Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation. See more photos. Photos provided by Sean Collins.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

As you can see from the photos, we are making great progress on the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation! Now the building is almost entirely funded (94%+) and we will certainly be moving in this fall.

We have a very full issue this week! I wanted to give a shout out to Anna Sampaio (Ethnic Studies) who received a grant from the Center for American Women and Politics for her comparative study of Latina Congressional candidates, political consultants, fundraisers, and organizers throughout the 2018 and 2020 elections in California and Texas. I also want to congratulate Melan Salas (Military Science) who has been promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel. I attended a lovely (virtual) event in his honor this week to celebrate this achievement!

We have had some great news—Seventeen SCU students and alumni have been selected as Fulbright program semi-finalists (the most ever!) with fourteen of them majoring in Arts and Sciences. Wow, go Broncos! If selected as finalists, these students and alumni will be spreading across the globe to perform research, attend graduate school, or work in a foreign country.

I’d also like to draw attention to the CAS Department Chairs, who have embraced the work of recognizing diversity, equity and inclusion in the faculty evaluation process. While this work is less visible to the outside world, it signals an important step forward on our journey toward making ours an anti-racist campus. Thank you, Department Chairs!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Sonia C. Gomez (History) has published an article titled,"'Yankee, Why Does a Big Man Like You Fear My Baby?': The Politics of the Anti-Japanese Movement, 1908-1924," in Ameriasia Journal. In the article, Gomez examines political discourse between 1908 and 1924 to show how Japanese immigrant women’s labor – both reproductive and productive – became a source of deep anxiety for xenophobic politicians in the early twentieth century further inciting the anti-Japanese movement and ultimately leading to full exclusion.

John C. Hawley (English) published "“Who Wants to Live Forever?” Andrew Holleran, Garth Greenwell, and The Gayest Decade That Never Ended" in the online journal de genere, in their special issue on “Girls Don’t Just Want to Have Fun,” and he guest-edited a special issue of the journal Humanities on the topic of “Religion and Postcolonial Literature, Music, and Art.”

Tom Plante (Psychology) co-edited a special issue of Spirituality in Clinical Practice entitled, "Addressing Catholic Clergy Issues in Psychological Research and Practice" which can be read here or here. He also published several papers in the edition including Introduction to a special issue on addressing Catholic clergy issues in psychological research and practice, Clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church: Dispelling eleven myths and separating facts from fiction, and An examination of the psychological health of applicants to the Catholic priesthood and diaconate.

Amy Lueck (English), Nathan Barnes '21 (English), Catherine Cunha '23 (Psychology and Political Science), and Jessica Joudy '21 (Computer Science and English) presented at the online Regional Conference on Composition and Communication hosted by USC about their experiences creating a born-digital "an(ti)thology" of women writers and writing in their Fall 2020 Women Writers and Writing course. The digital book, created in Scalar, features only authors and texts held in SCU's Archives and Special Collections, and uses them as an occasion to interrogate questions of literary value, recovery, and canonization. Student researchers are currently preparing this work for publication with an online academic journal.

Image: Introduction page of the Scalar book composed by students in our Women Writers and Writing course

Mathew Gomes (English), Bree Bellati '20 (English), Mia Hope '20 (English and French & Francophone Studies), and Alissa LaFerriere '21 (Mathematics) published a peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Writing Assessment about their experiences of participation in a writing course ("Teaching Writing") that used a labor-based grading contract. The article describes our attitudes and purposes going into the writing course, makes observations about our labor during the class, and offers reflections on the impact of that labor after the class from our various subject positions: Matthew writes about assessing participation in Teaching Writing; Bree describes how she was able to participate in a community of learners; Mia writes about developing skill around peer feedback; and Alissa describes how she was able to learn from peers and develop her knowledge of pedagogy. Our experiences suggest that the labor of participating in writing classes (and not just written essays or products) can be meaningful, and that offering many structured options for participation can enable meaningful course engagements. Our narratives also suggest experiences with contract grading can inform future teaching, learning, and professional activity. Gomes is scheduled to offer "Teaching Writing" again in Spring 2021.

Photo: Authors of "Enabling Meaningful Labor: Narratives of Participation in a Grading Contract" include Mathew Gomes (top), Bree Bellati (middle), Alissa LaFerriere (bottom), and Mia Hope (not pictured).

Since last summer, Barbara Molony (History) has had a number of publications in gender history and gender studies. In August, Barbara participated in a Zoom conversation on mentorship hosted by the Journal of Women's History. It may be found on the JWH website.

In November 2020, Routledge published Barbara's co-edited volume (with Eileen Boris and Sandra Dawson), Engendering Transnational Transgressions: From the Intimate to the Global. Barbara also co-authored the introduction. This volume reclaims the transgressive side of feminist history, challenging hegemonic norms and the power of patriarchies. Through the lenses of intersectionality, gender analysis, and transnational feminist theory, it addresses the politics in public and intimate spaces.

In December, she published two articles in edited collections: "Ichikawa Fusae to Fujin Sanseiken Undo" (Ichikawa Fusae and the Women's Suffrage Movement), in Kindai Nihon no Joseishi (History of Modern Japanese Women), ed. Hiroko Tomida and Gordon Daniels (Tokyo, 2020); and “Feminism and Gender Construction in Modern Asia,” in Companion to Global Gender History, ed. Teresa Meade and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020).

