COLLEGE SPOTLIGHT: CENTERS
The OU College of Arts and Sciences is composed of numerous departments and programs, but it also includes more than 20 centers that serve as hubs of collaboration.
As innovative and interdisciplinary forums for trailblazing ideas, they allow scholars from across the university to tackle problems and make lasting contributions that complement the academic goals of the college. This month we will look at the work being done in our center by people like
Carol Silva
and
Hank Jenkins-Smith.
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Jenkins-Smith and Silva have been married and research partners for more than 20 years. They focus part of their research on the public response to large-scale tornados. By monitoring what is posted through social media before, during and after storms, they have been able to draw conclusions that shape disaster policy and save lives when severe weather strikes
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Social scientists from t
he
Center for Risk and Crisis Management
,
National Institute for Risk and Resilience and
OU Political Science Departmen
examine
how humans perceive Earth's move from the Holocene epoch to a new 'Anthropocene' geologic epoch. Joseph T Ripberger, Hank C Jenkins-Smith, Carol L Silva, Deven E Carlson, Kuhika Gupta and Nina Carlson looked at data from Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network and the Oklahoma Mesonet to see shifts in basic values, beliefs and political predispositions. Their findings are published in
iopScience.
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The
Carl Albert Center
has started a
Thousands Strong campaign in support of the 2018 N.E.W Leadership Program.
N.E.W. (National Education for Women’s) Leadership is an intense, five-day, non-partisan leadership program designed to educate and inspire future women political leaders a
nd remove the barriers faced by women in public life. In order to remove any financial barriers which might prevent students from applying or attending, this life-changing program is offered at no cost to the students. The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center is a unique and nonpartisan institution that strengthens representative democracy through scholarship, learning and service
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The 2017 fall semester has seen the launch of the
CMRS's,
Presidential Dream Course
"Exploring Medieval & Renaissance Studies."
MRS 3023 provides an overview of the history, literature, art and music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, including hands-on work with medieval manuscripts and early printed books. The course was designed and is being run by professor
Joyce Coleman
of the English Department in coordination with the CMRS's Curriculum Committee, which consists of professors
Kathleen Crowther
(History of Science),
Roberta Magnusson
(History),
Jennifer Saltzstein
(Musicology) and
Rienk Vermij
(History of Science).
Four distinguished guests will give public lectures, to which all are invited
. The
CMRS
promotes the study of the period in Western history that saw the
development of such major components of modern life as parliamentary democracy, the nation-state, English and other modern languages, printing, Islam, global exploration, heliocentric astronomy, romantic love--and the universities in which we research and teach all these subjects. Some thirty-five faculty at OU contribute to the study of these and many other facets of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
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WINTER CONVOCATION MOVED TO FRIDAY, DEC. 15, AT LLOYD NOBLE CENTER
A College of Arts and Sciences Convocation celebration is too big to contain. We heard our students and are moving the 2017 Winter Convocation to Friday, Dec. 15, at the Lloyd Noble Center. Please make plans to attend and help us spread the word to our graduating students. We encourage as many family, friends, and community members as possible to join us in this momentous celebration. There will be no guest ticketing and graduating candidates are asked to arrive in full academic regalia at 6 p.m. to the Lloyd Noble Center.
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DOUGLAS GAFFIN NAMED INTERIM DEAN OF OU HONORS COLLEGE
Award-winning OU educator
Douglas D. Gaffin
, has been
named interim dean of the Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College,
succeeding David Ray, whose retirement takes effect in Dec.
Gaffin, who joined the OU faculty in 1995, currently serves as David Ross Boyd Professor of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and previously served for 10 years as dean of OU’s University College.
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JEFF KELLY NAMED CORIX CHAIR AND DIRECTOR OF THE CORIX PLAINS INSTITUTE
Jeff Kelly
has been
named the inaugural Corix Chair and director of the Corix Plains Institute
.
The Corix Plains Institute will link interdisciplinary environmental science and decision- making while serving as a nexus among the University’s survey organizations — biological, geological, water, archeological and climate — and stakeholders in the public, private and non-governmental sectors. The institute will provide a platform for innovation in interdisciplinary research and educational programs.
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CARSTEN SCHAPKOW NAMED DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR STUDY OF NATIONALISM
Carsten Schapkow
(associate professor, History), has been named the Director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism at the College of International Studies. The center engages OU faculty and students in the empirical and theoretical aspects of studying nationalism and related cultural and political issues, including: cultural authenticity and reinvention; self-determination and secession; ethnic conflict and civil war; immigration and citizenship; globalization, development, and inequality; minority rights, accommodation and nation-building.
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ZARROW FAMILY FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENT CENTER OPENS IN BIZZELL LIBRARY
Located on Lower Level 2 of Bizzell Memorial Library, the
Zarrow Family Faculty & Graduate Student Center
is a space dedicated to supporting the research and teaching needs of OU faculty and graduate students in a central campus location. Users must use their OU ID to gain entry.
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POETICS OF INVENTION EXHIBIT OPENS
The “
Poetics of Invention”
exhibit explores the process of invention from ideation, to fabrication and to commercialization. English professor
Jonathan Stalling
, inventor and entrepreneur, attempts to make English more accessible to the 350 million Chinese learners through merging the world’s two most-spoken languages at the level of their phonetic DNA.
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RILLA ASKEW:
MOST AMERICAN
Rilla Askew
(professor of English) casts an unflinching eye on American history, both past and present in
Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place
. Nine linked essays evoke a vivid impression of the United States: police violence and gun culture, ethnic cleansing and denied history, spellbinding landscapes and brutal weather. To render these conditions in the particulars of place, Askew spotlights the complex history of her home state.
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STERLING EVANS:
FARMING ACROSS BORDERS
Farming across Borders A Transnational History of the North American West
b
y
Sterling Evans
(Louise Welsh Chair Department of History)
uses agricultural history to connect the regional experiences of the American West, northern Mexico, western Canada and the North American side of the Pacific Rim
. Case studies of commodity production and distribution, trans-border agricultural labor and environmental change unite to reveal new perspectives on a historiography traditionally limited to a regional approach.
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KYLE HARPER:
THE FATE OF ROME
Senior Vice President and Provost Professor
Kyle Harper's
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
examines the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome’s power. The example of Rome is a timely reminder that climate change and germ evolution have shaped the world we inhabit—in ways that are surprising and profound. Harper's book has been named as a
book of the year
by The Times Literary Supplement.
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KARLOS HILL:
BEYOND THE ROPE
Beyond the Rope
is an interdisciplinary study that draws on narrative theory and cultural studies methodologies to trace African Americans' changing attitudes and relationships to lynching over the 20th century.
Karlos K. Hill
(interim director and associate professor, African and African-American Studies) illuminates the submerged histories of black vigilantism and consolidating narratives of lynching in African American literature that framed black victims of white lynch mob violence as heroic, Hill argues that rather than being static and one dimensional, African American attitudes towards lynching and the lynched black evolved in response to changing social and political contexts.
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VICTORIA STURTEVANT:
WOMEN IN AMERICAN COMEDY
of original essays by the leading authorities on women’s comedy surveys the disorderly, subversive and unruly performances of women comics from silent film to contemporary multimedia.
Victoria Sturtevan
t (associate dean and associate professor of Film and Media Studies) and other contributors explore such topics as racial, ethnic and sexual identity, celebrity, stardom, censorship, auteurism, cuteness and postfeminism across multiple media.
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DAVID WROBEL:
AMERICA'S WEST
America's West: A History, 1890–1950
examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century,
Interim Dean
David Wrobel
explores turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era, the 1920s, the Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II and the early Cold War years. He emphasizes culture, politics, economics, demography, environment, and race relations, showing how developments in the West frequently indicated the future direction of the country.
