Joan McAlister, associate professor of rhetoric, with editorial assistance from Drake students Ana Salgado and Hanna Howard, produced the most recent edition of Women’s Studies in Communication, the premier journal addressing the relationships between communication and gender. You can peruse the journal here.
—Submitted by Emily Kruse, Assistant to the Dean, Arts & Sciences
The Department of International Business is celebrating another successful semester, including the following accomplishments:
New documentary on the horizon for Jody Swilky
Jody Swilky, the Ellis and Nelle Levitt Professor of English and writer and co-producer of the award-winning documentary A Little Salsa on the Prairie: The Changing Character of Perry, Iowa, is working on a new project documenting the history and evolution of the Iowa State Penitentiary. The documentary is tentatively titled Serving Time: The Long Life of Iowa State Penitentiary.
Kathleen Richardson to be recognized
The Iowa Supreme Court will honor School of Journalism and Mass Communication Dean Kathleen Richardson for her strong voice in support of justice at a recognition program today. Drake Professor Emeritus of Journalism Herb Strentz will recognize Kathleen for her 15 years of service on the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a coalition of journalists, lawyers, educators, and other Iowans devoted to open government. Kathleen served as council’s executive director from 2000 to 2015.
Student opportunities at the #demdebate
In case you didn’t know, Drake hosted the nationally televised Democratic Presidential Debate last week. Go behind the scenes and check out one student’s experience working with CBS News.
The University of Nebraska Press recently published Associate Professor Jennifer Perrine’s manuscript, “No Confession, No Mass.” Jennifer’s manuscript won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for 2014. Jennifer is also the author of In the Human Zoo, recipient of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and The Body Is No Machine, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry.
On Saturday, Nov. 7, the Des Moines Symphony accompanied Michael Cavanaugh on the music of Billy Joel at the Des Moines Civic Center. Cavanaugh was personally picked by Billy Joel to play him in the Broadway hit musical “Movin’ Out.” Drake faculty performing with the symphony that night were regular members Clarence Padilla (clarinet), Bob Meunier (percussion), Jennifer Bloomberg (oboe), Sue Odem (oboe), Tim Gale (bassoon) and Ashley Eidbo (double bass). In addition, faculty members Leslie Marrs (flute), Jim Romain (sax), and Dan Peichl (horn) joined as substitutes and extras giving Drake nine musicians who played at that concert.
Teri Koch, professor of librarianship, participated in a panel on “The Importance of Outreach in Shared Print Projects” at the Charleston Conference. This conference is the preeminent gathering of librarians, publishers, resource managers, and vendors, in Charleston, South Carolina, that focuses on issues in book and serials acquisitions. Teri discussed the Central Iowa Collaborative Collections Initiative, a ground-breaking shared collection among Drake University and five other Iowa colleges and universities.
Art and Design Professor Phillip Chen is one of only four artists whose work was selected for permanent installation in the John and Mary Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building at The University of Iowa. Application standards were notably high, requiring no fewer than ten artworks in museum collections, exhibitions in at least five museums, and national grants or fellowships. The four finalists are: Phillip Chen, Viola Frey, Susan Hettmansperger, and Charles Ray. Phillip’s artwork is also included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s current exhibition, “Homegrown: The School of the Art Institute in the Permanent Collection,” through Feb. 15, 2016. His recent print, “Federgeist,” has been selected for exhibition at the International Print Center New York, Nov. 19–Jan. 2016, and at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, Nov. 13–Dec. 13.
The most recent volume of dsm magazine (Nov/Dec) featured a story on the book project about the religions of Des Moines that Tim Knepper, professor of philosophy, is writing with a local photographer.
Since the story was written, the book has been picked up by Carol Spaulding-Kruse’s Drake Community Press, which partners local book projects with Drake curricular and extracurricular opportunities and donates the proceeds of the sale of the book to local nonprofits. Students will be doing much of the work for the book: research, writing, editing, layout/design, fundraising, community building, marketing and advertising, documentary work, and web design. Most of the content collection and writing will occur next semester in a class that Carol and Tim are co-teaching.
Klaus Bartschat, the Ellis & Nelle Levitt Professor of Physics, was awarded the 2016 Will Allis Prize for the Study of Ionized Gases from the American Physical Society (APS). APS represents over 51,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and throughout the world.
Klaus received the award “for fundamental theoretical and computational contributions to the understanding of charged-particle and photon collisions with atoms and molecules and for providing critical data and insight to the plasma modeling community.” His research is of fundamental importance for basic physics and has broad applications in many areas of research and industry.
The Will Allis Prize was established in 1989 in recognition of the outstanding contributions of Will Allis (1901-1999), an American theoretical physicist, to the study of ionized gases. It is awarded in even-numbered years.
Klaus is the 14th honoree in the award’s history; recent recipients hail from noted research institutions including the University of California at Berkley (2014), the Queen’s University of Belfast (2012), and the University of Michigan (2010). More information can be found at www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/allis.cfm.
Klaus will receive $10,000 and deliver an invited talk at the 47th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, in June 2016. He will also be honored at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC), to be held in Bochum (Germany) in October 2016.
Read more about Klaus here.
Kevin Lam, assistant professor of urban and diversity education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, published Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling: Vietnamese American Youth in a Postcolonial Context (Palgrave Macmillan). The book examines Vietnamese American youth gang formation in Southern California, with an emphasis on the experiences of those heavily involved in the 1990s. Lam traces the genealogy of the Vietnamese American youth gang phenomenon as part of the conflict in Southeast Asia. He describes the consequences of war and migration for youth as well as their racialization as “Asian American” subjects.
Grounded in the critical narratives of three gang members, Lam addresses themes of racism, violence, class struggle, style, and schooling in an era of anti-youth legislation in the state and nationally. In this dehumanizing context, Lam frames Vietnamese and Southeast Asian American gang members as post-colonial subjects, offering an alternative analysis toward humanization and decolonization.
Lam received his B.A. in Sociology and specialization in Asian American Studies from UCLA, M.A. in Social Foundations of Education from CSU-Los Angeles, and Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies (Social and Cultural Studies) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the director of the Social Justice in Urban Education program in the School of Education.
More information on the book can be found here.
—Submitted by Kevin Lam
Maria Bohorquez, chair and professor of chemistry, started her two-year term as president of the Iowa Network for Women in Higher Education.
Mahmoud Hamad, associate professor of political science, had a truly international summer. During May 17-21, Mahmoud traveled to Cairo, Egypt, to work on organizing the fourth annual conference of the Arab Constitutional Law Association—he chairs its scientific committee. Mahmoud also attended the Brandeis University’s Summer Institute of Israel Studies with a select group of U.S. and foreign faculty. Mahmoud was then invited to attend the 2015 Central European University’s Summer University program on Constitution-building in Africa in Budapest, Hungary. Finally, Mahmoud traveled to Tunisia to work with the Libyan Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA) in finalizing the first democratic constitution for Libya. The CDA is expected to approve the final draft of the constitution in late October, before being put to a referendum later in 2015.
Debra DeLaet, professor of politics and international relations and department chair, is presenting a paper at a conference on Transnational and Transborder Familial and Gender Relations: Comparing the Influence of Blurred and Brittle Borders at the University of Oxford. Her paper is titled, “Female Genital Cutting and the Family as a Site of Cultural Contestation and Change in Transnational Migration Contexts.”