Faculty Scholarship & Research

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes John Davis, Assistant Professor of Black Studies, East Asian Studies, International Studies and Anthropology and Sociology at Denison, presenting “The Racial Politics of ‘Japan’s Invisible Race’.” Japan’s Burakumin minority, introduced to the West as “Japan’s Invisible Race,” is often posited as a diverse demographic disadvantaged by the powerful and pervasive ideology of Japan as a racially and ethnically homogeneous society. However, this presentation will draw on a range of ethnographic data and examples to problematize the category “Burakumin” and argue that the presumed homogeneity imagined to be a general source of friction and marginalization for minorities in Japan has actually played a decisive role in efforts by Burakumin activists to combat discrimination and prejudice.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes BethAnn Zambella, director of libraries at Denison, presenting “The Once and Future Library.” In this talk, Zambella discusses a variety of topics including what the “Open” movement means for libraries and Denison (including the Lever Press, Institutional Repositories, and the Open Textbook Network), a sneak peek at the library’s spring focus group results and “Design Thinking” and libraries.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Xiao Jiang, assistant professor of economics and philosophy, politics and economics at Denison, presenting “Value-added Erosion in Global Value Chains: Rethinking International Trade.” The prevalence of “vertical specialization” and global value chains (GVCs) in today’s world demands us to think about international trade and its relationship to employment differently. Moreover, inherent to the surge of trade in intermediates in GVCs is often the decline in shares of domestic value added in a country’s exports. In this talk, Jiang will discuss his findings on the employment effect of GVCs trade and put forward the argument that the expansion of foreign high value-adding activities in the upper stream of GVCs is likely to lead to a decline of domestic value-added share, thus the intensification of international and domestic distributional conflicts.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Diana Mafe, associate professor of English, presenting “Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV.” Mafe’s newly published book examines representations of black womanhood and girlhood in new millennial British and American speculative film and television. The movies and shows in question which include “28 Days Later,” “AVP: Alien vs. Predator,” “Children of Men,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Firefly,” and “Doctor Who: Series 3,” have never been read together or primarily through their portrayals of black femininity. However, each case study includes a subversive black female character in its main cast. Although black women have a long cinematic history of being stereotyped or simply erased on screen, Mafe’s book showcases twenty-first-century examples that challenge or complicate that history through the speculative genre. “Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before” draws on critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories to explore each film and show, to place the black female characters at the center of the analysis, and to demonstrate the agency of these characters. But the book is also intended to be accessible, rather than alienating, to mainstream readers who are interested in horror, science fiction, and fantasy. During her talk, Mafe will discuss the overall scope and relevance of her book, read a short excerpt and answer questions. A few copies will be available for purchase at the event.

Founded in 1983 in the wake of the first visionary national conference on Black women’s health, the National Black Women’s Health Project was a galvanizing grassroots force in the lives of many thousands of Black American women. The organization, initially under the aegis of the National Women’s Health Network, coalesced around the work of two dynamic women activists: experienced health feminist Byllye Avery, already co-founder of two other pioneering feminist women’s health institutions, and social justice consciousness-raiser Lillie Allen. From its inception, the NBWHP struggled to cope with the multiple, deeply intersecting burdens of creating a social justice oriented Black women’s health agenda that not only had to bridge gaps of accessibility, affordability, and education but also recognized Black women’s profound need for sufficient social, emotional, economic, and political support to allow them to improve their health and health outcomes. Despite many successes, the staggering weight of this complex agenda quickly became inextricably linked with organizational politics, personality conflicts, economic woes, and a controversial and organizationally distinctive form of psychopolitical self-analysis that led to the downfall of the NBWHP as a grassroots resource for Black women’s lives. The making and unmaking of the National Black Women’s Health Project is a history that speaks, loudly and distinctly, to present-day attempts to address both racial and gender-based health disparities.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Denison professors Rebecca Kennedy and Max Goldman presenting “Teaching in Rome: No Classroom Required.” One of the most exciting elements of teaching off campus, especially abroad, is the chance to take students into unusual environments and to teach in ways that no classroom can ever allow. In this talk, Goldman and Kennedy will discuss their summer course, “Art and Archaeology of Ancient Rome,” taught at various archaeological sites and museums throughout Rome and southern Italy. Their presentation will cover the types of assignments that have been succesful in getting students to engage with both the modern cities and the ancient ruins among them.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Jo Tague, assistant professor of history at Denison, presenting “Educating Activists: The South African Education Program on Denison’s Campus, 1982 to 1990.” Each summer from 1982 to 1990, Denison hosted a month-long orientation for the South African Education Program (SAEP). Administered by the Institute for International Education (think Fulbright) and funded by American foundations, corporations, and universities as a means to secure and promote the education of black South Africans during apartheid, every year SAEP awarded 115 scholarships so that students could attend one of 150 participating institutions. Though the vast majority of students completed the orientation and then went on to other colleges or universities, a handful remained at Denison to complete their undergraduate training. Still, this means that for nearly 1,000 South African students awarded SAEP scholarships, Denison served as their point of entry to American higher education; Granville was their first exposure to life in the United States. This talk explores how students experienced this orientation program–the type of coursework they completed, their evaluations of orientation pedagogies, how they managed homesickness, and how they made home anew. What emerges is a narrative of South African students–beyond the gaze of the apartheid regime–who transformed into activists in their own right and politicized their American peers, Denison students, in the process. Most scholarship approaches the history of anti-apartheid activism on U.S. campuses by focusing exclusively on the activities and contributions of American students and faculty (particularly via calls for divestment). Less visible has been the prominent role that South African students played in the movement and how their international education fostered advocacy and activism.

