Celebrating Emerson Faculty’s Creativity, Scholarship
Emerson faculty Cher Knight, Yu-Jin Chang, and Shujen Wang chat during the Faculty Appreciation Reception held Tuesday, September 25, in the Bordy Theater. Photos/Claire Richards ’22
Emerson faculty were busy over the past year, racking up awards, fellowships, books, and papers, in addition to sharing what they know with students.
“All too often in the academy, modesty shields the accomplishments,” Provost Michaele Whelan said at a Faculty Appreciation Reception held during Faculty Assembly on September 25 in the Bordy Theater. “Let’s invoke Walt Whitman [and] sing one another and enjoy.”
The following are faculty who were recognized at the Appreciation Reception, plus some late entries not necessarily mentioned at the event. FAFGs are Faculty Advancement Fund Grants, awarded to tenured and tenure-track faculty to enhance creative or scholarly work. AFDF’s are Affiliated Faculty Professional Development Fund grants, do the same for affiliated faculty.
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Clinical instructors Jena Castro-Casbon and Jocelyne Leger piloted the first Boston-area Transgender Voice and Communication Group Program in CSD’s Robbins Center.
Clinical instructor Laura Glufling-Tham presented and facilitated a continuing education workshop, Tips & Tools for Effective Supervision, attended by 100 New England-area speech-language pathologists.
Associate Professor Ruth Grossman was awarded a FAFG for her project, “Social Signals During Partnered Classroom Engagement of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”.
Assistant Professor Rhiannon Luyster received a Family Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to support a lab-based study of language use in children with autism spectrum disorder. Luyster and her students had two posters accepted to the annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research. She also participated in the Research Mentoring Pair Travel Award Program at the 2017 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in Los Angeles, mentoring a Boston University doctoral student.
Sandy Cohn Thau, director of clinical education and Graduate Program director, won the 2018 Massachusetts State Clinical Achievement Award for “contributions to the advancement of knowledge in clinical practice in audiology or speech-language pathology.”
Senior affiliated faculty member Nancy Vincent-Meotti is introducing True+way ASL, a new technology-driven curriculum for Emerson’s American Sign Language courses, and trained affiliated faculty over the summer. Vincent-Meotti also was recognized for her 25 years teaching at Emerson.
Communication Studies
Affiliated faculty member Israela Brill-Cass won the Alan L. Stanzler Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Professor Phil Glenn co-edited Studies of Laughter in Interaction, which received a favorable review in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.
Affiliated faculty member Mohamed Khalil received an AFDF award for his digital trivia system.
Chair Greg Payne was recognized for 35 years of teaching at Emerson.
Professor Rich West co-wrote two textbooks, Perspectives on Family Communication and Introducing Communication Theory Analysis and Application.
Journalism
Assistant Professor Michael Brown on the Emerson College Alumni Award for Teaching Innovation.
Affiliated faculty member Angela Anderson Connolly received an AFDF award for her Poynter Teach A Palooza.
Assistant Professor Catherine D’Ignazio won the Norman and Irma Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award for her work on data feminism.
Associate Professor Paul Mihailidis co-edited International Handbook of Media Literacy Education, published this year.
Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of the School of Communication Paul Niwa was awarded a FAFG for his project, Senator Inouye: Making a More Perfect Union.
Marketing Communication
Affiliated faculty member Paul Hackett published The Perceptual Structure of Three-Dimensional Art.
Associate Professor Seounmi Han Youn won a Best Paper Award for “The effect of Facebook newsfeed ads on teens’ information disclosure: The interplay of persuasion knowledge, benefit-risk assessment, and ad skepticism” at the 17th International Conference on Research in Advertising held in Valencia, Spain in June.
Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
Professor Sam Binkley published “Biopolitical Metaphor: Habitualized Embodiment Between Discourse and Affect” in the journal Body & Society in May. In April, Binkley gave a presentation titled “The Shameful Body of Whiteness: Against Racial Interiority” at the annual meeting of the Foucault Circle in Cleveland.
