Tidewater Project Seeks to Broaden Climate Change Education In Curriculum

May 4, 2018

The Tidewater Project brought six St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) faculty and eight local experts together on October 8 and 9, 2017, to discuss cross-disciplinary approaches to effective climate change education. Headed by Dr. Barry Muchnick, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, the Tidewater Project centered on leveraging campus and community resources to strengthen climate literacy and sustainability awareness and to integrate sustainability into our institution’s strategic future.

Represented disciplines included: Art & Art History, Biology, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Local experts and faculty gathered at the Brome Howard Inn to create new and renovated courses using innovative interdisciplinary teaching methods, discuss ideas for research projects, grants, and publications, expand their own knowledge about practical action to mitigate climate change, strengthen community ties, enhance wellness, and enrich connections to the natural world. Program organizers and participants were thrilled with the project outcomes, and valuable impacts continue to be realized as reimagined programming focusing on climate change education is implemented on campus.

The Tidewater Project was primarily funded by a University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science grant awarded to Dr. Muchnick, with additional support generously provided by SMCM’s Office of Sustainability. Organizers are exploring options to host similar workshops in future years to reach additional individuals, and to build on the positive momentum generated to date.

Tidewater Project faculty participants, from left to right: Drs. Barry Muchnick, Susan Grogan, Emily Casey, Andrew Cognard-Black, Jessica Malisch, Kristy Lewis, and Charles Stein.

SMCM Announces 2018 Cohort of SURF Researchers

April 20, 2018

The 2018 cohort of SURF students with co-directors Dr. Rhoda (top left) and Dr. Emerson (top right)

As the Spring 2018 semester draws to a close, a group of students with diverse interests and backgrounds are preparing to take part in the St. Mary’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program this summer. The SURF program partners students from intentionally varied disciplines with faculty mentors to engage in directed research or creative work. While working full-time for eight weeks on their individual projects, students will also participate in workshops and group meetings to develop their professional skills. The SURF program will culminate in a symposium in July 2018, allowing each student to showcase their finished projects to the campus and local community.

Nine students were chosen during a competitive selection process to participate in the SURF program this summer:

Justyce Bennett, a junior DeSousa-Brent Scholar studying anthropology, is working on a project entitled “Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery: The View from Art History” under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Art History Emily Casey. Justyce will research the methodology of archaeologists and art historians to establish an interdisciplinary approach to the interpretation of artifacts found on sites that relate to slavery. The project’s purpose is to develop a critical method for approaching these artifacts that connects them to larger visual cultures and provides insight into the culture and lives of enslaved people, while also allowing room for personal agency and creativity.

A sophomore studying chemistry and applied math, Nick D’Antona is conducting the project “Printing Perovskite Solar Cells: A Low-cost Production Method for Renewable Energy”. Nick and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Troy Townsend hope to layer inks with an automated printing process so that they consistently produce stable and efficient solar cells. Nick hopes to earn his PhD in chemistry, but first wants to be a research chemist and explore the materials sciences. He hopes to gain better presentation skills and is thankful for the research experience available through the SURF program.

James Judlick is a junior studying psychology. His project “Queer Eye for the Employer: A Résumé Audit Study for LGBTQ Individuals” is a study of possible discrimination against LGBTQ men as they apply to administrative, clerical, and management positions. The project will be mentored by Dr. Ayse Ikizler, an Assistant Professor of Psychology with a background in the effects of oppression of marginalized groups and the intersectionality of identity. James is looking forward to the collaborative and interdisciplinary aspects of the SURF program, hoping to become a group therapist in the future.

Bethany Laffan is a sophomore English major who is working with Professor of English Jeffery Coleman on the project “Literary Rock Star: A Reception Study of Haruki Murakami’s Popularity in Japan and the United States”. Analyzing the novels Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle through various psychoanalytical theories, Bethany hopes her research will reveal intercultural connections between readers in Japan and the United States. She hopes to use SURF to gain more experience in research and analysis and later become an English professor or librarian.

Lily Pohlenz is working on a biology-focused project, “What’s the Buzz on Somatic Wolbachia Infection? Using Drosophila Melanogaster as a Model Organism to Understand the Control of Disease Transmission in Mosquitoes”. She will be conducting research under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Biology Kevin Emerson. Since somatic Wolbachia infection limits disease transmission among mosquitos, Lily and Dr. Emerson are attempting to learn its method of growth as a potential mechanism for preventing the spread of vector transmitted diseases. Lily is majoring in biology, with a minor in philosophy. She hopes to travel and help others during a future stint with the Peace Corps and later work as a physician’s assistant. Lily is looking forward to designing a project and conducting experimental research as part of her SURF experience.

