Spring/Summer 2021 Issue

Apple Valley Farm by S. Robert Latham Jr., M.D. ’59 (2019, Wings Publishers LLC). The history of a Glenville, North Carolina farm with origins in 1854.

My San Francisco by Gordon Ball ’66 (2020, Richard W. Couper Press). Part memoir, part prose and part poem, Ball offers a revenant’s journey to the city that left an indelible imprint upon his mind. 

Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film: Rant Against the Regime by Kirk Combe ’76 (2021, Routledge). Since 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged—the Rant.

Elder Fraud Wars: Case Histories from an Enforcement Attorney by David Neil Kirkman ’76 (2020, Exposit). By recounting actual court cases, Kirkman examines the multi-billion-dollar elder fraud industry and reveals successful strategies for combating that industry.

SPIN by Patricia Cornwell ’79 (2021, Thomas & Mercer). The second in Cornwell’s new series continuing the story of Captain Calli Chase, a NASA test pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator.

The Learn-to-Read Bible and Coloring Book by Rev. Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux ’87 (2020, printed by Penmor Lithographers). A book for new readers of all ages, with simple, clear text and lovely illustrations. Each story ends with a Bible memory verse. 

Your Business Ventures: The Prep. The Pitch. The Funding. by Linsey Mills ’92 (2020, Independently Published). Mills, an entrepreneur and financial professional, offers the secrets to pitching your venture and raising funds for your idea.

Teach Your Child About Money Through Play: 110+ Games/Activities, Tips and Resources to Teach Kids Financial Literacy at an Early Age by Andrea Stephenson ’02 with Linsey Mills ’92 (2019, Independently Published). With more than 30 years of combined experience teaching youth financial literacy, Stephenson and Mills make conversation around money fun and engaging for young children.

Preparing Science Teachers Through Practice-Based Teacher Education by David Stroupe ’02, Karen Hammerness and Scott McDonald (2020, Harvard Education Press). This comprehensive volume examines the compelling ways teacher educators across the country are using core practices to prepare preservice teachers for ambitious and equitable science teaching.

A Blaze in the Northern Sky by Ross Hagan ’01 (2020, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing). This book explores Darkthrone’s “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” (1992), a foundational keystone of the musical and aesthetic vision of the notorious Norwegian black metal scene and one of the most beloved albums of the genre.

The Last Resort: A Novella in Voices by Allie Coker ’10 (2021, Warren Publishing, Inc.). Told from various perspectives, The Last Resort reveals the vulnerable side of humanity and forces readers to stop and ask, “What is normal?”

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Add Yourself to the Shelf

To submit your book for this column, as well as to E.H. Little Library’s Davidsoniana Room, please send a signed copy to: 

Davidson Journal 

Box 7171, Davidson College

Davidson, NC 28035-7171

Africana Studies

Takiyah Harper-Shipman received the American Philosophical Society’s Franklin Research Grant to continue fieldwork on her second book project. Harper-Shipman also co-authored an op-ed titled “The Business of Black Death” with Kim Bako ’21. The article was published in Africa Is a Country. 

Anthropology

Laurian Bowles published, “Black Feminist Ethnography and the Racial Politics of Porter Labor in Ghana” in Feminist Anthropology. Bowles and Beth Uzwiak published “Epistolary Storytelling: A Feminist Sensory Orientation” in The Senses and Society.

Arab Studies

Rebecca Joubin, AJ Naddaff ’19 and Nick Lobo ’20 translated Threshold of Pain, a Syrian novel by Hasan Sami Yusuf.

Art

Tyler Starr participated in the exhibit “Breathe” at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art from 1/8-3/19. This group exhibition, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., is part of BIMA’s Untold Stories series. Works focus on social justice and human rights, addressing diverse and connected issues. His solo exhibit “Redress Papers” was held at the gallery Antenna in New Orleans this spring.

Biology

A. Malcolm Campbell was awarded a 2022 U.S. Fulbright Scholarship for New Zealand. He was one of three faculty chosen from a national pool. His project blends teaching introductory biology with research on student engagement and retention. 

Karen Hales served as co-organizer for the 62nd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, sponsored by the Genetics Society of America. During the conference she chaired two plenary sessions, moderated a careers panel discussion, and spoke in a workshop on inclusive language frameworks for teaching genetics. 

Mark Stanback, David Millican ’11, and others co-published a paper, “Double-brooding in Southern Yellow-billed Hornbills,” in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology.

Dave Wessner and Siena Senn ’22 published an article titled, “Maintaining Student Engagement During an Abrupt Instructional Transition: Lessons Learned from COVID-19,” in the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education.