Assistant Professor Kaysha Corinealdi received a FAFG award for her project, Defining Panama.
Affiliated faculty member Kimberly Dong co-authored two articles: “Food Acquisition Methods and Correlates of Food Insecurity in Adults on Probation in Rhode Island,” published in PLOS, and “Competing Priorities that Rival Health in Adults on Probation in Rhode Island: Substance Use Recovery, Employment, Housing, and Food Intake,” published in BMC Public Health. She also gave a presentation at the American Society of Nutrition Conference on “Food Insecurity, Morbidities, and Mental Health in Adults on Probation in Rhode Island.”
Assistant Professor Mneesha Gellman’s book, Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic Minority Rights Movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador, came out. She spent her Spring 2018 pre-tenure leave in Oaxaca, Mexico, conducting fieldwork for her new book-length project, Cultural Competency and Citizen Formation: Spanish and Indigenous Language Education Politics in Mexico and California. Gellman gave talks about her research to audiences at the Centro Cutural San Pablo and the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca.
Associate Professor Nigel Gibson co-authored a book, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, published in the last year. For the launch, Gibson and Achille Mbembe discussed Fanon’s ethnopsychiatry at a special event last July at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Gibson also was a keynote speaker at the 5th Annual International Conference of the Centre for Phenomenology in Johannesburg.
Assistant Professor David Kishik gave a keynote address this spring at a conference at the University of Jena in Germany titled Urban Walking: The Flâneur as an Icon of Metropolitant Culture, where he presented his paper “The Schizoid City.” This summer, Kishik read his paper, “The Work of Dance in the Age of Sacred Lives,” at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, as part of the world premiere of Paramodernities by choreographer Netta Yerushalmy.
Senior affiliated faculty member Thomas McNeely published a short story, “Little Deaths,” in Epoch Magazine.
Senior affiliated faculty member Cynthia Miller edited Divine Horror: Essays on the Cinematic Battle Between the Sacred and the Diabolical. She also co-edited Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema.
Assistant Professor Cara Moyer-Duncan presented her paper, “Local Stories, Global Audiences: South African Cinema and the International Market,” at the African Literature Association Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. in May.
Affiliated faculty member Charles Oliver received an AFDF grant for his proposal to completely revise, update, and reorganize PH 204 (Environmental Ethics) for Fall 2018.
Assistant Professor Tylor Orme received a FAFG award for his work on “The Impact of ‘Let’s Play’ Videos on Video Game Revenue.”
Affiliated faculty member Mary Potorti received an AFDF grant to work on The Food and Freedom Politics of Comedian Dick Gregory.
Professor Eiki Satake delivered a research paper, “Teaching Probability and Decision Making Theory Through the Game of Squash,” at the 44th Annual New England Mathematical Associaiton for Two-Year Colleges (NEMATYC) convention in April. He also was recognized for his 30 years at Emerson.
Assistant Professor Diana Sherry co-edited The Arc of Life: Evolution and Health Across the Life Course.
Professor Tulasi Srinivas won a senior short-term fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies for her forthcoming book, The Absent Goddess: Religion, Ecology and Violence in Urban India.
Assistant Professor Erika Williams received a FAFG award to work on Versions and Subversions of Genre and Gender in Modernist and Contemporary Africana Literature. In May, she presented a paper, “Subversions or ‘Perversions’ of Passing?: Race, Gender, and Queer Sexuality in Linda Villarosa’s Passing for Black and Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird” for the American Literature Association’s annual conference in San Francisco. Williams also presented two public lectures at UMass-Amherst as part of her fellowship at UMass’ Du Bois Center and this fall, will be a visiting scholar participating in Bentley University’s Valente Center Humanities Research Seminar of 2018-2019, which will explore “Intersectionality at the Intersect of Disciplines.”
Performing Arts
Professor Melia Bensussen directed Shakespeare & Co.’s Summer 2018 production of Macbeth.
Senior affiliated faculty member Brynna Bloomfield and affiliated faculty member Janie Howland designed the sets for Come to Your Senses, an exhibit running now at MassMoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. In addition, Howland received an AFDF grant to work on SketchUp 3D Basecamp, and Bloomfield got AFDF funding for a Mask Making Master Class.
Affiliated faculty member Josie Bray received an AFDF to attend devising workshops at Celebration Barn Theater and Pig Iron Theatre Company.
Distinguished Artist-in-Residence P. Carl is spending Fall 2018 in Germany on a Berlin Prize fellowship while working on his forthcoming book, Becoming a White Man.
Senior affiliated faculty member Andrew Clarke’s play, Churchill on the Beach, was produced at the New Bedford Culture Park Short Play Festival and the Boston Theatre Marathon, where it was directed by senior affiliated faculty member Joe Antoun. Antoun also directed Noir Hamlet.
Costume shop supervisor Richelle Devereaux-Murray was the costume designer for CentAStage’s Noir Hamlet.
Associate Professor Kathleen Donohue was recognized for 40 years of teaching at the College.
Affiliated faculty member Jennifer Farrell completed the first year of her doctoral program. She also choreographed Guys and Dolls and directed and choreographed Damn Yankees for the Priscilla Barn Theatre in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Assistant Professor Sariva Goetz was music supervisor for the Cleveland Playhouse’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Senior affiliated faculty member Eric Hofbauer received an AFDF to work on The Five Books.
Professor Emeritus Timothy Jozwick won the Helaine and Stanley Miller Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Affiliated faculty member Damon Krometis received an AFDF for his pilot play workshop and development.
Assistant Professor Bethany Nelson won the Ann Flagg Multicultural Award from the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. She had pieces published in journals Applied Theatre Research (“Radical Practice: Devising as Activism”) and Youth Theatre Journal (a book review of Jay Gillen’s Educating for Insurgency: The Roles of Young People in Schools of Poverty). Her paper, “Loyalty, Longevity, and a Community of Influence: Playmaking with Urban Young Adults,” has been accepted for publication in Youth Theatre Journal in April 2019.
Associate Professor Magda Romanska won the Elliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and she was an Apothetae and Lark Theatre Playwriting Fellowship Finalists for writers with a disability, supported by the Time Warner Foundation. Romanska also co-edited Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory & Criticism.
Professor Maureen Shea was recognized for 30 years of teaching at the College.
Affiliated faculty member Cassandra Tunick received an AFDF to work on new course material and Physical Eloquence for Movement and Acting.
Senior Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Scott Wheeler received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in Summer 2018. He also contributed songs to the album, Light Enough, and was recognized for 40 years at Emerson.
Visual and Media Arts
Affiliated faculty member Gautam Chopra received an AFDF for What Are Your Thoughts on Bowling?
Professor Tom Cooper was recognized for 35 years of service to the College.
Affiliated faculty member Janeann Dill received an AFDF to work on a mode of fine art film.
Senior affiliated faculty member David Kelleher received an AFDF for his virtual reality development project.
Joseph Ketner II, distinguished curator-in-residence and Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice, published a book, Witness to Phenomenon: Group Zero and the Development of New Media in Postwar European Art. Ketner died earlier this month.
Affiliated faculty member John Krivit received an AFDF for his summative presentation at the 146th Audio Engineering Society European Convention.
Assistant Professor Ed Lee received a FAFG to work on his project, Becoming Eddie.
Assistant Professor Leslie McCleave received a FAFG for The Work of the Science Filmmaker.
Affiliated faculty member Robert Nesson received an AFDF for continuing education and photographic art.
Affiliated faculty member Tanju Ozdemir received an AFDF for Alexander at the End of the World.