Collaborating with Research & Instruction Librarian Amanda VerMeulen, Stephanie Schoch is working on the project “Visualizing Refugee Health Data: Impact of Domain-specific Knowledge on Comprehension”. Stephanie is a computer science and psychology double major graduating in May 2019. Her project will investigate the role of domain-specific knowledge in health data visualizations. This research specifically focuses on how healthcare domain knowledge affects comprehension of data visualizations with varying properties and attributes. She plans to apply for PhD programs in the fall, with current research interests including human-computer interaction, UX (user experience) design, and data visualization.

Kelly Healy will work with Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Shanen Sherrer on her project titled “Cutting a Pathway: Locating Binding Site of Environmental Contaminant Cadmium in Metal-binding Protein”. Kelly is a junior, double majoring in biology and biochemistry with a minor in music. She hopes that SURF will give her more research experience and prepare her for grad school.

With Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Barry Muchnick, Elizabeth (Izzy) Peterson is conducting the project “A Call to Animate: A Study and Subversion of Propaganda’s Power”. A studio arts major with a minor in film & media studies Izzy hopes to work in the film industry as a production designer. Her research is focused on analyzing propaganda films of the early 20th century, such as Disney war bond shorts, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, the films of Leni Riefenstahl, and more. She intends to uncover the techniques behind successful propaganda films and employ them in her own animated short film she hopes will serve as a “call to enlist” for women in the arts.

The SMCM community wishes this summer’s cohort of SURF students the best of luck and anticipates many exciting outcomes from their scholarship!

~St. Mary’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship~

SMCM Wraps Up Spirit of Jazz and Democracy Program

March 27, 2018

Music has always been a means of salvation. This can be seen in a recently completed project, “From Slavery to Freedom in St. Mary’s City: Engaging History to Strengthen Democracy with Jazz”. Created by Professor of Philosophy Sybol Anderson and Professor of English Jeff Coleman, this project served to promote the intersectionality between democracy, creative expression, and slavery in southern Maryland. The project was supported by the Maryland Humanities Council, and engaged community members of all ages and backgrounds in historical, cultural, and philosophical reflection on the meaning of slavery in St. Mary’s City and beyond. Participants explored how African-Americans liberated themselves from oppression by “improvising” methods of “physical” escape from slavery and of spiritual escape in jazz; and how through engaging this history, one can liberate themselves for an inclusive democracy. The multi-disciplinary project intentionally varied both it’s engagement medium (symposiums, lectures, and workshops) and it’s content (archaeological finds, jazz concerts, and spoken-word performances).

Program events included a symposium held on September 23rd, 2017 at which St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) faculty, students, and visiting scholars shared with the general public information about the discovery of archaeological evidence that St. Mary’s Female Seminary owned slaves in the 19th century. Discussions highlighted narratives about those enslaved people and slavery in Maryland. For democracy to flourish, the truth about slavery in Maryland has to be uncovered and recognized, allowing for healing, inspiration, and understanding.

Workshops entitled “Improvisation, Self-Emancipation, and Democratic Participation,” were held in October and November 2017. Through historical study, philosophical reflection, and improvisational activities, participants explored the themes of improvisation, innovation, and freedom linking jazz and democracy. They learned how jazz stimulates free thought and expression and how to employ jazz concepts in daily life to nurture democratic listening and practice.

Along with the symposium and workshops was a lecture and performance titled “The Spirit of Jazz and Democracy.” The opening lecture was part of the aforementioned symposium that illuminated jazz as the embodiment of democracy and traced it from slavery to innovations by Maryland jazz artists such as Billie Holiday to its use by the US government to promote ideas of American democracy globally. The closing lecture and performance on December 8th, 2017, featured workshop participants’ reflections on the connections between jazz and democracy.

Exploring the local African-American narrative and its connection to liberation and democracy through jazz was a profound research approach. This project was able to unite scholars from varied disciplines, as well as students and local SMCM community members, thus succeeding in the goal of bring SMCM closer together, engaging with the past for a better, more democratic, future.

This project was made possible by a grant from Maryland Humanities, through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Maryland Humanities.