Chemistry

Nicole L. Snyder has been elected as a council representative on the Council on Undergraduate Research executive board. The CUR is a national organization that advocates for promotes, and supports high impact, collaborative undergraduate research, scholarly and creative activities. Snyder recently published an article in Royal Society of Chemistry Advances with Ana Nottingham ’20, Logan Russell ’19, J. Alexander Sizemore ’20 and Domi Babin ’23, titled “Synthesis and Evaluation of Porphyrin Glycoconjugates Varying in Linker Length: Preliminary Effects on the Photodynamic Inactivation of Mycobacterium Smegmatis.” The work was supported in part by the NIH and the NSF.

Classics

Michael Toumazou co-authored an article entitled “The Directional Occurrence of the Levantine Geomagnetic Field Anomaly: New Data from Cyprus and Abrupt Directional Changes” in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 

Dance

Alison Bory co-authored an article with Gretchen Alterowitz (UNCC) and Amanda Hamp (UNM) as AGA COLLABORATIVE, titled “Collaborative Ethics: Choreographing Within the System and Beyond;” published in PERFORMING ETHOS: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance.

Educational Studies

Hilton Kelly was invited to serve as a 2021-2022 ACE Fellow on the American Council on Education.

Chris Marsicano was named an Emerging Education Policy Scholar (EEPS) by the Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute for the 2021-2022 academic year. The prestigious program connects early career education scholars with policymakers to support the goal of data-driven and evidence-based policymaking around education issues in Washington. Marsicano will be the second liberal arts college faculty member ever to receive the honor. Marsicano, Emily Rounds ’21 and a colleague at the CDC Foundation recently published a brief written in the peer-reviewed CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The article shows the distribution of COVID-19 testing protocols on college campuses in the United States.

Brittany Murray co-authored two articles: “Remote or Removed: Predicting Successful Engagement with Online Learning during COVID-19” In Socius, and “Practicing Parental Involvement: Heterogeneity in Parent Involvement Structures in Charter and Traditional Public Schools” in Educational Administration Quarterly.

English

“Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde,” a collaborative work of digital scholarship co-created by Suzanne Churchill and others, has been awarded an honorable mention for the 2020 Garfinkle Prize in Digital Humanities from the American Studies Association.

Ann Fox and Jessica Cooley ’05 launched Chapter 3: FRONTLINES OF ALL KIND for the online component of their Ford Foundation Gallery exhibition, “Indisposable: Structures of Support after the ADA.” The new video commission documents work by the artist collective Black Power Naps under the strain of a global pandemic that exacerbates social inequity for many. Fox delivered a Zoom talk at the University of Notre Dame entitled “Why Disability Art Matters in the Age of COVID-19.” The talk was sponsored by the Reilly Center for Medicine and the Liberal Arts at Notre Dame as part of their “Educating the Whole Physician” series.

Alan Michael Parker served as a judge for the 2021 National Book Awards in fiction. He also published, “Meeting Someone Once for Five Seconds” in Fiction Kitchen Berlin and had six poems published in the spring 2021 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. His latest book of poems is The Age of Discovery.

Environmental Studies

Brad Johnson, Liam Stiefel ’20 and Susannah Cooley ’18 published an article entitled, “Increased Colluvial Hollow Discharge and Subsequent Recovery After a Low Intensity Wildfire in the Blue Ridge Mountains, USA” in the journal Hydrological Processes. The study examines how wildfires in the southeast may be unique compared with more widely studied fires in the western United States.

French and Francophone Studies

Caroline Fache co-authored an article in the International Journal of Francophone Studies titled “French Dis-integration: New Identity Formation Processes in 30° Couleur.” In March, Fache was invited to present a paper in a panel entitled: “Mariannes à la croisée des Identités” for the 20th and 21st French and Francophone Studies Colloquium. In April, she chaired the “Immigration Comedy: Beyond the Tragic Immigrant” seminar at the ACLA conference and presented a paper entitled “France Immigration Comedy: Confined to the Margins.”

Sandrine Hope has received the 2021 Southern Conference of Languages teaching Educator of Excellence Award.

Shanaaz Mohammed published, “Reimagining the Aapravasi Ghat: Khal Torabully’s Poetry and the Indentured Diaspora,” in the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies.

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Yurika Tamura, Jared Lindo ’21 and Nade Bai ’22, together with State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed and Tricia Sisson, Town of Cornelius Commissioner, were invited to speak at the “Stop Asian Hate” rally organized by Unity in Community North Mecklenburg. 

History

Diego Luis has been awarded a Huntington Library Travel Grant for a month of archival study abroad at the Archivo General de las Indias in Seville, Spain. Luis published, “Diasporic Convergences: Tracing Knowledge Production and Transmission Among Enslaved Chinos in New Spain” in Ethnohistory. He also published a photography portfolio on the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexican border, “A Few Missing Visuals of the Crisis,” in Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures.