Photo: Transnational Transgression: From the Intimate to the Global

Tim Myers (English) has a poem, "At the Border," out with America Magazine and another in the upcoming The Chrysalis Project: An Anthology for Dementia Caregivers. His artpiece "All Things Marching into the Dark" is coming out in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts (Northeastern University), and he has three art photos in the current Peauxdunque Review.

Photo: "The Pipes Release Color" by Tim J. Myers, Peauxdunque Review.

Anna Sampaio (Ethnic Studies) was awarded a $30,000 grant from the Center for American Women and Politics (along with Christina Bejarano) for their comparative study of Latina Congressional candidates, political consultants, fundraisers, and organizers throughout the 2018 and 2020 elections in California and Texas entitled “Mujeres, Movidas, y Movimiento: Comparative Study of Latina Candidate Emergence and Political Mobilization in California and Texas.”

Anna also published the essay “Biden Promised the Most Diverse Cabinet in History. So Where are the Latinas?” (with Jennifer Piscopo) in the Washington Post on December 30 and her research was highlighted throughout the election and transition in interviews with NBC News, NPR, KCBS news radio, The 19th News, Government Executive News, Financial Times, Views from Venus podcast, and Ms. Magazine.

Anna presented her research on race, gender, and political mobilization at a virtual panel on the inauguration and the election entitled “The U.S. Inauguration in Context: Race, Health, Law, and Violence,” as part of the social justice initiative Public Square series at the University of Redlands on January 20 and at the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, on November 6.

Kristin Kusanovich's (Theatre & Dance) invited article, "What Non-Corporate, Non-Commercial, Non-Competitive Dance means for Children and the Adult Dancers they will Become" will be published in the January newsletter of the child advocacy organization, DA:NCE Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited. In this article, Krisin problematizes the culturally-sanctioned (and often parent-approved) over-sexualized images of young girls in dance in certain corporate, commercial, or competitive training contexts. The article focuses on dance teachers as the unfortunate source of these normalized but developmentally inappropriate choreographies and micro-cultures. She traces certain struggles evident later on in young adult female dancers to the abusive and not too artful practices in this subset of dance academies. The alternative paradigm already exists in the form of non-exploitative creative dance for children and youth in any cultural or even commercial style. She also acknowledges the need for more intra-field interventions and questioning of educators responsible for essentially forcing the conformity of children's bodies into the demanding expectations of the so-called (and predominantly) male gaze. From her 30 years of experience teaching children's dance, she draws the conclusion that girls do not naturally make these self-objectifying movements unless they are expressly taught that that is what dance is, and offered no alternative.

Photo: Kristin Kusanovich teaching modern dance

Theresa Conefrey (English) has had a busy start to the quarter with three conference presentations this month. She presented a paper with Davida Smyth (Eugene Lang College, the New School) entitled “High-Impact Practices for Transforming Online Learning during COVID-19” at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (January 22). They also shared a panel discussion with Catherine Duckett and Heide Estes (Monmouth University) on “Interdisciplinary Narrative in Science” at the SENCER Mid-Atlantic Virtual Conference on Narratives in Science (January 16). Theresa began the quarter with a solo presentation entitled “First-Year Composition through COVID-19: Writing our Way to Community and Connection” at the Minds, Means, and Materials: A Shared, Virtual Second Annual Writing and Well-Being Conference (January 4).

Sonja Mackenzie (Public Health) published an article in Advances in Medical Sociology, entitled "Experiences of Gender and Sexual Minority Stress Among LGBTQ Families: The Role of Community Resilience and Minority Coping." The paper is based on Sonja's Gender Justice Project and examines the minority stress and resiliency processes of parents in LGBTQ families. Findings indicate that LGBTQ parents experience minority stress due to the stigmatization of their own identities as sexual and/or gender minorities, and that parents also share the experience of gender minority stress faced by their transgender or gender-expansive child. Sexual and gender minority stressors were enhanced and resiliency factors reduced among those experiencing structural racism and economic disadvantage. The paper suggests a further queering of sociological inquiry on LGBTQ families that theorizes LGBTQ family formations as structural intimacies, Sonja's 2013 framework for understanding how structural inequalities affect possibilities for and constraints on intimate lives and, in so doing, to understand how these forms of embodied inequalities impact health.

Aparajita Nanda (English) presented her paper titled "Transreligious World Building: Hindu Philosophy and Language in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood" at the MLA 2021 conference in a special session on "Religion in Speculative and Science Fiction by Black Women" arranged by the forum TC Religion and Literature.

This past fall and early winter Pancho Jiménez (Art & Art History) had his work included in two art exhibitions: "Justice", a contemporary art exhibit held at The Marine Museum of Contemporary Art. The theme of the exhibit was racial inequality and social justice. He also exhibited work at The Clay International show held at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia.

Photo: This work (exhibited in the Marin MOCA show) titled “Last Gasp” memorializes the amount of time (8 minutes and 46 seconds) George Floyd was held down with a knee on his neck.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar