People and Places: September 2022
People & Places is published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Marketing & Communications. It reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievement.
Over six months in 2018, and in collaboration with Catholic Charities, students in the Global Citizen Scholars Program recorded a set of oral history interviews with recently-arrived refugees in Erie, PA. The refugees came from Congo, Bhutan, Ethiopia, and Pakistan. Professor of French and International Studies Laura Reeck wrote a four-part series featuring interviews and sound clips of refugees telling their stories in their own words. The series, “Refugees: In their Own Words,” also focusing on Erie as a medium-sized city with a longstanding commitment to refugee resettlement, was published through the Jefferson Educational Society in Erie, PA. The series can be read here.
Most recently, Reeck also published a piece on an exhibition currently on view in Marseille, France, “Objets Migrateurs: Trésors sous influences” in Migration Studies.
Associate Professor of Biology Lisa Whitenack has contributed to two chapters in the third edition of Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives. She is the lead author of the book’s first chapter, which is about shark paleobiology, with co-authors from Yale University and the University of California Merced. She also co-authored the third chapter about shark biomechanics, with co-authors from Arizona State University, Florida Atlantic University, and California State University Fullerton.
Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives was released in June 2022 by Routledge Press and is an award-winning and groundbreaking exploration of the fundamental elements of the taxonomy, systematics, physiology, and ecology of sharks, skates, rays, and chimera. This edition presents current research and traditional models, to provide future researchers with solid historical foundations in shark research and present current trends from which to develop new frontiers in their own work.” More information about the book can be found here.
Assistant Professor of Art Paula Burleigh contributed an essay, “A Journey Outside the Ordinary,” to the book The Dream of Ulysses published by Editions Dilecta on the occasion of an exhibition organized by Fondation Carmignac (Porquerolles, France). Burleigh’s essay explores a select history of labyrinthine museum exhibitions in the 1950s and ’60s as pre-cursors for the Foundation’s current exhibition-as-labyrinth.
Associate Professor of History Guo Wu was invited by the producer of “Focus,” the longest-running Chinese-language Current Affairs weekly TV program by Singapore’s MediaCorp, to discuss the history and controversies of gun control in the US. Wu’s interview was aired on July 1 in Singapore.
Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability and Co-Director of Allegheny’s Watershed Conservation Research Center Casey Bradshaw-Wilson published a paper with colleagues from Penn State, PA Fish and Boat Commission, and USGS titled “Freshwater unionid mussels threatened by predation of Round Goby (Neogobius melanostomus)” in Nature-Scientific Reports.
This paper was published in July 2022 and discusses the impacts of how invasive Round Goby poses a growing threat to our native mussels (unionid), including species of conservation concern. Introducing the invasive Round Goby to freshwaters of North America is shaping ecosystem transitions within the critical aquatic zone, having widespread implications for conservation and management. The impacts of round gobies on our local freshwater systems remain a focal point of Bradshaw-Wilson’s research.
Retired Chaplain Jane Ellen Nickell was invited to submit an article to the Methodist History journal. The article, entitled “Covenant Broken: The Legacy of the 1980 General Conference,” was published in the June 2022 issue (Vol. 60, No. 1) and examines how actions by the governing body of the United Methodist Church that year laid the groundwork for the current division over the inclusion of LGBTQ persons.
Associate Professor of History Alyssa Ribeiro published a chapter on Black politics in Philadelphia in the 1980s and 1990s in If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress, a newly edited volume from Temple University Press.
Professor Emerita of Psychology Juvia Heuchert presented a paper at the 3rd International Conference on LGBT+ Psychology in Lisbon, Portugal. The title of her paper was “Psychological perspectives on working with transgender children,” and the conference took place from June 22-25, 2022.
Professor of Political Science Sharon Wesoky is the editor and chief translator of Chinese Modernity and Socialist Feminist Theory (Routledge), a collection of the writings of contemporary feminist political theorist Song Shaopeng. The work ranges from the late imperial period to the current moment, examines questions of Chinese feminism’s relationship to revolutionary politics, collectivism and the party-state, and neoliberal political economy, and features a new interview by Wesoky with Song, excerpts of which are also forthcoming in Chinese intellectual journal Kaifang Shidai (Open Times).
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently interviewed Wesoky for an article on contemporary feminist politics in relation to recent episodes of violence against women in China. Read the ABC piece here.
Professor Emerita of Chemistry Ann Sheffield presented two papers at international conferences this summer. At the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July, she gave a talk entitled “A King of Their Own? Óláfr Tryggvason in Medieval Icelandic Prose.”