Affiliated faculty member Martin Roberts received an AFDF for his work, Token Gestures.
Professor Shujen Wang was recognized for 20 years of teaching at Emerson.
Writing, Literature and Publishing
Assistant Professor Susanne Althoff received a FAFG for Lucky Thing Elon Musk Wasn’t a Girl.
Associate Professor Jabari Asim was named a Trustee of the Boston Public Library and received a Live Arts Boston grant.
Senior affiliated faculty member Michael Bent was recognized for teaching 30 years at Emerson.
Senior affiliated faculty member Leslie Brokaw has two guidebooks, Boston Day by Day and Frommer’s New England, due out this year.
Senior lecturer Mary Kovaleski Byrnes published a collection of poetry, So Long the Sky.
Senior affiliated faculty member Delia Cabe published Storied Bars of New York: Where Literary Luminaries Go to Drink.
Senior Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Maria Flook published her novel, Divorce, Dog Style.
Senior Writer-in-Residence Lise Haines published her novel, When We Disappear.
Affiliated faculty member Beth Ineson was named executive director of the New England Independent Booksellers Association.
Senior affiliated faculty member Alden Jones wrote the piece “My Son Loves Guns” for The Cut. It was reprinted in the New York Magazine issue on “how to raise a boy.” Jones also moderated a roundtable discussion on travel writing that appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, and on the podcast Deviate. She co-directs the Cuba Writers Program, and is core nonfiction faculty at the Newport MFA Program in Creative Writing at Salve Regina University.
Affiliated faculty member Katherine Kim received an AFDF grant to work on The Language of Haunting.
Chair Maria Koundoura was recognized for 25 years of teaching at Emerson.
Assistant Professor Adele Lee published The English Renaissance and the Far East: Cross-Cultural Encounters.
Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor Megan Marshall published her Elizabeth Bishop biography, A Miracle for Breakfast. Marshall also spent Fall 2017 as a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University, and was interviewed for the PBS American Masters documentary, “Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive.”
Affiliated faculty member Vassiliki Rapti published Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond, and translated Avaton by Dimitrios I. Bafaloukos; Light Breeze in Paradise by Carmen-Francesca Barciu; and translated and edited Nightfall Hotel: A Surrealist Romeo and Juliet by Nanos Valaoritis.
Affiliated faculty member Anna Ross received the 2018 Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Affiliated faculty member Scott Loring Sanders published a book, Surviving Jersey: Danger and Insanity in the Garden State.
Affiliated faculty member Matthew Scully received an AFDF grant to work on Refractions of the Subject: Identity Politics and Voting. Scully’s review of Scott Henkel’s Direct Democracy: Collective Power, the Swarm, and the Literatures of the Americas, was accepted for publication in the June issue of sx salon: a small axe literary platform. His article “Plasticity at the Violet Hour: Tiresias, The Waste Land, and Poetic Form” appeared in the spring 2018 issue of JML: Journal of Modern Literature and his post “Disordering Modernism: On T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land,” was published on the JML blog in August.
Associate Professor Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann received a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, and a FAFG grant to work on Constructing the Caribbean.
Senior affiliated faculty member Peter Shippy was recognized for teaching 30 years at Emerson.
Professor John Skoyles published his book, The Nut File.
Assistant Professor Adam Spry published his book, Our War Paint Is Writers’ Ink: Anishinaabe Literary Transnationalism.
Professor Daniel Tobin published The Stone in the Air: A Suite of Forty Poems from the German of Paul Celan, and was awarded the Boston Authors Club’s Julia Ward Howe Award for his book-length poem, From Nothing.
Senior Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Jessica Treadway was recognized for 20 years of teaching at the College.
Senior affiliated faculty member Meta Wagner published What’s Your Creative Type?: Harness the Power of Your Artistic Personality.
Professor Jerald Walker was named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.
Professor Steve Yarbrough published his novel, The Unmade World.
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