Jane Mangan was part of a collective of Latin American historians awarded the Rocky Mountain Council of Latin American Studies 2021 Edwin Leiuwen Teaching Award. 

Rose Stremlau has been awarded a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation fellowship of $35,000 toward completion of her project, Barbara Longknife: A Cherokee Life in the Age of American Empire.

Sarah Waheed serves as ongoing advisor to Hyderabad Urban Labs, one of India’s more innovative academic Urban Studies Research organizations. Waheed presented the paper, “Hyderabad’s 1948 ’Police Action’: Muslim Belonging, Memory, and the Hidden Histories of Partition” for the recent symposium and conference “Citizenship, Belonging, and the Partition of India,” sponsored by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia. Waheed also presented at Davidson College History Forum with her students, Ashley Ip ’22 and Yashita Kandhari ’22, on their project “Archival Matters: The History of Asians and Asian Studies at Davidson College” as part of the Stories Yet To Be Told: Race, Racism, and Accountability on Campus series. 

Remembering Willie Earle, a documentary film about South Carolina’s last reported lynching, was named best documentary for 2021 in the “History-Plus” category of North Carolina’s Longleaf Film Festival. Co-directors and former history majors Frank Carroll ’19, Cassie Harding ’20 and Stevie Jefferis ’19 accepted the award on behalf of the filmmaking team, a team that also includes executive producer John Wertheimer. The film began as a project in Wertheimer’s “Filming Southern History” class in 2018. 

Mathematics & Computer Science

Tabitha Peck and Jessica Good (Psychology), with student author Katharina Seitz ’20 published the paper, “Evidence of Racial Bias Using Immersive Virtual Reality: Analysis of Head and Hand Motions During Shooting Decisions” in the IEEE VR special issues of Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 

Physics

Michelle Kuchera recently co-authored two articles: “A.I. For Nuclear Physics,” in The European Physical Journal A, and “cFAT-GAN: Conditional Simulation of Electron-Proton Scattering Events with Variate Beam Energies by a Feature Augmented and Transformed Generative Adversarial Network,” in 19th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications. Kuchera, Braden Kronheim ’21 and Alexander Karbo ’19 recently published an article, “Bayesian Neural Networks for Fast SUSY Predictions,” in Physics Letters B.

Kristen Thompson, Michelle Kuchera and Sam Frederick ’19 recently published an article entitled “Modelling Magnetohydrodynamic Equilibrium in Magnetars with Applications to Continuous Gravitational Wave Production” in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Political Science

Peter Ahrensdorf published an essay, “Socrates’ Critique of Homer’s Education in the Republic,” in a book entitled, Liberty, Democracy, and the Temptations to Tyranny in the Dialogues of Plato.

Britta Crandall and Emma Lynn ’21 co-authored an article on COVID-related fiscal responses in Latin America titled, “Could Two Wrongs Make a Right?,” published in Global Americans.

Psychology

Phia Salter’s co-authored article, “CUE-ing Student Success: Evaluating Academic Support Space in Residential Communities” (2020), was recently awarded the Betty L. Harrah Journal Manuscript of the Year Award from the Association of College and University Housing-international.

Religious Studies

Andrew Lustig won first prize in the 2021 New York Encounter Poetry Contest for his poem “Invitation.”

Rachel Pang presented a paper entitled, “Visualizing Avalokiteśvara’s Pureland: Shabkar’s (1781-1851) Autobiography and the Rise of a Geographic Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Tibet” at the ASIANetwork annual conference.

Karl Plank has published a book concerning the American writer David Foster Wallace and the ethics of fiction. The Fact of the Cage: Reading and Redemption in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest explores the religious dimensions of Wallace’s masterpiece and the significance of reading fiction. 

Sociology

Gayle Kaufman and Molly Bair ’19 published an article, “Attitudes Toward Working Mothers and Work-Oriented Fathers in the U.S.,” in Journal of Family Issues. 

Gerardo Martí accepted an invitation to join a highly select group of nationally renowned scholars on the board of directors of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture and public policy. PRRI’s mission is to help journalists, scholars, pundits, thought leaders, clergy and the general public better understand debates on public policy issues.

Theatre

Sharon Green recently co-designed and co-facilitated a six-week, practice-based research project with an international team of Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners, investigating methods for translating Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques and methodologies for Zoom and other online platforms. 

Writing

Andrew Rippeon published an article in the minnesota review titled, “’lighght’ and ’covfefe’: reading media and misspellings from mimeo to twitterverse.” In it, he examines how technologies of inscription, from the typewriter to Twitter, intersect with poetics and politics. Rippeon also published a chapter in the edited collection, Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner. 

Davidson College alumni & friends obituaries can be found online at inmemoriam.davidson.edu.