Fall/Winter 2024 Issue
Explore the 2024 fall/winter issue of the Davidson Journal.
Ali Fitzgerald '04 has achieved coveted status as a cartoonist, graphic artist and essayist for some of the world’s top publications. She’s crafted comics and essays for The New Yorker and published a poignant illustrated memoir about her experiences working with refugees in Berlin. Her latest book will be available in 2025.
Comic Sense: Ali Fitzgerald ’04 Finds Refuge in Art, High and Low
Mezzo Soprano Briana Hunter '08 has dazzled audiences at the world’s top venues, including the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center.
Briana Hunter '08 Shines on Some of Opera's Most Coveted Stages
Stand-up comedian Joe Zimmerman ’05 has released CDs, specials and appeared on a host of TV shows and networks.
Headlining Comic Joe Zimmerman ’05 Finds His Voice and With It Success
Emily Schmitt '23 reflects on a role that combines unbridled fun with underestimated depth: a “hotdogger.”
Marcus Pyle started playing viola in fourth grade; Anthony Strouse '28 began playing violin as a fourth grader. They grew up in the same small town—Garland, Texas—where they attended the same public schools. They were encouraged to keep playing by the same music teacher, Ms. Pruitt. Now, they’re both making music at Davidson College.
Noteworthy: Professor’s Program Jump-starts Musical Aspirations for Dallas-area Youth
The Well
Introducing: Jacob Kim '26
Jacob Kim embodies a line you might hear in one of the songs he plays with the 1970s-inspired soft rock student band Fool’s Errand—the only way to find yourself is to go looking.
By diving into his classes and extracurriculars, he’s found not just one but many creative outlets—music composition, digital art, sewing, improv comedy.
Kim, a recipient of the POSSE Foundation Scholarship, double-majors in music and digital screen and media through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.
His digital composition class taught him new techniques that improved his solo-music creation and gave him the confidence to perform in front of people. He took that further, onto the stage playing the keys with Fool’s Errand (the group won first place at last year’s Battle of the Bands competition). When his friends encouraged him to try out for the student troupe Oops! Improv Comedy, he accepted the challenge.
Interests have led to internships. During a summer stint at Kontoor Brands, a global apparel company, Kim focused on videography and marketing—and discovered an unexpected passion for sewing. As the Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement (DACE) program manager, he’s helped organize clothes-mending workshops, expand the DACE Studio’s sewing resources and teach his peers how to make clothes.
He also received a Davidson in East Asia Grant that opened doors to a music company in South Korea, where he composed and created music for Samsung and Kia exhibitions and commercials. When he thinks about potential careers, it’s the music that sings the loudest.
“There are so many different paths to creating and sharing art,” he says. “If I could do music at work every day, I’d be happy.”
Pardon Me, But I Disagree
On a weekend night, Davidson College students showed they could provide what the nation’s political climate needs: the capacity to disagree and debate civilly and respectfully.
College Republicans and College Democrats faced off from the balconies of Philanthropic and Eumenean halls, 19th-century buildings constructed, facing each other, by debating societies for just such moments. This year’s students were continuing a Davidson College tradition dating back 175 years, and a crowd of more than 200 students, faculty, staff and community members clustered around. The speakers and the audience demonstrated they could still talk to one another in spite of the heated campaign season.
In a twist on the standard, time-tested format, this year’s debate integrated the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, which fosters constructive dialogue and participation in civic life. DCI facilitators guided brief conversations in small groups after each debate topic, allowing neighbors to share their thoughts with each other.
“It’s a wonderful spotlight and a moment for Davidson where we can feature the kind of democratic engagement that we’ve been focused on all semester, and, in fact, we’re focused on all the time as a liberal arts college,” President Doug Hicks said in an interview with The Assembly.
Distinguished Guest on Campus
Grammy- and Pulitzer-winning jazz musician Wynton Marsalis played trumpet with Davidson College students at the end of his appearance on campus this fall, but he spent only a fraction of his visit creating music. He mostly talked about, well, how to talk—with each other. Marsalis is passionate about the importance of citizens listening to one another.
“We need the best of who we are,” he said, “instead of the worst of who we have been.”
Marsalis spoke about culture and civic life, followed by a moderated conversation with President Doug Hicks ’90. The event was made possible by The Hon. Anthony Foxx ‘93, who was elected as the next chair of the Board of Trustees in October, and sponsored by the Office of the President.
Heavy Metal
Art professor and sculptor Cort Savage leads “Art 109” students through basic sculpture and the lost-wax bronze casting process. Students created their own sculptures in wax, then cast them in bronze. Lost wax casting dates to 3700 BCE and is still practiced today.
Inside Art
This photo was taken at the Balloon Museum in Madrid, Spain. The four of us—me (Isabella McCormick), Anya Neumeister, Calli Robles and Savannah Vonesh—had just completed internships teaching English at various schools across Spain via the Davidson Hispanic Studies Department. We had met in Madrid for the first time after our respective summer experiences and decided to do something fun together.
—Isabella McCormick ’25
Comparative Literature Major and Hispanic Studies Minor
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
The college's fall theatre production offered a reimagined take on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with a conflicted Brutus torn between loyalty to his dear friend and duty to protect the republic. Plans go awry, new tyranny awaits. Centuries later, those ancient themes of friendship and betrayal, fear, and the ambitious pursuit of power remain timeless. Pictured are Jamey Davis ’28 ( left), who played Julius Caesar, and Sahana Athreya ’25 (right), who played Brutus.
Grand Stands
Fans from all generations gathered Sept. 7 for the first home fall football game at the new Davidson College Stadium. The Wildcats defeated Catawba College, and the stadium starred in its own right, with spectacular sunset views adding an extra magical element to the evening.
Madeline Dierauf, a Davidson College senior and professional fiddler, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, making her one of 32 Americans selected this year for one of the most prestigious graduate scholarships in the world.
Scholar-athlete Issy Morgan ’25 attributes her success to the team's culture of competing as one, and love for "fearless leader" Coach Gayle.
Submit your caption for a chance to win Davidson College swag. The winner will be notified and announced in January 2025.
The Union
Alumni Authors
Tom, What Are You Doing Here?: Adventures in Public Service by Tom Saunders ’73 (2023, Filibuster Press, LLC). From janitor at the courthouse to a 26-year career as a state representative, Tom Saunders has been called the Forrest Gump of Indiana politics. Saunders shares stories from the campaign trail, meetings with members of five presidential administrations, unlikely friendships, and the satisfaction of helping people he has represented.
Merry Thank You Christmas by Gus Succop ’75 (2024, Warren Publishing). More and more the true spirit of Christmas is lost to the commercialization and hustle and bustle of the holiday season. With his new children’s book, retired Pastor Gus Succop seeks to remind young readers and their families of the most important parts of Christmas: being thankful for the birth of Christ, spending time as a family, and being good people.
Haphazard Families: Romanticism, Nation, and the Prehistory of Modern Adoption by Eric C. Walker ’75 (2024, The Ohio State University Press). Taking up the stories of both fictional and historical adoptees, Eric C. Walker explores the history of the adopted child in Romantic-era England and examines the stories of adopted children associated with Queen Caroline, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and more.
Facing Suicide: Understanding Why People Kill Themselves and How We Can Stop Them by James Barrat ’83 (2024, Avery). Suicide has reached epidemic proportions in America, claiming over 45,000 lives each year. Yet suicide is preventable, if we can grasp the complex factords behind it and look out for the signs of suicide in our families, communities, and colleagues. In this book, James Barrat delivers an in-depth exploration of America’s suicide crisis, celebrates solutions and offers a message of healing and hope.
The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency by John Eglin ’84 (2024, Oxford University Press USA). Grounded in archival research that goes beyond the anecdotes that have dominated previous work on the subject, The Gambling Century explores the relationship between the understanding of probability and the practice of gambling as no other work has done.
Honest Creativity: The Foundations of Boundless, Good, and Inspired Innovations by Craig Detweiler ’85 (2024, Morehouse Publishing). This purpose-driven book shatters assumptions about what it takes to create honestly as a way of honoring the gift of life. At a time when AI can generate text and images in seconds, Detweiler shows readers how to excel at “honest creativity”: an act that is, fundamentally, both uniquely human and magnificently divine.
Struck by Magic by Hasan (Has) Malik ’90 (2024, self-published). In his novel cast in the form of a screenplay, Has Malik explores new ways of delving into mistaken identity in fiction. When unsuspecting Clyde Zanders, a Vegas-bound magician, is mistaken for a mafia-linked casino magnet, he must seek the help of a perfume-industry executive, Angela Exton, to escape the killers on his trail. Together, they get pulled into an explosive vortex of intrigue they had not bargained for.
Sideline Confidential: A Novel by Brooke Bentley ’01 (2023, Greenleaf Book Group Press). Set against the backdrop of pro football and sports media and informed by her career as a sports reporter, Brooke Bentley weaves an important and timely story of gender equality and female empowerment into a fast-paced, eye opening and ultimately uplifting work of fiction.
From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership by Erin Raffety ’04 (2022, Baylor University Press). American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts to enrich the church. From Inclusion to Justice argues that our churches don’t need more programs for disabled people but rather the pastoral tools to repent of able-bodied theologies and practices, listen to people with disabilities, lament ableism and injustice, and be transformed by God’s ministry through disabled leadership.
This Is How We Play: A Celebration of Disability and Adaptation by Caroline Cupp ’05 and Jessica Slice ’05 (2024, Penguin Random House). Caroline Cupp and Jessica Slice, both disabled moms and disability rights advocates, have written a picture book for children that celebrates the way disabled people play. The book includes a kid-friendly guide to thinking, learning, and talking about disability; a glossary of the different disabilities represented throughout the book; and a guide for grown-ups on ways to encourage discussions about disabilities with the children in their lives.
Under This Forgetful Sky by Lauren Yero ’07 (2023, Atheneum Books for Young Readers). This star-crossed love story follows two teens in a starkly unequal future world who are struggling to find their places. Sixteen-year-old Rumi ventures out from behind his city’s walls to find a cure for a fatal virus that has stricken his father. He meets 15-year-old Paz in the ruined city of Paraíso. With the powerful forces at play in their cities putting them at odds, can the two learn to trust in each other enough to imagine a different world?
Add yourself to the shelf!
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Africana Studies
Takiyah Harper-Shipman co-authored an article with a graduate student in Burkina Faso for Antipode titled “La Femme Fait La Maison: The Accumulation of Surplus Value through Family Planning in Burkina Faso.” Harper-Shipman also recently received an advance contract for her second book with Stanford University Press.
Arab Studies
Rebecca Joubin has co-authored a book titled Yom Asel ve-Yom Basel: Accelerated Hebrew for Students and Speakers of Arabic with Kieran Clark ’21, Adam Gelman ’21, and Josef Milstein ’22.
Art
John Corso-Esquivel recorded more than five hours of interviews with Detroit-based painter Beverly Fishman for the Archives of American Art Oral History Program at the Smithsonian.
Biology
Bryan Thurtle-Schmidt presented his lab’s work, “Class 1 OLD proteins provide anti-phage defense and are inhibited by nucleotide,” at the Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria at Harvard Medical School. Thurtle-Schmidt has been awarded an R15 AREA grant from the National Institutes of Health titled “OLD family nuclease function across diverse anti-phage defense systems.” The grant will support student-driven research in his lab over the next three years.
Susana Wadgymar co-established the Primers in the Plant Sciences series in the International Journal of Plant Sciences, which was introduced in the article “Primers in the Plant Sciences: Accessible Reviews for Learning at All Career Stages.” Wadgymar and colleagues published a Primer titled “Defining Fitness in Evolutionary Ecology” in the International Journal of Plant Sciences.
Chemistry
Bassil El-Zaatari was awarded a grant through the NSF LEAPS-MPS program ($250,000). He and his students will conduct research on the synthesis of recyclable silicone-based plastics and composite materials.
Nicole L. Snyder and Anna Brown ’20 recently published a paper in Science Advances titled “Site-specific sulfations regulate the physicochemical properties of papillomavirus–heparan sulfate interactions for entry.” The work highlights their collaborative efforts with the team of Prof. Mario Schelhaas to unlock the mechanism underlying how viruses like papilloma virus engage and infect host cells. The work was primarily funded by the German National Science Foundation through the Virocarb program. Snyder served as an external collaborator.
Film, Media, and Digital Studies
Mark Sample was the keynote speaker at the 8th annual Digital Humanities Utah Symposium, hosted by Utah State University. Sample’s talk, titled “Almost AI: The Pleasure and Poetics of Staying Human in an Age of Machines,” makes the case for what he calls small-language models as an antidote for the anodyne and exploitative writing generated by large-language models like ChatGPT.
Economics
Professor Emeritus Clark Ross published an article titled “Colleges are Wed to the Status Quo” in the “Clarion Call” of The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. This summer, he also directed two AP institutes for high school economics teachers, one at Davidson College and one at the University of South Florida.
Pedro Casavilca Silva’s job market paper was awarded the first prize in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Young Economist Award, for his research toward understanding the labor dynamics in Latin American countries such as Peru.
English
Brenda Flanagan was invited to read from her new book, Women’s Artistic Dissent: Repelling Totalitarianism in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia, by Anglo-American University in Prague. She was also invited by the Harvey Gantt Arts and Cultural Center to facilitate a conversation with artist Christopher Myers at the opening of his solo exhibition, “Please Water, Carry Me.” Flanagan conducted a workshop for attendees at the 22nd international Conference on New Directions in the Humanities in Rome, Italy, on “Teaching Anti- Apartheid Literature in South Africa,” the subject of her recent Fulbright Specialist Fellowship in South Africa.
Alan Michael Parker had four cartoons nominated for “2024 Best of the Net”: “Rothko Burger,” by Identity Theory; “Captain Pete Considers Where to Eat,” by Identity Theory; “Giraphageal Reflux Syndrome,” by Identity Theory; and “Norbert Tried to Keep the Ear Happy” by Orange Blossom Review. He continues to publish weekly at Identity Theory, where 141 cartoons have appeared since January 2022. Another cartoon, “Just Imagine What Your Dad Will Say,” was recently published by a new journal, Twin Bird Review.
Environmental Studies
Brad Johnson received a $25,000 grant from the USGS EDMAP program to fund an undergraduate research team working to map stream terraces and landslide deposits in the Blue Ridge.
French and Francophone Studies
Madeline Bedecarré signed a contract with Edinburgh University Press for her first book: African Authors and the Politics of Literary Recognition. It will be published as part of the series New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonization, Queerness. Bedecarré published an article in the journal CFC Intersections, “Off the Charts: The Whiteness of French Bestsellerdom.”
German Studies
Burkhard Henke recently completed his first year as chief reader for the AP German Language and Culture exam. Working with College Board and ETS, as well as high school and college teachers across the country, he helped develop this year’s AP exam, then planned and supervised the scoring (or “reading”) of the exams in early June.
Maggie McCarthy recently published an essay titled “Utopian Spaces and Their Everyday Traces in Thomas Stuber’s In den Gängen” in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. It examines a fictional film about shelf stackers at a big box store in the former East Germany, particularly utopian elements that persist despite the end of the GDR and the rise of neoliberal working conditions.
Hispanic Studies
Kyra Kietrys recently organized a panel for the Association for the Hispanic Humanities Conference commemorating the 5th anniversary of the death of Neus Català, an anti-fascist concentration camp survivor from Catalonia, Spain. On the panel, Kietrys presented a paper titled “Traduciendo La Memoria y Las Memorias de Neus Català” [Translating memory and the memoirs of Neus Català].
Magdalena Maiz-Peña and Luis H. Peña recently published the collaborative essay titled “Cuerpos Envenenados, Delirios Perturbadores, Escenas Fantasmales: Distancia de Rescate de Samanta Schweblin” [Toxic Bodies, Disturbing Delusions, Ghostly Scenes: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblinin] in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Special Volume, Suspense in 20th and 21st Century Latin American and Spanish Literature and Film.
In the September issue of The Latin Americanist, Angie Willis published “Reinaldo Arenas’s Original Antes que anochezca Manuscript: Unveiling and Unraveling ‘Un escándalo póstumo.’” This study, the first of its kind, closely examines Arenas’s final Antes que anochezca manuscript, a text long shrouded in mystery; in the process, it reveals surprising redactions that were not included in some of the published versions of the autobiography. Willis was invited to join the editorial board of The Latin Americanist, beginning this fall.
Physics
Anthony Kuchera, Garrett Ryan ’24, Olivia Guarinello ’24, Branner D’Amato ’24, and Pat Kielb ’24 published an article titled “Single-neutron Adding on 34S” in The European Physical Journal A.
Political Science
Silvana Toska’s book Revolutionary Emotions: The Roots of Revolutionary Waves is now out with Oxford University Press.
Psychology and Neuroscience
Molly Flaherty published an article called “Validating Lab Studies of Silent Gesture with a Naturally Emerging Sign Language: How Order Is Used to Describe Intensional vs. Extensional Events in Nicaraguan Sign Language” with her coauthor Marieke Schouwstra from the University of Amsterdam in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. She also published an article with collaborators Christine Cuskley and Rebecca Woods from Newcastle University called “The Limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs) for Understanding Human Language and Cognition” in the journal Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science.
Kristi Multhaup has been named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 2, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, adding to her Fellowship in APA and its Divisions 3 (Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science) and 20 (Adult Development and Aging). “A fellowship represents a top-five percent contribution in the field of psychology,” according to a recent chair of the APA Fellows Committee.
Julio Ramirez was the keynote speaker for the Wilkes Honors College Symposium at Florida Atlantic University. His talk was titled “Are Broken Brains Doomed to Dysfunction? Lessons from the Hippocampal Formation.” Ramirez also gave the inaugural Adrienne Kirby ’81 Distinguished Alumni Lecture at Fairfield University, titled “Broken Brains and Breaking Barriers: Lessons from the Hippocampal Formation and Life.” Ramirez is a first-generation college student and graduated from Fairfield University in 1977. The talk focused on his and his Davidson students’ discoveries in promoting recovery from cortical injury in rats (a model for neuroplasticity in Alzheimer’s disease) as well as his personal journey as a scholar and advocate for social justice. Additionally, Ramirez served as a member of the 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarship Review Board.
Public Health
Kata Chillag was appointed to the new Wastewater Surveillance Working Group, established by the CDC Board of Scientific Counselors-Infectious Diseases (BSCID). BSCID is a federal advisory committee providing guidance to the HHS Secretary, CDC Director, and CDC infectious diseases centers.
Sociology
Gayle Kaufman, Georgia Morris ’23, Li Yin Chen ’24, and D’Lane Compton published an article titled “Attitudes Toward Mononormativity and Polyamorous Legal Rights in the U.S.” in Sexuality Research and Social Policy. Kaufman co-authored an article titled “Looking Beyond Marital Status: What We Can Learn from Relationship Status Measures” in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Gerardo Martí accepted an invitation to be an affiliated scholar with the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (IACS) at the University of Southern California. The IACS is a global research center that draws from an international pool of scholars from diverse disciplines and religious traditions to advance innovative research, create dialogue, and spark ideas on religious thought, creative imagination, and lived experience. Martí published an open access article in SOCIUS titled “Latinx Blue Wave or Religious Red Shift? The Relationship Between Evangelicalism, Church Attendance, and President Trump Among Latinx Americans.” The article demonstrates the importance of distinguishing more finely within the generalized, panethnic category “Latinx” to trace the religious consequences of political behavior. He also delivered an invited plenary address at Princeton Theological Seminary titled “Hartmut Rosa Goes to Church: Acceleration, Resonance, and the Megachurch Ministry of Robert H. Schuller.”
Phia Salter and coauthors published “Each One, Teach One: Critical History as Counterstories, Antiracist Affordances, and Cues for Belonging” in American Psychologist.
Kapriskie Seide presented her paper “Recognizing and Unlearning Ableism: A Study of Individuals with Acquired Physical Disabilities in Haiti” at an invited panel discussion during the American Sociological Association (ASA) annual conference in Montréal, Quebec.
Theatre
Anita Tripathi is designing the scenery for Grace for President at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte. She worked on the original world premiere musical based on the book of the same name in 2016. This is an all-new design highlighting the story of a third-grade African American girl running for class president, as she asks the question: “Where are the Girls?”
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