In August, she spoke about “Óðinn’s Ale-Bearers: Masculinity and the Mead of Poetry” at the 19th International Saga Conference held in Helsinki and Tallinn.
At the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference in Detroit this past July, Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies Mark Cosdon participated in a discussion “35 Years of the American Theatre and Drama Society, Reflections with Past Presidents.” Cosdon served as president of the American Theatre and Drama Society, an international organization with over 250 members, from 2011 to 2014.
In May/June, Professor Mark Cosdon and Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace co-led the Italy EL. Joined by 23 Allegheny students, they spent 3.5 weeks in Amelia, Florence, Naples, Capri, and Rome. A highlight of the trip was returning to Amelia, Umbria, where students studied the Italian language and contemporary culture while living with host families.
Professor of Philosophy Eric Palmer presented a talk on “Development and decoloniality” as the Presidential address of the conference “Development in times of conflict” in Medellín, Colombia, in July. The event was the twelfth Congress of the International Development Ethics Association and was co-produced by Universidad Autónoma LatinoAmericana. Palmer closed his tenure of eight years as President of the Association this month; he was succeeded in the post by Professor Lori Keleher of New Mexico State University. See the conference link and organization link.
Department of Environmental Science and Sustainability faculty and staff members Rich Bowden, Terry Bensel, Matt Bethurem, Laura Branby, Casey Bradshaw-Wilson, Delia Byrnes, Ian Carbone, Beth Choate, Lee Demi, Wendy Kedzierski, Eric Pallant, Kelly Pearce, Chris Shaffer, and Jesse Swann-Quinn, Director of Sustainability Kelly Boulton, and Meadville Market House Manager Kerstin Martin presented the paper “College-Community Environmental Collaborations: Guidance for Successful Community-Based Projects and Research” at the 5th World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities, held on Allegheny’s campus in June. The presentation describes the advantages and challenges of the department’s extensive and long-running collaborations between the department and community partners. The paper received a Best Paper Award at the conference.
Photo: Allegheny College students partnering with Ernst Seeds on a sustainable biomass project.
Professor of Mathematics Tamara Lakins has been appointed the next Editor of The College Mathematics journal. Published by The Mathematical Association of America, one of the two most prominent national professional societies for mathematicians, The College Mathematics journal is an “international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality exposition on mathematical topics related to the undergraduate curriculum” (from maa.org), particularly for the first two years. Lakins will serve as editor elect in 2023, with her five-year term as an editor from 2024 to 2028.
Assistant Professor of German Julia Ludewig and Assistant Professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability Jesse Swann-Quinn led an Experiential Learning seminar in Germany this summer. Under the umbrella “Green Germany: Sustainability Past and Present,” 15 students representing majors across campus explored four cities and major regions.
The group learned about wind energy in Bremen/Bremerhaven, the social and economic ramifications of the energy transition in the coal-mining region around Cottbus, sustainable city planning, and political participation in Freiburg. The group hiked in the Black Forest under a forester’s guidance, kayaked the Spree forest’s wetlands, and appreciated the extremes of the Wadden Sea mudflats, a UNESCO heritage site in the north. Berlin, as the historical and political heart of Germany, was a must-see.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability Kelly Pearce co-authored a recently published book chapter, “Conservation Status of the North American River Otter in the United States and Canada: Assessing Management Practices and Public Perceptions of the Species,” published in Small Carnivores: Evolution, Ecology, Behaviour and Conservation by Wiley.
In the chapter, the authors highlight that the conservation status of river otter populations in North America has improved considerably and constitutes a conservation success story. However, the historical vulnerability of the river otter to various perturbations – particularly overharvest – is well documented, and future conservation strategies should include careful field monitoring of the species distribution and population status to identify threats that could hinder or reverse its ongoing recovery.
Professor of Physics Doros Petasis’ textbook EPR Spectroscopy was published on August 22 by De Gruyter (Berlin) academic publishers, part of De Gruyter’s Graduate Textbook Series. The book focuses on electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), a spectroscopic technique used to study materials with unpaired electrons and finds wide applications in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. The book’s target audience is advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students who are first learning about EPR.
During the writing of the book, two Allegheny alumni reviewed all chapters and provided valuable corrections and comments: Dr. Katlyn Meier (Allegheny physics, 2009) of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Miami and Dr. Bill Gunderson (Allegheny physics, 2002) of the Department of Chemistry at Hendrix College.