborators from Swarthmore College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Sheffield.

Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux and her students, Lainey Gutierrez ’25, Jaxson Haynes ’25, Maryn Medlock ’25, Cassidy Reynolds ’25, and Lauren Sanders ’24, presented a poster titled “Developing the Self-Perceived Parental Effort Scale (SPES)” at the annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, CA on May 25.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes reviewed Katharina Fritsch’s book, The Diaspora of the Comoros in France: Ethnicised Biopolitics and Communitarianism, for H-France. It can be read here.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira presented two papers at the Rhetoric Society of America Conference, held in Denver, CO, May 23-27. Moreira presented the essay “The Place of Blackness in U.S. Constructions of Latinidad,” in which she investigates Anzaldúa’s legacy of mestizaje and hybridity as foundational for the absence of studies about Blackness and antiblackness in Latine Communication Studies. Additionally, she presented on the failures of media literacy and “informational bootstraps” approaches in the classroom in the face of growing monetized and organized disinformation campaigns.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira was among 30 scholars invited to participate in the Viral Movements Symposium, hosted at Penn State on May 14 and 15. The symposium was organized by Lisa Flores, the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair of the Humanities, and featured scholars from the humanities and life sciences to discuss the topics of (im)mobility, (mis)information, and (mis)management.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the first edition of the complete four-movement version Florence B. Price’s valedictory opus, Dances in the Canebrakes, for Piano Solo, with ClarNan Editions (Fayetteville, AR). Price actually began work on the music that would become this suite in early 1929, and returned to the idea repeatedly over the next twenty-four years. Finally, in what was to be the last year of her life, she was ready to publish it and made preparations to do so – but died before the edition could come out (it was copyrighted five months to the day after her death and published shortly thereafter). That edition soon went out of print, however, and consequently the Dances in the Canebrakeshave been known mostly in the orchestral arrangement prepared by Price’s colleague William Grant Sill. Cooper’s edition makes her music newly available as she conceived it, also including an appendix that provides the original version of final movement (this titled Chicken Feathersinstead of Silk Hat and Walking Cane). Interested folk can hear three of the suite’s movements in the landmark recording on pianist Althea Waites’s 1987/1993 album Black Diamonds here.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper in the journal Optimization Methods and Software. “Maximizing the number of rides served for time-limited Dial-a-Ride” shows that for a particular variant of the offline Dial-a-Ride problem, no polynomial-time algorithm will serve the optimal number of requests, unless P = NP. It then describes k-Sequence, an approximation algorithm that repeatedly serves the fastest set of k remaining requests, and bounds its performance. The paper can be read here.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long published a paper titled “Reckoning Climate Apartheid” in the journal Political Geography. That paper, which examines global systematic climate injustice, can be found here.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long presented a paper titled “Avoiding Adaptation as Partition” on May 16 at the Human Geographies of Adaptation Conference at the University of Bergen in Bergen, Norway.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long presented a flash talk on May 13 titled “Reframing Existential Adaptation” at the Theory of Change Workshop hosted by Imagine Adaptation in Bergen, Norway.

Director of Study Abroad and International Student Services Monya Lemery has been nominated and elected to serve on the Forum Council beginning July 1, for a three-year term. The Forum Council serves as part of the shared leadership of The Forum on Education Abroad, along with the Board of Directors and the Forum staff. One of the primary roles of Council members is to represent the Forum membership and the greater field of Education Abroad and communicate the interests and needs of the field of Education Abroad to The Forum.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson has just published “Lucy’s Story: The Surprising Tale of an Enslaved Black Woman in British Central America in the 1770s” in Anthropology Now. The article can be read here.

Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon participated on a panel entitled “Atravesades Igniting through Art, Community, and Place-Making” with co-panelists Anel Flores and T. Jackie Cuevas at El Mundo Zurdo Conference in San Antonio. She presented her paper, “Somos Lesbianas: Chicana Lesbian Place-Making and Place-Taking En Comunidad,” which examines how Chicana lesbians take up art and writing as vessels for challenging oppressive forces and building coalition in the 1991 anthology “Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About.” edited by Carla Trujillo. In her paper, Solomon examines how Chicana lesbians integrate and redefine cultural customs in their creative expressions of self, spirituality, and familia that push back against the heteropatriarchal logics of Chicano nationalism. Underscoring the anthology form as a critical source of feminist coalition, she asserts that the voices featured in Chicana Lesbians intervene in dominant discourses on Chicana lesbian life toward a shared state of conocimiento - a spiritual and activist consciousness that tasks us with imagining and enacting new worlds.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano has a chapter entitled, “Making Personal Connections with Social Psychology,” appearing in the forthcoming book (to be published in August), Teaching Social Psychology.

Professor of Communication Studies Valerie Renegar furthered her research agenda on the rhetoric surrounding stepmothers by presenting on Kamala Harris as an antidote to traditional stepmother stereotypes in Barcelona, Spain at the International Conference on Gender Research in late April.

Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone was the featured speaker for the City of Georgetown’s Main Street Program Breakfast Bites meeting. She presented “From Storefronts to Stories: Preservation & Local Business History,” highlighting materials held in Distinctive Collections related to Georgetown businesses.

Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone presented at First Friday for Preservation Georgetown on the impact of the Williamson County courthouse on the architecture of downtown, plus presented an overview of the new Historic Downtown Georgetown Walking Tour, a joint project between the City of Georgetown and Preservation Georgetown.

Professor of Art History and Margarett Root Brown Chair in Fine Arts Kimberly Smith published four “in-focus” essays in the exhibition catalogue, Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider(Tate Publishing, in association with Yale University Press). The essays address specific collaborations and relationships in the Blue Rider movement, and are titled: “The French Connection,” “Else Lasker-Schüler and Franz Marc’s Mail Art,” “Reiterinnen: Women Riders,” and “Fritz Burger: The Art Historical Connection.” The catalogue was edited by Natalia Sidlina, and published in conjunction with the landmark exhibition, “Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider” at the Tate Modern, London, on view until October 20, 2024.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper contributed an invited guest post to the Women’s Song Forum blog. Titled “Florence Price, Motherhood, and Loss,” the post draws on archival research and textual and musical analysis to explore the relationship between “Brown Arms (To Mother),” which Price composed (on her own poem) at the twentieth anniversary of her mother’s unimaginably painful decision to sever all ties to Price and renounce her race, spending the rest of her life passing as white, and “To My Little Son” (poem by Julia Johnson Davis), which she composed at the thirtieth anniversary of the death of her son Tommy, who died of malaria two days before his sixth birthday. Cooper discovered the manuscript for “Brown Arms (To Mother)” several years ago and released its first published edition this past January. Interested folk can read this post here.

Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone presented at two sessions, “Top Topaz Picks” and “Adult Book Pairings for Programming,” during the Texas Library Association Annual Meeting held April 16-19.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Assistant Professor of Curriculum Instruction and Learning Sciences at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Debra Plowman published a chapter titled “Slide Rules: To the Moon and Back” in Collaboration to Advance Science & Mathematics Education: Panamá City, Panamá, published by the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education. The publication can be read here.

Director of Advising and Retention Jennifer Leach served as a panelist for a NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising webinar on April 22. The panel was titled “The Advisors’ Role in Retention” and was hosted by the Small Colleges & Universities Advising Community & Probation/Dismissal/Reinstatement Issues Advising Community. The panel focused on the advisor’s role in retention and explored how advisors at small institutions can help students successfully navigate the processes of probation, dismissal, or reinstatement.

On April 25, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Kyle Wilhite and his Ph.D. advisor, Mike Ryan, published a paper in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiologytitled “Condition dependence in the sexual communication system of the túngara frog.”

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer was the Keynote speaker at the inaugural Mid-Atlantic Regional Math Alliance Conference. Her talk was titled “I am not a Mathematician” and contained a guide to current issues in the field of mathematics, current issues in academia, recent student arrests on US campuses at protests, and some advice for faculty who want to do better. The talk was intended to guide some discussion and goals of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Math Alliance.

Part-time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello’s voice student Will Mallick ’24 has been cast in leading roles with theater companies around the Georgetown and greater Austin area this year. At the Palace Theatre, Mallick performed the title role “Daniel” in Once on this Island, the title role “Chad” in Disaster, supporting roles “Lord Savage” and “Spider” in Jekyll and Hyde, and supporting role “Kodaly” in She Loves Me. He will soon perform the title role of “Jimmy Ray” in Bright Star. Mallick performed “Kenickie” in Greasewith Summer Stock Austin, and is soon to perform the title role “Emmett” in Legally Blondeat Zilker Hillside Theater. Please congratulate Will Mallick on his incredible success these past twelve months! Altobello has been Mallick’s voice teacher for four years.

Garey Chair and Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry Maha Zewail-Foote co-authored a paper in a top journal, Briefings in Bioinformatics.She and her co-authors showed that DNA damage is localized within cancer-forming sequences across the human genome. This multidisciplinary research involved a unique collaboration with UT Austin professors in various disciplines.

Senior Research and Instruction Librarian Katherine Hooker presented a poster at the Texas Library Association’s annual conference on April 17. “Three Ring Library Circus (But in a Good Way): Leaning into the Theme with Creative Instruction for Creative Students” summarized three-part library instruction delivered to students in Associate Professor of Theatre Kerry Bechtel’s “Design Fundamentals” course. Students learned via an online escape game, a collaborative Padlet, and an InfoGuide, all highly customized around the course’s vibrant circus theme.

Sabrina Woodward ’25 presented the paper “Motocicleta lúdica/Playful motorcycle” at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium held at Rollins College on March 22. Her presentation was based on the course “Leisure and Play in Latin America” (Fall 2023) that Sabrina took with Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodriguez Cadena, who mentored her to present at the Symposium.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed (panel organizer) and Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson (panel chair), along with two SCOPE undergraduate students, Rose Reed ’25 and Kalista Esquivel ’26, presented their panel “Unsilencing the Past: How Oral Histories Give Voice to Black and Latinx Students at Southwestern University” on April 18 at the Southwestern Social Science Association Conference in New Orleans, LA. Dr. Johnson discussed the foundational history of the University and the founding of The SU Racial History Project. Dr. Reed discussed the liberatory potential of oral histories and why this particular method is key to unsilencing the voices of the oppressed at a predominantly white institution. Rose presented the oral history of Lynette Philips, a Black woman who attended Southwestern University between 1980-1984, played basketball for the university, and was very active on campus. Kalista presented the oral history of Eva Mendiola, a Mexican-American woman who attended Southwestern University from 1972-1975 and founded the volleyball team, which was the first women’s sports team on campus. Future plans include submitting these student papers to a special issue of an oral history journal. The conference program can be viewed here.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen was elected to the position of second vice president (becoming the first vice president and president over the following two years) of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP). He will serve as conference chair for the 2026 TASP conference. TASP is the premier professional organization in academia dedicated to interdisciplinary research and theory construction concerning play throughout the world since 1973. The Association’s broad multidisciplinary focus includes the fields of anthropology, biology, communication studies, cultural studies, dance, ecology, education, ethnology, folklore, history, kinesiology, leisure studies, musicology, philosophy, psychology, recreation, sociology, and the arts.

Graduating senior education major Leora Ammerman ’24 has earned selection for the prestigious and nationally competitive Fulbright U.S. Student Program fellowship, to serve as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Spain for 2024-2025. Leora will be able to leverage the elementary and special education certifications she’s earning at SU to be a highly prepared ETA. Congratulations to Leora and her faculty champions!

French and psychology double major Sarah Woods ’21 is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, studying cognition and neural science in the department of psychology. She was recently selected as a recipient of the prestigious and nationally competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations to Sarah and her SU faculty champions who prepared her for this next step!

At the GiveCampus Partner Success Days in San Antonio on April 16, Director of Annual Giving Lauren Strilich and Assistant Director of Annual Giving Jayden Hughes ’21 presented their work, entitled “Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Building Cross Campus Partnerships.” This presentation focuses on leveraging and collaborating with campus partners for successful fundraising.

University Chaplain and Director of Spiritual Life Ron Swain presented the Student Leadership for Racial Justice Award, which is named in his honor, at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA on April 12. This Award was created at Swain’s alma mater in 2020, during the 50th anniversary of his graduation from Duquesne. The Award is presented annually to students who have demonstrated authentic passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion through education, engagement, and advocacy at the University or in the city of Pittsburgh. This year’s recipients are Lei’Asha Battle, a junior nursing major, and Jakobie Green, a junior Finance major, both from Sarasota, FL.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar presented a plenary talk titled “Bringing the Archives Out of the Archives: Mobilizing and Reframing University Archives in Critiques of Campus Commemorative Landscapes” at the Austin Archives Bazaar, held at Scholz Garten in Austin on April 14. The talk described the experience of developing the Placing Memory Interactive Story Map in Summer 2023 with Megan Firestone, Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives, and a team of 11 student researchers: Bettina Castillo ’24, Max Colley ’24, Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24, Lainey Gutierrez ’25, Teddy Hoffman ’24, Hannah Jury ’24, Shawn Maganda ’24, Harper Randolph ’25, Andrea Stanescu ’24, Michelle Taing ’24, and Ava Zumpano ’25.

Two East Asian Studies faculty members, Associate Professor of Art History Allison Miller and Visiting Professor of Economics Maorui Yang, and two students attended the ASIANetwork conference in Atlanta, Georgia from April 12-14. Natalie Davis ’27 presented her poster titled, “Dueling Depictions: Zhang Zhixin and the Politics of Femininity in Chinese Scar Art.” Kate Medlock ’26 presented her poster titled, “Reviving the Past: A Mid-Western Zhou Jade Pendant and its Neolithic References.” Maorui presented on the panel, “Teaching and Research in the Liberal Arts: ASIANetwork-Luce Postdoctoral Fellows.”

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth’s engagement with the German speaking community was instrumental in securing a gift to Southwestern University’s Distinctive Collections: Uwe Lemke’s extensive Perry Rhodan collection, donated by his widow Mary Duffy. The many volumes of this epic narrative represent Germany’s most successful and longest running science fiction series that started in 1961, arguably the most successful science fiction novel series in the world. This gift makes Distinctive Collections and Archives currently the only library in the USA that can provide access to a German language collection of the Perry Rhodan series.

Natalie Davis ’27 was named as runner-up for ASIANetwork’s McJimsey student essay award for her paper, “Dueling Depictions: Zhang Zhixin and the Politics of Femininity in Chinese Scar Art.” Natalie received funding to present her work at the ASIANetwork annual conference in Atlanta.

Four art history students presented their research at the virtual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium from April 11-14. David Salvania ’27 presented his paper titled, “Feng Zikai’s Advocation of Unity within Shanghai through the Subtlety of Cartoons.” Natalie Davis ’27 presented her paper titled, “Dueling Depictions: Zhang Zhixin and the Politics of Femininity in Chinese Scar Art.” Ceridwen Grady ’24 presented her paper titled, “Accessibility Archive: Finding Sensory Equity in Olafur Eliasson’s Installations.” Hannah Chock ’24 presented her paper titled, “Invitation and Alienation: Semiotic Constructions of Holy Bodies in Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto.”

Sociology major Elena Clark ’24 was selected as the first place winner in the prestigious Alpha Kappa Delta national undergraduate paper competition for her capstone project titled “‘Freedom of the streets’ or ‘Barriers to success?’ Factors that Predict Attitudes About Homelessness In The United States.” Elena competed against sociology majors from R1s, liberal arts universities, and other schools across the country. Her award comes with a cash prize and travel money to the August 2024 American Sociological Association (ASA) meeting in Montreal, Quebec, where she will participate in the ASA Honors Program, present her paper, and receive her award at the AKD Awards Ceremony. Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe served as Elena’s faculty mentor for this project.

Recent political science grad and newly elected Phi Beta Kappa member Sierra Rupp ’23 has earned one of the State Department’s prestigious Critical Language Scholarships to study Russian this summer in Kyrgyzstan. Sierra is also one of SU’s two winners of the State Department’s 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Student Program fellowship for an English Teaching Assistantship to Spain. Previously, she was also the winner of a CLS Spark award for Summer 2024 to study beginning Russian. Congratulations to Sierra for such outstanding accomplishments!

From a pool of more than 5,000 applicants, biochemistry/mathematics junior and Dixon Scholar Brian Armijo ’25 was selected as a 2024 Goldwater scholar - SU’s first ever! The Goldwater Scholarship Program, one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics in the United States, seeks to identify, encourage, and financially support college sophomores and juniors who show exceptional promise of becoming this nation’s next generation of research leaders in these fields.

Olivia Bakke ’25, Logan LeBlanc ’25, and Abby Ryan ’25 competed in the National Collegiate Digital Marketing Championships hosted by Baylor University on April 10-11. They competed in all the events and demonstrated outstanding team camaraderie. Logan won the Viral Competition on YouTube marketing.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala (LB) published an article along with co-author Dr. Jaishikha Nautiyal in the journal QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. The article, “Queer Desi Kinships: Reaching across Partition,” offers ethnographic accounts of how casteism, anti-Muslim sentiment, and anti desi-queerness diminish desi solidarities in white and western contexts, including academia. They argue that the 1947 Partition of Pakistan and India is still ongoing, and worldwide. Dr. Nautiyal is also joining the Communication Studies Department in Fall 2024, and we are very lucky to have her. The article can be read here.

At the American Physiological Society’s Annual Meeting in Long Beach, CA from April 3-7, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Stokes presented her work, entitled “Collaborative Critical Thinking Problem Sets Enhance Student Perceived Learning and Promote Student Practice Outside of the Classroom.” This pedagogical research focuses on student collaborative learning and engagement in the Anatomy and Physiology classroom.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha presented a paper at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference, held from April 4-7 in Chicago. The paper, “Gestational Surrogacy and Party Politics in Europe,” was part of a panel on “European Political Parties.” She also served as a discussant for a panel on “European Executive and Parliamentary Politics.”

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor, Gerald Jones ’25, and Adrian Gonzalez ’25 presented their collaborative project, “Unraveling State Identity in the United States,” at the Midwest Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting April 3-5 in Chicago, IL. They were joined at the conference by SU alumna Alesha Lewis ’21, a current PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who presented her first-year graduate paper “Does Racial Trauma Influence Political Behavior in Marginalized People?”

Associate Professor of History Joseph Hower found time, between beignets, to chair and comment on a panel on “Environmental Justice in Postwar America” at the Organization of American Historians Conference on American History in New Orleans.

Computer Science majors Caleb Highsmith ’24, Alejandro Medina ’24, Travis Rafferty ’24, and Noah Zamarripa ’24 presented a poster on “SNITCH: Southwestern’s Newest Innovation to Cultivate Honor” which earned 3rd place at the 34th Annual Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region on April 5 in Nacogdoches, TX. Their work, done in Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony’s capstone course, develops a web-based tool allowing a person to upload assignments and make judgments about the likelihood of the result having been generated by AI, with machine learning models that are constantly being evaluated and are automatically configured based on their performance. Travis also presented a poster on “Using Multi-Objective Quality Diversity to Evolve Complex Machines in Minecraft” that was joint work with Joanna Lewis ’24 done through a SCOPE project with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth presented an invited talk on “Die Zukunft des Sprachenlernens in den USA: Visionen und Innovationen” (The Future of Studying Languages in the USA: Visions and Innovations) at the Goethe-Institut in Washington DC. The joint conference sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) and the Goethe-Institut brought together invited expert voices in education, administration, and professional organizations to collaborate on future oriented visions for the continued success of learning and teaching German across institutions, proficiency levels, and global networks.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth earned two DAAD materials grants to support teaching and learning in German Studies. The grants from Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) and the German Foreign Office provide two curated collections of German language titles: a collection of literary works published in 2023, and a collection of literature commenting on and reflecting current salient issues in German culture. Students will use the collections to study representations of diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism in German literature. Success with DAAD materials grants is made possible through Berroth’s work in community engagement as a DAAD Ortslektorin, serving to amplify and multiply the DAAD mission and motto “Change by Exchange.”

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth mentored two students who presented their research projects at the 13th Undergraduate Research Conference in German Studies, organized by Moravian and Lafayette Colleges in Pennsylvania on April 6, 2024. This national conference brought together young scholars and their mentors for presentations and discussions of a range of interdisciplinary topics representative of German Studies. Isabella Moore ’25, double major in German and Environmental Studies, presented her comparative study on developments in the use of solar energy in Germany and the United States. Kendyl Feuerbacher ’27, double major in German and Studio Art with a minor in Design Thinking, presented her research on the increase of motivation for learning new languages through the use of video games.

Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro presented the paper “Revelando el impacto y el trauma del conflicto armado: La espectralidad como estrategia cinematográfica en el cine colombiano del nuevo milenio” at the 2024 Southwest Council on Latin American Studies in Panama City, Panama.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long attended the Political Ecology Society and Society for Applied Anthropology conference in Santa Fe, NM from March 25-30. He served on a panel and presented a flash talk titled, “Extractivism and Climate Justice: Fueling the New Climate Colonialism.”

Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe and four sociology seniors attended the Southern Sociological Society annual meeting in New Orleans, LA from April 3-6. Each student also presented their capstone research. Elena Clark ’24 presented her paper titled, “‘Freedom of the streets’ or ‘Barriers to success?’ Factors that Predict Attitudes About Homelessness In The United States.” Liana Collins ’24 presented her paper titled, “Americans’ Attitudes About Second Language Learning in the U.S.” Carson Maxfield ’24 presented his paper titled, “Who is More Likely to Support Conspiracy Theories? Examining the Connections between Education, Gender, and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theory.” Brigit Reese ’24 presented her paper titled, “Hope, Nope, or Cope: Americans’ Perceptions about Climate Change in the 2020s.” In addition, Lowe, Reese, and Maxfield presented the preliminary findings from their faculty-student collaborative project titled, “Racialized Fears in White Spaces: The Frequency with Which Residents Worry About Being Perceived As Suspicious in Their Neighborhood.”

Professor of English Michael Saenger published an essay that was featured on the Times of Israel website, titled “Keeping the light on, in my campus office.” The essay advocates activism to combat rising antisemitism at American universities. He was nominated to join the Steering Committee of the new initiative he has helped to launch, discussed in the essay, Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement. The essay can be read here.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano published an article entitled “Successfully publishing with undergraduate coauthors in psychology: Insights from faculty with top track records.” Coauthors are former students Will Hebl ’23 and Jennifer Howell ’09. The article can be read here.

Several Psychology faculty members and students presented papers at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association in San Antonio. Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano and student Megan Muskara ’24, presented a poster titled “Identifying predictors of the psychological benefits of travel.” Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux and students Lainey Gutierrez ’25, Jaxson Haynes ’25, Maryn Medlock ’25, Cassidy Reynolds ’24, and Lauren Sanders ’24 presented a poster titled “Developing the Self-Perceived Parental Effort Scale (SPES).” Assistant Professor of Psychology Karen Lara and students Mara Strohl ’25, Paige Chapman ’25, Tessa Elizondo ’24, Jessica Metcalf ’25, Hailey Brisco ’25, and Ashten Wheeler ’25 presented a poster titled “Children’s and Adults’ Reasoning About How Expected Wait Time Influences Preferences and Emotions.”