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MAN-FUNG YIP:
MARTIAL ARTS CINEMA
At the core of
Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Aesthetics, Representation, Circulation
is a fascinating paradox: the martial arts film, long regarded as a vehicle of Chinese cultural nationalism, can also be understood as a mass cultural expression of Hong Kong's modern urban-industrial society. This important and popular genre,
Man-Fung Yip
(associate professor, Film and Media Studies) argues, articulates the experiential qualities, the competing social subjectivities and gender discourses, as well as the heightened circulation of capital, people, goods information, and technologies in Hong Kong of the 1960s and 70s
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LINDA ZAGZEBSKI PRESENTS ON NEW BOOK
George Lynn Cross Research Professor, and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics
,
Linda Zazebski
presented on her book
Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017)
at the the University of Genoa in October. She also gave a seminar on her book as part of the Cardinal Mercier Lectures at the University of Leuven, Belgium. While there, she gave a public lecture "The Two Greatest Ideas," (2015) and also led a workshop on her book
Epistemic Authority.
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KEITH GADDIE AND JUSTIN WERT SELECTED FOR V.O. KEY AWARD
The Southern Political Science Association has selected Keith Gaddie (professor, Political Science) and Justin Wert's (associate professor, Political Science)
The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act
as the winner of the V.O. Key Award, which will be presented in New Orleans in January. The book provides compelling and much-needed insight into the ways voting rights legislation has shaped the United States.
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BEN HOLT NAMED KINNEY-SUGG AWARD WINNER
Ben Holt (
associate professor, Microbiology and Plant Biology) has been named the 16th recipient of the Kinney-Sugg Award. The award goes to an associate professor or higher with at least two years of service to the college who is a model teacher that has demonstrated outstanding scholarship. Holt's r
esearch is focused on transcription factors in plants and how they function in flowering time and hormone response
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JILL HICKS-KEETON HONORED BY SOCIETY OF
BIBLICAL LITERATURE
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LEE KRUMHOLZ LEADS RESEARCH GROUP
A research group led by
Lee Krumholz
(professor, Microbiology and Plant Biology), i
s studying methane-consuming microbes from extreme environments for use in industrial applications
. The research group received $1.4 million as part of a consortium with South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Montana State University.
The OU team
will collect samples of these methane-consuming microbes from three sites: Zodletone Spring in southwestern Okla.; the Sanford Underground Research Facility in S.D.; and Yellowstone National Park in Mont.
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CHRISTINA WARINNER NAMED TO SCIENCE NEWS' SN 10: SCIENTISTS TO WATCH
and mid-career scientists on their way to widespread acclaim. Warinner is the first and only Big 12 scientist ever to be spotlighted in the SN 10. Warinner’s story is available in the October 14 edition of
Science News
available online at
www.sciencenews.org/SN10
.
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FACULTY RECOGNITION
Bayrammurad Saparov
(assistant professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry) received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.
Lori L. Jervis
(professor, Anthropology and Center for Applied Social Research) became a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, in recognition of her career-long commitment to research, publication, teaching and expert service in gerontology with Native Americans.
Garret Olberding
(associate professor, History) has been invited to serve as a visiting professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, during the month of October. While there he will offer a series of four weekly lectures on the limits of sovereignty in Early China.
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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES STUDENTS HONORED AS OUTSTANDING SENIORS
Six students from the College of Arts and Sciences were recognized for their outstanding achievement in scholarship, honors, awards, leadership and service to the university and the community during the 2017 Outstanding Senior Awards reception and ceremony Nov. 10, in Oklahoma Memorial Union. The award winners were
Auston Stiefe
r (Outstanding Senior Man; Planned Program in Spanish and Public Health);
Jonna Vanderslice
(Outstanding Senior Woman; Biology);
Husayn Ramji,
(Outstanding Senior College of Arts and Sciences; Planned Program in Public Health) shown above with President David Boren and Interim Dean David Wrobel;
Cody Totten
(Outstanding Senior Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy; Petroleum Geology and Letters);
Pamela Ortega
(Outstanding Senior Gaylord College; Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Science);
Kendall Hughes
(Multidisciplinary Studies; Neuroscience).