SMCM students attending the 2018 National Conference on Undergraduate Research

February 22, 2018

In April 2018, students, faculty, and academics alike will travel to the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, OK for a very special event. The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), annually invites accepted students to present their undergraduate research from a variety of disciplines. After a competitive review, three St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) students have been awarded the opportunity to share their research and academic achievements at NCUR 2018.

One of these successful students is Hannah Murphy, a graduating senior studying Spanish. She has been conducting research on increasing the retention of critical thinking skills in students that speak English as a second language. Using local middle school students as her focus, she hopes to develop critical thinking skills using articles in the students’ native language, and show that those skills transfer over when students use English. She will assess students critical thinking skills before and after relevant articles are read in the native language and will share her results at the NCUR conference. Hannah hopes to promote the importance of native languages and how they can be used to better the students educational experience, instead of hindering it.

Sidi Chleuh working on Fulbe linguistic research

Another notable student is Sidi Chleuh, a senior here at SMCM. He is studying International Languages and Cultures, with a double concentration in French and Spanish. He will be presenting his research on Fulbe oral literature at NCUR. The Fulbe are an ethno-linguistic group located in West Africa and have had their linguistic culture influenced by the spread of Islam and colonization. Sidi hopes to revive the importance of the Fulbe language and show how Fulbe proverbs impact culture throughout time. Sidi has conducted much of his fieldwork in the Republic of Guinea, collecting notes on the Fulbe language from the former colonial administration records, as well as past anthropological work. He will present his findings and showcase how Fulbe proverbs impact local identity, as well as influence values and knowledge. Sidi conducted much of this research in the summer of 2017, as part of the St. Mary’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. After graduation, Sidi hopes to continue travelling and to share his passion for languages as he contemplates future education.

Chikondi Kulemeka is researching female Muslim identity in France

Also going to NCUR is Chikondi Kulemeka, presenting ‘Beyond the Veil: Exploring the Many Layers of Muslim Women’s Identity in Nice, France’. Seeing the rising rate of Islamophobia in Europe, Chikondi has researched the daily life of Muslim women in France. She focuses her research on one woman particularly. This woman was born in Morocco, but grew up in France and is currently attending Nice University. Chikondi used this woman as a main focus of her interviews and research, helping to describe the bigger picture of the female Muslim experience in France as a whole. This research can show the opinions and experience of these individuals during their daily life. Through interviews and a detailed literature review, she hopes to shed light on the unique perspectives that these female Muslim individuals have as they navigate through their layered identities.

Past SMCM students presenting their work at NCUR have included Elizabeth Wenker ’17 and Brad Davidson’s ’17 research with white-crowned sparrows in Dr. Malisch’s lab (NCUR 2017) and Alex Schoen ’17 and Mary Korendyke’s mathematical modeling research with Dr. Socha (NCUR 2016).

Katharina von Kellenbach to lead study of guilt as a culturally productive force

January 30, 2018

Katharina von Kellenbach, professor of religious studies and her colleague Matthias Buschmeier (German literature, University of Bielefeld) were awarded a prestigious grant for over €500,000 (about $600,000) by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF) at the University of Bielefeld for the 2018-2019 academic year.

She and Dr. Buschmeier will lead 15 scholars from different continents representing the disciplines of anthropology, art, classics, law, medieval studies, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and sociology to examine the idea of guilt as an enduring and generative force in the aftermath of violent conflicts.

Titled “Felix Culpa? Guilt as a Culturally Productive Force,” the research group will be in residence at the ZIF in Bielefeld to exchange theoretical perspectives on the notion of ‘productive guilt’ and to pursue individual projects examining a variety of topics ranging from white guilt in the United States to the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, from religious healing rituals in Mozambique to the reception of Syrian refugees in Germany as negotiation of different kinds of guilt.
The project closely examines the intersections of violence, shame, and guilt to ask how guilt consolidates social orders in the cultural production of jurisprudence, art, literature, and religion. Each scholar pursues their own research project while engaging in collaborative discussion across disciplines and different religious, cultural, and linguistic contexts to explore the wealth of symbolic representations and discourses of guilt.

SMCM Professor of Chinese Jingqi Fu Awarded Major Language Documentation Project Grant

August 24, 2017

Dr. Jingqi Fu, SMCM Professor of Chinese, in Yunnan Province, Summer 2016

Dr. Jingqi Fu, Professor of Chinese at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, was awarded funding in April 2017 from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme through SOAS, University of London for her project titled: Documentation and Preservation of an Endangered Ethnic Minority Language in China. Fu will travel to China extensively over the next three years to document the Lemo language that, to date, has no written script. “Lemo is the oldest dialect of Bai and is known to have separated from the Bai some 300-400 years ago,” explains Fu. “Its study will give clues as to the evolution of the Bai language as a whole.”