Gabriela Nicole Hislop Gomez ’26, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Sabrina Woodward ’25 gave platform presentations at the Capitol of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference (CTURC) hosted at UT Austin. Their presentations were the result of work conducted in the bioprinting laboratory of Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote presented “Biological and molecular consequences of oxidative damage on non-B DNA-induced genetic instability” at the 2024 American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology National Meeting.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote delivered a presentation on effective strategies for improving diversity, inclusion, and belonging within undergraduate research laboratories at the 2024 American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology National Meeting. Her abstract was selected for the coveted spotlight talk for a special session on challenges and best practices in running a research program primarily with undergraduate students.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson presented the paper “The Crawford Family Line: Subaltern Socio-Ecological Formations on the British Coast of Central America in the 1700s” at the Political Ecology Society/Society for Applied Anthropology 84th Annual Meeting on March 27 in Santa Fe, NM.

Visual Content Producer Todd White and Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone won a Texas Library Association Branding Iron Award in the digital communications category for an academic library for their work on the Behind the Artifactseries.

The A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center (SLC) has been named a winner of the Texas Library Association’s “Branding Iron” awards, recognizing outstanding library marketing. Senior Research and Instruction Librarian Katherine Hooker created a pirate-themed interactive library treasure hunt to orient students to the spaces and resources of SLC. Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives Megan Firestone designed a temporary tattoo of the first SU Pirates logo and provided these as prizes for completing the treasure hunt activity. The project won for “Best External Communication” from an academic library.

Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone was added to the acquisition board for the Williamson Museum.

Head of Distinctive Collections & Archives Megan Firestone presented on women’s education at Southwestern University and creation of the Ladies Annex for Preservation Georgetown’s First Friday on March 1.

Professor of English Michael Saenger was invited to contribute to the Antisemitism Studies program at Gratz College. In pioneering its new Masters program in Antisemitism Studies, Gratz College joins the expertise of its own faculty with experts from around the world.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed and investigative journalist Brittney Martin received a 2024 Gracie Award for Best Investigative Feature [Radio ‐ Nationally Syndicated Non‐Commercial] for their podcast series “Sugar Land.” The Gracie Awards celebrate women in media. More info can be found here.

In 2023, Professor of Biology Romi Burks contributed to a United States Department of Agriculture - Agriculture Research Services (USDA-ARS) effort to communicate the latest science on the invasive apple snail that occurs across the southeastern region of the United States. The content of that Apple Snail Workshop, entitled “Apple Snails: Discussion of past problems and future solutions for an emerging pest in the United States agriculture/aquaculture,” now appears published in World Aquaculture, the magazine for the World Aquaculture Society. Recent Burks’ Lab researcher, now professional scientific illustrator, Lauren Muskara ’21 provided the photograph of an apple snail laying eggs on a pylon that the authors chose for the cover of the article. The full article can be read on page 46 here.

Four Mathematics faculty and five students participated in the 2024 Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held March 22-23 in San Marcos, TX. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Mathematical Modeling Projects.” Shelton also performed administrative duties as past Representative of the Texas MAA to the association level MAA Congress, and she served as the Department Liaison. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross participated in Project NeXT sessions. Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr and Professor and Lord Chair of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura attended. Alley Koenig ’24 presented “Subtractive Edge Magic Labelings” resulting from the capstone project supervised by Marr, and Kathryn Altman ’24 presented “​​Difference Distance Magic Oriented Graphs,” also supervised by Marr. ​​Amanda Mejia ’27, Camille James ’27, and Kate Dennis ’27 participated in the Calculus Bowl. 

Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bryan Freyberg published the paper “Neighborhood Balanced Colorings of Graphs” in Graphs and Combinatorics. The article can be read here.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote co-organized and led a well-attended 90-min workshop titled “Unlocking Your Career Success Through Networking and Mentorship” at the 2024 American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology National Meeting. Workshops were selected based on proposal submissions. 

Assistant Professor of History Soojung Han was invited to give a talk in the “Asia in Depth” series at Georgetown University. Her talk was titled “The Rise of the Shatuo Turks: Identity Formation in Medieval China.”

Professor and Austin Term Chair in English Eileen Cleere presided over the 39th meeting of INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies) in Cincinnati, OH, March 21-24, under the theme of “Trans-Turns in the Nineteenth Century.” In addition to whipping Board votes for a successful overhaul of the organization’s bylaws and constitution and announcing prizes and initiatives at the membership banquet, Cleere chaired a panel on “Theorizing Trans-historically.”

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-presented “BA versus BS Degrees in Computer Science” at the Innovations and Opportunities in Liberal Arts Computing Education-affiliated event at SIGCSE 2024, the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education in Portland, OR. The working group considered the computer major requirements of 100+ liberal arts colleges, highlighting commonalities and differences in the BA and BS offerings as well as some of the implications for programs and students.

Associate Professor of Business Debika Sihi and Student Researcher Abigail (Abby) Ryan ’25 presented their research project, “Proactively Leveraging Generative AI Tools in Marketing Courses: A Process for Prompt Engineering Assignments” at the Marketing Management Association’s Spring Educators Conference on March 21-22.

The cello studio of Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music and Artist in Residence Hai Zheng Olefsky participated in a masterclass led by guest artist Joshua Gindele on March 21 at the Caldwell-Carvey Foyer. Professor Gindele, a cello professor at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding member of the prestigious Miro Quartet, conducted the session and provided valuable insights to the performers. During the masterclass, Anna Martens ’24, the first cellist of the SU Orchestra, performed a cello solo piece by Bach and the first movement of the Elgar Concerto, accompanied by Part-Time Instructor of Music David Utterback. Additionally, the Sarofim Piano Trio, a student trio coached by Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa, also performed a rendition of Shostakovich’s Trio Op. No. 2 in E minor at the event.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes presented as part of “New Directions in the Historiography of Post/Colonial France: A Book Panel,” at the Society for French Historical Studies annual meeting at Hofstra University.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper presented a keynote lecture titled “The Cost of Being Fanny Mendelssohn” at each of two concerts offered as part of a Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel festival given by the Capitol Hill Chorale in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Frederick Binkholder of Georgetown University.

Associate Professor of Theatre Kerry Bechtel worked as a costume buyer for Amazon Pictures’ new series “Fallout.” Alumnus Jonathan Knipscher ’03 was the Associate Costume Designer on the project. The show premieres on April 11, 2024. The series trailer can be seen here.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Assistant Professor of Curriculum Instruction and Learning Sciences at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Debra Plowman published “It’s Done with Mirrors” in the Winter 2024 newsletter of the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education. Their quarterly column tells the ongoing story of the fictional character, Ian Quiry, as he studies and struggles to learn how to be an effective elementary school STEM teacher.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby co-authored “Fabrication and Characterization of Quad-Component Bioinspired Hydrogels to Model Elevated Fibrin Levels in Central Nervous Tissue Scaffolds” in the journal Gels with Dr. Dany Munoz-Pinto and his undergraduate laboratory at Trinity University. The work was published open-access and can be downloaded here.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Andrea Stanescu ’24 presented their paper “La doble alteridad en Carmen & Lola” at the Northeastern Modern Languages Conference in Boston, MA, March 8-10.

Professor of Religion Elaine Craddock published the article “Divine Power and Fluid Bodies: Tirunaṅkai Communities in Tamil Nadu” in the International Journal of Hindu Studies this March. The article can be read here.

Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Laura Hobgood spent part of spring break in Los Angeles being interviewed and filmed for a documentary focusing on women as leaders and healers in early and medieval Christianity. The documentary, tentatively titled “Immortality Key,” will be a feature length motion picture when it is completed.

Associate Professor of Art History Allison Miller gave an invited presentation on February 26 in a webinar organized by the Association for Chinese Art History titled “Chinese Art History in the Undergraduate Curriculum.”

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer recently published a review in Nature of the documentary Journeys of Black Mathematicians: Forging Resilience. The review can be read here.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented a talk titled “The study abroad experiences of heritage Spanish speakers” at the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) in Washington, D.C., March 1-3, 2024. This year’s theme was “Education Abroad: Language, Learners, and Communities.”

Professor and Austin Term Chair of English Eileen Cleere published an article in the most recent issue of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. The essay, “Girls on Fire: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1861), Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (1943), and the Adolescent Sublimation of Victorian Sensation” was reworked from a Paideia Lecture, and can be read here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper led a virtual seminar on the subject of the politics of the CREDO of W.E.B. Du Bois and Margaret Bonds with the combined choirs of the University of California, Berkeley. Attended by about eighty singers and several community members, the seminar was offered in preparation for the choirs’ upcoming performance of the Bonds/Du Bois CREDO.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala and SU students R’Yani Vaughn ’24 and Sydney Wahl ’24 attended the 2024 Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Undergraduate Scholars Research Conference in Reno, NV. Lamiyah supervised R’Yani and Sydney’s senior projects, which were anonymously reviewed and competitively selected for presentation: “Exploring Depictions of Black Motherhood in the Music Industry,” R’Yani Sydnee-LeChe’ Vaugn, and “From Samoan Warrior to American Traitor: The Media Framing Creations plus Exceptionalism, Nationalism, and Masculine Perfectionism Reactions that hanger the Course of Football Star Manti Te’o’s Life,” Sydney Lee Wahl. Senior scholars as well as the WSCA President themself spoke with these students and attempted to recruit them to their graduate programs. Congratulations to these impressive students!

Assistant Professor of Music Ruben Balboa served as a jury member for the 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition. As one of the most renowned string instrument competitions in the world, the Primrose International Viola Competition features the world’s best and most promising young violists.

Lerchen Zhong, a sophomore at Westwood High School in Austin and a piano student of Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa since 2019, has been awarded one of fifteen Texas Young Masters arts awards for 2024-2025. Texas Young Masters is a joint program of the Texas Cultural Trust and the Texas Commission on the Arts that focuses on talented young artists in grades 8-11. Recipients, selected through competitive application and audition, receive the title of Young Master and are awarded renewable grants of $5,000 per year for further study in their chosen arts disciplines. In addition to his piano studies, Lerchen was selected as Assistant Concertmaster of the Texas All-State Symphony, the top All-State orchestra, in February.

Gabriela Nicole Hislop Gomez ’26, Noor Nazeer ’24, and Angel Rodriguez ’24 presented their research talks at the Texas Academy of Science (TAS) 2024 Annual Meeting hosted at UT Permian Basin in Odessa. Noor and Angel were awarded first place in the chemistry/biochemistry and physics/engineering sections, respectively. Their presentations were the result of work conducted in the bioprinting laboratory of Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth served as an Evaluator for the National German Exam, administered through the American Association of Teachers of German. The National German Exam is administered each year to over 15,000 high school students of German. The exam, now in its 64th year, provides individual diagnostic feedback, rewards students through an extensive regional and national prize program, and creates a sense of accomplishment. Exam results provide teachers a means of comparing students in all regions of the country, as well as programmatic data to help inform curricular decisions. For over 60 years, the Federal Republic of Germany, through the German Foreign Office and its Pedagogical Exchange Service, has provided the AATG/PAD National German Exam Scholarship, a three-week trip to Germany. Berroth’s outreach and support for teachers and learners of German facilitates transitions from high school to college level German curricula and the enjoyment of lifelong learning.

Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives Megan Firestone presented on the development of downtown Georgetown prior to 1915 and the use of Sanborn Maps to the Georgetown Sertoma Club.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth hosted a campus exploration day for 15 students from Germany and their teachers on February 29. The students from Paul-Klee-Gymnasium in Augsburg participate in the German American Partnership Program, GAPP, with Westwood High School in Round Rock. Established in 1972, the German American Partnership Program facilitates bilateral transatlantic exchanges between schools in the U.S. and Germany. With a substantial network of participating schools and over 400,000 participants over the years, GAPP is the largest bilateral exchange program between the U.S. and another country. Berroth’s sustained engagement in this form of community outreach connects and supports German educators across institutions and increases guidance for students of languages, who are encouraged to integrate experiences abroad into their educational paths. Southwestern students and GAPP participants enjoyed opportunities for increasing their intercultural knowledge and competence.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and former Senior Director of Integrative Learning Sarah Brackmann recently published a piece in Inside Higher Ed Jobs  about how to engage in nonpartisan voter engagement efforts in today’s polarized political climate. They were invited to write the piece based on their presentation on the SU Votes coalition’s strategies for increasing voter registration and engagement at the AAC&U conference in January 2023. It can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Economics Chandrayee Chatterjee presented her co-authored paper titled “Spillover Effects of Advertising: Do TV Advertisements for Non-Food Health Products Promote Healthy Food Choices?” at the American Marketing Association Winter Academic Conference at St. Pete’s Beach, FL, on February 25. The paper was accepted for a session in the competitive paper category.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Amy King wrote, directed, and produced a staged reading of her new play Finger Lickin’ Goodat the Jones Theatre in February. The cast included students Jason Bui ’27 as Raymond, Kyle Bussone-Peterson ’24 as Kevin, and Connor Bustos ’26 on stage directions. They were joined by guest Gina Houston in the leading role of Alice and Director of Business Internships and Assistant Professor of Business Andy Ross as Jim, etc., in his acting debut! The reading was also performed at Austin Community College in Highland Park.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby published a review titled “Open-source extrusion 3D bioprinters: Trends and recommendations” in the journal Bioprinting. The publication evaluates the latest syringe extruders that have been designed to extrude bio-inks and offers concrete recommendations to ensure that this technology remains inexpensive and open-source. The process involved building and testing the five most popular designs available in the literature, as seen in Figure 2. The paper can be accessed for free for 50 days here.

The violin studio of Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Jessica Mathaes performed in a masterclass by guest artist Sandy Yamamoto on Saturday, February 24, at Caldwell-Carvey Foyer. Professor Yamamoto is a violin professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding member of the renowned Miro quartet. Mathaes’ students performed violin solo works in front of a live audience, with a real-time critique by the guest artist. The Sarofim String Quartet (a student quartet coached by Mathaes) concluded the masterclass with a Beethoven Op. 18 No. 4 performance.

Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr attended the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January in San Francisco, where she spoke about the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Summer program as an invited panelist in the AMS Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Panel Discussion: Successful Programs that Support Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr gave the keynote address titled “The Edges of my Mathematical Life” at the Yellowhammer Network of Women in the Mathematical Sciences Workshop at the University of Alabama.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes gave a guest lecture at the University of Maryland-College Park on “Race and Activism in France: From the Algerian War to #BLM.” While in the DC area, she also gave invited talks at American University and Georgetown University about her recent book, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer gave two invited talks in February. On February 7th, she spoke at the University of Illinois Chicago about geodesic currents and how to use them as a tool. On February 12, she spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about a work in progress with her collaborators on statistical properties of CAT(0) spaces.

Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon participated in the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship Conference in Los Angeles, CA, from February 15-18. With co-discussants X’andrí and Alexandra Salazar, she presented on a roundtable entitled “The Pleasures and Intimacies of Jotería Spacemaking Within and Beyond the University.” Their roundtable focused on the necessity of cultivating spaces to exist and commune as jotería (queer Latinxs) against continued assaults on our humanity. As politicians and their constituents continue to target and alienate LGBTQ+ folks, this roundtable asserted that jotería spacemaking is an act of survival.

Kathryn Altman ’24 and Alleen Koenig ’24 gave a poster presentation at the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics (NCUWM). Their poster was on the summer research they performed in which they used mathematical modeling to study the effects of gravitropism on the structure of tomato plant root system architectures.

Associate Professor of Education Alicia Moore, Visiting Professor of Education Deborah Shepherd, and Rebecca M. Giles (University of South Alabama) published the article, “Preparing Early Childhood Teachers to Create Inclusive Literacy,’” in English in Texas: A Journal of the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. The essay highlights the importance of “mirror” texts for young children, which allow students to see their identities highlighted through books and analysis.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Jessica Mathaes was selected to lead the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra as concertmaster this summer. Hailed as “one of the top 10 classical music festivals in the US” (Financial Times), the Grand Teton Music Festival takes place in Jackson, Wyoming. In its 63rd season, the festival is eight weeks long and is a destination for top orchestral players from world-renowned orchestras. Mathaes will lead the orchestra in July, with Sir Donald Runnicles conducting.

Assistant Professor of Economics Chandrayee Chatterjee was invited to present her work in the Economics Seminar Series at the Department of Economics and Decision Sciences at Western Illinois University. She presented her paper titled “Spillover Effects of Advertising on Health Behavior and Nutritional Choices” virtually on February 16th.

Professor of English Michael Saenger co-authored an op-ed in the Times of Israel with David Mikics, Moores Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the Honors College, University of Houston. The article “Trouble at the Modern Language Association” opposes academic antisemitism and extremism and advocates for dialog and diversity in American campus life.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Katharine Hodgdon has been appointed as a contributor for The Wall Street Journal’s Critical Thinking Resources publication. This resource summarizes articles appearing in the Journal and provides thought-provoking, free-response questions to be used for class discussions. Katharine’s contributions will focus on informative and persuasive communication techniques utilized by reporters and journalists to explain current events.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal was invited to join the Board of Directors for the Palace Theatre, Georgetown, TX.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby, alongside three outstanding Southwestern alumni and current students (Domenic Cordova ’23, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Nina Woodward ’24), published an article in HardwareX that demonstrated the development of an open-source bioprinting extruder for Ender-series 3D printers. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00510

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala gave an invited lecture at Arizona State University on January 16, 2023. The virtual talk discussed the role of the critic and public scholarship to graduate students in a Research Methods seminar.

Assistant Professor of Math Noelle Sawyer is a Mathematically Gifted and Black 2024 Black History Month honoree. You can find the profile here.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed was invited to present at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Historical Studies of Texas Symposium on February 9th and 10th in Austin, Texas. On the roundtable “Community-Based Scholarship,” she explored who gets to be “community” when decisions are being made about forgotten Black cemeteries such as The Bullhead Camp Cemetery (the current resting place of the Sugar Land 95). She discussed how the Texas Antiquities Code requires community input when remains are discovered and how the broader Black descendant community of the 95 has been ignored, thus resulting in subpar memorialization efforts by the local school district that owns the land the bodies are buried on.

Chair & Associate Professor of Kinesiology Ed Merritt presented a talk, “Simple Strategies to Incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Existing Kinesiology Lessons and Curriculum,” at the American Kinesiology Association Leadership Workshop on January 25 in Albuquerque, NM.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music and Concertmaster of the Austin Symphony Jessica Mathaes’ student Seth Sagen ’26, a violin performance major, performed in the violin section of the Austin Symphony on their Masterworks concerts February 9-10 at the Long Center.

Assistant Professor of English Sonia Del Hierro gave a public talk in a Modern Language Association webinar where she co-presented her recent collaborative publication, “Radical Collegiality and Joy in Graduate Education,” included in the edited collection Graduate Education for a Thriving Humanities Ecosystem.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira published the article, “Rhetorics of authentic hybridity and the racially mobile mestiça in ‘Girl from Rio,’” in the Quarterly Journal of Speech. The essay challenges common readings of Latinidad’s racial hybridity as a transgressive in-betweenness against the Black/white racial binary, focusing instead on how this rhetorical construction produces racial mobility, specifically toward whiteness. The Quarterly Journal of Speech is the field’s most prestigious journal, a peer-reviewed publication of the National Communication Association.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper wrote the program note for the first performance of Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The performance is another milestone in the ongoing Florence Price movement, as a major orchestra that, even just ten years ago, had never even considered performing any of her music finally elected to recognize her significance by granting her a place in its repertoire.

Part-Time Faculty Member in the English Department Chelsey Clammer ’05 and had her recent lyric essay, “The Ruins of What Never Was,” published in Volume 4 of iO Literary Journal, available here.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson’s work on Belize was featured in the January 19, 202, JSTOR Daily.

Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Laura Hobgood had three chapters published in edited volumes in January and February. “Blessings of Pets in Jewish and Christian Traditions” and “Companion Animals” in Animals and Religion, Routledge Press (ed. D. Aftandilian, B Ambros, and A. Gross) and “Animals and Religion” in Religion and Nature in North America, Bloomsbury Press (ed. L. Kearns and W. Bauman).

Professor of English Michael Saenger published “The University after October 7” in TELOSscope, which is part of Telos: Cultural Theory of the Contemporary.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen presented a roundtable session, “Polishing the Gems, Professional Development for Project WILD facilitators Through Lesson Study,” at the Association for Science Teacher Education in New Orleans annual conference. He discussed the results of a pilot project he conducted with Kiki Corry, former Project WILD coordinator for the state of Texas.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes gave a public talk on the history behind the book and recent Netflix series, All the Light We Cannot See, at Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Stokes and current SU student Mila Fisher ’24 published an article entitled A Single 10-Minute E-cigarette Vapor Exposure Reduces Tidal Volume and Minute Ventilation in Normoxia and Normobaric Hypoxia in Adult Rats in Cureus, an open-access journal for medical sciences.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Stokes, current SU student Mila Fisher ’24, and alumni Alicia Peters ’23 published an article entitled Fourteen-day E-Cigarette Exposure Disrupts Ventilation Patterns and Serum IL-1B Levels in Adolescent Rats in the Journal of Student Research.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma presented a paper titled, ‘‘Agriculture is a scam!’: Modified seeds, fertilizers and the agrarian fallacy among African grain farmers in colonial Zimbabwe, the 1950s to 1979, at the European University Institute, Knowing the planet: Environment, technology, and development in the 19th and 20th centuries workshop.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma published an article in the journal Critical African Studies, ‘Our stomachs are still hungry’: The colonial state, African Nutrition and small grains in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), c.1950 to 1970s.

Professor of Religion Elaine Craddock published an article titled “Un/Desirable Encounters at the Intersections of Caste, Class and Religion” in the journal Feminist Review in December.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Adriana Ponce participated in the Sociologist for Women in Society (SWS) 2024 winter meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, from January 25 to 28. She presented her project, “The Intersectional Landscape of Stepparents in the U.S.: What’s Next?,” which advocates for an intersectional, feminist approach to stepparenting research, in preparation for a Faculty-Student Project (FSP).

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes was part of a roundtable on “Difficult Conversations in the Liberal Arts Classroom” that followed a workshop by the same name at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, CA. Mercedes Chervony ’23 presented her research, “From the Chicago Freedom Movement to Cabrini-Greene: The Limitations of Legal Activism and the Foresaking of the Projects,” at an undergraduate lightening round, also at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, CA.

Director of Organic Chemistry Labs Carmen Velez and Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby, alongside several outstanding Southwestern undergraduate alumni and students (Kristie Cheng, Nina Woodward, Noor Nazeer, and Gabriela Nicole Hislop Gomez) published an article in the Journal of Chemical Education that describes the adaptation of gelatin methacryoyl (GelMA) hydrogels to the undergraduate laboratory. The authors found that their methods reinforced chemistry laboratory skills introduced students to a new discipline (biomaterials), and increased student interest in the medicinal applications of materials. The article was additionally featured by ACS as a supplementary journal cover designed by Lauren Muskara, a Southwestern alumnus.

Assistant Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair had her article titled “Unlocking the Door to Shadow and Substance: Nona Fernández’s La dimensión desconocida” published in the 50th issue of the journal Ciberletras: Revista de crítica literaria y de cultura. Learn more here.

Professor of English and Austin Term Chair Eileen Cleere has been elected to the Presidency of INCS, the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. Effective January 1, 2024, Cleere will lead the international organization for a two-year period, convening the annual convention in Cincinnati, OH, in 2024 and Genoa, Italy, in 2025. The organization has hundreds of active members who write and publish in multiple languages, ranging from English, History, and Art History to Environmental Studies, Feminist Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Learn more about the organization here.

Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin presented a paper at the most recent International Studies Association-Global South Caucus Conference in Bangkok entitled “Global South Stories of IR: An Entangled Anarchival Prosopographic Approach.” He also served as Chair for a panel titled Exploring Synergies: Revealing the Dynamics and Impact of South-South Cooperation.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Tatiana Zhuravleva, along with her colleagues from New Mexico State University, the University of Texas-Austin, and the University of Nebraska-Kearney, published an article titled ‘The Effects of PETTLEP Imagery and Action Observation on Strength Performance of a Leg Extension and Flexion Task’ in the Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity (JIRSPA).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Gwen Daugs presented a paper at the 2024 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association titled “Moral Panic and Gender: Michel Foucault, Toby Beauchamp, and the Safety of Children.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Kyle Wilhite published a paper titled “Ripple effects in a communication network: anti-eavesdropper defense elicits elaborated sexual signals in rival males” in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on December 20, 2023. This research was a multi-national collaboration with Purdue University, The University of Texas at Austin, VU University in the Netherlands, the University of Tennessee Knoxville, the University of Antioquia in Colombia, and The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published two new volumes of previously unknown compositions by Florence Price: Seven Songs on Texts of African American Poets and 12 Pieces for Piano Solo (both Fayetteville, AK: ClarNan Editions) and released these in tandem with sixteen videos performed and produced by African American artists; four of these videos were produced with assistance from Southwestern. The volume of songs was released in both the original settings for medium voice and a separate edition for high voice (because we all want to keep the sopranos happy). Totaling about 54 minutes worth of music, the 19 pieces in these volumes reveal the breadth and richness of Price’s musical imagination and span her active composing career from 1929 to the early 1950s. Those interested in hearing the Seven Songs on Texts of African American Poets can check out this YouTube playlist, and those interested in hearing the 12 Pieces for Piano Solo can check out this YouTube playlist. Listeners should, however, be forewarned that after listening to either or both of these playlists, they might experience what one listener dubbed #ThePriceEffect: a highly emotional state that mingles joy at this music’s entry into public life with a wide range of other emotions triggered by the music itself and sorrow that such genius that the political economy of the music industry and higher education allowed these works to remain unknown for decades – depriving audiences, teachers, and (most of all) students of their beauties.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha attended the Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. Her paper with Linsey Jensen ’23, “Patterns of Radical Right Support in Czechoslovakia’s Successor States,” was part of a panel titled Left, Right, and Center, and she also served as chair and discussant for the panel European Political Institutions.

Professor of English Michael Saenger presented a paper at the Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia. His paper, “Double Tongue: Multiple Languages in Shakespeare,” examines the theoretical status of linguistic mixture in the early modern period. At the convention, Saenger also advocated for social justice and academic freedom at the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association, and his activism was covered in the national press. Saenger published an op-ed on the struggles of the organization, which was presented as a Featured Post in the Times of Israel. He then presented an invited talk on Academic Engagement Network’s Short Course in Phoenix, “A Break in Discourse after October 7.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Jeffrey Easton presented a paper at the Fourth North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy in Chicago on January 8-9. The paper “An (Almost) Unspeakable Office,” explored a textual crux in a public Latin inscription of the early Roman Empire to reconsider the nebulous world of administration and distribution of civic and military authority in the early and middle Roman Republic.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes published her book Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon as part of the France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization Series at the University of Nebraska Press.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer was featured in a video interview in the Meet a Mathematician series on December 30th, 2023. The mission of Meet a Mathematician is to share stories of mathematicians from different backgrounds, especially from historically excluded groups, with the aim of introducing students to role models and fostering a sense of community. Watch the video here.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross had an article, “Las técnicas de reproducción asistida y la donación: el caso de Samanta Villar,” published in the Revista de ALCE SXXI, Journal of Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and her co-authors, Christine Chung of Connecticut College, Ananya Das of Middlebury College, and David Yuen, published their article “Earliest Deadline First is a 2-approximation for DARP with Time Windows” in the proceedings of the International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications.

Assistant Professor of Biology Kim McArthur presented a virtual poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November 2023. Her poster, titled “Mapping the dendrite topography of facial motor neurons in larval zebrafish,” presented preliminary results from her sabbatical research, gathering evidence to test the hypothesis that the relative positioning of a neuron’s dendrites can determine which synaptic inputs that neuron receives– thereby determining its functional role in a neural circuit.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Assistant Professor Debra Plowman (A&M -Corpus Christi) published “Solving Word Problems with Understanding” in the Fall 2023 newsletter of the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education. Their quarterly column tells the ongoing story of the fictional character, Ian Quiry, as he studies and struggles to learn how to be an effective elementary school STEM teacher.

Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala (LB) attended the 2023 National Communication Association conference, the discipline’s flagship conference, in National Harbor, MD:

1. LB presented on three panels: a roundtable discussion on extractivism and energy justice, a roundtable discussion on the “bamboo ceiling” about challenges undercutting Asian scholars, and a co-authored-paper presentation on de-whitening consent amidst COVID-19 rhetoric.
2. LB received a Top Paper Award for her co-authored paper from the Critical/Cultural Studies Division.
3. LB assumed responsibility as elected Vice Chair of the Feminist and Gender Studies Division and will plan the division’s NCA Program for 2024.
4. LB chaired a panel on misogyny in international media.

In August of this year, Part-time Assistant Instructor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello ’99 was the featured guest Resident Artist alongside Grammy-nominated pianist Austin Haller at the iconic Spiritual Retreat Center, Holden Village, located in the remote North Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Altobello and Haller led daily musical workshops, choral programs, and performed a contemporary-classical concert for voice and piano titled “Hope and Healing.” Holden Village offers visitors a unique opportunity to step into the wilderness to form and renew their relationship with God, the earth, and each other. Over the course of more than 60 years, Holden Village has been transformed from a copper mining town to a vibrant place of education, programming, and worship where everyone is welcome and embraced. For more information, visit www.holdenvillage.org.

Part-time Assistant Professor of Music and concert cellist Hai Zheng Olefsky has continued coaching the top high school cellists in Austin. Her cello students have won the first stand cello chairs for Texas Region 26-All Region High School Symphony Orchestra this school year, and her students also won the cello audition for All-State Orchestra sponsored by TMEA (Texas Music Educator Association) and All-State Orchestra sponsored by TPSMEA (Texas Private School Music Educator Association).

Associate Dean of the Faculty & Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower published the chapter, “Utopia’s Empire: Thomas More’s Text and the Early British Atlantic World, c. 1510-1625,” in Thomas More’s Utopia, edited by Phil Withington and Cathy Shrank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). The piece explores the broad context in which one of the most famous–and incompletely understood–books of the sixteenth century were written and read, arguing that doing so allows us to come to a fuller understanding of the nature, significance, and utility of Utopia and of the empire created alongside it.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma published a co-authored piece in the Routledge Handbook of Environmental History. The paper titled “Future Directions” was a collaborative work by six scholars across six time zones, reimagining the future of environmental history. You can find the book here.

Assistant Professor of History Bryan Kauma attended and presented his paper Unholy Alliances! Hunger, Politics and Control in Southern Africaat the African Studies Association Annual Meeting held in San Francisco from Nov. 30_Dec. 3. In this paper, Kauma explores the politics and weaponization of food by political and cultural elites in postcolonial southern Africa.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes published a coedited volume on Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population. The book is the first in the New Directions in Welfare History series published by Palgrave Macmillan. It examines issues of race, demography, medicine, and social policy from the 17th century to the 20th across the breadth of the French Empire (including Algeria, Canada, Cambodia, India, and Senegal). In addition to cowriting the introduction, she contributed a solo-authored chapter, “Criminal Fertility: Policing North African Families after Decolonization,” which traces the connections between sexuality, surveillance, population control, and police power in the Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Jessica Mathaes presented a violin masterclass at Baylor University on Nov 27.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed presented her poster presentation, “From Convicts to Ancestors: Resurrecting the Humanity of the Sugar Land 95,” at The American Anthropological Association Conference in Toronto, CA on November 16, 2023, where she explored the impact of white redemptive narratives–in media, archaeology reports, history curriculum, and cemetery signage–of Black history on the memorialization efforts of the Sugar Land 95 in Fort Bend County, TX.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez presented “‘My Last Evangelical Hold Out’: Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, and Everything in Between” at the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Antonio, TX.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented a talk titled “Language Variation and Standard Language Ideologies in Spanish Classrooms” at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 17–19 in Chicago, Illinois.

• Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira participated in the following activities at the National Communication Association Annual Conference in National Harbor, MD, on November 15–19:

1. Presented on the necessity to decolonize childhood in the panel, “Intimate Freedoms: Building Decolonial Relations across Communicative Contexts.”
2. Presented on rethinking and rebuilding gendered and racialized structures in the panel, “Comadrisma Collective: Envisioning and Co-creating Communities of Care.”
3. Participated as an invited scholar in NCA’s Scholars’ Office Hours.
4. Participated as a mentor in La Raza’s Mentorship Gathering.
5. Chaired the NCA Mentorship and Leadership Council business meeting.
6. Responded to four papers in the session, “Narratives on Race, Nation, Masculinity, Anti-Blackness, and Fat-Phobia.”
7. Participated in both the NCA Executive Community and the Legislative Assembly meetings as a voting member.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura wrote a grant proposal on behalf of the Japan-America Society of Greater Austin (JASGA) for the Japan Foundation’s Japan-America Society Capacity Building Grant Program. She currently serves as a board member of JASGA, a non-profit organization that provides Japanese classes, cultural programming, and events in the Austin area. She learned a great deal about grant writing through this process and valuable conversations with the associate program director. The proposal was accepted, and JASGA received $26,625 to support its programs and staff.

Assistant Professor of Economics Chandrayee Chatterjee jointly organized a session called “The Economics of Risky Behavior” and presented her paper titled “Vaping Regulations and Mental Health of Teenagers” at the 2023 Annual Conference of the Southern Economic Association in New Orleans from November 18th to 20th.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the first monograph on Margaret Bonds and her music. Titled “Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Variations and Du Bois Credo,” the book was published by Cambridge University Press as part of the New Cambridge Music Handbooks series. It was born during the tumultuous year 2020 and draws on dozens of previously unpublished archival documents and takes a deeply interdisciplinary dive into the complex and powerful cultural, intellectual, political, social, and musical cross-currents that produced these twin summits of Margaret Bonds’s career-long quest to put her talent and her art into the service of the quest for racial justice and global equality. It is available here.

Assistant Professor of History Soojung Han was invited to give a talk in the China Humanities Seminar (CHS) series at Harvard University. Her talk was titled, “Forging a New Sino-Inner Asian Order: The Brotherly Relations Between the Shatuo Turks and Kitans (907–979).”

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson was part of a collaborative team of nearly 50 social scientists whose publication “Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas” Annual Review of Environment and Resources.48: 559-588 has just come out. It is available here.

Five students presented four talks at the Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), and four more students attended. The conference was held at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, on October 27-28, 2023. Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24 presented “Wolf Reintegration in Yellowstone National Park.” Ashley Odell ’24 and Madison Williams ’24 presented “Does Money Really Buy Happiness?”. Blue Goodson ’24 presented “The Mathematical Artistry of Portrait Making.” Johanna Campbell ’24 presented “To the Heart of the Milky Way.” The speakers gave preliminary presentations of their mathematics capstone projects under the supervision of Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton. Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf co-supervised Cambell’s. Shelton also moderated two sessions of student talks. Zoe Kincaid ’24 attended, and first-year S-STEM/EQUIP students Amanda Mejia ’27, Juliana Elizondo ’27, and Alyanna Martinez ’27 also attended. The TUMC is partially supported by the National Science Foundation grant DMS-2226539. The Atkin Junior Professorship in Mathematics for Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer provided funding.

Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Ed Merritt presented “Unexpected Results in Muscle Hypertrophy and Regeneration Research” at the University of Wisconsin, Department of Kinesiology Lecture Series. The talk discussed the importance of inclusive practices in science research and education.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and education majors Hailey Arrington ’25, Alexiz Quintanilla ’25, and Terri Ray ’25, presented “Hands-on Science Lessons Presented by Preservice Teachers” at the Science Teachers Association of Texas annual Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching (CAST) in Houston, Texas.

In her role as co-director of the EDGE summer program, Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr attended and co-organized EDGE25: Mobilizing the Power of Diversity at Bryn Mawr College from October 12-14. She co-MCed the Thursday night reunion of over 150 EDGE alumna. One of the tasks involved in this role was creating a slideshow of 25 years of EDGE photos and a 20-minute video compilation of 25 years of EDGE talent shows. She also MC-ed the closing session on Saturday, introducing the final three talks of the conference. SU and EDGE alumna Elyssa Sliheet ’19 and Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 were also in attendance. The full schedule of dynamic speakers across multiple disciplines can be found here.

Professor of Chemistry Emily Niemeyer, Bailey Meyer ’20, Haley White ’20, and Jared McCormack ’22 published an article titled “Catechin composition, phenolic content, and antioxidant properties of commercially-available bagged, gunpowder, and matcha green teas” in the Springer Nature journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. Interestingly, results showed that the lowest-cost teas in the study (such as a loose-leaf gunpowder tea made by Pure Leaf and bagged green teas produced by Allegro, Twinings, and Lipton) had significantly higher phenolic contents and antioxidant capacities than more expensive matcha green teas. The research was supported by the Robert A. Welch Foundation and Southwestern’s Herbert and Kate Dishman endowment. The article is available here.

Noor Nazeer ’24 and Nicole Hislop ’26 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby October 20-21 at the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCURS), hosted on Rice University’s campus. Both platform presentations, entitled “Synthesizing Biomaterial Inks to Determine Significant Printing Parameters,” earned complimentary reviews from the graduate student judging panel.

Meghana Nittala ’24 and Sanjana Nittala ’24 each gave an oral presentation on their research on how photosynthetic diatoms adapt their light-harvesting under light and iron stress at the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCURS) hosted by Rice University in October. Both of their talks were recognized with “Outstanding Presentation in Physical Chemistry” awards. Their presentations resulted from research done with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her co-author, Lauren Santoro of the University of Texas at Dallas, published their article “Blind Trust, Blind Skepticism: Liberals’ & Conservatives’ Response to Academic Research” in American Politics Research. The article shows that individuals make assumptions about the ideological position of different major U.S. universities, and their likelihood of believing political (or politicized) research produced at those universities is dependent on whether their own ideological positions “match” those of the institution.

Part-time Assistant Instructor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello was a featured guest soloist at New Music On the Bayou’s International Summer Music Festival located in Monroe and Ruston, Louisiana, in June of this year. Altobello performed “Evocations” by Steven Landis alongside soprano Claire Vangelisti. “Evocations” was composed in 2021 for soprano and mezzo-soprano and is entirely acapella (unaccompanied). The work is comprised of a set of nine site-specific nocturnes in mobile form. Each song explores aspects of the night: astronomy, astrology, mythology, and some of the associations humanity makes with the night (fear of the unknown, death, and sex). The work integrates the use of space and lighting (moonlight, fire, starlight) to further enhance the atmosphere. Altobello premiered the piece “Everything is Tiny,” composed by Astrid Hubbard Flynn alongside Benjamin Cold (alto saxophone), Justin Kujawski (bass), and Diana Thacher (piano). The title is a quote from Tomoe-san Katagiri, a Japanese Zen elder living in Minneapolis. The work is about giving time and space to everything and having nothing to prove. New Music On the Bayou’s International Summer Music Festival allows composers and performers from around the world to intersect during an intense multi-day, multi-city, multi-venue series of rehearsals, presentations, and concerts to enliven the region with new ideas about music and to inspire composers with the unique landscapes and cultural offerings scattered among the cities of Monroe and Ruston, Louisiana. Learn more here.

Professor of Political Science Bob Snyder had his paper titled “Realist or Just Anti-Liberal? Trump’s Foreign Policy in Retrospect” accepted for publication in the journal International Journal. It demonstrates that the Trump administration’s foreign policy of retrenchment was motivated less by the purported goal of reducing costs than by the desire to weaken liberal international practices, which had similar domestic ramifications.

Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon attended the American Studies Association Conference in Montreal last week, where she chaired and participated in a roundtable entitled “Community Knowledge and Solidarity Work as Public Scholarship and Collective Healing.” She presented her collaborative zine project with Ruba Akkad (TCU), situating zines and zinemaking as forms of community-accountable scholarship and healing.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper was interviewed by the Hong Kong-based online magazine Interlude about his forthcoming Cambridge University Press book on Margaret Bonds’s “Montgomery Variations” and “Credo” (https://tinyurl.com/y3drvdkb) and his ongoing projects concerning Bonds and Florence Price in general. The book is due out this month. Those who missed their extra hour of sleep this past weekend can quickly recapture it by reading the interview here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper was interviewed by the Hong Kong-based online magazine Interlude about his forthcoming Cambridge University Press book on Margaret Bonds’s “Montgomery Variations” and “Credo” (https://tinyurl.com/y3drvdkb) and his ongoing projects concerning Bonds and Florence Price in general. The book is due out this month. Those who missed their extra hour of sleep this past weekend can quickly recapture it by reading the interview here: https://tinyurl.com/3w7dtb73.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper gave the keynote address “Margaret Bonds: A Life in Music” and two pre-concert lectures at the first-ever three-day Margaret Bonds symposium on November 3-5. Hosted by Queens University (Charlotte, North Carolina), the symposium included a salon recital of Bonds’s art songs, popular songs, and spirituals and a choral concert that included Bonds’s choral lullaby “Sleep Song” and a performance of her magisterial setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s iconic civil-rights manifesto “Credo” (both works recently edited and published by Cooper as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Company).

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed the staging and was a scenic artist of scenery and stage properties for Penfold Theatre’s production of Yasmina Reza’s play, Art. The comedy is playing at the Ground Floor Theatre in Austin, TX. from Nov. 2 through Nov. 18. Glenda Wolfe, SU Costume Shop Manager, designed costumes, and the production was directed by Stephen Pounders, Professor of Theatre at Baylor University. The production explores the meaning of art and the meaning of friendship. When Serge purchases an all-white painting for $200,000.00, his longtime friendship with good friends Marc and Yvonne is tested. Arguments quickly go from theoretical to personal to confrontational, and friendships hang in the balance. Yasmina Reza’s sometimes heartbreaking play asks poignant questions about the meaning of art and friendship. The play has won the Moliere Awards for Best Play, Best Author, Best Production, the Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and the Tony Award for Best Play. Penfold website: https://tinyurl.com/art-penfold Production stills: https://tinyurl.com/ytafq9dr Trailer: https://youtu.be/7Mn5xqSNMK8.

Associate Dean of the Faculty & Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower’s book, Mary I in Writing: Letters, Literature, and Representation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), co-edited with Valerie Schutte, won the best collaborative project award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Hower co-wrote the introduction and single-authored a chapter in the volume, the first of three books on the queen that she has written in the past two years.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz, along with Rebecca Ramirez ’24 and Aminadab Corral Arras ’24, presented a paper titled “Towards a LatCrit Youth Program Evaluation: Tensions and New Directions” at the annual Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA) conference in Chicago on October 26-27. This paper emerged from FSP research conducted in the summer of 2023 to evaluate an after-school music program in Santa Fe, NM.

Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodríguez Cadena presented “Ecofeminismo y poesía indígena Latinoamericana” at the Asociación de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades Conference at the Universidad Autonóma de Querétaro. Querétaro, Mexico. October 5-7, 2023.

Staff Instructor of Spanish Noelia Cigarroa-Cooke and Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodríguez Cadena presented research papers at the annual Canadian Association of Hispanic Studies Conference in Ottawa, Ontario, June 3-5, 2023. Cigarroa-Cooke presented “En las entretelas del corazón guatemalteco: tradición y justicia en la película La Llorona de Jayro Bustamante (Guatemala, 2020).” Rodríguez Cadena presented “Mujeres del pasado en las series históricas de televisión en México.”

On October 26th and 27th, Assistant Professor of English Sonia Del Hierro participated in the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities’ Mellon Grants-in-Aid Showcase, a public presentation by 2023 recipients of a digital humanities grant, funded by the Mellon Foundation and supported by Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage/Arte Público Press and the University of Houston. She co-presented “Señora Power: Updates and Challenges” with her research collaborators, Gaby Barrios of the University of California-Los Angeles and Sophia Martinez-Abbud of Rice University.

Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin presented a paper entitled “The Grenadian Revolution: The Paris Commune of the West Indies” at a conference, “Grenada, 1973-1983: Beginnings of a Revolution, Invasion and After.” The Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library convened the conference on the 40th anniversary of the United States invasion of Grenada and the destruction of the Grenadian Revolution.

Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa performed as harpsichord soloist on October 23 with Jessica Mathaes, Austin Symphony Orchestra concertmaster and Adjunct Instructor of Music at SU, and Rachel Lopez, ASO flutist, in J.S. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto with the Austin Youth Orchestra. The “Bachtoberfest” concert was part of the Youth Orchestra’s 30th anniversary season.

This past weekend (Oct 19-22), Assistant Professor of Sociology Amanda Hernandez attended the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and convened a session entitled “Feminist Approaches to the Sociology of Religion.” Additionally, she presented her paper “The Sacred & The Secular: Examining the Intersection of Feminist Christian Identification and Progressive Social Issues” with collaborator Tess Starman of Howard University and served as a guest panelist for “Religion And…How to Bring the Study of Religion into Conversation Across Disciplines.”

Professor of English and Austin Term Chair Eileen Cleere gave a talk entitled “Grooming Habits: Revisiting Victorian (Child) Marriage in the Age of #MeToo” at the annual meeting of VISAWUS (Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States) at the Seattle Public Library on October 19-21. She also participated in a pedagogy workshop dedicated to “Bringing the Climate Crisis into the Classroom.”

Will Mallick ’24 performed the lead role of Daniel in “Once On This Island” by Lynn Arenas and Stephen Flaherty at The Georgetown Palace Theatre on May 19-June 18 in Georgetown, TX. Mallick performed the role of Kienickie in “Grease” by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey at Summer Stock Austin July 28-August 7 in Austin, TX. Cayden Couchman ’23 performed in the ensemble of “Matilda” by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin with Zilker Theatre Productions on July 7-August 12 in Austin, TX. Couchman and Mallick are currently performing in Jekyll & Hyde at The Georgetown Palace Theatre in Georgetown, TX. Couchman performs the title role of Jekyll and Mallick plays Lord Savage and Spider. The show runs October 6-November 5th. For more information:georgetownpalace.com

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira has published the chapter, “Dragging White Femininity: Race and Gender Inauthenticity on Instagram,” in The Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication, published in October 2023. The link to the full table of contents can be found here.

Professor of Biology Romi Burks continues “chocolating” her way through her sabbatical. On October 6th, she gave an invited talk at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle, the largest professional gathering of fine chocolate professionals. Taken place on the Fine Chocolate Industry Association’s stage, the talk “you say cacao, I say cocoa” chronicles her work on and vision for the Fine Chocolate Glossary project. Burks left for 3 weeks in London, where she will judge within the UK’s premier organization, The Academy of Chocolate. All of this travel and networking will contribute to her book project “Journey into Chocolate,” coauthored by Indi Chocolate owner and entrepreneur Erin Andrews.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano presented a poster titled, “Using ‘Personal Connections’ Writing Assignments in Introductory Psychology,” at the annual meeting of the Society for Teaching of Psychology in Portland, Oregon, Oct 6-8.

Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury were invited to perform at the Just Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 7th-9th. A social justice and human rights festival, the Just Festival is part of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival whose events aim to challenge perceptions, celebrate differences, and encourage dialogue on the key issues of our time. The duo was also invited to perform at the Hispanic Heritage Festival at Palm Beach Atlantic University on October 14th. The program for the concerts in Scotland featured works on environmental themes written for the duo by composers Matthew Dunne, Jason Hoogerhyde, Diego Luzuriaga, Eduardo Martin, Julio Cesar Oliva, and Diego Vega, while the concert for the HHF was comprised of works based upon Spanish texts.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and four of his FSP research students— Nicole Hislop ’26, Noor Nazeer ’25, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Nina Woodward ’25 — attended the 2023 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, held October 11-14 in Seattle, Washington. They presented two posters focused on the development of a novel biomaterial ink for simulating brain parenchyma tissue and the fabrication of a syringe extruder for Ender series 3D printers (the “Enderstruder”). Both posters were well-attended and generated some fascinating discussions.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the second, enlarged edition of his Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. The first edition of this book (2013) was the most diverse and inclusive single-volume study of music of the long nineteenth century (ca. 1780-ca. 1914) to date. But the 600+ entries of the new edition double down on the challenge of dismantling the widespread and historically false portrayal of Romantic music as an imaginary museum of works by dead White folk, most of them German, French, or Italian, and most of those male. It includes more women, more Black musicians and other musicians of color, and more musicians from Central and South America as well as Central and Eastern Europe than any other single-volume study of Romantic music. It features entries on topics such as anti-Semitism, sexism and misogyny, and racism that were pervasive and defining to the worlds of musical Romanticism but are rarely addressed in general studies of that subject, as well as (another first) dedicated entries on spirituals and ragtime and genre-determinative topics such as the Haitian Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, the National Peace Jubilee, the World Peace Jubilee, and the Second Great Awakening. The result is an expansive, inclusive, diverse, and more richly textured portrayal of “Romantic music” than is elsewhere available. A bonus is that a dozen or so of the book’s entries were written by SU alumna Megan Marie McCarty’10.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson was an invited speaker for the 26th Meeting of the United Kingdom-Belize Association (UKBA) at University College London on October 13, 2023. She presented a revised and longer version of her paper “Lucy’s Story: A Window into the Shore and the Bay in the late 1700s” via Zoom, and it was very well received.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed was invited to discuss her podcast “Sugar Land” on the panel “Can you hear us now? Storytelling in podcasting” at the 2023 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference hosted by The University of North Texas in Dallas, Texas, this past weekend October 13-14th. (https://www.themayborn.com/schedule). Dr. Reed and her co-host, investigative journalist Brittney Martin discussed their process of writing and editing “Sugar Land” and the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration in storytelling and producing public scholarship.

Professor of Art History Thomas Noble Howe co-published a peer-reviewed online monograph with Prof. Joseph C. Williams (Univ. of Maryland), Adan Ramos (UMd), and Gabriel Maslen (UMd and Tecnico di Milano), “The Role of the Field Architect in the Digital Age: Integrating Human and Electronic Recording at the Villa Arianna in Roman Stabiae”, The Journal for Field Archaeology, Received 17 Apr 2023, Accepted 04 Sep 2023, Published online: 11 Oct 2023. Howe is the overall director of the project and began to develop the technique of using conventional digital survey commands in the then-nascent digital laser EMD (Electronic Measuring Distance) surveying instruments to develop an efficient means of using surveying line commands to create a precise 3D “line wire cage drawing” to guide the completion of on-site hand drawings. He was the chief field architect and associate director of the American Academy in Rome Palatine Excavation project (1988-1994) and has been the director general of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae project since 1998.

Professor of English Michael Saenger co-authored with Professor of American Studies and Humanities Nancy Koppelman at The Evergreen State College an essay entitled “Before the War: Educators in Israel / Palestine” for the Times of Israel. Their essay relates their experiences leading a group of American university professionals through encounters with different perspectives in the Middle East.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer accepted an invitation to join the Human Resources Board of the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). The board advises AIM in supporting its goals of increasing the participation of traditionally under-represented groups in mathematics and junior researchers and researchers at primarily undergraduate institutions in AIM programming.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Julia Taylor and Part-Time Instructor of Music David Utterback were invited to perform a recital for the South Texas Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing Fall Conference. The program included works by William Grant Still, H.T. Burleigh, Amy Beach, Dominick Argento, Reynaldo Hahn, and Rachmaninoff.

Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon published an essay entitled “Ana Castillo: A Multigenre Author” in the collection Chicana Portraits: Critical Biographies of Twelve Chicana Writers, edited by Dr. Norma E. Cantú and published by the University of Arizona Press. Dr. Solomon’s essay examines the central themes of feminist friendship, queer intimacy, and women’s spirituality in a selection of Ana Castillo’s essays and novels, including Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (1994), The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986), Sapogonia (1990), and So Far From God (1993). Released this month, you can find the collection here.

Professor of Art History Kimberly Smith gave a talk entitled “Beyond Japonisme: Charlotte Berend-Corinth’s Wartime Watercolors” at the 2023 Feminist Art History Conference, held online and in-person, hosted and organized by American University, Washington DC, September 30 - October 1.

Sanjana Nittala ’24 gave a talk titled “The Emergence of the F710 State Due to Iron Stress on Diatom P. tricornutum Light-harvesting Complexes” at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium (FURS) at UT-Austin in September. She was awarded the Best Presentation Award in Chemistry. Her talk resulted from research done with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey.

Professor of English Michael Saenger delivered an invited keynote lecture at Waseda University in Tokyo at an international conference entitled “Translation of Shakespeare as Cultural Exchange.” Also presenting was Nick Baylor ’25, who traveled to Japan with Dr. Saenger.

Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Laura Hobgood was interviewed for U.S. Catholic magazine’s podcast “Glad You Asked.” Each episode of GYA is centered around a question about Catholicism/Christianity that may seem simple at first but requires a good deal of nuance to address well. The question posed to Laura is, “Do dogs go to heaven?” The episode will be released on November 10, 2023.

Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness Kimberly Faris presented a session on “Student Achievement on our Minds: Measuring and Demonstrating Student Success” at the Texas Association of Higher Education Assessment Conference on September 27.

Part-time Assistant Instructor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello ’99 performed the world premiere of Chris Prosser’s hilarious piece spoofing Facebook entitled “Meta Anthem” (an eleven-minute duet for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and piano) at Tetractys New Music’s sold out event HERE BE MONSTERS! on Saturday May 27th at The Butterfly Bar in Austin, TX. The event featured five hours of new music on two stages, was sponsored by KMFA Classical 89.5, and featured outstanding local artists such as The Kraken Quartet, Convergence, Invoke, and Graham Reynolds. You can watch the live performance of “Meta Anthem” here.

Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower published the book Mid-Tudor Queenship and Memory: The Making and Re-making of Lady Jane Grey and Mary I. It is part of Palgrave Macmillan’s internationally renowned “Queenship and Power” series and features 11 original, peer-reviewed scholarly articles. Hower coedited the book with Valerie Schutte and also single-authored both the introduction as well as the chapter, “’As the Kinges of this Realme her Most Noble Progenitours’: Historical (Self-)Fashioning at the Accession Moment.” The volume is available on the publisher’s website here and on Amazon.

Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones was invited to present his work in the seminar “Itinerante” of History and Historiography of Sciences and Technologies jointly hosted by UNAM, CINVESTAV, and COLMEX. In his talk titled “Homeopathy in the light of biology: The Limits of Medical Science after the Mexican Revolution,” he discussed how MDs used the emerging paradigm of experimental physiology to establish the limits between what counted as legitimate medicine and not in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Given their professional differences, homeopaths and its detractors adopted and adapted the paradigm to criticize each other´s curriculum and practices. While the different interpretations created a boundary between both types of practitioners, patients and authorities regarded both approaches as scientific and, therefore, susceptible to consumption and support. You can see the entire session (in Spanish) on YouTube or Facebook.

Three works by Margaret Bonds, discovered and edited by Professor of Music Michael Cooper, were featured on the new album “Reflections in Time” by trailblazing pianist Althea Waites. Waites – who will perform at Southwestern at 7:30 p.m. on February 24, 2024, as part of the Sarofim Music Series – made history with her first album, “Black Diamonds,” in 1993 by presenting the first commercially released album devoted exclusively to piano music by African American composers (a proposition that had previously been considered not commercially viable) – including the world-premiere recordings of Margaret Bonds’s “Troubled Water” and Florence Price’s Piano Sonata. This latest album includes the second recording of Bonds’s sensual “Tangamerican” and the world-premiere recordings of her evocative “Flamenco” and masterpiece sui generis, Fugal Dance. Cooper published the first and third of these pieces in 2021, and his edition of the “Flamenco” is to appear in 2024. He also wrote the liner notes for these works.

Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci was invited to give a talk at the symposium titled Gender Incongruence at the 63rd annual meeting of the European Society of Pediatric Endocrinology in den Hague, Netherlands, in September. The talk “Animal Models of Transgender Care: Advantages and Drawbacks” was well received by a mostly clinical audience.

Part-time Assistant Instructor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello’s voice student, Abigail Bensman ’25 was cast as Brenda in the National Broadway Tour of the hit musical “Hairspray”! After five grueling days of callbacks in New York City, Bensman was offered a year-long contract touring the United States and living her dream performing musical theatre. Altobello has been Bensman’s voice teacher for three years and has witnessed her incredible growth, talent, and work ethic. For more information: www.hairspraytour.com.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer co-led a virtual workshop titled “A Word Problem: The Hows and Whys of Mathematical Communication” at the National Association of Science Writers’ annual conference on Wednesday, September 27.

Access Services Assistant in the Smith Library Center Lindsay Howard was a co-writer for a short film titled “ICK,” produced earlier this year through UT Austin. This week, the team received word that the film has been accepted into three festivals, including the Austin Film Festival (“AFF”) and the Bolton Film Festival (Manchester, UK). Because of acceptance to those festivals, the film can now be nominated for both the Academy Awards and the BIFF Awards (the UK version of the Academy Awards). The North American premiere date has yet to be announced, but it will be at AFF this fall.

Alejandro Medina ’24 recently presented at the 2023 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in Dallas. The poster on “Evaluating an Earliest Deadline First Algorithm for a Dial-a-Ride Problem” resulted from research done with Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony.

Associate Professor of Music Jason Hoogerhyde’s student Brayden Carr ’23 was an invited participant to the Valencia International Performing Arts Festival, Valencia, Spain, this summer. While there, they participated in composition masterclasses and received a performance of their commissioned work for the Mivos String Quartet. Carr was the winner of an international call for scores from the Rock Mountain Chamber Choir. The choir’s performance of Carr’s work, The Elysian Fields, may be heard here.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar has published an article titled “Roadside Media: Roadside Crash Shrines as Platforms for Communicating Across Time, Space, and Mortality in the Early 2000s United States” in Cultural and Social History, The Journal of the Social History Society. The article traces the recent history of roadside shrines to show that they are not only entangled with other contemporary media forms but have also developed into miniaturized and materialized social media platforms. The article officially comes out in print later this winter and is now available here.

Chair and Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala (LB) published a new article titled “De-whitening consent amidst COVID-19 rhetoric” with her co-author Dr. Kate Lockwood Harris (UMN). This article appears in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, the #1 ranked journal in rhetoric. It discusses how existing consent rhetorics are constituted against the specter of Black Muslim women and calls for a de-whitening of consent norms by building on lessons learned from COVID-19. You can read more here.

Access Services Assistant at the Smith Library Center Lindsay Howard was a voiceover production intern on the video game Starfield, which has been nominated three times (different years/competitions) for Most Anticipated Game of the Year prior to its release. You can learn more about the game here.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano published an article entitled, “How common is undergraduate publication in psychology? An examination of faculty vitae from top colleges and universities.”Coauthors are former students Will Hebl ’23 and Jennifer Howell ’09.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Assistant Professor Debra Plowman (A&M -Corpus Christi) had their column, “Learning to Teach Math and Science: Thoughts from an Emerging Elementary Teacher,” accepted as an ongoing column in the quarterly newsletter of the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education. It tells the ongoing story of fictional character, Ian Quiry, as he studies and struggles to learn how to be an effective elementary school STEM teacher. The first column is published in the Summer 2023 newsletter.

A nonfiction book titled Funky Fungi: 30 Activities for Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens, and More was co-authored by Adjunct Professor of Music Education Alisha Gabriel. In March, the book won the 2023 AAAS/Subaru Book Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the hands-on category, and Gabriel spoke about the book at the AAAS Conference in Washington, DC.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson presented work from her current book project on the social and environmental history of Belize and the Mosquito Shore, “Lucy’s Story: A Window into the Shore and the Bay in the late 1700s.” for the 3rd Annual Belize Kulcha Symposium, run by the Belize Heritage Education Network. September 7, 2023. The network keeps these permanently available to make scholarships more accessible. See more here.

Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala (LB) published an invited chapter titled “Critical surveillance studies: Living ethically in a surveillant world.” It appears in the textbook “Introduction to Communication Studies: Translating Communication Scholarship into Meaningful Practice” published by Kendall Hunt. Read more here

Professor of Biology Romi Burks and chocolate pedagogy enthusiast gave two invited presentations this past weekend at the Dallas Chocolate Festival, which featured a theme of “The Dream of Chocolate.” On Saturday, Burks spoke about her work as the Chair of the Fine Chocolate Glossary project within the Fine Chocolate Industry Association with a title - Chocolate “Definitions” - the dream of developing a common language. On Sunday, Burks stepped 48 guests through “How to Taste Chocolate like a Competition Judge” talk where participants learned about criteria for fine chocolate. When not giving presentations, Burks staffed a booth to talk to the attendees about the Fine Chocolate Glossary. Pictures can be found on her ProfRomi Instagram and other social media platforms.

Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon published an article, “Beyond Sexual Deviance: Elevating the Expansive Intimacies of Chicana Lesbian Life in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About” in the Journal of Lesbian Studies. In this article, she expands popular readings of Chicana lesbianism focused on sexuality by tending more deeply to the affective terrains of love and kinship represented in the 1991 anthology Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About,edited by Carla Trujillo. Countering the (il)logics of white supremacy and Chicano nationalism, which reduce Chicana lesbians to symbols of sexual deviance, she argues that Chicana Lesbiansembodies an expansive matrix of intimacies that reconstruct the Chicana lesbian figure from a one-dimensional symbol of sexual deviance to a multi-faceted figure who redefines what it means to love one’s people and culture beyond colonial paradigms that privilege heterosexuality. The article can be read here.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Adriana Ponce published her article, entitled “Invested Mothering: An Intersectional Analysis of Mothers’ Feminized Breadwinning Strategies Under State-Mandated Child Support Arrangements,” in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues as part of a special issue, “The Political and Economic Contexts of Families’ Financial Lives.” The paper can be read here.

A choral composition by Margaret Bonds, “Joy,” discovered and edited by Professor of Music Michael Cooper, was included on GRAMMY-winning choral ensemble Conspirare’s new album, “House of Belonging,” along with Cooper’s program note for the piece. Based on a parable-poem written by Langston Hughes after he had abandoned the racism and stifling conformism of Columbia University for a job as a “saloon messman” aboard a decommissioned freighter (where he discovered that his rough, ne’er-do-well shipmates where “the finest gentlemen [he] ever met”), the work teaches that joy is not the province of the exalted halls of universities and churches, but rather something that can be found in the humblest of human quarters and need only be embraced wherever we find it. Margaret Bonds’s musical interpretation is, aptly enough, suffused with joy as well as genius in its brief 2’14”. Those who wish to hear it can stream it on YouTube here.

Feminist Studies faculty and students presented their research at the national Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) summer institute. This year’s conference, “40 years of MALCS, Centuries of Activism: La Lucha Sigue for Racial, Reproductive and Decolonial Justice,” took place on July 13-15, 2023, at UC Davis. Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Meagan Solomon presented “Reflections on Chicana/Latina Lesbian Feminism from This Bridge to the Digital Dyke Age.” Associate Professor of Feminist Studies Brenda Sendejo, MALCS chair and conference co-chair, presented on a roundtable titled “Chicana Movidas: Reflections on 50 years of Chicana Knowledge-Making” with her co-contributors to the Chicana Movidas anthology. The following students presented papers under the guidance of Sendejo: Myla Benally “Restoring the Meaning of Hózhó Within a Decolonial Framework: A Return to Balance and Beauty” and sof varnis “Weaving as a Decolonial Practice: Reconciliation, Transformation, and Spiritual Activism Among the Mampujan Weavers.”

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross has had a paper accepted for publication in the Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry. The paper, “Solution to the n-bubble problem on R with log-concave density,” extends the results of his work with his SCOPE students (mentioned above) in two meaningful ways: it allows for configurations of any number of bubbles (not just 3 or 4), and it relaxes the restrictions on the density function being considered

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross, in collaboration with students Emily Burns ’21, Zariah Whyte ’21, Jesse Stovall ’22, and Evan Alexander ’22, now Coordinator of Student Activities, published an article titled “Isoperimetric 3- and 4-Bubble Results on R With Density |x|.” The paper looks at a mathematical space called a dense number line and explores the geometry of 3- or 4-bubble configurations in this space. The results presented in this article are the result of SCOPE summer research in the summers of 2020 and 2021 and is published in the PUMP Journal of Undergraduate Research.

Professor of Mathematics and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr published an article, “Collaboratively Re-envisioning Calculus for the Modern Student,” with co-authors Joel Kilty and Alex McAllister from Centre College in the MAA Notes series “Justice Through the Lens of Calculus: Framing New Possibilities for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” The article discusses the collaborative work Southwestern and Centre’s mathematics faculty did in creating our new Modern Calculus sequence. Read the article here.

Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe, Luis Romero (2018-19 SU Mellon Teaching Fellow), and Madeline Carrola ’19 published an article titled “‘Racism Masked as Safety Concerns’: The Experiences of Residents of Color With Racialized Coveillance in a Predominantly White Neighborhood” in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. In their article, the authors coin the term racialized coveillance and discuss ways that residents of color navigate and are negatively impacted by such resident-initiated monitoring practices.

Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Laura Hobgood was invited to give the Inaugural Animal History Lecture at the University of Dayton. The lecture will be held in February 2024.

In June, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Amy King completed the teacher certification program at The Meisner Institute and is now a Designated Meisner Teacher (DMT). King also led and organized the panel “What Are You? Amplifying Mixed-Asian Voices in Acting Pedagogy,” which she presented at the ATHE (Association of Theatre in Higher Education) 2023 conference. She was able to bring student Bronwyn Fogarty to attend the four-day conference, which featured panels by several theatre scholars from around the world.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper discovered an art song by Margaret Bonds that was given its world premiere by acclaimed soprano Nicole Cabell and pianist Lara Downes at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago on 22 August. The song “Sunset” is Bonds’s only known setting of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and reflects the ideals of the mid-twentieth-century Black renaissance in its portrayal of daylight passing into the beauties of the night. Bonds’s music emphatically celebrates the rich splendors of night’s Blackness by vividly portraying twinkling stars and using exceptionally evocative harmonies during the portion of the song devoted to darkness. Cooper discovered this song quite by accident during his archival research: the manuscript for the first half of the song is in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, while that for the second half is in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. Cooper’s edition is being published as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Company (proofs are already awaiting his review as soon as he returns from his next appointment with his ophthalmologist).

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz attended and presented her research at the International Migration Research Network (IMISCOE) annual conference at the University of Warsaw in Poland. The conference took place from July 3-5 this year. Sáenz Ortiz presented a paper titled “Ethnic Studies and the fight for educational equity for immigrant-origin youth in an era of censorship in the United States,” focusing on the impact of censorship legislation in Texas, on a panel about institutions, educational opportunities and in/exclusion in an international context.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala has been selected to present on a “Top Paper Panel” at the 2023 National Communication Association conference. Her paper, co-authored with Dr. Kate Lockwood Harris, is titled “De-Whitening Consent Amidst COVID-19 Rhetoric” and examines how the r/ejection of Black Muslim women foundationalizes discourse on bodily autonomy and social distancing.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her coauthor, Emily Pears (Associate Professor, Claremont McKenna College), received the 2023 John Kincaid Best Article Award from the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association for their article “The Correlates and Characteristics of American State Identity.” They are currently extending the arguments made in the article into a book-length manuscript.

Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin’s chapter “Revolution” was published in Mlada Bukovansky et al., eds. The Oxford Handbook on History and International Relations Oxford University Press. This is the middle of three pieces (the first came out last year, and the next is due out next spring) where Selbin is trying to resituate revolution in some sort of modernist formulation fundamentally predicated on the marriage of macro-, even meta-level thinking—how can we change the world—with a profoundly micro approach: the granularity of actions people take to change their world. This essay considers how and where current academic thinking about revolution might be situated and where, if anywhere, it might be going, and recasts it as an entangled, figurative zone of awkward engagement(s) both (deeply) ingrained in a (still) useful ‘generational’ analysis as well as how our analyses might be evolving outside of that or beyond definitions at all.

Assistant Professor of Biology Jennie DeMarco attended and presented her research on using compost and native seeding to restore ski slopes and sequester soil carbon at the 2023 Ski Conservation Summit held at Copper Mountain Ski Resort in Frisco, Colorado. Also in attendance were Southwestern University students Logan Antone ’24, Cooper Phillips ’24, Blaine Ten Wolde ’25, Hailey Vickich ’25, and Olivia Johnson ’26. The summit and our research were covered in several media outlets: 5280 Denver’s Mile High Magazine, CBS Colorado, Summit Daily, and SAM Magazine.

Three faculty members presented at MathFest, the national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America, on August 2-7, 2023, in Tampa, FL. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Using R Projects to Explore Regression” in the Contributed Paper Session on Activities in Statistics and Data Science. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a four-hour Professional Enhancement Program, “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Resources for Faculty and Students” in the Contributed Paper Session on Teaching and Learning of Differential Equations.

Associate Professor and Chair of the Theatre Department Kerry Bechtel has accepted an invitation to serve on The United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) Costume Commission Leadership Board and as the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT) representative for a three-year term. OISTAT organizes the Prague Quadrennial and World Stage Design Event and is a collective of theatre creatives working worldwide. The USITT Costume Commission develops and oversees national and regional programming and events for professionals, academics, and students involved in the fields of design and technical theatre.

Assistant Vice President for Admission Christine Bowman participated in ROCA, Rural Opportunities for College Admission as a faculty member in July. Working with 30 first-generation students from Northern New Mexico, students learned from admission professionals for five days and started their common application, worked on their essays, completed their resumes, and developed skills to speak to colleges about their college journey. This is her third year on the ROCA faculty.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, from July 15-19 with his former SCOPE students, Melanie Richey ’23 and Mark Mueller ’24. Melanie and Mark jointly presented their paper, “Evolving Flying Machines in Minecraft Using Quality Diversity,” co-authored with Dr. Schrum and fellow student Alejandro Medina ’24, based on their SCOPE research experience in Summer 2022.

On August 3rd, Gabriel Peña presented at the American Theatre in Higher Education conference. He spoke on the panel “Spotlight on New Works LIA (Latinx Indigenous and the Americas) and ATDS (American Theatre and Drama Society). Only two books were selected by LIA to highlight this year, and he presented on behalf of one of them, Marissa Chibás’ work “Mythic Imagination and the Actor: Exercises, Inspiration, and Guidance for the 21 Century Actor”.

