research Archives - Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP)

Jennifer Cognard-Black Named a 2022 Independent Artist Award Recipient by Maryland State Arts Council

February 18, 2022

Jennifer Cognard-Black, professor of English and 2020 recipient of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, is a 2022 recipient of an Independent Artist Award presented by the Maryland State Arts Council. Cognard-Black will receive a $2,000 regional grant to recognize promise in fiction writing. This is her second Maryland State Arts Council Award; she received her first in 2013.

Cognard-Black says of this award, “While the Individual Artist Awards honor past writing – in this case, two of my short stories – what I appreciate most is how these awards support artists as they move toward their creative futures. For me, that’s a novel I’m writing fictionalizing part of the life of the novelist Edith Wharton against the backdrop of World War I, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Photo-Secessionist movement. To know that members of MSAC find promise in my current work helps give me energy towards its completion.”

One of her award-winning short stories is included in the forthcoming issue of SlackWater, an occasional journal published by St. Mary’s College of Maryland, featuring the work of faculty, students and members of the Southern Maryland community.

This year’s 69 awardees were chosen from a pool of nearly 300 applicants through a public panel process. With this year’s awards focused on the literary arts, the 2022 awardees represent a wide range of artistic talents – ranging from poets to playwrights, novelists to essayists – from all across the state. Click here for the full list of winners.

Professor King’s Archaeological Work with the Rappahannock Tribe Featured on Podcast

January 25, 2022

Professor of Anthropology Julia King took part in the pilot episode of “Tribal Truths,” a new podcast series from RadioIQ that aims to debunk myths and legends with facts, teaching about tribal cultures and current issues.

King says in the first episode titled “Ancient cliffs are revealing lost tribal histories” that “there is so much that the land tries to tell us if we just listen to what it has to say.”

Featuring Rappahannock Tribe Chief Anne Richardson and narrated by tribal member Steven Nelson, the episode focuses on Fones Cliffs, a place along the Rappahannock river in eastern Virginia where the Rappahannock Tribe once lived. King and her team of archaeologists, in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the US Fish and Wildlife Services, and the Federally-recognized Rappahannock Tribe, have been working to trace the history and development of the Rappahannock Tribe in early American history.

“[The archaeologists are] digging for traces of our towns and connecting them to our oral histories. And centuries after the Rappahannock Tribe’s removal from this area, they’re reconstructing our ties to Fones Cliffs, looking for three of our towns once located there. It’s a race against time, development and climate change,” Nelson said on the podcast.

The anthropology department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland first began studying the Rappahannock Tribe’s history in 2016 at the request of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake Bay Office, the Chesapeake Conservancy, and the Rappahannock Tribe. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. Following the NPS-funded project, the Tribe and King and her students have continued their collaboration. The survey of the greater river valley has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Communities Program.

Photo credit: Pamela A. D’Angelo

Alumna Awarded Research Grant from Phi Chi Honor Society

August 27, 2021

SMCM alumna Oates (left) and Dr. Howansky

India Oates ’21 was awarded a $509 Mamie Phipps Clark Research Grant from Psi Chi over the summer of 2021. The award “highlights research projects by Psi Chi students and faculty advisors focusing on diverse populations and issues.” Her project, “Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals’ Dehumanizing Beliefs and Experiences” was originally conceived and developed though directed research with Assistant Professor of Psychology Kristina Howansky in the spring 2021 semester. The study aims to identify how transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) individuals experience dehumanization and examine how their beliefs about stereotypes may mediate the association between dehumanization and harmful mental health effects and the association between dehumanization experiences and self-dehumanization. This study will help fill in gaps in the current psychological body of literature. Limited research has examined the associated effects of dehumanization, nor has past dehumanization work focused on transgender and GNC individuals’ perspectives. Grant funding will be used to compensate a large sample of online survey participants recruited from Academic Prolific.

India is currently studying morality and empathy as a full-time lab manager at Pennsylvania State University – the perfect combination of her double-major in religious studies and psychology.

SMCM Physics Professor and Student Conducting Physics Research with NAS Pax River

August 25, 2021

Dr. Adler (left) and Mr. Marx

Charles (Chuck) Adler, Professor of Physics, and Evan Marx, SMCM undergraduate student, collaborated over the 2021 summer break with researchers from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWDAD) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

Dr. Adler and Mr. Marx worked on a project simulating how orbital angular momentum beams propagate through turbulent and scattering water. These beams, also called “optical vortex beams”, carry a twist (orbital angular momentum), unlike standard laser beams. The Navy is interested in understanding whether these beams are more effective than standard laser beams for various imaging and laser ranging technologies. This work is being done in partnership with the Advanced Lidar Systems Team (A-LiST) at NAWCAD, led by Dr. Linda Mullen, Alan Laux, and Dr. Brandon Cochenour.