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CAPTAIN GARY ROSE AWARDED MEDAL OF HONOR
Retired Army Captain
Gary M. Rose
, an alumnus of Cameron University and the University of Oklahoma, received the Medal of Honor
from President Donald J. Trump at a White House ceremony. The Medal of Honor is the highest award given to U.S. service members for valor in action against an enemy force.
Capt. Rose was honored for his extraordinary efforts as a medic in combat operations in Laos during the Vietnam War. He received a bachelor’s degree in general education and military science from CU in 1977 and a master’s degree in communication from OU in 1989. I
nformation abo
ut Capt. Rose and the Oct. 23 ceremony can be found on a
U.S. Army webpage
and in a
White House news release
.
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BOARD OF REGENTS CHOOSES PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH COMMITTEE
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ALAN VELIE REFLECTS ON 50 YEARS AT OU
This fall marks the 50th year of teaching at OU for
Alan Velie
. The David Ross Boyd Professor of English is OU's longest-serving faculty member still teaching. He has worked under seven of OU's 13 presidents. He arrived at the university in 1967 after accepting an offer to teach four courses a year at a then-annual salary of $8,900. Recently, Velie was interviewed by Anna Bauman of the OU Daily to
reflect on his career.
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KEITH GADDIE WORKS ON LANDMARK SUPREME COURT CASE
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RETURNING THE GIFT CELEBRATES 25th ANNIVERSARY
Founded in 1992, the festival marked its 25th anniversary this year. It was created by indigenous writers to represent creatives in their community. The literary festival was held Oct. 8 - 11 and each day
featured a schedule of native writers, workshops and opportunities to experience the literary community.
The OU Daily's Allison Weintraub covered the event
, which included remarks from festival coordinator Barbara Torralba Hobson (photo by Jordan Miller, OU Daily).
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JOSHUA NELSON DIGITIZING MUSIC OF STATE TRIBES
Joshua Nelson,
associate professor of English, and Warren Queton, OU tribal liaison, joined Broadway star and humanities advocate Lin-Manuel Miranda on Capitol Hill to showcase the
NEH-funded work OU's Sam Noble Museum
is doing to preserve Native American music.
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DEADLINES AND FEATURED EVENTS
SAVE THE DATE
March 2, 2018 - KALEIDOSCOPE EVENING
The college's banquet designed to honor our distinguished alumni will be held at the Sam Noble Museum. The evening is a celebration of the college at the completion of Arts and Sciences Week. During the week, departments and programs hold special events open to all of the OU community. Also, the college hosts the Distinguished Alumni of the college who present lectures open to the public.
Nov. 20
Deadline to enter graduate courses and undergraduate courses with G designation not associated with program modifications into Courseleaf
Nov. 21
President's undergraduate dream course proposals due to Dean's office
Dec. 1
Deadline for academic units to upload unit recommendations for promotion-only cases to TPS system.
Dec. 7
Chairs and Directors Meeting, 9 a.m., Ellison Hall
Dec 7
CASFAM Holiday Luncheon, 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m., Dale Hall Tower Ninth Floor
Dec. 8
The CRPDE and the College of Arts and Sciences invite you to a discussion on NEH funding opportunities from 10 a.m. - Noon in Ellison Hall Room 132
Reminder:
Departments, institutes and centers that need to migrate their website to the OU CMS have until Dec. 31, 2017, to do so. Please contact college communication staff members at 325-6556 for more information.
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If you have information or announcements for
News & Updates
, please submit to the college
communication office
.
News & Updates
is published every month.
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