Faculty Accomplishments
Professor Marina Banchetti, department of philosophy, has just finished guest editing two special issues of Foundations of Chemistry (Springer), the leading international journal in the philosophy of chemistry. These two issues feature selected papers from the 20th annual conference of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry, which was organized by Professor Banchetti last summer and was held August 1-4, 2016 at Florida Atlantic University. The conference included participants from 11 countries, with keynote addresses by Manuel DeLanda and Eric Scerri, and included topics in the history of chemistry, as well as ontological, epistemological, pedagogical, ethical, and environmental issues that arise from the theory and practice of chemistry.
Dr. Ben Lowe, professor and chair of the Department of History, has been selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 24 seminars and institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions, so that faculty can work in collaboration and study with experts in humanities disciplines. Lowe will participate in a seminar titled "The Formation and Re-formation of the Book: 1450-1650." The 4-week program will be held at The Huntington Library, in San Marino, CA.
Don Adams, Department of English, has been awarded a Fulbright to conduct research and teach in India starting in August 2017. During his stay, Dr. Adams will be affiliated with Christ University in Bangalore, a private liberal arts college with ties to the indigenous Catholic church. Adams will conduct research in Indian philosophy and theology, and will be working with the school's department of English as well as their attached theological institute, the Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram institute of philosophy and theology. His scholarship focuses on "analyzing relatively marginalized figures in modern literature in regards to metaphysical thought systems that enable and illuminate their work through alternative contexts." This will be Adams' second Fulbright award. His first took him to Vietnam from 2002-2004, and he describes the experience as "life and career-changing." During this time, Adams worked on his second scholarly monograph which asserted that "alternative world-views are expressed generically in fiction as alternative realisms, endlessly ramifying in their existential and epistemological difference." Adams seeks to use his upcoming experience in India to expand upon this topic. "I feel that my habitual life and thought are overdue for another cultural-intellectual intervention," Adams said. "I really am looking forward to it.
Ilene Prusher, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, will be one of two journalism professors to lead the Journalism program of Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), a two-week summer fellowship in Germany and Poland, which uses the conduct of professionals under Nazi rule as a way to reflect on contemporary professional ethics. Now in its eighth year of operation, FASPE provides a unique historical lens to engage graduate students in professional schools as well as early-stage practitioners in five fields (business, journalism, law, medicine, and seminary) in a course of study focused on contemporary ethical issues in their professions. FASPE Journalism uses the conduct of reporters and other media professionals in Nazi-occupied Europe as a way to reflect on contemporary journalism ethics. Its approach differs from the usual classroom experience by looking beyond formal or informal rules of conduct to focus on concrete ethical problems faced by journalists in contemporary media settings. This year, the Journalism program has 12 Fellows, both graduate students and early-career journalists, who were drawn from a pool of nearly 200 applicants.
Civil War scholar Stephen Engle, professor of history, has recently published a book that is beginning to create a lot of buzz and is already receiving awards. Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union's War Governors was awarded the 55th annual Barondess/Lincoln Award which included a formal ceremony in New York City ( http://www.civilwar.com/news/recent-postings-54491/277954-55th-annual-barondess-lincoln-award-presentation.html ). He was also recently on a panel of the Abraham Lincoln Institute Forum at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., which was covered by CSPAN https://www.c-span.org/video/?425302-3/abraham-lincolns-governors , and was also invited to the Virginia Festival of Books in Charlottesville. He will be going to the Gettysburg Institute this summer.
Kelly J. Shannon, Assistant Professor of History at FAU and faculty affiliate with FAU's Peace, Justice, and Human Rights (PJHR) Initiative, has received a Summer Stipend award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support research for a new monograph project on U.S. relations with Iran, 1905-1953. Summer Stipends support individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars and/or general audiences. The Summer Stipend is very competitive; the NEH typically funds only 7-9% of applications each year. Summer Stipends support continuous full-time work on a humanities project for a period of two consecutive months. Professor Shannon will use her award to conduct archival research in the United Kingdom in British foreign policy records and Iranian manuscripts, which she will use to write her second book that will explore the various levels of Americans' engagement with Iran during the period between the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the 1953 U.S. and British coup, which overthrew Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Her first book, U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights, will appear in print with the University of Pennsylvania Press later this year.
Noemi Marin, professor, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, has been invited by Columbia University's Hariman Institute, East Central European Center and the Romanian Cultural Institute to make a presentation about her research at the end of April 2017. Marin will present on the pre- and post-1989 political discourse in Romania, Eastern Europe and the United States, drawing on the volume she recently co-edited with Cezar Ornatowski, Rhetorics of 1989: Rhetorical Archaeologies of Political Transitions (Routledge, 2015). She will address the question of how political speech in communist and transition periods does and does not change democratic action, and what challenges remain inherent to the public arena to this day.
Mary Cameron Ph.D., professor of Anthropology, has photographs featured in an exhibit about Nepal's Dalits, at the Patan Museum in Patan, Nepal (near Kathmandu). View Image 1
Image 2. Learn more about the exhibition here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewtucker/17-powerful-photographs-that-show-nepals-history-of-discrimi?utm_term=.nfODYEwy3#.ljWzKX5wm
https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewtucker/17-powerful-photographs-that-show-nepals-history-of-discrimi?utm_term=.nfODYEwy3#.ljWzKX5wm
Noemi Marin on Romanian National Television, a First for FAU. "Performing Rhetoric" is the Romanian National Television feature documentary on Dr. Noemi Marin's academic and public life as a Romanian-American scholar and public figure. The documentary was aired on Romanian National Television International Channel and TVR+. on Monday, April 25, to be aired again on May 13, on TVRHDWhile this documentary features Noemi Marin and her academic career, this is the first time FAU has been featured on Romanian television. The Romanian TVR crew filmed a lot of campus scenes: the FAU College of Arts and Letters; University Theater; The Dalai Lama tree; the Arts studios; the CU building; and the College of Nursing. The documentary can be seen here: http://www.tvrplus.ro//editie-lumea-si-noi-440080
Lisa Swanstrom, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, won the Elizabeth Agee Prize in American Literature for her new book, Animal, Vegetable Digital: Experiments in New Media Aesthetics and Environmental Poetics (January 2016). The prize from The University of Alabama Press is awarded annually to a work that exemplifies scholarly excellence in the field of American literary studies. She did the bulk of her preliminary research in HUMLab, a digital humanities lab at the University of Umeå in northern Sweden, where she interviewed digital artists whose work complicates the boundary between "natural" and "digital" ecologies.