Dr. Adler’s summer 2021 work was supported under the Office of Naval Research’s Summer Faculty Research Program (SFRP), and Mr. Marx who worked with the group as a summer student was funded by the Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP). Adler and Marx recently received additional funding from NAWCAD to continue their collaborative research in the 2021-22 academic year.

Professor of Art Sue Johnson Awarded a 2021-22 Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library Maker-Creator Research Fellowship

April 14, 2021

Professor of Art Sue Johnson will be in residence for one-month to carry out collection research for her project, Woman, As Advertised, which focuses on 19^th and early 20^th century material culture sources for the creation of new works for her on-going project, Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines. She explains the importance of the process of research that informs her creative work that “mining the archive is like building a time machine; I look at the material culture of the past as a way of understanding what has come into being in our contemporary times.“

The Maker-Creator Fellowships are designed for artists, writers, filmmakers, horticulturalists, craftspeople, and others who wish to examine, study, and immerse themselves in Winterthur’s vast collections in order to inspire creative and artistic works. Fellowships include a research award of 1750.00 per month and access to Winterthur’s museum, garden, and library collections that focus on American life from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Fellows share their work by giving a public lecture and gain new perspectives from others on site, including librarians, curators, conservators, students, and other fellows.

About Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library: http://www.winterthur.org

According to the website, “Almost 60 years ago, collector and horticulturist Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969) opened his childhood home, Winterthur, to the public. Today, Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) is the premier museum of American decorative arts, with an unparalleled collection of nearly 90,000 objects made or used in America between about 1640 and 1860. The collection is displayed in the 175-room house, much as it was when the du Pont family lived there, as well as in permanent and changing exhibition galleries.”

Image: Sue Johnson, exhibition view of Briinng and Western Electric Sculptura ‘doughnut” telephone, Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines, 2021, Workhouse Arts Center.

Professor Julia King Receives Prestigious Fellowship in Landscape Studies from Dumbarton Oaks

March 8, 2021

Julia King, professor of anthropology and chair of that department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, has been awarded a prestigious residential fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C.

Administered by the trustees for Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks supports research and learning in Byzantine, Garden and Landscape, and Pre-Columbian studies through fellowships, internships, meetings, and exhibitions.

King will spend her fellowship researching the experiences of Indigenous communities in the Rappahannock River valley in eastern Virginia between 1500 and 1900, linking these experiences to the river valley’s Native landscape. Using the extensive archaeological database assembled during the College’s recently concluded NEH-funded project in the Rappahannock valley, King will draw on Dumbarton Oaks’ extensive library holdings to place the finds in their greater context. The fellowship will allow King time to prepare a book exploring how the Native Rappahannock communities negotiated settler colonialism over the course of four centuries.

“The Dumbarton Oaks Library holds one of the most extensive collections anywhere of published and unpublished materials on landscape, including Indigenous landscapes,” King noted. “The opportunity to have access to DO’s holdings for the fellowship period will enhance my understanding of the Native landscapes my students, staff, and I have been studying over the last decades.”

King is an anthropological archaeologist who has 30 years’ experience researching, studying, and teaching about the Chesapeake region’s rich past and its relationship to the present. She is a past president of the Society for Historical Archaeology and the recipient of the Society’s 2018 J. C. Harrington Award in recognition of her scholarship and contributions to the field of historical archaeology. Her work has also been recognized by the Archaeological Society of Virginia and the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

Professor of History Christine Adams Interviewed on Her Work as a Newberry Library Fellow

February 5, 2021

Professor of History Christine Adams, on sabbatical work as a Newberry Library residential fellow through June 2021, was interviewed recently about the Newberry Library, her current project: The Merveilleuses and their Impact on the French Social Imaginary, 1794–1799 and Beyond, and on how the events of the past twelve months have impacted her project.

Adams described how current events have affected the way she’s approached her project. Her research is focused on “a really tense and chaotic moment in French history, right after the Terror has come to an end, and the French are trying to stabilize the country (they are at war and the economy is really suffering; in 1795 and 1796 in particular, misery is rampant throughout the country), and they are dealing with immense political divisions. My research has provided a lens to think about current events, and current events have been in the back of my mind as I work on this project.”

Adams’s full interview, along with additional Newberry Fellows, can be read here.

