Faculty Accomplishments
Kathryn Johnston (Theatre) has become a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson and she has been appointed to the board of The Arts Radio Network Theatre Project and appeared in their productions of "The Philadelphia Story" and "Rebecca."
The American Academy of Arts and Letters invited 40 artists, through nomination and selection, to participate in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, which opened on March 12, 2015 at their historic building in New York City. The Exhibition featured over 120 paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs and works on paper. Carol Prusa (Visual Arts and Art History) had a large work purchased by the Academy to donate to an American museum collection.
Julie Ward (Visual Arts and Art History) was awarded the Dorothy F. Schmitt College of Arts and Letters Japan Foundation Summer Travel Grant and spent two weeks in Japan, mainly in Tokyo and Kyoto. Ward used the opportunity to continue her research into the subculture of truckers. While researching "The Last Independent Trucker," she found the Dekotora trucks of Japan and knew that they would emerge as a new line of inquiry at some point. Dekotora is an abbreviation for "decoration truck." The goal is to add as many decorations to your truck while still keeping it operational.
Arlene Fradkin (Anthropology), Rod Faulds (University Galleries) and Evan Bennett (History) were recently awarded a $15,000 grant by the Florida Humanities Council for their project, "Beanie Backus and Florida's Highwaymen: History, Commerce and Art." The project centers on an exhibition jointly presenting a selection of FAU-owned original works by Backus and Highwaymen paintings borrowed from private collections, supplemented by texts and historical photographs and artifacts, to be on display at FAU's Ritter Gallery from September to November 2016. A series of public programs by Florida-based humanities scholars will take place concurrently with the exhibition and will examine the art and the social, historical and political milieu of these artists.
Talitha LeFlouria's (History) first book, "Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South," has just been published by the University of North Carolina Press. LeFlouria will be away for 2015-16 on a highly competitive Carter G. Woodson Post-doctoral Fellowship at the University of Virginia, where she'll be lecturing and working on her next book.
Clevis Headley (Philosophy) has been voted Vice Chairman of the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics.
Robert Rabil (Political Science) traveled to Syria this past summer to conduct field research in Syrian refugee camps along the Lebanon-Syria border. Rabil studied 1) the socio-political, educational, ideological and health conditions in Syrian refugee camps, 2) the extent to which ISIS and al-Nusra Front are present or supported within the camps, 3) the plans and outcome of the government, UN and NGOs efforts to help Syrian refugees, 4) the prospects for hundreds of thousands of Syrian children, youth and women who have been the most vulnerable and fall prey to radicalization, child labor, early marriage and prostitution, and 5) the impact of the Syrian refugees on Lebanon's society and institutions.
Phillip Hough (Sociology) spent the summer of 2015 in Colombia where he conducted additional interviews on his multi-year project on labor rights, class formation, and political mobilization associated with the country's coffee industry. In addition to archival research, Hough has done close to 100 interviews with industry insiders, government regulators, social activists, farmers and observers of Colombian politics.
A study by Douglas Broadfield, associate professor of anthropology, along with Kristian J. Carlson, University of the Witwatersrand, and Ralph L. Holloway, Columbia University, about the South African Taung Child fossil, was published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
Kate Schmitt, assistant professor of English, has a new book titled "Singing Bones." It is a memoir about a woman facing inner demons.