Dr. Fu’s linguistic research interests carry on work conducted by her mother, Lin Xu, who spoke the ethnic minority language of Bai during her childhood. Fu’s linguistic knowledge of the Bai dialect and structure, learned alongside her mother, provides a framework for the documentation effort she will lead as principal investigator on the three-year grant.

The research goal is both a linguistic study of the Lemo dialect and an enhancement of the status of Lemo language and culture. According to Fu, the Chinese government wants to document the culture by way of costumes in a museum but is not trying to keep the culture (and language) alive. The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme “supports keeping endangered languages alive and emphasizes that their documentation should be done in natural, everyday settings and situations, to best characterize the language and its cultural role” Fu remarks. All recordings will be archived in the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS and thereby preserved for posterity. The archive makes this invaluable resource available to the community, the public, and to the scientific community.

Fu spent three weeks in China during the summer of 2016 to prepare for the project, with the work beginning in earnest in summer 2017. A second summer in 2018, followed by a five-month stretch during spring 2019, will bring the project to completion.

Fu is principal investigator but will enlist a team to help with the research and data gathering. Representatives from the Yunnan Nationality Affair Commission and Dali Bai Research Institute, plus a technician and speaker-consultants recruited from the Lemo Community in Nujiang will form the research team.

The first two weeks in Nujiang will be spent making contacts with relevant people and conducting a week-long workshop on language documentation for speaker-consultants to learn to document their own language and culture. Afterwards, team members, equipped with recorders and cameras will gather data in different Lemo-speaking villages. Members will film and record in a variety of settings and contexts: story-telling, interviews, folksongs and dances, speeches, everyday situations, and, if permitted, religious ceremonies.

Once audio/video is captured, researchers and speaker-consultants will work to transcribe the data using open source software developed to annotate text, audio, and video media and generate the lexicon/dictionary of the language. In addition to the dictionary, the team will also build a grammar sketch. Both the dictionary and grammar sketch use data generated from the recorded audio/video. A working orthography (the way a language is expressed in written form, with symbols, punctuation, spelling) will be developed together with the Lemo community and a short language manual will be made based on the orthography. The manual, intended for first-grade children, will include cultural material relevant to their living environment.

Fu is grateful for the support she’s received to get this research funded. A summer grant from the St. Mary’s College Board of Trustees enabled her to travel to China this past summer in preparation for the work she’ll do under the current grant.

Fu has taken SMCM students on study tours to study and interact with Yunnan minority groups including Bai, as recently as 2015. In 2014, her students Megan Dower ’14, Naomi Garcia ’15, and Meng Fei Chen ’16 helped with the research on folksong translations.

Professor of Anthropology Julia King Awarded $240,000 Grant for Native American Study

August 24, 2017

Dr. Julia King (third from left), collaborators, and project participants

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Professor of Anthropology Julia King was awarded a $240,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to trace the history and development of the Rappahannock Indians in early American history (200-1850 AD) in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR), Chesapeake Conservancy, and the state-recognized Rappahannock Tribe of Virginia. The grant was one of 245 humanities projects from across the country awarded a combined $39.3 million from the NEH.

The anthropology department at St. Mary’s College first began studying the Rappahannock River Valley’s history in 2016 at the request of the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay office with funds administered by the Chesapeake Conservancy. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail.

Conventional wisdom has long held that the Rappahannock Indians moved to the north side of the Rappahannock River to escape the politically powerful Powhatan Indians in the York River Valley. Research by the St. Mary’s College team, however, suggests that ecological factors, including agricultural soils, marshlands, and clays suitable for pottery manufacture, and not political factors, better explain the Rappahannock’s decisions about where to settle. This discovery, which was made using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology, revealed the need for further archaeological study of the river valley. The NEH grant will allow this study on these tribal groups to continue.

Professor of Anthropology Julia King leads the research team, comprised of anthropology instructor Scott Strickland, an assistant archaeologist, and two archaeology technicians (St. Mary’s College undergraduate students) who will assist with field and laboratory work. They are joined by Chief G. Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe, who, along with tribal members, will assist with the field and laboratory work.

The continuing study will focus on the trajectories of movement into and within the Rappahannock valley, how the Rappahannock people used landscape and other forms of material culture to forge group and/or political identities between 200 and 1600 CE, and the reaction of the people living in the river valley to European contact and colonization.