SMCM Archaeologists Featured in Archaeology Magazine

January 18, 2021

Professor of Anthropology Julia King and adjunct instructor of anthropology Scott Strickland ’08 are featured along with Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe in the January/February edition of Archaeology Magazine. The article, “Return to the River,” focuses on their work tracing the history and development of the Rappahannock Indians in early American history. 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 and the Chesapeake Conservancy. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail and led to the Rappahannock Indians’ return to the river when former Senator John Warner and his daughter, Virginia Warner, donated land to the Rappahannock in their ancestral homeland. The survey of the greater river valley has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Assistant Professor Brownlee Awarded Collaborative Research Grant from NSF

September 18, 2020

Assistant Professor of Biology Emily Brownlee was recently awarded a $21,840 grant from the National Science Foundation for her project titled: Collaborative Research FSML: PhytoChop: An estuarine phytoplankton observatory (Award Number: 2022966). The two-year award began August 1, and will help fund Brownlee’s collaborative research with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES- Horn Point Laboratory).

With this grant, the researchers will establish the PhytoChop Coastal Observatory, an advanced autonomous instrument array designed to monitor the composition and photosynthetic activity of the phytoplankton community, together with water column nutrient and optical properties. The PhytoChop Coastal Observatory will be housed at Horn Point Laboratory’s research pier situated on the Choptank River, a tidal sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay.

Brownlee will be responsible for setting up and analyzing instrumentation data, and will help curate and expand the imaging library. Furthermore, Brownlee will coordinate with her collaborators at UMCES to synthesize results from the integration of Imaging FlowCytobot data with other PhytoChop instrumentation.

I’m excited to be a part of founding one of the first observatories to combine high-resolution plankton imaging and plankton health measurements at very small timescales. Along with measuring environmental parameters, this can provide unprecedented insight into how phytoplankton, such as those contributing to harmful algal blooms, are responding to long-term environmental and climate change. To have such an observatory on the Chesapeake Bay is a long-time dream of mine and I look forward to integrating observatory data into my courses and supplying St. Mary’s Project students with a lot of data in years to come!

Professor Julia King Awarded Archeology Grant from National Park Service

September 16, 2020

Professor of Anthropology, Julia (Julie) King, was recently awarded a $110,000 grant from the National Park Service to fund a complete archeological overview and assessment of Piscataway Park in Prince George’s County, Maryland. This project will be conducted through a Cooperative Agreement under the Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit. The Cooperative Agreement was signed August 14, 2020 and the project is expected to be completed by December 31, 2021.

Piscataway Park is a unit of the National Park Service administered by National Capital Parks—East. The park is located in Southern Maryland along the banks of the Potomac River. This park is significant because of the rich archeological resources located within the park and their impact on our modern understanding of Native American societies in the Eastern Middle Atlantic. Situated approximately 25 miles downriver from Washington D.C., lands within the park were home to the Potomac Valley’s indigenous inhabitants for thousands of years—dating as far back as 6,000 years ago and through the 1500s. Among the occupants were the Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland whose ancestors still live nearby today.

Piscataway Park is the greatest resource of pre-contact and contact period American Indian archeological resources in the National Capital Region of the National Park Service. The park has been the subject of several archeological investigations, but there has never been a synthetic report of this work or a formal organization of this material for management needs. The scope and breadth of existing archeological collections also lend themselves to addressing future research questions related not only to the history of Piscataway Park, but also the Native American communities that once lived there.

The archeological overview and assessment will describe and assess the known and potential archeological resources at Piscataway Park. The overview reviews, summarizes and synthesizes existing archeological data in detail, assesses past work, identifies gaps in our understanding of the archeological data, and determines the need for and recommendations for future studies. The document will be a core baseline archeological resources management reference for the National Capital Parks—East unit. This project will also critically examine and evaluate museum collections from archeological sites in the park to assist in understanding the history of the park. Furthermore, this work will develop recommendations for future research for management of park resources and public education. Julie King is the Principal Investigator for the project, with Scott Strickland (’08) serving as Research and GIS Coordinator. The grant also includes funding for an assistant archaeologist, likely to be an SMCM alum, and two student assistants.

Pending available funding, King and NPS may continue the project into 2022 and beyond with a new cooperative agreement. Additional work will likely entail reviewing and assessing archaeological collections, completion of updating state site forms, and updating archeological site condition assessments for the National Park System’s online Cultural Resources Inventory System. Further work may also involve the production of a publicly accessible document (excluding sensitive archeological information) that will provide a detailed history of the Native American experience as linked to Piscataway Park, along with a Finding Aid/Collections Assessment document to complement the Archeological Overview and Assessment Document.