People & Places: December 2022
People & Places is a monthly highlight of the ongoing professional activities and achievements of faculty, staff, and students of the College.
Professor of French and International Studies Laura Reeck contributed five translations to the first English-language anthology of Morocco’s longest-standing political and cultural journal, Lamalif. Her contributions focus on multiculturalism in France and migration between Maghreb and France:
- “The Moroccan Worker Population in France”
- “The ‘Beur’ March”
- “Rockin’ Babouches: The New Culture of ‘Second-Generation’ Maghrebis in France”
- “Immigrants: They Won’t Go Back”
- “Immigrants in France: Jeha’s Nails”
Edited by Brahim El Guabli and Ali Alalou, the two volumes titled Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco during the “Years of Lead” (1966-1988) (Liverpool University Press, 2022) show the continued relevance today of the debates alive when the journal was active.
Religious Studies Program faculty members traveled to Denver, Colorado, for the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting November 18-22, 2022. All three faculty members participated in multiple roles throughout the conference.
Dara Coleby Delgado, the Bishop James Mills Thoburn Chair of Religious Studies and Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, served as the respondent for a panel called “Migration, Creativity, and Labor: New Books in Religions in the Latina/o Americas.” Delgado also presided over a panel called “The Resurgence of Kingship in the Pentecostal Social Imagination.”
Matthew Mitchell, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, presented a paper in the Japanese Religions Unit called “Two Tickets to Paradise: Lived Religion, Mendicant Patriarchs, and Amitabha Amulets in 19th Century Nagoya.” Mitchell also organized and moderated a panel called “Japanese Religions Beyond Japanese Religious Studies: Engaging a Broader Community” and served as a respondent for a panel called “Assessing the Current State of Methodology in the Study of Religious Spaces, Places, and Landscapes: An Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Religious Space (2022).”
Adrienne Krone, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability and Religious Studies, presented a paper called “Jews and Chickens in the Anthropocene.” Krone also presided over a panel called “Animals in the Classroom (and beyond): Pedagogical Encounters” and participated as a panelist on a book roundtable on Valuing Lives, Healing Earth (2021), which was based on her chapter in that edited volume.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Ryan Pickering’s chapter “Practicing power: Empowerment activities within the classroom” was recently published in the Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s ebook Empowering Students as Change Agents in Psychology Courses.
Professor of Political Science and International Studies Shannan Mattiace and Professor of Business & Economics Tomas Nonnenmacher published a paper titled “Internal Migration to Yucatán, Mexico: Moving for Security” in the bi-lingual area studies journal Mexican Studies/Estudios mexicanos.
The “fieldwork” for the study was done during COVID-19 while on sabbatical and consisted of street-level observations and work with Mexican Census Bureau statistics. They found that Mérida, Yucatán, is attracting thousands of migrants from around Mexico who say they are moving for security-related reasons. These people are not internally displaced persons (IDPs) but what we call “security migrants.”
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Irem Kurtsal has been asked by the editorial board of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to take over work on the entry “Identity over time.” The Stanford Encyclopedia is the premier reference work for the discipline of philosophy. Her revision is anticipated for publication in summer 2023.
Claire Lignac ’21 and Professor of Biology Ron Mumme recently published an article in Ornithological Applications, a journal of the American Ornithological Society and the world’s most highly ranked journal of avian biology. The paper is titled “Brood parasitism of Hooded Warblers by Brown-headed Cowbirds: Severe impact on individual nests but modest consequences for seasonal fecundity and conservation” and is based on Lignac’s senior project and long-term research on Hooded Warblers that Mumme, Lignac, and 20 other Allegheny students have conducted at Hemlock Hill Field Station since 2010.
Mumme and Lignac also authored a short piece about the research, “Living with cowbird nest parasitism—and thriving,” for the Wing Beat blog of the American Ornithological Society. One of the photos used to illustrate the blog post was taken by Abby Hileman ’16.
Professor of English and Director of Writing Alexis Hart recently served as a panelist to evaluate applications submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Dialogues on the Experience of War program.
Environmental Science & Sustainability Professor Richard D. Bowden coauthored the paper “The Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium: A State-Wide Collaborative Network for Sustainable Outreach, Education, and Action” at the 5th World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities, held on Allegheny’s campus in June. The presentation described sustainability efforts by the consortium, of which Allegheny College is a founding member. The paper received a Best Paper Award at the conference.