Director of Organic Chemistry Labs Carmen Velez attended the NSF-sponsored Chemistry for the Community Workshop at St. Joseph’s College of Maine. She presented her work on community-engaged learning that she did last spring in the Chemistry Capstone course.

Associate Professor of Education Alicia Moore has been invited to serve on the College of Education Advisory Council based on her expertise and commitment to positively impact their education program. Dr. Moore has humbly accepted.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey presented a poster titled “The light-harvesting response of the diatom P. tricornutum to external stressors varies by native environment” at the Photosynthesis Gordon Research Conference, held July 23-28 in Newry, Maine. She conducted the research with Yusuf Buhari ’23, Sanjana Nittala ’24, Meghana Nittala ’24, and Noor Nazeer ’24.

Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux has accepted an invitation to join the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. This biannual publication focuses on evolutionary approaches to sociocultural aspects of life such as the arts, humanities, philosophy, history, and pop culture.

Senior Research and Instruction Services Librarian Katherine Hooker has been elected to serve on the board of directors for Preservation Georgetown.

Former Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Mike Gesinski and five of his research students—Richard Rodriguez ’23, Natalie Zequeira ’24, Sophia Karim ’24, Luca Cipleu ’25, and Zachary Logan ’26—attended the 48th National Organic Chemistry Symposium, held July 9-13 at Notre Dame University. They met with scientific leaders from academia and the pharmaceutical industry and sang karaoke with Nobel laureates. Together, they presented three posters on the “Titanium-Mediated Synthesis of Cyclobutanones” and the “Gold(I)-Catalyzed Synthesis of Heterocycles.”

Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa performed two solo recitals in July, one for the Central Presbyterian Church Noonday Concerts series in Austin and the second on the Sunday Concert Series presented by the city of Lakeway.

Professor of Communication Studies Valerie Renegar visited Queens University, a liberal arts school in Charlotte, North Carolina, to conduct an academic program review of the undergraduate programs in the Knight School of Communication.

Professor of Philosophy Michael Bray published an essay, “Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Post-Marxism Can’t Give Us a Political Strategy,” on the Jacobin website. A Spanish translation, “Laclau, Mouffe y la estrategia política,” was also published on Jacobinlat.com.

Assistant Professor of Applied Music Ruben Balboa’s research has been published by The Journal of the American Viola Society and is a featured article. The title of the publication is The Loeffler-Verlaine Connection.

In July, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jorge Lizarzaburu presented the paper “An Extended Evolutionary Account of Human Nature” at the International Society for the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology at the University of Toronto.

Part-time Instructor of Applied Music Sarah Oliver presented “Less Pain, More Gain: Looking Beyond Technique for Longevity” at American String Teachers Association’s 2023 Summit and the Greater Austin Suzuki Institute.

Vice President and Dean for Student Life Brit Katz provided a keynote presentation for the 2023 Interfraternity Institute on Tuesday, June 12, 2023. Titled “Expected Changes in American Higher Education for Student Affairs,” Katz educated a national gathering of student affairs and fraternity-sorority leaders.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed scenery and was Scenic Charge Artist for Magnolia Musical Theatre’s inaugural production of the musical, “Beauty and the Beast,” running July 19 through August 13 at the Galleria Pavillion in Bee Cave, TX. This professional production is directed by SU theatre faculty Emeritus, Rick Roemer, with technical direction by SU theatre scene shop manager, Monroe Oxley. Bella Morrow ’25 and Piper Swisher ’26 collaborated with Roybal as academic interns in scenic fabrication and scenic art. Kyle Bussone-Peterson ’24, Alex Canatta ’24, and Ashlyn Zunker ’25 were scenic carpenters.

Professor of Political Science Bob Snyder presented “The Fall of Afghanistan: An American Tragedy” at the International Studies Association’s conference at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, in June.

Director of Admission Rebecca Rother served as a Faculty Co-Chair for the Admission College Counseling Institute (ACCI) through the Texas Association of College Admission Counseling (TACAC). This was an opportunity for over 100 new counselors on the higher education and secondary side of college counseling to learn and engage about how to serve our students best. The faculty also consisted of 19 seasoned professionals on both the secondary and higher education side who were there to share their wisdom. The institute was held on the campus of Texas Christian University from July 10-July 13.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long consulted on the new NPR / KUT 90.5 podcast “Growth Machine” and was interviewed for multiple episodes.

Professor of Biology Max Taub and Marcelo Salazar-Barragan ’23 published the paper “The Effects of Elexacaftor, Tezacaftor, and Ivacaftor (ETI) on Blood Glucose in Patients With Cystic Fibrosis: A Systematic Review” in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science.

Professor of Biology Romi Burks attended the Fine Chocolate Industry Association meeting in New York City on Saturday, June 24th. She led a “Lunch and Learn” interactive presentation on the Fine Chocolate Glossary project during that time. Visual art major Ryan Tanner ’25 designed the new logo for the glossary and helped craft two display posters as part of her summer internship. The FCIA session titled “Chocolate: I do not think it means what you think it means” plays off the famous quote about the inconceivable from The Princess Bride. Drawing on that, Burks wrote a blog post about her thoughts on taking over the leadership of the Glossary project. This open-access resource recruits professionals in the chocolate industry to author entries based on their experience and research, and each entry can then receive feedback and revision. The project seeks to establish a common language within the world of fine chocolate. Being part of the project and networking within the chocolate industry contributes directly to Burks’ sabbatical plans to write a mainstream book on chocolate.

Two chapters published by Professor of Art and Architecture Thomas Noble Howe in Jan. 2020 for the 21st Edition of Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture (see Jan. 2020, by Royal Institute of British Architects, Bloomsbury Press, Jan. 2020): “Hellenistic Architecture” (17,000 words) and “The Christian Roman Empire, A.D. 306-c. A.D. 500,” (11,000 words), pp. 284-331; 409-43 was awarded the prestigious Colvin Prize for 2020 by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. It was recently awarded the Special Prize in the 2023 Architectural Book of the Year Awards at the World Architecture Festival (WAF), which was open to all books published over the last three years. Bloomsbury tells us that the book’s online version is currently licensed by 253 institutions worldwide. Altogether, this amounts to an astonishingly high level of online readership for the new Banister Fletcher, which far surpasses the previous book-based editions. The 21st Edition seems easily to exceed the readership figures for any previous global architectural history survey. Altogether, this amounts to an astonishingly high level of online readership for the new Banister Fletcher, which far surpasses the book-based previous editions (for comparison’s sake, the print-only 20th Edition managed to sell 25,000 hard copies over the 25-year period following its 1996 publication).

Director of Admission Rebecca Rother was selected for The Friend of Pflugerville High School award for her commitment to their college counseling office and making sure that all students at PHS and in the PfISD are knowledgeable about their post-secondary options, whether they include SU or not.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira published the essay, “‘Didn’t She Used to Sell That WAP?’: Cardi B, Clashing Femininities, and Citizenship,” in Women’s Studies in Communication. The article argues that conservative reactions to Cardi B’s performances of racialized and classed femininity on Twitter, especially from right-wing cisgender women, aimed to put the rapper “in her place,” which is outside of politics and in opposition to (white) American values. Even though Cardi B’s working-class Black femininity places her outside of discourses of normative U.S. citizenship and meritocracy, the rapper “makes herself at home” by engaging in civic practices regardless of the classist misogynoir directed at her. The article is available here.

Professor of History Melissa Byrnes published a discussion of police violence, anti-racist activism, and the current French protests on the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha presented on “Gestational Surrogacy and Party Politics in Europe” at the Southern Political Science Association Summer Conference in June.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed collaborated with investigative journalist Brittney Martin to write and produce an 8-episode podcast, “Sugar Land,” that explores the discovery of and the fight to memorialize the Sugar Land 95–the 95 Black men who died in the convict lease system in Sugar Land Texas in the early 20th century. The Texas Newsroom (Austin’s NPR station) produces and distributes “Sugar Land” and launched the podcast on June 16, 2023. New episodes are being released every Thursday.

Professor of Theatre and Dean of the Faculty Sergio Costola, JaimeLynn Hotaling ’23, and Maisie Jones ’23 presented a paper titled “Undergraduate Research and Theatre: Lessons Learned during the Pandemic” at the 2023 ConnectUR Annual Conference, held June 26-28 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed and painted scenery for Penfold Theatre’s world premiere production of “Box,” running June 23 through July 8 at the Ground Floor Theatre in Austin, TX. The playscript and production is a two-year collaboration with Jarrett King, playwright-in-residence at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, IL; Ryan Crowder, Producing Artistic Director of Penfold Theatre; and a collaborative production team with direction from Simone Alexander, Producing Artistic Director and Founder of New Manifest Theatre Company, Austin, TX. SU Theatre major Kyle Bussone-Peterson ’24 collaborated with Roybal and the production team by serving as Stage Property Designer and Property Master. Bussone-Peterson completed this faculty/student collaboration as an Academic Internship opportunity with Penfold Theatre. “Box” is a story about Mr. Henry “Box” Brown, an abolitionist born into slavery in 1815 and escaped slavery at 33 by arranging to have himself shipped via a wooden crate from Virginia to an abolitionist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1849. The crate measured 3’1” long x 2’6” high x 2’ wide, equipped with 3 holes for air and a water bladder. The sealed crate was transported by wagon, railroad, steamboat, and ferry over an approximated time of 27 hours. Watch the trailer here.

Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Laura Hobgood has been invited to join the Board of Directors of Education Congo. This organization works to provide scholarships and raise funds to support programs aimed at enhancing the quality of higher education in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her term begins with the fall board meeting in September.

Head of Special Collections & Archives Megan Firestone has been elected to the Preservation Georgetown Board of Directors.

Senior Research and Information Services Librarian Katherine Hooker has been selected for the Texas Library Association’s TALL Texans Leadership Development Institute. This competitive and transformational program “helps participants learn and embrace their potential to take new initiatives for their institutions, profession, and stakeholders.”

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth accepted an invitation to serve on the 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Student Program National Screening Committee. Berroth looks forward to contributing her experience and expertise to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program Team, Institute of International Education.

Professor of English Michael Saenger represented Academic Engagement Network on a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The Signature Seminar Series participants – senior and mid-level DEI and Student Affairs administrators from U.S. universities and colleges – traveled to West and East Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Ramallah between June 6 and June 14 for an experiential learning opportunity. They engaged with prominent figures at Israeli and Palestinian universities and NGOs to see how people from various perspectives, including Druze, Jewish, Muslim, and secular backgrounds, are working to build bridges of understanding and how that can be relevant to improving campus climate in the US.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton co-led an intense four-day virtual workshop, “Active Learning in Differential Equations Inspired by Modeling,” in June 2023 for 26 faculty participants from diverse institutions and backgrounds. In its second year, this workshop is part of the Online Professional Enhancement and Capacity Building for Instructional Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics (OPEN Math) program. OPEN Math is a collaborative project between the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-B). Support for OPEN Math is provided by the National Science Foundation: MAA Award DUE-2111260 and CU-B Award DUE-2111273.

Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux, along with alumni Alyssa Sucrese ’21, Erica Burley ’22, Sarah Woods ’21, and Zach Bencal ’21, have published a paper titled “Just friends? Jealousy of extramarital friendships” in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences (after nearly a year and a half ‘in press’!). This article is based on the group’s Capstone research.

Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux and alumna Sarah Woods ’21 presented a poster titled “Parental Burden Predicts Jealousy in Married Individuals” at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) in Palm Springs, CA, at the beginning of June. This work reflects Sarah’s capstone research at SU (she is currently in graduate school at the University of Utah).

Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre Kerry Bechtel completed the costume design for the mid-century classic musical Godspell by John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz. This production runs through June 25, 2023, at Unity Theater, a professional AEA and USA-associated theater company in Brenham, Texas. https://unitybrenham.org/

Marketers and advertisers were asked about the most effective cereal mascots for an article in Advertising Week’s brand mascot site, PopIcon. They all separately and independently agreed on Tony the Tiger (Frosted Flakes). Associate Professor of Business Debika Sihi was quoted in the article highlighting Tony’s greatness. Read the article here.

Assistant Professor of History Joseph Hower published a review of Jane Berger’s A New Working Class: The Legacies of Public-Sector Employment in the Civil Rights Movement in the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History.

Technical Assistant and Exhibitions Coordinator Seth Daulton is exhibiting three mixed media prints in “Undercurrent,” a juried regional exhibition of artists working in any media within a 100-mile radius of Contracommon, an artist collective and gallery in Bee Cave, TX. The exhibition is on view from May 29th – July 10, 2023. A closing reception for the exhibition is scheduled for Saturday, July 8th, 2023, from 6–9 pm. Contracommon members invited prominent members of the local art community in Central Texas to serve as jurors for this exhibition: Ryan Runcie, Sarah Fox, Gabi Magaly, and Kevin Ivester. This jury reviewed over 100 applications from artists throughout the state, selecting ten participating artists whose works overlap in several interesting ways. Common themes among those selected include dichotomies, metamorphosis, and vulnerability. These works resonate with subtle emotion and offer a view of the artists’ identities through their subject matter and the materials used. The next generation of Texas artists on view in this exhibition employ elements of collage, appropriating familiar iconography and materials to reflect on their lived experiences through surprising combinations of mixed media. Participating artists include Ashley Blazer, Via Boley, Seth Daulton, Jessica Gritton, Alexis Hunter, Jamal Hussain, Celeste Lindsey, Hayley Morrison, Shannon Purcell, and Alan Serna.

Coordinator of Alumni and Parent Relations Serena Bettis presented at the Alumni Professionals of Texas Conference in April 2023 on “Leveraging Local Chapter Volunteers’ Efforts.”

Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower presented a paper entitled, “‘The recovery of her ancestral and hereditary right’: History, Memory, and Female Succession in the Mid-Tudor Era,” at the Female Succession in Late Medieval and Early Modern Monarch—Contestation, Conflict, and Compromise Conference at Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, 24-26 May 2023.

Head of Special Collections & Archives Megan Firestone has been selected to serve on the scholarship committee of the Texas Library Association’s College and University Libraries Division.

Head of Special Collections and Archives Megan Firestone completed a certificate program in Sustainable Preservation from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.

Professor of English Michael Saenger completed a three-week residency at the department of European, American, and Intercultural Studies, Sapienza Università di Roma. He led seminars, gave lectures, and collaborated with Iolanda Plescia, Associate Professor of English in that department, as well as Laetitia Sansonetti, Senior Lecturer in English at Université Paris Nanterre, both of whom are leading figures in the study of Shakespeare’s use of multiple languages and the question of translation. His final lecture was entitled “Accidental Multilingualism in Shakespeare.”

Associate Professor and Chair of the Education Department Alicia Moore and Professor of Education Michael Kamen presented “New Kids in the Blocks: Pedagogical Models of Play for Social Justice” at The Association for the Study of Play annual conference. In addition, Kamen was an invited panelist for the roundtable session “Playful Pedagogies in Early Childhood Teacher Education: Building a Playful ECE Workforce” and presented a research session, “Successful Play-Based Programs,” reporting on his current research.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper’s edited arrangement for piano solo of Margaret Bonds’s “Especially Do I Believe in the Negro Race” is featured on pianist Lara Downes’s new album “Love at Last,” which debuted at No. 1 in Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums category and has held that position for two weeks (so far). In its original guise for soprano with piano or orchestra, the work is No. 2 of Bonds’ setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s iconic civil-rights manifesto, CREDO. Cooper’s edition of this arrangement will be published later this summer as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Company. Those interested in hearing Lara Downes’s exceedingly beautiful interpretation can find it on all major streaming platforms or on YouTube here.

Assistant Professor of History Joseph Hower presented a paper titled “Out of Their Beds and into the Streets: Care, Violence, and AFSCME’s Response to Deinstitutionalization in the Long 1970s” before the 2023 meeting of the Labor and Working-Class History Association at Rutgers University.

Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury recently released a video recording of BESOS, the first movement from a song cycle written for them entitled CANCIONES POR LA VIDA by noted Cuban composer Eduardo Martín. View the video here.

Dean of Admission and Enrollment Services Christine Bowman presented at Seattle’s 2023 Spring IECA (Independent Educational Consultants Association) Conference. Along with other college deans, she presented “What is Demonstrated Interest and Does It Matter” to an engaged audience of counselors who strive to make the college search process stress-free.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Bailey Barlow ’23 had their second co-authored article come out in print. The article “The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Gazpacho Agridulce” was published in Hispanic Journal vol. 44, no. 1 (spring 2023).

Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury were invited to perform at the College Music Society Southwest Regional Conference in March and as featured guest artists at Rollins College in April. The programs for these concerts featured works on environmental themes written for the duo by composers Susan Cohn Lackman, Daniel Crozier, Matthew Dunne, Jason Hoogerhyde, Diego Luzuriaga, Eduardo Martin, Julio Cesar Oliva, and Diego Vega.

Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development Adrian Ramirez and Associate Vice President for Alumni and Parent Relations Megan Frisque presented at the CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) District IV Conference in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, on the topic, “A New Model For University Career Services and Alumni Engagement.” The presentation addressed how Southwestern has restructured its campus career services, moving the CCPD to University Relations to increase opportunities for alumni, parents, and other members of the SU community to contribute to student career readiness and professional development.

Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Political Science Alisa Gaunder published a book review of Women and Political Inequality in Japan: Gender Imbalanced Democracy by Mikiko Eto in Social Science Japan Journal, 2023.

Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development Adrian D. Ramirez participated in The Collective 2023 Annual Conference in April, hosted by The Career Leadership Collective in Atlanta, GA. Adrian served on a panel titled “Designing Our Future,” along with representatives from the University of St. Thomas, Vanderbilt University, and Career Launch. Ramirez also delivered a presentation titled “A New Model for University Career Services and Stakeholder Engagement,” highlighting the structure of career services at Southwestern University.

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and her 2022 SCOPE students, Andrew Parker ’23, Adelaide Armen ’24, and Abigail Skelton ’25, presented their paper, “The Effects of Protest Coverage on American Attitudes,” at the Midwest Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Sydnor also presented her paper, “50 Nifty United States? Understanding Variation in State Identity Across America,” which is co-authored with Emily Pears (Claremont McKenna College) and served as a panel chair. Political science student Megan Kelly ’23 presented her honors project, “Effects of Defense Mechanisms on Contentious Political Discussions,” as part of an undergraduate poster session at the conference.

Teddy Hoffman ’24 presented a paper at the Communicating Diversity Conference at Texas A&M University on May 6, 2023. Her paper, “Resisting Geographies of Fear and Enacting a Safer World: Solo Female Travel Influencers and their Rhetorical Constructions,” was supervised by Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar. The paper received one of only two Top Undergraduate Paper prizes awarded at the conference.

Director of the Library Alexia Riggs served as a panelist with the American Library Association Education and Behavioral Sciences Virtual Forum on April 25th. The panel “Landing Your First Academic Library Position” focused on connecting academic library leaders to new graduates.

Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower gave the keynote lecture for the Queen Elizabeth I Society at their annual meeting in conjunction with the international South Central Renaissance Studies Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, 27-29 April 2023. Hower’s talk was entitled “A Tale of Two Pales: Dublin and Calais in the Tudor Imperial World” and served as a transition of sorts from my first monograph into a new stream of research on the once-English, now-French city and its history, myth, and heritage from the sixteenth century to the present.

Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development Adrian D. Ramirez was selected as one of 24 participants for NetWorkLab, a “remote collaboration course for researchers, technologists, and project managers in the Digital Humanities and allied fields.” NetWorkLab is hosted by Greenhouse Studios at the University of Connecticut.

Georgetown will be featured in the upcoming Amazon Prime docuseries “The Story of Art in America.” The show, created by award-winning director Christelle Bois, showcases the art scene of different cities and counties through interviews with well-known artists and historians. The docuseries aims to explore the significance of the arts in American society. Concert Cellist and Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music Hai Zheng-Olefsky was selected to be featured as one of the four artists. The filming took place on April 16th, and the episode is expected to premiere on Amazon Prime Video in early 2024.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper traveled backward nearly twenty-three years, to late May in the year 2000, when he went poking around in the Conservatorio di musica “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan, Italy, looking for significant music manuscripts pertaining to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. At that time, Cooper found a fascinating and beautiful manuscript that transmitted an arrangement by Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) of Mendelssohn’s Albumblatt (Album leaf) op. 117, originally written for piano solo, for bassoon with piano. Cooper edited it immediately upon return to these shores and even arranged for several performances (at the Juilliard School in 2002, the University of North Texas in 2003, and Southwestern University in 2007) – but he never committed it to print. Having returned to our own day, Cooper finally realized, some twenty-three years later, that this arrangement warranted publication. Martucci’s arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Albumblatt is now available through the Recital Publications imprint of Classical Vocal Reprints (Fayetteville, AR). Those interested in hearing the work can do so here.

The following individuals were recently recognized as award recipients for the 2022-23 academic year. Teaching awards: Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Chelsea Massaro, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jorge Lizarzaburu, and Associate Professor of French Francis Mathieu. Assistant Professor of Art Ron Geibel won the Jesse E. Purdy Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Works Award. The Advising Award went to Associate Professor of Chemistry Michael Gesinski.

Director of the Library Alexia Riggs presented with Assistant Professor of Library Science Kawanna Bright on their joint research project reviewing librarian and faculty research partnerships at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference in Austin. Their presentation, “The Role of Collaborative Partnership Development in Creative Sustainable Campus Relationships,” focused on noting the value of soft skills and role balance for collaborative success on April 21. Riggs also presented parts of her dissertation research focusing on understanding the mechanics of program development and sharing stories of library engagement from the multiple sites studied titled, “Creating Sustainable Partnerships between Librarians, Student Affairs, and Faculty,” on April 22.

Senior Research and Instruction Librarian Katherine Hooker has been named Chair of the Information and Membership Committee of Texas Library Association’s College and University Libraries Division. The committee’s charge is to develop recruiting messaging and market the division to grow membership and foster increased academic librarian support.

Head of Special Collections & Archives Megan Firestone has been selected to serve on the Texas Library Association’s Texas Topaz Reading List committee. The committee aims to provide children, teens, and adults with recommended nonfiction titles that stimulate reading for pleasure and personal learning.

Director of Student Inclusion and Diversity Malissa S. Ismail presented at The Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) “Diversity Advocate Workshop” in Atlanta, GA, April 24-26, 2023. Her presentation focused on Southwestern’s Dimensions of Diversity Certificate program for students and how other ACS institutions can adapt these resources and strategies to faculty and staff.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz delivered a paper at the Annual American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting in Chicago, April 13-16. Her paper, “‘Separate but equal?’: Interest convergence in an era of censorship in K-12 Ethnic Studies,” examines the impact of censorship legislation (Senate Bill 3) on high school Ethnic Studies (Mexican American Studies and African American Studies) in Texas.

Director of the Library Alexia Riggs served over the past year representing private academic libraries on the Texas Library Association Professional Conference Planning Committee. This committee created the conference theme, reviewed program and speaker development, and provided professional support for over 6,500 librarians attending the conference in Austin from April 18-22. Additionally, Riggs convened two sessions addressing DEI collection efforts and a session focused on working with fine arts collections.