“Thanks to the NEH grant, we will be able to start addressing some of the recommendations from the original study we conducted in 2016,” King said. “We hope to assemble a detailed culture history for the Rappahannock Indians in the river valley over the last 2,000 years, including archaeological collections-based analysis and a regional survey.”

Chief Richardson notes that her tribe’s oral history recalls the Powhatan as neighbors with whom they shared winter hunting grounds. “The Rappahannock’s history has been overlooked in almost every history book. We are grateful to the NEH for recognizing this serious gap in American history and providing the resources for us to address it.”

This research tracing the history and development of the Rappahannock indigenous cultural landscape is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. NEH supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this press release, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,700 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto Awarded Prestigious Howard Foundation Fellowship

June 19, 2017

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto was awarded a highly-competitive Howard Foundation Fellowship in April 2017 for her project titled: Emancipation and Commerce: The Gambia Colony and American Plantations in the Age of British Abolition. The $33,000 fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year will support Dr. Gijanto’s research which examines the nature of the impact of the Atlantic trade on the Gambia River. Dr. Gijanto was one of just eight nationwide 2017-2018 fellowship recipients and the only recipient in the field of archaeology. Other 2017-2018 fellowship recipients were selected from the fields of photography and anthropology and range from professors at large institutions such as UCLA to independent artists collaborating with organizations such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This distinguished award will allow Dr. Gijanto to complete data-gathering for the Emancipation and Commerce project and begin writing a monograph describing the work. The project will advance understanding of the complex history of abolition in West Africa, a program that was ironically undermined by the continued consumption of goods produced by enslaved laborers in the Americas within an African colony founded to end the traffic of slaves. Dr. Gijanto will travel to two archives: the Peter Strickland Archive in Mystic, Connecticut and the British National Archives in Kew, London, during Fall 2017 and begin work on the monograph in Spring 2018.

The Howard Foundation is associated with Brown University and is one of few funders dedicated “to furthering the personal development of promising individuals at the crucial middle stages of their careers in the liberal and creative arts”. The Howard Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent projects in selected fields, targeting its support specifically to early mid-career individuals and those who have achieved recognition for at least one major project.

Julia A. King Awarded Funding to Host Book-Preparation Conference

May 19, 2017

Dr. Julia A. King (far right) and collaborators including SMCM alumni Strickland ’08 (back row third from right), Mansius ’13 (front row third from right), and Webster ’16 (front row second from right)

Julia A. King, Professor of Anthropology, recently received a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Dr. King received $4,000 from the NEH Chairman’s office to help fund a small two-day conference in May 2017 which brought together participants from a previous NEH-funded Collaborative Research Grant entitled: The Lower Potomac River Valley at Contact (ca. 1500-1720 AD). The conference provided an opportunity for collaborators to review, critique, and better integrate individual essays for a peer-reviewed manuscript with a hopeful submission date in September 2017. The book will describe the archaeological research focused on the history and development of the lower Potomac River valley before the age of George Washington. Dr. Barbara J. Heath, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, will serve as co-editor along with Dr. King. The conference was held at Stratford Hall, a historic house museum in Westmoreland County, Virginia and was additionally supported by the SMCM Provost’s office.

The book will consist of 14-15 chapters by different authors, all of whom participated in the original project which began in 2012. Collaborators, staff, and consultants assembled collections from 34 previously-excavated archaeological sites on both sides of the Potomac and used these assemblages to address three major topics related to Anglo-Native interaction: economic exchange and the rise of consumerism; the role of conflict, violence, and the threat of violence in the competition for resources; and the use of material culture to maintain or broker new or hybrid identities in a colonial setting. The project has resulted in several peer-reviewed articles, symposia at professional meetings, and the website colonialencounters.org. SMCM alumni Scott M. Strickland ’08, Mary Kate Mansius ’13, and Rebecca Webster ’16 attended the conference as participants and are preparing chapters for the book.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Associate Professor Betül Başaran Leads Summer Seminar Funded by NEH Grant

August 11, 2016

Associate Professor of Religious Studies Betül Başaran recently completed a four-week seminar for college and university professors in Washington, D.C. Her seminar, titled “Transcending Boundaries: The Ottoman Empire, Europe and the Mediterranean World, 1500-1800.” was funded by a prestigious institutional grant for St. Mary’s College of Maryland from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). [Read more…]