Arts & Sciences Faculty News: Fall/Winter 2017
Faculty lead, publish with students, draw international interest and consider dystopian fiction
Assistant Professor of English Sarah C. Canfield, Ph.D., participated, with Rhonda Shary of the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., in a panel discussion entitled “Handmaids and Hunger Games: Dystopian Fiction,” at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University on Oct. 13. Dr. Canfield and Shary explored the question, “What impact is dystopian fiction having on the world today?” They discussed the history, distinguishing features and topicality of dystopian fiction, from classics to recent works and films. While dystopian themes have always expressed warning and anxiety, recently they seem to have become less fictional and more factual.
Assistant Professor of Digital Media Production Glenn Østen Anderson, M.St., M.F.A., was selected as a fellow for the City University of New York’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellowship for Disruptive Educators. As part of the fellowship, Anderson attended the Online News Association conference in Washington, D.C., in October, and is preparing a project looking at the power and potential of observational video in news reporting.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Casey R. Eriksen, Ph.D., had a recent work, “‘Y assí su alma con su mármol arde’: Renaissance Erotica and New Approximations to the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega,” accepted for publication. It will appear as a book chapter in “Iberian Pornographies, 1300-1850: Archiving Flesh, Perversion, and the Visceral” (Bucknell University Press).
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Andrea Meador Smith, Ph.D., recently attended the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she presented a paper titled “Watch Out for the White Saviors: Using Spanish-Language Film to Question the White Racial Frame,” in a pedagogy-focused panel on incorporating critical race studies into the language classroom.
Associate Professor of Exercise Science Jessica C. Peacock, Ph.D., and two exercise science students had a paper accepted for publication in the journal Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, “Bariatric Patients’ Reported Motivations for Surgery and Their Relationship to Weight Status and Health.” Peacock’s co-authors are Levi Perry, an exercise science alumnus who is now a first-year student in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Shenandoah, and Kyle Morien, a junior double-major in exercise science and math, with guaranteed-admit status to the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Shenandoah.
Professor of Comparative Literature Petra M. Schweitzer, Ph.D., has been invited by the United Nations’ Holocaust Outreach Program to contribute an essay for inclusion in the fourth volume of the program’s discussion papers. The essay is titled “In the Aftermath of the Holocaust: The Rise of Consciousness in Global Resistance Against Injustice.”
As President-elect of the Virginia Academy of Science (VAS), Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology Woodward S. Bousquet, Ph.D., organized and coordinated the Academy’s 2017 Fall Undergraduate Research Conference on Oct. 28. The event featured science undergraduates from Virginia universities, who presented their research proposals to teams of judges. Nine research grants were awarded at the conference, which took place at Hampden-Sydney College in Prince Edward County.