Kristie Cheng ’23 and Angel Rodriguez ’24 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby on March 3-4 at the 2023 Texas Academy of Sciences (TAS) Annual Meeting hosted at San Angelo State in San Angelo, Texas. Cheng presented a talk entitled “Printability of biomaterial inks to mimic the blood-brain barrier,” and Rodriguez presented a talk entitled “Engineering an ultra-low-cost open-source 3D bioprinter from a Creality Ender 3 FDM 3D Printer”. Both talks were well-attended and received great questions from the audience.

Associate Professor of Kinesiology Ed Merritt was invited to speak at the American Physiology Summit in Long Beach, CA, on April 21. His talk, “Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy and Satellite Cells: A Southern White Male’s Subterfuge to Champion Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Physiology,” was part of an inclusive pedagogy session and round table discussion aimed at improving physiology education in undergraduate, graduate, and medical schools.

Professor of Communication Studies Valerie Renegar presented work related to her ongoing research program on step-mothering rhetoric in a paper about Kamala Harris at the 6th Days of Ivo Škarić in Postira, Croatia, last week. This conference drew notable rhetorical scholars from eight countries together for four days of presentations. The conference also included field trips to cultural sites on the island.

Associate Professor of History Jessica S. Hower organized the Britain and the World 2023 Conference at Duquesne University, held June 20–22. The conference welcomed 125 interdisciplinary scholars from across the globe for three full days of papers, plenaries, and roundtables on Britain’s relationship with the wider world from the 16th century to the present. In addition to evaluating abstracts, coordinating the program, and helping lead things on the ground, Hower chaired a panel on “Rivalry and Restoration in the Early Modern British Atlantic” and led Dr. Carole Levin, a world-renowned scholar of Elizabeth I, “in conversation” for a lunchtime plenary session about Levin’s distinguished career and contributions to women’s, gender, and royal studies.

Kellie Henderson ’23 presented “Historical Cycles of Black Student Experiences at a Predominantly White College” at the 2023 Southwestern Anthropological Association (SWAA) in Long Beach, California. The paper was well received. Henderson was mentored by both Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the entry on Florence B. Price in MGG Online (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart Online), the leading German-language encyclopedia of music. The entry marks Price’s first appearance in German music-lexicography and will give German speakers easier access to reliable information about this extraordinary composer’s life, works, and significance than has been the case until now.

Director of the Smith Library Center Alexia Riggs completed a series of lectures on April 3 and 4 for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign I-School on “Censorship: A Case Study of Texas Libraries” for graduate students enrolled in “Libraries, Information, and Society.” The virtual lectures were followed up with an open forum for graduate students to ask questions about academic library work and research.

Southwestern University was well represented at the American Chemical Society Spring 2023 meeting in Indianapolis, IN. Five students presented a total of three posters at the meeting: Yusuf Buhari ’23, Holly Lawson ’23, Sanjana Nittala ’24, Meghana Nittala ’24, and Noor Nazeer ’24. This work was done collaboratively with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sara Massey and Professor of Chemistry Emily Niemeyer.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper gave a virtual lecture on the deliciously finite and focused subject of “The Piano Music of Florence Price” for California State University, Northridge. Florence Price’s complete oeuvre comprises more than 456 works, but a paltry 217 of those were written for piano solos. The presentation classified this body of works into major style periods in the fashion that scholars have long since done for virtually every canonical composer as well as many Kleinmeister whose utter insignificance is undisputed even by their advocates; it is the first attempt to come to terms with Price’s extraordinary creative imagination in this fashion. Best of all, the presentation included clips of recently unearthed Price compositions in performances by Lara Downes, Samantha Ege, Elizabeth G. Hill, Phoenix Park-Kim, and Althea Waites; and viewers who were not lost in Instagram or simply snoozing were rewarded with a video of the world premiere of Price’s final composition for piano solo, the still-unpublished Waltz Charming, discovered and edited by Cooper and recorded especially for this presentation by Prof. Kevin Wayne Bumpers.

Associate Professor of Feminist Studies Brenda Sendejo was invited to participate as a faculty mentor in the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Crossing Latinidades engages cross-institutional and cross-regional comparative research, training doctoral students, and new scholarship in emerging areas of inquiry about Latinos. The initiative serves as the anchor of the consortium of R1 Hispanic Serving Institutions at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sendejo is among a group of Latino Studies faculty across the U.S. who will be paired with doctoral students through the professional mentorship program.

Professor of Political Science Eric Selbin’s chapter “El Che: The (Im)possibilities of a Political Symbol” was published in Benjamin Abrams and Peter Gardner, eds. 2023. Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics. Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press. Dedicated to our late colleague Professor of History Daniel Castro (¡presente!), this chapter recognizes that “writing about Che ‘is like dancing about architecture,’ a nearly senseless, even absurd exercise” even as he is “a remarkably universal symbol, he—or his spirit or incarnation—…’ the inescapable symbol of everything that dreamers think a revolutionary should be” (Donovan 2020). Those in need of sleep can find the chapter here.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira received the Innovator Award for Most Outstanding Book from the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Caucus at the Central States Communication Association Annual Conference in St. Louis, MO, for her monograph, Bitches Unleashed: Performance and Embodied Politics in Favela Funk. At the conference, Moreira also presented the paper “The Right Girl from Rio: Anita’s Crossover and Latinidad’s Whiteness” and participated in the panel discussion “Effective Inclusive Pedagogical Practices by and for Silenced Voices.”

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long co-edited a book with Jennifer L. Rice (University of Georgia) and Anthony Levenda (Evergreen State). That book, titled “Urban Climate Justice: Theory, Praxis, Resistance,” was published by the University of Georgia Press. The three editors also authored two chapters within the book.

Professor of Environmental Studies Joshua Long presented the opening paper in the Climate Colonialism series at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Denver, CO. His talk was titled: “Climate Justice or Climate Apartheid: Interrogating three trajectories of climate colonialism.”

Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty Alisa Gaunder published the second edition of her book Japanese Government and Politics with Routledge in February 2023. The second edition includes new information on party realignment, elections since 2017, the effects of the global pandemic, and Japanese foreign policy.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote and Associate Professor of Biology Martín Gonzalez published an article in the Journal of Chemical Education where they describe the development and implementation of a unique undergraduate research-based laboratory course that cultivates an inclusive and supportive learning community and helps students develop a sense of belonging through mentorship and peer-to-peer learning. The course is centered on a new framework they developed called crisscrossing laboratory experiences (CCLE), where first-year students were placed into two interdisciplinary research cohorts. Halfway through the course, the cohorts swapped research projects to establish reciprocal peer learning partnerships allowing students to be both learners and teachers.

Several student members of the Texas Alpha chapter of the Alpha Chi Honor Society attended the Alpha Chi National Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they presented research and creative works from several fields. Arden Neff ’25 presented a research poster titled “Using Linear Programming to Optimize Grape Harvest Timing and Yield” based on research supervised by Professor of Computer Science Dr. Barbara Anthony. Chelsey Southwell ’24 Samuel Dawson ’23 gave a presentation titled “Gold(I) Catalyzed Synthesis of Isoquinolines” based on research supervised by Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Mike Gesinski. Finally, Anna Wicker ’24 gave a piano performance of “Souvenir de Porto Rico” by L.M. Gottschalk, which she selected with the guidance of Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa. Additionally, it was announced that Marcelo Salazar-Barragan ’23 was awarded a $3,000 H. Y. Benedict Fellowship. Alpha Chi is a national honor society open to students of all academic disciplines and was founded at Southwestern University in 1922. Only the top 10% of juniors and seniors are invited to join, and our chapter currently consists of 55 student members.

Southwestern’s Feminist Studies Program was well represented at the annual meeting of WGS South last weekend. Elena Welsh ’22 presented a paper entitled “Slow Pleasure/Slow Death: Rituals of Survival in Queer Media” as part of a panel on LGBTQ Health. Visiting Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Jordan Johnson presented a paper entitled “Feminist Science Studies and Multispecies Justice: Responding to Weedy Entanglements” as part of a panel on Multispecies Feminisms.

Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe and two sociology students attended the Southern Sociological Society annual meeting in Myrtle Beach, SC. In addition, Angel Ferrales ’25 presented her capstone paper titled, “‘As long as everything is legal and consensual, there’s no problem’: Attitudes that help to predict efforts to ban online subscription sexual content websites,” ThuyMi Phung ’24 presented her capstone paper, “‘There are Always Going to be the Bad People who Access the Guns’: Predictors of Americans’ Perspectives on Gun Violence,” and Maria Lowe and ThuyMi Phung presented their faculty-student collaborative research project titled, “‘Because history has been whitewashed for decades:’ Predictors of Attitudes about Critical Race Theory” Katherine Holcomb ’24 was a co-author on this project.

Austin-based choral ensemble Conspirare and conductor Craig Hella Johnson, GRAMMY-Award winners both, gave posthumous premiere(s) of a composition by Margaret Bonds discovered and edited by Professor of Music Michael Cooper in a pair of performances on March 31 and April 1. A setting of Langston Hughes’s parable-poem Joy (1922), the composition was evidently one of Bonds’ favorite works: she returned to it in no fewer than six different arrangements, all performed to acclaim, over the period 1936-66 – more than any other work. It has remained unpublished, but Cooper’s edition will be published as part of Hildegard Publishing Company’s Margaret Bonds Signature Series later this year.

Professor of English Michael Saenger presented a paper entitled “’Oh, I smell false Latin!’: Multiple Languages in Love’s Labours Lost” at the Multilingualism in Translation Conference, Université Paris Nanterre, March 31, 2023. Saenger also served on the Advisory Board of the conference.

Students Alejandro Medina ’24, Melanie Richey ’23, and Mark Mueller ’24 attended the South Central Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges at Stephen F. Austin State University to present two research posters based on their SCOPE 2022 summer research with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum. The poster “Using Quality Diversity to Evolve Flying Machines in Minecraft” describes the use of artificial intelligence to generate flying machines in Minecraft and won 3rd place in the Student Poster Competition. The poster “Interactive Evolution of Novel Shapes in Minecraft” described an interactive system for automatically generating large artistic structures in Minecraft and received Honorable Mention.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth, together with Liesl Alingham, Associate Professor of German, Sewanee, Anne Stone, Associate Professor of Communications, Rollins, and Melissa Nelson, Director of Social Impact Hub, Rollins, earned an ACS Award to offer a faculty development workshop at Sewanee from Tuesday, May 23, 2023,– Thursday, May 25, 2023. The workshop is titled Sustainability Mindset: Making Change Makers. Check the ACS site and register here.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth presented an invited lecture and an invited workshop at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, on April 2 and 3, 2023. The lecture titled Connecting through Literature: Reading GDR Women Writers in 2023 contributes to Belmont’s general education initiative, Well-being for Life-long Learning (WELL Core), as an intercultural learning WELL Core. The workshop for language educators is titled Hospitality, Inclusion, and Intercultural Learning: Increasing Empathy by Engaging Food Ways Across Cultures. It contributes to Belmont’s ongoing community engagement series, Conversations @ Belmont, that allows for communication and collaboration among educators at colleges, middle, and high schools for the purpose of preparing students to transition to college

Assistant Professor of History Joseph Hower presented a paper titled “’Out of Their Beds and into the Streets’: Public Sector Labor and the Politics of Mental Healthcare in the Long 1970s” on March 30 to the 2023 OAH Conference on American History in Los Angeles, California.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote gave an oral presentation at the 2023 American Chemical Society national meeting in the Division of Biological Chemistry’s session on Emerging Areas and New Methods in Biological Chemistry. Her talk was titled “Impact of oxidative damage on H-DNA-induced genetic instability.”

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote gave an oral presentation at the 2023 American Chemical Society national meeting, Division of Chemical Education. Her talk was on developing and implementing an undergraduate research-based laboratory course that promotes inclusion and belonging through mentorship and peer-to-peer learning. Her abstract was chosen for the SCI-MIX poster presentation – a poster event representing each division’s best.

A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center has been named a winner of the Texas Library Association’s Branding Iron awards, recognizing outstanding library marketing. Instruction and Student Success Librarian Katherine Hooker, MSIS, created an SLC ‘tiny library zine’ and distributed it widely to library users. The pocket-sized guide delivered important information literacy info and resource tips and tricks in a memorable, unexpected format. The mini zine won for best external communication from an academic library.

Pre-college and Southwestern students of Professor of Music Kiyoshi Tamagawa distinguished themselves in March. Eighth-grader Richard Wang won the first prize in the Steinway Piano Gallery Concerto Competition, Division II (Grades 6-8), and Lerchen Zhong, a ninth grader at Westwood HS, won both the first prize in the Senior Piano division and overall Grand Prize at the Asian American Community Partnership Music Competition. (Assistant Professor of Music Hai Zheng is the Artistic Director of the latter event.) Finally, SU piano student and Music major Anna Wicker ’24 performed at the Alpha Chi national convention in Albuquerque, NM.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal secured a design contract with Magnolia Musical Theatre to design the stage scenery for the musical Beauty and the Beast. The production is being directed by Southwestern University Professor Emeritus Rick Roemer, with Technical Direction by Monroe Oxley, Southwestern University Scene Shop Supervisor. The production will be presented at the Galleria at Bee Caves, TX. July18-August 13.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal secured a scenic design contract with Penfold Theatre. The project is threefold: 1. Collaboration with Chicago playwright Jarrett King to develop an original playscript about the life and times of Henry “Box” Brown. 2. Specifically, design and paint early 20th Century roll drop scenery with dry pigment paint and ground flake animal glue. 3. Present the design in a modern presentational format at the Ground Floor Theatre, Austin, TX, in June 2023. Henry “Box” Brown was an abolitionist who was born into slavery in 1815 and escaped slavery at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself shipped via a wooden crate from Virginia to an abolitionist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1849. Henry Brown went on to lecture for the abolitionist movement in New England before moving to England, where he continued to speak out about the evils of slavery and performed his one-man show, Henry Box Brown’s Mirror of Slavery.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Bailey Barlow ’23 presented their paper “The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Gazpacho Agridulce” at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Niagara Falls, New York, on Saturday, March 25. A longer version of this paper has been accepted for publication in Hispanic Journal and will come out this summer.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala gave an invited virtual talk on March 22 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities on the topic of feminist collaboration. Bahrainwala spoke with graduate students in the seminar “Feminist Organizing” about possibilities for coalition building and the settler contours of “breaking ground” ideology in the academy.

Southwestern had a great showing at the 2023 Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America, held March 24-26 in Stephenville, TX. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr received the 2023 Ron Barnes Distinguished Service to Students Award, given in recognition of faculty who have distinguished themselves through service and support of undergraduate students within the Texas Section. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton received the 2023 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional service to the Texas Section. Shelton also served as Departmental Liaison and participated in the Business Meeting. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross participated in the Project NeXT session. President Emeritus of Southwestern University and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Edward Burger presented an invited plenary talk, “Paper folding for the organically challenged: Uncovering beauty and structure through effective thinking.” We had eight student presentations, one of which won an award, by 13 students and one alum. This was the most student presentations by far of any institution besides the host institution. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura supervised the following student talks: Zek McCormick ’24: “Applying Linear Algebra to Penrose Tilings” won an award for Best Student Paper Within a Session, Oliver Johnson ’24: “How accurately did Van Eyck paint the chandelier in the Arnolfini Portrait? A geometric analysis contributing to a decades-old debate,” and Isabella Robinson ’25, Oliver Johnson ’24: “Solving Sudoku Puzzles Through Linear Algebra.” Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr supervised the following student talks: Anderson Johnson ’24, Paige Thompson ’26, Kyla Gorman ’21: “Domino Antimagic Configurations,” Alley Koenig ’24, Casandra Nunez ’26: “Subtractive Edge Magic Labelings,” Kathryn Altman ’24, Lauren Calzado ’23: “An Exploration of Difference Distance Magic Graph Labelings,” and Aaron Garza ’26, Kaiden Salaz ’26: “What is the smallest area? A parabolic parable.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton supervised the following student talk: Emma Lewis ’23, Jillian Reese ’23: “An ODD Look at Theorems in Differential Equations.” This work was funded with a grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics, collaborating with a student team at the University of North Texas-Denton, supervised by Joe Iaia. A team of four students competed in the Math Bowl: Altman, Calzado, Koenig, and Jess Kazmir ’23, Yasmine Soto ’25, and Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24 also attended the meeting.

Assistant Professor of History Soojung Han served as chair and discussant in the panel, “Revisiting the Jin from Digital, Political, Geocultural, and Long-Term Perspectives,” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2023 annual meeting in Boston. The panel was sponsored by the Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies.

Kate Nguyen ’24 and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored “Non-majors Explore Less Well-Known Contributors to Computing,” which was presented at the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’23).

Professor Emerita Lois Ferrari, Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Holly Dalrymple, and Instructor of Applied Music Chaz Nailor collaborated with Austin-based soprano Natalie Joy Howard, the Southwestern University Chorale, and the Austin Civic Orchestra to give the Texas premiere of a work recovered, edited, and published by Professor of Music Michael Cooper: the choral/orchestral version of Margaret Bonds’s setting of W.E.B. Du Bois’s iconic Civil Rights Credo. Given on February 25, the performance was many students’ first time singing with an orchestra – and the opportunity to lift their voices in song to proclaim Du Bois’s magisterial text with Margaret Bonds’s music was, in the words of one student, “a life-altering experience.” Those interested in hearing or re-hearing the performance can find it here. The Chorale will perform the Credo again, now in its original version with piano accompaniment, with Professor of Music Bruce Cain (baritone), Part-Time Assistant Professor of Applied Music Julia Taylor (soprano), and Part-Time Instructor of Music Bruce Cain (piano) in another concert at 7:30 p.m. in the Alma Thomas Theater on April 15.

Allison Hentges ’24 and Education Professor Michael Kamen presented “The Reasons for Seasons” (Allison’s King Creativity project), and Kamen and Assistant Professor Debra Plowman (A&M Corpus Christi) presented “Slide Rules: to the Moon and Back” at the International Consortium for Research in Science and Mathematics Education in Panama City, Panama.

Professor of Biochemistry and Garey Chair of Chemistry Maha Zewail-Foote, Cargill Endowed Associate Professor of Education Alicia Moore, and Professor of Political Science Alisa Gaunder co-presented a virtual session for the Association for American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) 2023 Conference on Diversity, Equity and Student Success. The mission of the AAC&U conference was to explore the complexities of truth within higher education while examining institutional structures and beliefs that impede diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. The presentation, titled “Cross-Institutional CONNECTions: Mentorship, Truth, Belonging, and Retention,” provided an overview of Southwestern’s ACS-funded FOC CONNECT project, which seeks to dismantle barriers to success experienced by early-career faculty of color (FOC) in the academy. The project supports a cross-institutional faculty mentoring program that connects these scholars with senior faculty of color from other ACS institutions.

Associate Professor of History Melissa Byrnes presented her work, “Activist Echoes: Connecting French Anti-Salazarism to Opposition to the Algerian War,” at a panel on ‘Leftist Expertise” during the joint Society for French Historical Studies and Western Society for French History conference in Detroit over Spring Break. She also moderated a discussion with three authors on their newly published books about youth activism, anti-imperialism, and radical politics in the Francophone world.

Samantha Alvarado ’22 (Anthropology) presented a paper titled “Challenging Norms: Gender, Obstetrics, and the Gynecological Massage in Mexico in the 1920s,” coauthored with Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones at the Southern Association for the History of Science and Medicine 2023 Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA. This project was the culmination of a faculty-student research collaboration with Hernández Berrones, who mentored her through the design of the project, archival work in the summer of 2022 in Mexico City, and the production of the conference paper. Alvarado received multiple compliments for the breadth and depth of her project and even an invitation by the editor of the top-notch blog on the history of medicine, Nursing Clio, to submit her work for online publication.

ThuyMi Phung ’23 received the Southern Sociological Society’s 2023 Howard Odum Award for Best Undergraduate Paper for her capstone paper titled, “‘There are always going to be bad people who access guns’: Predictors of Americans’ Perspectives on Gun Violence.” Maria Lowe Professor of Sociology and Morenz Endowed Professor, supervised ThuyMi’s project during this year’s sociology capstone class.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the entry on composer Margaret Bonds for MGG-Online (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart – Online), the leading German-language encyclopedia of music. It is this African American composer’s first-ever appearance in German musical lexicography and her first in German-language musicology generally. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in German interest in Bonds and her work in Germany. This article will grant German speakers easier and more authoritative access to reliable information concerning Bonds and her music. Cooper’s entry is available here.

Assistant Professor of History Soojung Han presented the paper, “An Integrated Empire: The “Great Liao” in the Tenth Century,” at the 233rd Meeting of the American Oriental Society in Los Angeles.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum served as associate editor of a Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Games on the topic of Evolutionary Computation for Games. Schrum worked with several external editors on the issue, which is being published in March 2023. These fellow editors were also co-authors with Schrum on a Guest Editorial for the issue. The issue also contains a peer-reviewed contribution from Schrum, external collaborators, and some of Schrum’s former SCOPE students, Kirby Steckel ’21 and Benjamin Capps ’22. The article “Hybrid Encoding for Generating Large Scale Game Level Patterns with Local Variations” was already available via Early Access on IEEE Xplore but has now been officially published.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson was interviewed on March 17, 2023, by students at Colorado College in a course called “The Idea of Latin America” taught by Dr. Santiago Guerra ’03 about her book Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize(Rutgers 2018). The interview will be published as part of the podcast series produced by the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies. Listen to the podcast here.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer was the invited faculty speaker at the Underrepresented Students in Topology and Algebra Research Symposium (USTARS) on March 18-19. She gave a presentation called “Rigidity in Math and Mathematicians,” covering her work in marked length spectrum rigidity and the rigidity mathematicians force upon each other to conform to the field’s norms.

Arden Neff ’25 presented a poster at the 126th annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences in San Angelo, Texas, on March 3-4, 2023. In this work, begun as a community-engaged learning project in the Fall 2022 Operations Research course, Neff and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony investigated the use of operations research for issues relevant to small agricultural businesses. The poster, “Optimizing Grape Harvest Timing and Yield using Linear Programming,” won first place in the Mathematics and Computer Science poster section.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer gave two invited talks on her work, “Unique Equilibrium States for Geodesic Flows on Translation Surfaces,” last week. Once at a conference called A Dynamical Weekend at Wesleyan on March 4 and once at the University of Houston’s Dynamics Seminar on March 9.

Associate Professor of Business Debika Sihi presented her research project titled “Have We Reached a Privacy Plateau? Consumers’ Evolving Privacy Concerns and Their Alignment with Increased State Regulations” at the Association of Collegiate Marketing Educators Annual Conference held March 6-11, 2023, in Houston, Texas. The project explores the privacy paradox and consumers’ willingness to share information online despite stated privacy concerns and growing consumer data protection regulations (at the U.S. state level).

Professor of Education Michael Kamen has been elected to the Board of Directors of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP).

Domenic Cordova ’23 and Nina Woodward ’25 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby on March 4 at the Capitol of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference (CTURC), hosted on UT Austin’s campus. Cordova presented a poster entitled “A Low-Cost Affordable Bioprinter Attachment for an Ender 3 3D Printer,” and Woodward presented a poster entitled “An ImageJ Script to Analyze the Printability of Bioprinted Lattices.” Both earned complimentary reviews from the judging panel.

Assistant Professor of Theatre Gabriel Peña presented a workshop at SETC (the Southeastern Theatre Conference) in Lexington, Kentucky, on March 3. His workshop “Sensing Possibilities: Feldenkrais Method and its Potential Applications for Performers” explored how Awareness Through Movement lessons, often utilized as physical therapy, can be resourceful to actors.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson gave a talk on her book Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize (Rutgers 2018) to the community of Lemonal, Belize, one of the villages that the book is about, on Sunday, February 26, 2023. As a result of social media advertising about the talk, Johnson was invited onto Channel 7 News Belize’s morning television show, Sun Up on 7, to discuss the book in their studio on Thursday, February 23, 2023. The news segment starts around minute 30 here.

Associate Professor of History Jessica S. Hower recorded an episode for the “Tudors Dynasty” Podcast. In the episode, Hower’s co-author, Valerie Schutte, and Hower discussed their two-book edited collection, Mary I in Writing and Writing Mary I, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in mid-2022, and the complicated life and afterlife of England’s first crowned queen regnant. The pair were the final, culminating episode in a special series on Mary I. “Tudors Dynasty” has been running since 2017 and has over 130,000 downloads per month. The episode is available here.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala steered several student projects that were presented and recognized at a highly selective regional conference. Five Southwestern students traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, to present their research at the 2023 Undergraduate Scholars Research Conference hosted by the Western States Communication Association. This marks the third conference Bahrainwala has mentored her students through. Faculty reviewers and the conference Chair commended the students afterward and attempted to recruit them to their graduate programs. These outstanding students also swept the awards, winning three out of the four Top Paper Awards presented at this conference. Katie Love ’23 won a Top Paper Award for her paper “It’s About Damn Time: Lizzo’s Impact on Fat Identity, Fat Celebrity, and Societal Perceptions of Fatness.” Preston Willis ’23 won a Top Paper Award for his paper “Queer Icons & Queering Iconography: Lady Gaga’s Liberal Use of Religion in Born This Way.” Jenna Baird ’23 presented her paper “The Animalization of Blackness within Disney’s Animated Films: New Imagined Ways of Being Racist.” Jordan Preston ’23 won a Top Paper Award for her paper “Miley Cyrus: White Feminism and Queernormativity in Contemporary Pop Culture.” Caden Cox ’23 presented his paper “Shaping Your Type: How Dating Apps Effect and Influence Queer Relationships For Men.” This is the second time Cox was invited to present at this conference and received a Top Paper Award from this conference last year. Southwestern students Nina Mitrofanova ’23 and Alli Ziehm ’23 were also invited to present. Congratulations to these outstanding students!

Associate Professor of Psychology Carin Perilloux and students Madeline Bollinger ’24, Laurel Mulkey ’24, and Vy Nguyen ’23 presented a poster titled “Calm Yourself Up? Converse Effects of ASMR on Heart Rate and GSR” at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in Atlanta this past weekend. This reflects work completed during SCOPE 2022.

Professor of Art and Art History Thomas Howe was invited to attend the opening of a major new exhibition of Roman painting at the San Antonio Museum of Art, “Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii,” on February 23. Howe was part of the technical advisory committee for the exhibit, and several frescoes from his archaeological site of the Roman villas of Stabiae were included in the exhibit. The exhibit will be open until May 21, 2023. Howe will be lecturing in San Antonio on recent discoveries from his site in April.

Professor of Biology Romi Burks engaged in a number of off-campus presentations in February about her research on apple snails and environmental DNA and also her passion and philosophy of teaching through chocolate. The chocolate events occurred in person, while the science talks occurred as part of a federal government-sponsored workshop and a Texas-based science podcast. On February 12: Not Just a Casual Love Affair: How to Cultivate a Real Relationship with Chocolate; Lecture and tasting at the Rockport Center for the Arts, February 17: Biology & Chemistry of Chocolate; Lecture and tasting for Westwood High School Enrichment Program, February 21st: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t? Using eDNA to confirm removal of invasive snails by local agency; APHIS-USDA 2023 Apple Snail Workshop, and February 24th: Science Stories Podcast (Live on community radio station KZSM) with Dr. Mateo Garcia, a postdoctoral researcher at Texas State University.

Assistant Professor of Economics Chandrayee Chatterjee presented her paper titled “Impact of the Nature and Timing of Affirmative Action: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment” at the 2023 Annual Conference of the Eastern Economic Association in New York City from February 23rd to 26th.

Assistant Professor of Biology Jennie DeMarco recently had a research paper published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment titled “Composted biosolids for enhanced soil organic carbon and water storage in perennial pastures in Colorado”. This work was part of Dr. DeMarco’s former graduate student’s thesis and focuses on how we can manage pasture lands to sequester carbon into the soil as a climate change mitigation strategy. The paper can be accessed here.

Associate Professor of History Melissa Byrnes published a review, “The Last Dreams of Empire,” as part of a Tocqueville21 forum discussing Megan Brown’s recent book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano and psychology major Will Hebl ’23 presented a poster entitled “How Common is Undergraduate Publication in Psychology” at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Atlanta, Georgia, this past weekend.

Professor of Communications Studies Valerie Renegar and Kristi Cole co-edited the book Refiguring Motherhood Beyond Biology, which was published this month. The book features essays that challenge the biological expectations of motherhood and features work by communication, rhetoric, and motherhood scholars across the country, including Southwestern’s Renegar, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala, Professor of Spanish Katy Ross, and her student Bailey Barlow ’23.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth served as a judge at the Texas State German Contest. On February 25, 2023, Texas State University in San Marcos hosted the Texas State German Contest on its 41st anniversary. This scholastic competition for high school students brought together over 1,000 high school students and their teachers from all over Texas. Engagement with this event marks an important aspect of Berroth’s commitment to community building and outreach. It was a wonderful opportunity to encourage young learners to continue their studies of languages, literature, and cultures.

Assistant Director of Outdoor Adventure Branndon Bargo was the keynote speaker at the Texas Outdoor Leadership Conference (TOLC) held at the University of Houston. Over 160 outdoor leaders from nearly a dozen Texas universities were in attendance. TOLC provides regional outdoor program administrators, educators, and students a unique opportunity to network, develop backcountry skills and exchange ideas associated with outdoor leadership, risk management, and environmental stewardship.

Assistant Professor of Business Raji Kunapuli presented a paper titled “Effect of IPO communication on types of institutional investors” at the JMS Publishing Workshop, organized by the Journal of Management Studies at the Florida International University, Miami, FL.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano recently delivered a “Guest Expert Webinar” for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Her presentation was titled “Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Publishing with Undergraduates.” The NCFDD’s mission is to provide underrepresented faculty at member schools with on-demand access to mentoring, tools, and support to thrive in academia– including help with planning, productivity, healthy relationships, and work-life balance.

Director of Smith Library Center Alexia Riggs has been elected as the incoming chair of the College and University Library Division (CULD) for the Texas Library Association (TLA). The Chair also serves as the President of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) state chapter. This three-year term includes work promoting and advocating for Texas academic libraries and creating professional development programming for Texas librarians.

Professor of English Michael Saenger and Associate Professor of Theatre Sergio Costola collaborated on a book titled Shakespeare in Succession: Translation and Time (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). The edited collection brings together scholars from eight different countries and five continents.

Sr. Director of Integrative and Community-Engaged Learning Sarah Brackmann co-presented “Community-Engaged Learning Is Better Together: What We Discovered Facilitating a Multi-Institutional CEL Community of Practice” with Sascha Goluboff (Washington & Lee University) at the AACU Annual Meeting. They shared lessons learned from a year-long community of practice focusing on community-engaged learning (CEL) across the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS).

Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Sydnor and Sr. Director of Integrative and Community-Engaged Learning Sarah Brackmann co-presented at AACU’s Annual Meeting. Their presentation, “Building a Campus-Wide Integrated Voter Engagement Effort,” highlighted Southwestern’s success in building and institutionalizing a voter registration, education, and engagement program that spans the student experience.

On February 8-10, Professor of Art and Art History Thomas Howe was invited to do a department review of an undergraduate interdisciplinary architecture major at Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, AL, of a program introduced five years ago largely based on the Architecture Minor which Howe introduced at Southwestern in 1985.

Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano participated at the 4th Annual College Readiness Symposium (Breaking Barriers, Growing Generations) sponsored by the Austin ISD and held at St. Edwards University on Saturday, Feb 11th. Dr. Giuliano gave two sessions of a presentation called “A Professor’s Tips for Succeeding in College.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Ana Esteve Llorens presented an exhibition of new work at Set Espai d’Art Gallery in Valencia, Spain (on view through March 11). The project, titled Paisaje, extends my research on what I define as “Spatial Weavings.” Through this new series of works, Esteve Llorens proposes alternative ways of approaching artistic creation and the revision of classic art genres, such as landscape representation. Using textile production techniques that have been historically relegated to a second plane, Esteve Llorens claims space: the physical space generated by the pieces themselves and the space offered by the titles where Esteve Llorens quote and include sentences extracted from texts by feminist writers and thinkers. Only natural materials allow her to continue to research the sculptural possibilities of fibers, approaching an abstraction that she envisions as a space for action, inclusion, and freedom.

Part-time Assistant Professor of Music and concert cellist Hai Zheng Olefsky has been teaching and coaching top young talents in the greater Austin area. Three of her students won Cello Audition in the 2022–2023 Texas All-State Symphony, Philharmonic, and Sinfonietta Orchestras, sponsored by the Texas Music Educators Association; and two of her students from St. Stephen’s School won cello auditions for the Texas Private School Music Educator Association (TPSMEA) 2022–2023 All-State Orchestra.

Inversion Ensemble presents the world premiere of “Extinction,” a choral setting by Part-Time Instructor of Applied Music Adrienne Inglis of Kim Stafford’s poem “An Extinction” for its Planet Home concert, with a soundscape by Seylon Stills. Attend the performances on Saturday, February 25, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, February 26, 2023, at 3 p.m. The Rosette 3908 Avenue B Ste 116, Austin, TX 78751. Tickets are available here.

Assistant Professor of Biology Kim McArthur, with co-authors Emma Astad ’21, Emmett Griffin-Baldwin ’22, Bria Tovar ’22, and Tori Tovar ’22, wrote a research article recently accepted in the Journal of Comparative Neurology. The article, entitled “Early development of respiratory motor circuits in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio),” uses a combination of behavioral analysis and functional calcium imaging to reveal the developmental time course of early synaptic inputs from respiratory, central pattern-generating circuits to the cranial motor neurons that generate coordinated breathing behaviors. This work provides critical foundational information about the development of an emerging model circuit in developmental neurobiology, setting the stage for future work probing the mechanisms of synapse development.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth is co-editor of the recently published volume: “Behinderungen und Herausforderungen. Disability Studies in der Germanistik.” (Sektion) Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive. Akten des IX. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG). (Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik. Beihefte 5). Bd. 5 . Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2022, 463-605. Included in this volume is Berroth’s research article on representations of Deaf Cultures in German film: “Repräsentationen von Gehörlosigkeit im Film – Jenseits der Stille im Kontext der ‘Deaf Futures.’” 489-506.

Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Political Science Alisa Gaunder participated on a panel titled “Fostering Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Faculty Evaluation Processes” at the 2023 American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) annual meeting in San Francisco, CA, January 18-20, 2023. The panel included deans and faculty development and assessment professionals from Furman, Rhodes, Rollins, and Southwestern who shared how the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) addressed the following challenge: how do we honor the complexity of faculty work, the principles of DEI, and the distinctiveness of institutional context while implementing faculty evaluation processes that are, on the one hand, robust, rigorous, and systematic, and on the other, holistic, developmental, and fair? The ACS tackled this challenge through an Arthur Vining Davis grant devoted to improving faculty evaluation processes to, among other things, mitigate bias in student evaluations of teaching, adopt multiple measures of teaching, and assess faculty workloads for equity. The panel shared key lessons learned from developing a faculty evaluation toolkit and some of the strongest resources that support more holistic, authentic, transparent, and equitable faculty evaluation.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper was interviewed on the podcast “Her Music Academia,” founded by Lydia Bangura, a music theory Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan who is interested in “the intersection of performance and analysis, and the performance of Black feminism in American classical music.” The episode’s conversation retraces the long and winding trail of Cooper’s work on Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. The episode “get[s] into the weeds” (as Bangura puts it) about the powers, good and bad, wielded by music publishing houses, talks about Price and Bonds, and features a powerful reading by Dr. Candace Kerr Johnson (UC Berkeley) of a speech (discovered by Cooper) in which Margaret Bonds talks about her African American ancestral heritage, her experiences with racism at Northwestern University as well as Bonds’s recently discovered “Tangamerican,” which Cooper discovered in 2018 and published in 2021. The episode is on all major podcasting platforms and via Bangura’s anchor site.

Interim Vice President for Student Life Brit Katz provided the keynote address for the annual conference for national fraternity and sorority Executive Directors and Presidents on January 8 in Tampa, FL. The title of the presentation was “Quo Vadis? Life with Millennials and Gen Z.”

Professor of Kinesiology Scott McLean attended the Annual Meeting of the American Kinesiology Association in San Diego, where he received the Distinguished Leadership Award for Undergraduate Institutions. This award recognizes an individual’s outstanding administrative and leadership performance at an AKA member institution who contributes to the attainment of their kinesiology unit’s strategic goals.

Head of Special Collections and Archives Megan Firestone has been selected to serve on the J. Frank Dobie Library Trust Awards committee. The trust set up by J. Frank Dobie ’1910

Head of Special Collections and Archives Megan Firestone presented on the early history of the Georgetown branch of the American Association of University Women at their recent centennial event.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton, with co-authors Bonnie Henderson ’18 and Michael Gebhardt ’16, published a chapter, “Acrobatics in a Parametric Arena,” in Mathematics Research for the Beginning Student. The volume is part of the book series, Foundation for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (FURM), which is devoted to increasing access to undergraduate research opportunities. Parts of Gebhardt’s and Henderson’s Mathematics capstone projects supervised by Shelton were included in this chapter. Professor of Kinesiology Scott McLean aided in data collection from video capture software generated by Henderson’s juggling of flower sticks in the fall of 2017. Research Assistants for this project included E. Wilson Cook ’22, Audrey Schumacher ’23, and Emily Thompson ’22

Three faculty members and a student joined over five thousand mathematicians at the largest math gathering in the world, Joint Mathematics Meetings, in Boston, MA, January 4-7, 2023. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the undergraduate mathematics honor society Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) were among the fifteen partner professional organizations. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Isoperimetric solutions to a 1-dimensional problem within regions and log-concave density” in the AMS Contributed Paper Session on Topics in Analysis and Control Theory. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a four-hour Professional Enhancement Program, “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Distance Magic Labelings of Directed Graphs” in the AMS Special Session on The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program (EDGE): Pure and Applied Talks by Women Math Warriors. She also participated in multiple events in her capacity as Co-director of EDGE. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Cars, Competition, and Cholera” in the AMS Special Session on Stimulating Student Engagement in Differential Equations through Modeling Activities. Oliver Johnson ’24 presented “Perspective Analysis of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait” in the PME Contributed Session on Research by Undergraduates. This research was supervised by Futamura.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, along with students Sarah Friday ’21, Jordan Smith ’21, and Aaron Waclawczyk ’21, published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Linear Algebra and its Applications. The paper “Powers of Defective Matrices From Diagonalizable Dilations” resulted from research started during SCOPE in the summer of 2019. The article can be found here.

Professor of English Michael Saenger co-authored an essay with Cary Nelson, who is Professor Emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and served as president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012. The essay, entitled, “When Discourse about Israel Becomes Antisemitic: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Fathom is a prominent British journal that focuses on the Middle East. Read the essay here.

Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair 2023 has been selected as one of the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) 10 academic leadership fellows. The program is aimed at providing leadership experiences to a diverse cohort of humanities faculty members and will combine leadership training, mentoring, and hands-on leadership experiences for a diverse group of tenured humanities faculty as they enter administration leadership.

Assistant Professor of History Soojung Han presented the paper, “The Newly Integrated Empire: Liao Taizong’s Rule over the Middle Kingdom,” at the Kitan Network Annual Symposium 2023, hosted by Waseda University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Jeffrey Easton was invited by the editors of the peer-reviewed journal, Phoenix, to review a new book on the Roman dictatorship by Mark B. Wilson (2021, University of Michigan Press). The book provides a much-needed update on this ancient office through analysis of written texts, epigraphic documents, and modern theoretical approaches. Easton’s review is published in the current issue of Phoenix (Volume 75, Spring/Summer 2021, pp. 171-4).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Jeffrey Easton presented a paper at the joint Society for Classical Studies/Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The paper, entitled ‘What’s in a Name: The Ferrarii and Roman occupational associations in the Bay of Baratti and central and southern Spain,’ analyzed a group of Romans with a rare family name to better understand the socioeconomic experience of workers involved in the lowest levels of the metalworking industry.

Assistant Professor of History Joseph Hower presented a paper titled “The Municipal Doomsday Machinist? Ralph de Toledano and the Popularization of Public Sector Union Critiques in Postwar America” to the DC Labor History Seminar Series on January 13.

Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones was invited as a lecturer and discussant to the inquiry immersion elective course on Decolonization within the Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He virtually gave the talk: “Colonial Legacies in the Mexican Pharmaceutical Industry: The Instituto Médico Nacional (1888-1905) and the Exploration of Medicinal Plants” to medical students and guided a discussion about how to dismantle those legacies.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the first-ever edition of Margaret Bonds’ “Sleep Song” (text by Joyce Kilmer), written ninety-one years ago this year, as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series with Hildegard Publishing Co. Scored for women’s chorus and piano, it is a lullaby, likening the silver moon, watching lovingly over the sleeping earth with cloak and shoon, to the speaker as she watches her “little maid” drift off to sleep: “Your life, your love, your dreams are mine to keep / So sleep, so sleep.” Margaret Bonds gives musical voice to that protective parental devotion with delicacy, tenderness, and warmth. A plus is that this choral score was copied by Bonds’ friend and collaborator Florence B. Price – a circumstance that makes this the closest thing the modern world has to a compositional collaboration between the two great composers.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the world-premiere edition of Margaret Bonds’ setting of the iconic spiritual “We Shall Overcome” (for soprano solo, SATB chorus, bongo, and tambourine) as part of the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Co. (Worcester, Mass.). Running to a remarkable 130 measures, the setting employs a wide array of musical styles, making it the most original setting of a ubiquitous social-justice hymn ever written. It was commissioned by legendary soprano Leontyne Price, a close friend and collaborator of Bonds, in September 1969 but has had to wait nearly 54 years for publication. Now, though, it has overcome the silence forcibly imposed on it by a musical world determined to silence the voice of resistance tendered by this African American woman composer who was doubly damned by her race and her sex.

Professor of English Michael Saenger delivered an invited talk at the Academic Engagement Network’s Short Course in Miami on January 9. The talk was entitled “Addressing Challenges in the Humanities & Social Sciences: Toward a Better Understanding & Use of Key Terms in Combating BDS and Israel Delegitimization.”

Three faculty members and a student joined over five thousand mathematicians at the largest math gathering in the world, Joint Mathematics Meetings, in Boston, MA, January 4-7, 2023. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the undergraduate mathematics honor society Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) were among the fifteen partner professional organizations. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Isoperimetric solutions to a 1-dimensional problem within regions and log-concave density” in the AMS Contributed Paper Session on Topics in Analysis and Control Theory. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a four-hour Professional Enhancement Program, “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Distance Magic Labelings of Directed Graphs” in the AMS Special Session on The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program (EDGE): Pure and Applied Talks by Women Math Warriors. She also participated in multiple events in her capacity as Co-director of EDGE. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Cars, Competition, and Cholera” in the AMS Special Session on Stimulating Student Engagement in Differential Equations through Modeling Activities. Oliver Johnson ’24 presented “Perspective Analysis of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait” in the PME Contributed Session on Research by Undergraduates. This research was supervised by Futamura.

Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed A Christmas Carol for Penfold Theatre, which was presented at Old Settlers Hall in Round Rock, Texas, December 8-23. The classic radio cast production involved the design of a 1930s radio broadcast venue where five female actors represented all characters while also hand-operating Foley sound effects. The production ran at Old Settlers Hall December 8-18 before moving to the Driskill Hotel in Austin for a two-night run December 22 and 23.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, along with students Sarah Friday ’21, Jordan Smith ’21, and Aaron Waclawczyk ’21, published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Linear Algebra and its Applications. The paper “Powers of Defective Matrices From Diagonalizable Dilations” resulted from research started during SCOPE in the summer of 2019. The article can be found here.

Professor of Psychology Fay Guarraci and current students Megan Kelly ’23, Amanda Gale ’23, Jasmine Belfield ’23, and Natalie Williams ’25, as well as alums Layla Avendano ’22, Cler Estoestra ’22, Brooke Frohock ’21, Lily Yepez ’22, and Bernard Sencherey ’22, recently published the article “Chronic periadolescent leuprolide exposure affects the development of reproductive physiology and behavior of female and male rats differently, but both mature after treatment termination” in Biology of Sex Differences.

Interim Vice President for Student Life Brit Katz facilitated the 2023 Leadership Education for the Southern Athletics Association Student-Athletes’ Advisory Council. The event occurred on January 7-8 in Jackson, TN.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer and Benjamin Call (University of Illinois Chicago) applied for and won funding from the American Institute of Mathematics to organize a research community called Big Ideas in Dynamics in 2023. They will have 3-5 experts in dynamical systems give talks on one of the “big ideas” that underlies one of their papers. These talks will serve as jumping-off points for graduate student reading groups centered on the associated papers. Each paper will have an assigned mentor for graduate students to reach out to. Sawyer and Call hope to have the reading groups culminate in graduate students giving expository talks at a conference on the details of the paper and discussing related open problems.

Associate Professor of Feminist Studies Brenda Sendejo and Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala attended the El Mundo Zurdo conference for the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa at the University of Texas at San Antonio from November 4-5. The roundtable that Bahrainwala and Sendejo co-organized was titled “Reflections on Radical Love, Care, and Consent: How Anzaldúa Informs Our Liberatory Praxis.” Bahrainwala presented “Pandemic lessons: Consent as anti-Racism,” and Sendejo presented “Movidas of Healing: The Spirit Work of Movement Era Chicanas.” The roundtable was well attended by lead scholars in the field of Anzaldúan Thought.

Associate Professor of Feminist Studies Brenda Sendejo attended the National Women’s Studies Association annual meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from November 10-13. This year’s conference theme was “Killing Rage: Resistance on the Other Side of Freedom.” Sendejo presented a paper titled “The Spirit Work of bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa: Lessons on Radical Love as Resistance,” which drew from her book manuscript in progress.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer and Benjamin Call (University of Illinois Chicago) applied for and won funding from the American Institute of Mathematics to organize a research community called Big Ideas in Dynamics in 2023. They will have 3-5 experts in dynamical systems give talks on one of the “big ideas” that underlies one of their papers. These talks will serve as jumping-off points for graduate student reading groups centered on the associated papers. Each paper will have an assigned mentor for graduate students to reach out to. Sawyer and Call hope to have the reading groups culminate in graduate students giving expository talks at a conference on the details of the paper and discussing related open problems.

Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones was invited to participate in the seminar Itinerante of History and Historiography of Sciences and Technologies jointly hosted by UNAM, CINVESTAV, and COLMEX. He responded to and commented on the presentation “El genérico espectacular: los medicamentos y la simipolítica en México,” The Spectacular Generic: Pharmaceuticals and theSimipolitical in Mexico by Cori Hayden. The seminar was broadcasted on YouTube and Facebook.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha, and Catherine Hiebel ’22 published an article in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Their article, “Populism and Surrogacy in Spain,” can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala was an invited virtual speaker at the University of Nevada, Reno in an undergraduate seminar on New Media. The talk focused on feminist surveillance studies and surveillance ecosystems in public spaces built for children.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala attended the National Communication Association Convention in New Orleans from November 16-19, during which time she received a Distinguished Scholarship Award for Top Article from the International and Intercultural Communication Division. Bahrainwala organized, chaired, and presented on a panel titled Queer Desi Kinship, exploring how queering the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan offers non-Western lessons towards queer scholarship, and fulfilled her commitments as Second Vice-Chair of the Feminist and Women Studies Division.

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala was an invited virtual speaker at Arizona State University in the graduate seminar Rhetorical Methods. Students read two of Bahrainwala’s publications on equity work in the academy, and her talk focused on the role of critic in rhetorical criticism and maintaining energy while doing the difficult labor of critiquing inequitable structures.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Ana Esteve Llorens was awarded the Grupo Radio Gandia Prize, in its XII Edition, in the category of Art. This annual event recognizes the work and contributions of people, entities, groups, or companies from Valencia, Spain, from different professional fields. An interview and online publication of the news can be found here.

In June of this year, Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury made video recordings of works written for them. They are releasing them as the editing process is completed. The next video in this series, Luz, is the fourth song from the cycle Sobre La Naturaleza by Diego Luzuriaga. The composer, originating from Ecuador, has a special affinity for writing music derived from traditional sources and connects deeply with themes from the natural world. The video can be viewed here.

Professor of Political Science Bob Snyder had his paper titled “An American Tragedy: The Fall of Afghanistan” accepted for publication in the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Several compositions by Part-Time Instructor of Applied Music Adrienne Inglis are enjoying their premieres. “Oure Light in Oure Night” (2020) for voices and nature soundtrack gets its in-person premiere in Seattle on December 1 and 7, 2022, by the University of Washington combined choirs and in San Francisco on December 9 by the San Francisco State University choir. Portia Hansen and David Utterback recently premiered “Ma’iingan” for flute and piano at Southwestern. On January 21, Inversion Da Capo premieres “Julian’s Hazelnut” for treble choir and clarinet, using the original pronunciation of Julian of Norwich’s Middle English text. See more information here.

A wonderful interdisciplinary group from Southwestern participated in the 17th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), held this year at the University of Texas at Austin on October 29. Carson Vogel ’23 presented “Modeling Heat Transfer.” This project is a continuation of the 2021 and 2022 SCOPE projects under the supervision of Professor of Physics Steven Alexander and Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf. This work is part of ongoing efforts for the eventual development of a solar energy storage cell; a problem brought to Southwestern by Coordinator of Science Facilities and Equipment Oscar Lee Fellows. Melanie Richey ’23 presented “Rats on the Run: Modeling of Hippocampal Cell Activity Using Plasticity.” Her project is a continuation of a 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates at Southern Methodist University under the supervision of Dr. Katie Hedrick in collaboration with Dr. Brad E. Pfeiffer, Department of Neuroscience, UT Southwestern Medical Center. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton also attended the conference. Marr chaired a student presentation session. Shelton supervised Vogel’s and Richey’s current work, preliminary results for their mathematics capstone projects. Jillian Reese ’23 and Emma Lewis ’23 joined with their counterparts from the University of North Texas-Denton in research with Shelton and Dr. Joe Iaia, funded through the Council for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Other students also attended: Oliver Johnson ’23, Jess Kazmir ’23, Lauren Calzado ’23, Rowan Via ’23, Kathryn Altman ’24, and Aidan Bujanda-Moore ’23. Majors and minors among our student attendees included Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Education, Spanish, and Political Science.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton, with co-authors Bonnie Henderson ’18 and Michael Gebhardt ’16, published a chapter, “Acrobatics in a Parametric Arena,” in Mathematics Research for the Beginning Student. The volume is part of the book series, Foundation for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (FURM), which is devoted to increasing access to undergraduate research opportunities. Parts of Gebhardt’s and Henderson’s Mathematics capstone projects supervised by Shelton were included in this chapter. Professor of Kinesiology Scott McLean aided in data collection from video capture software generated by Henderson’s juggling of flower sticks in the fall of 2017. Research Assistants for this project included E. Wilson Cook ’22, Audrey Schumacher ’23, and Emily Thompson ’22.

• Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Raquel Moreira engaged in a number of activities at the 2022 National Communication Association (NCA) Annual Convention in New Orleans. Moreira received the International and Intercultural Communication Division’s Best Book Award for Bitches Unleashed: Performance and Embodied Politics in Favela Funk. Additionally, she presented the following papers:

1. “Mestiçagem and Racial spatiality in Anitta’s ‘Girl from Rio,’” co-planned paper session with Texas AM’s Dr. Bryce Henderson and sponsored by the Critical and Cultural Studies Division.
2. “Dragging White Femininity: Pabllo Vittar’s Performances of Gender and Race on Instagram,” paper session sponsored by the GLBTQ Communication Studies Division.
3. “Communication Needs Transfeminismo: How a Brazilian Political and Epistemological Movement Can Help Decolonize Our Discipline,” presented in Portuguese for a multilingual panel about structural violence sponsored by NCA’s First Vice President.

Finally, Moreira participated as a panelist in the following:

1. “Spotlight on Scholarship: New Books in Latina/o/x Communication Studies,” sponsored by NCA’s First Vice President.
2. “Publishing Race Scholarship in Communication Studies: Challenges Faced by Scholars of Color and/or International Scholars in the Field,” sponsored by NCA’s First Vice President.
3. “Latinx Faculty: Finding our PLACE in Predominantly White Institutions,” sponsored by the La Raza Caucus.
4. “The Future of the La Raza Caucus: An Open Forum,” a session co-chaired with Dr. Michelle Holling and sponsored by the La Raza Caucus.
5. “Shared Governance as a Place for Advocacy: Examining How the Neoliberal University is Dismantling Community Deliberation,” sponsored by the Association for Communication Administration.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented at the Heritage Languages Special Interest Group panel of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 18-20 in Boston, Massachusetts. Their talk, titled “Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Reflections on Their Study Abroad Experiences,” was based on a thematic analysis of follow-up interviews with a subset of participants who had completed their original survey. It explored how the participants’ heritage speaker status impacted their study abroad experiences.

Professor Emeritus of Music Lois Ferrari conducted the Austin Civic Orchestra in a performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and Wolf, narrated by Peter Bay, the Austin Symphony Orchestra conductor. Ferrari and Bay collaborated in the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s Pajama Party concert on November 12. Both orchestra and audience arrived in their pajamas and settled in for a unique take on the bedtime story.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson presented “Feeling Climate Change in the Unruly Environment of Central Belize” for the roundtable “How Does Climate Change Feel? (Re)Thinking Cultural Embodied Responses To Environmental Precarity” at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held November 9-13 in Seattle, Washington.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth earned a materials grant from the German Foreign Office and the German Academic Exchange Service, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The grant covers a curated collection of German language titles for children and young adults, including picture books, graphic novels, non-fiction, and fiction. Students will use the collection to study media, narration, as well as representations of diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism in German literature for young audiences. Success with DAAD materials grants is made possible through Berroth’s work in community engagement as a DAAD Ortslektorin.

Computer science major Chris Ojonta ’23 attended the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT/Association for Computing Machinery (CMD-IT/ACM) Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, held September 7–10 in Washington, D.C. Ojonta received a full scholarship to support his attendance in recognition of his accomplishments in computer science. He interacted with numerous undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from a variety of backgrounds at the event and explored career and graduate school opportunities.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and education majors Leora Ammerman ’24, Logan Ferguson ’24, Caitlynne Graves ’24, Allison Hentges ’24, Kristin Lacy ’24, Rebecca Ramirez ’24, and William Slanina-Wertz ’24 presented “A Potpourri of Hands-on, Minds-on Lessons and Activities” at the Science Teachers Association of Texas annual Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching (CAST) in Dallas.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer gave an invited talk titled “Geodesic Currents and the Boundary at Infinity” in the Geometry Seminar at George Mason University on Monday, November 14th.

Associate Director of Alumni Relations Becky Rodriguez has been selected to join the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Rodriguez graduated from the Chamber’s Leadership Georgetown program in May of 2022.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies Jordan Johnson published the article “Staying with the Trouble with Wilderness: Reworking Nature and Culture in the Plantationocene” in this fall’s issue of The Journal of Posthumanism. The issue is available here.

Associate Registrar Nadia Mahannah was appointed to a 4-year term on the Legislative Issues Committee within the Texas Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (TACRAO) at the TACRAO Annual Conference in November 2022. The committee closely follows higher education legislation at both the State and Federal levels to keep the TACRAO community informed of important changes impacting their institutions.

• In June of this year, Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury made video recordings of works written for them. They are releasing them as the editing process is completed. The next video in this series, Atmósfera, is the first song from the cycle Sobre La Naturaleza by Diego Luzuriaga. The composer, originating from Ecuador, has a special affinity for writing music derived from traditional sources and connects deeply with themes from the natural world. The video can be viewed here.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Music and concert cellist Hai Zheng Olefsky has been invited to be an adjudicator for a strings-cello audition for All-State Orchestra by TMEA (Texas Music Educator Association) on Saturday, November 12, 2022. She has continued coaching the Austin area’s top high school cellists. Two of her cello students have auditioned and won the first cello chairs for both Texas Region 26 and Region 32-All Region High School Orchestra this school year.

Assistant Professor of Education Raquel Sáenz Ortiz and two current students (co-researchers from SCOPE)— Rebecca Ramirez ’24 and Laura Carrasco Torres ’24— presented “Curricular imperialism: The impact of ‘anti-CRT’ legislation on Ethnic Studies classrooms in Texas” at the Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA) Annual Meeting, held October 26-28 in Edwardsville, Illinois.

Interim Vice President for Student Life Brit Katz co-presented “Leveraging Academic Affairs & Student Affairs Partnerships When Developing Student Leadership Programs” at the 2023 Southern Association of College Student Affairs Conference in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 6.

Associate professor of History Melissa Byrnes presented a paper entitled “Securing Thresholds: Housing, Family Size, and Alleged Delinquency” at the Western Society for French History Annual Conference in Victoria, British Columbia, on November 4.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth was the plenary keynote speaker at the 54th annual conference of the Tennessee World Language Teaching Association, “The Future of Languages is You: Learn and Share” in Franklin, Tennessee, on November 4–5, 2022. Berroth’s keynote address titled “Honoring Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity as Ways of Belonging” introduced important questions related to language justice. Increased awareness about language justice contributes to creating inclusive multilingual spaces and includes challenging structures of power and privilege associated with languages, accents, or dialects. Berroth highlighted the benefits of empathy gained through learning multiple languages and through inhabiting multilingual spaces. The invited plenary keynote engaged a diverse audience. The conference convened educators from the Tennessee Classical Association, the Tennessee Association of Chinese Teachers, and the American Association of Teachers of French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and two of his FSP research students— Domenic Cordova ’23 and Noah Pyles ’23 — attended the Great Plains Biomaterials Day in Lawrence, Kansas, on November 4, 2022. They presented two rapid-fire talks focused on developing a novel biomaterial ink for the blood-brain barrier and the fabrication of a low-cost Ender-3 bioprinter. Only 5 of the 35 submissions were selected for rapid-fire talks at the conference.

Associate Professor of History Jessica S. Hower recorded an episode for the “Not Just the Tudors” Podcast, hosted by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. In the episode, Hower’s co-author, Valerie Schutte, and Hower discussed their two-book edited collection, Mary I in Writingand Writing Mary I, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan earlier this year, and the fraught history and memory of England’s first crowned queen regnant more generally. “Not Just the Tudors” has been running since April 2021 and has had over 6 million downloads. The episode is available here.

Professor of Biology and 2022 London Faculty Romi Burks gave an invited presentation on October 22 on chocolate education entitled “Making the word chocolate mean more to everyone” at the first edition of the Latin American International Festival of Chocolate and Cocoa in Europe. This event took place in partnership with The Chocolate Story Museum and WOW/Vinte Vinte at their location in the cultural district in Vila Nova de Gaia in Porto, Portugal. During the following week (October 26-27), Burks participated as an invited judge for filled chocolates at The Academy of Chocolate awards back in London.

Professors of Biology Maria Cuevas and Maria Todd published a paper titled “Microarray Analysis Reveals Overexpression of both Integral Membrane and Cytosolic Tight Junction Genes in Endometrial Cancer Cell Lines” in the Journal of Cancer. The study reports for the first time a comprehensive analysis of 84 tight junction network genes in a panel of endometrial cancer cell lines. The authors identified three genes that were consistently deregulated in endometrial cancer, thus providing potential candidates for the development of both diagnostic markers and novel therapeutic approaches for endometrial cancer.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar published an article titled “Trauma Remains: The Material Afterlives of the 1989 Alton School Bus Crash,” in the October 2022 issue of the Journal of Material Culture. The article analyzes the ways a large roadside shrine in South Texas where 21 middle and high school students were killed in a crash in 1989 continues to quietly but forcefully reverberate as a site of collective trauma more than thirty years later.

Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Political Science Alisa Gaunder and her co-author Karine Moe published the lead essay “So You are Going to Be a New CAO: Strategies for Success” in the fall edition of The ACAD Leader sponsored by the American Council of Academic Deans.

Director of A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center Alexia Riggs serves as a book reviewer for  Choice Magazine .  Choice Magazine  is a publication focused on evaluating research for academic use. Two new reviews have been published, including “Ethics in Higher Education” and “Passing for Perfect” by Erin Khue Ninh.

Professor of Education Michael Kamen and Associate Professor and Chair of Education Alicia Moore presented “New Kids in the Blocks: Pedagogical Models of Play for Social Justice” at the International Play Association-USA Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Part-time Instructor of Applied Music Katherine Altobello ’99 was the mezzo-soprano soloist in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil” with the Texas Bach Festival, under the direction of Dr. Barry Williamson on June 23 and 26 in Georgetown and Austin. The work consists of 15 movements with a capella chorus and soloists, sung in Church Slavonic/Russian. The “All Night Vigil” is one of Rachmaninoff’s finest compositions, considered “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Watch the performance here. 

A wonderful interdisciplinary group from Southwestern participated in the 17th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), held this year at the University of Texas at Austin on October 29. Carson Vogel ’23 presented “Modeling Heat Transfer.” This project is a continuation of the 2021 and 2022 SCOPE projects under the supervision of Professor of Physics Steven Alexander and Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf. This work is part of ongoing efforts for the eventual development of a solar energy storage cell; a problem brought to Southwestern by Coordinator of Science Facilities and Equipment Oscar Lee Fellows. Melanie Richey ’23 presented “Rats on the Run: Modeling of Hippocampal Cell Activity Using Plasticity.” Her project is a continuation of a 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates at Southern Methodist University under the supervision of Dr. Katie Hedrick in collaboration with Dr. Brad E. Pfeiffer, Department of Neuroscience, UT Southwestern Medical Center. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton also attended the conference. Marr chaired a student presentation session. Shelton supervised Vogel’s and Richey’s current work, preliminary results for their mathematics capstone projects. Jillian Reese ’23 and Emma Lewis ’23 joined with their counterparts from the University of North Texas-Denton in research with Shelton and Dr. Joe Iaia, funded through the Council for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Other students also attended: Oliver Johnson ’23, Jess Kazmir ’23, Lauren Calzado ’23, Rowan Via ’23, Kathryn Altman ’24, and Aidan Bujanda-Moore ’23. Majors and minors among our student attendees included Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Education, Spanish, and Political Science.

On October 20th, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer was the speaker at the  University of Toronto’s Department of Mathematics Equity Forum in a talk she called “Abstracting  People out of Mathematics.” The goal of the Equity Forum is to create a space and time that  invites people to think about underserved students, marginalized colleagues, and postdocs, take  a serious look at the mathematical culture we promote and propagate to math majors, graduate  students, and colleagues. In particular, Sawyer spoke about how math culture and community are  harmful to us and the ways that we are still perpetuating the harm that was done to us. The  conversation focused on and reminded the audience that people will always be more important  than math.

Associate Professor of History Jessica Hower presented a paper titled, “‘Sole Hope of Caesar’s  Side’: Humanism and History in the Reign of Mary I and Philip II,” at the Northeast Conference on  British Studies annual gathering, which took place in a hybrid format at Bates College and online  October 21-23.

In June of this year, Associate Professors of Music Bruce Cain and David Asbury made videorecordings of works written for them and are releasing them as the editing process is completed.The next video in this series is a song from the River of Words Song Cycle entitled Mariquita,featuring music by Diego Vega, and text by Yutzel Garcia.

Director of the A. Frank Smith Jr. Library Center Alexia Riggs was a guest lecturer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign during the IS510 Libraries, Information, and Society  class. Her lecture was focused on the events currently happening regarding censorship and material challenges in libraries. The class was given the opportunity to ask questions and explore  academic librarianship in private higher education.

Director of the A. Frank Smith Jr. Library Center Alexia Riggs gave a presentation titled, “Show  me the data: Teaching new librarians how to find institutional data for analysis,” for the Midwest  Data Librarian Symposium held October 5-7th, hosted by Purdue University and Notre Dame. The presentation focused on mentorship and institutional training to provide new personnel  context and understanding of collections and data capture in an academic library.

Assistant Professor of Art Ana Esteve Llorens’ work was included in an exhibition at the international art fair Estampa 2022, held October 13–16 in Madrid, Spain. Organized by Set Espaid’ Art Gallery, the exhibition was a reflection on contemporary geometry and abstraction and it featured the work of five women artists. The gallery was awarded with the prize for the best stand. A large piece of Esteve Llorens was included. This work was produced over the summer partially thanks to the Faculty Competitive Award Esteve Llorens received for this academic year.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and four of his FSP research students— Kristie  Cheng ’23, Domenic Cordova ’23, Noah Pyles ’23, and Angel Rodriguez ’24— attended the 2022  Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, held October 12-15 in San Antonio, Texas. They presented two posters focused on the development of a novel biomaterial ink for the  blood-brain barrier and the fabrication of a low-cost Ender-3 bioprinter. Both posters were  well-attended by other conference-goers and generated some insightful and helpful discussions.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth was invited to contribute to a podcast series sponsored by Literaturhaus Heilbronn, Germany, which was published on October 14, 2022. The podcast series is titled “Warum Kleist?” (Why Kleist?) and features responses from international Kleist scholars. Contemporary German language authors compete for the annual award of the Kleist-Preis in honor of one of Germany’s most remarkable language artists, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811). Berroth’s research includes a book on Kleist and work on several Kleist-Preis awardees. The podcast episode can be accessed here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper gave a presentation at the 25th anniversary conference of the African American Art Song Alliance at the University of California, Irvine. Titled “A Ghost No More: On a Prize-Winning Song by Margaret Bonds No Longer Lost,” Cooper’s talk centered on Bonds’s setting of Frank Dempster Sherman’s poem “A Sea Ghost,” which she composed at the age of eighteen and for which she won a prestigious prize of $250 (about $5,400 in 2022 dollars) in the national Wanamaker Competition in 1932. The song has frequently been described as lost, but Cooper discovered it in the course of his archival research. By examining it and the political campaign song “We’re All for Hoover Today” (written when Bonds was fifteen), putting those two into a focused chronology with the flowering of mature song that emerged in mid-1932, and examining the previously unknown correspondence of the composer, Cooper shed light on the nature and potency of the otherwise unseen but powerfully felt encounter that enabled Bonds to grow by a decade or more as a composer in a matter of mere months. For those who are wondering, it is totally and truthfully coincidental that Cooper, who has an aversion to cheesy promotional stunts, gave a talk about ghosts and phantom voices two weeks before Halloween.

Associate Professor of Theatre and Associate Dean of the Faculty Sergio Costola presented a paper titled “Lucrezia Borgia and Theatrical Practice of Women in Elite Society” at a conference on Memory and Performance. Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals sponsored by the Archive for Performances of Greek and Roman Drama of the University of Oxford, England (Parma, Italy, October 13-14, 2022).

Associate Professor of Theatre and Associate Dean of the Faculty Sergio Costola presented a paper titled “The Battle of Polesella (1509). Diplomatic Relations and the Performing Arts” at the 10th Splendid Encounters Conference, Beyond the Truth. Misinformation and Credibility in Early Modern Diplomacy (Florence, Italy, October 12-14, 2022).

Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones was invited as the inaugural lecturer of the First-Year Experience lecture series at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio on October 12. Berrones’s talk drew from his own research and career trajectory to reflect on the role of the liberal arts in education, the value of interdisciplinary study, and a commitment to lifelong learning.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and the Texas Alpha chapter of Alpha Chi National College Honor Society were awarded the prestigious designation of Notable Chapter for the 2021–2022 academic year. This award acknowledges Schrum and Texas Alpha’s high level of involvement and Southwestern’s commitment to and support for Alpha Chi’s high academic standards and their mission to make scholarship effective for good. Schrum ensured that multiple benchmarks of exemplary chapter health were met and exceeded.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper wrote the program notes for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s first-ever performance of the two violin concertos of Florence B. Price (1887–1953). In Prince’s life, most White stages banned Black audience members, White orchestras had no Black performers, White orchestras rarely performed classical music by Black composers, and standing Black orchestras that could handle difficult concertos, Florence Price had to know that the chances of these two powerful compositions (1931 and 1951) being performed were virtually nil – and yet she wrote them. Now, though, 67 years after their composer’s death, they have finally been performed by one of the world’s greatest orchestras. Cooper’s program notes supplement their abstruse analytical comments on Price’s violin concertos with reflections on Price’s complex and deft negotiations of White and Black performance spaces and music in these two compositions.

Director of the A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center Alexia Riggs and Head of Special Collections & Archives Megan Firestone attended the Queer Histories South Conference and presented information on Southwestern University’s archive during the conference information sharing expo. This event includes archives, libraries, historians, and leaders focused on promoting LBGTQ archiving and history in the South.

Head of Special Collections Megan Firestone was awarded the Texas Library Association College and University Libraries Division stipend to support her attendance at the TALL Texans Leadership Development Institute.

Head of Special Collections and Archives Megan Firestone was an invited speaker at the September 29 Texas State University Department of History Senior Seminar, where she was part of a panel titled “What can I do with a History Degree?”

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson traveled with three students who worked with and were mentored by Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed this summer through SCOPE to represent Southwestern at the Universities Studying Slavery Fall 2022 Conference, held September 28–October 1 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Southwestern’s panel was titled “Revealing Race and Exploring White Dominance at a Small Liberal Arts School: How Southwestern University Confronts (Ignores?) Its White Supremacist Foundations.” Johnson presented a paper coauthored with Reed titled “An Overview of the Southwestern University Racial History Project”; Maria (Cony) Cameron ’24 presented “Exploring Policy and Racial Climate”; Aspen Coriz-Romero ’24 presented “Building Communities of Care and Organizing Resistance at Southwestern University”; and Kellie Henderson ’23 presented “Early Life of Black Students and Faculty on Southwestern University Campus.” The panel was well attended, and attendees (primarily faculty) were very impressed with the students.