Riggen’s popular film “La misma luna” (2007) has been praised as a heartwarming film that humanizes undocumented immigrants for American audiences and, for Mexican audiences, deviates from typical immigration narratives by focusing on women and children as immigrants rather than men. Despite this seemingly progressive intentionality, St-Georges argues that Riggen’s film is exceedingly conservative in its portrayal of mexicanidad as not only inescapably patriarchal, but “naturally” so. Mexico’s ruling class has a vested interest in reaffirming mexicanidad as biological, and therefore, politically incontestable. By selling mexicanidad in a transnational context as a racial essence under constant threat by Anglo-American hegemony, hegemonic institutions within Mexico create the illusion of national and ethnic unity, thus erasing any and all internal racism and classism. In “La misma luna,” the characters’ race and gender performances work in tandem to naturalize prescribed notions of national identity and reaffirm the bourgeois and politically-limiting mandate to be a “good” Mexican by being a “good” (wo)man, equating the imperative to remain true to one’s nationality to the allegedly unproblematic imperative to remain true to one’s biology. Additionally, membership into mexicanidad is reinscribed as contingent upon neoliberal practices of consumerism, up to and including viewing the film itself.

What does it take for two or more people to act together? What constitutes solidarity? This talks brings into dialogue two philosophers working in disparate subfields – feminist and queer theory icon Judith Butler and Finnish philosopher of action Raimo Tuomela – in order to develop a view of joint action that does justice to its embodied nature and to the multiple forms it can take. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Bill Kirkpatrick, associate professor of communication, presenting “Radio MD: Quacks, the AMA and the Radio Industry of the 1920s and ’30s.”

The role of genetic inheritance in defining physical characteristics in living organisms has been well established for over a century. But over the past several decades, genetic researchers have come to identify additional factors that drive these characteristics. “Epigenetics” describes inheritable elements that operate above-and-beyond genetic features, genes/DNA, to shape the characteristics of an individual and their descendants. In this talk, Thompson will outline current understanding of epigenetic inheritance and describe some examples of epigenetic phenomena, including work done recently in his lab to investigate the role that epigenetic inheritance plays in the cellular response to DNA damage caused by UV radiation. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Karen Spierling, associate professor of history and director of global commerce at Denison, presenting “Imagining the Protestant Reformation, 500 Years Later.”

This presentation explores the general education movement - a groundswell of writing and experimentation on creating, implementing, teaching, and evaluating curricula for secondary and postsecondary students between 1930 and 1960. It challenges the historical and contemporary interpretation that prestigious universities including Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago influenced the curriculum of high schools and institutions of higher learning across the nation. Kevin S. Zayed is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at Denison University where he teaches U.S. Education system and Critical Pedagogy. In the spring (2018) he will offer a seminar entitled "The ongoing Quest to Provide College for All". His research on curriculum reform and the history of general and liberal education has appeared in the Journal of General Education and Comparative and International Higher Education.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Denison professors Heather Rhodes and Sarah Wolff presenting “Service Learning on a Global Scale: Experiences partnering with a STEM program in Africa.”

We have always had an uneasy relationship with madness. The history of mental illness is, in many respects the history of silence, the history of shame. As a creative writer, Dr. Grandbois' discussion veers into a poetry reading and an excerpt from a stage-play, all written during his past year's sabbatical exploration of the history of the ways in which human beings talk about, tip-toe around, or turn away from those who suffer from mental illness and the consequences of that engagement or lack thereof when it comes to treatment and care. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

In contemporary U.S. politics, anger is a potent force that cements new communities even as it fractures others. In this presentation. Dr. Griffin looks at social media content that circulated during and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in order to parse out the relationships it forges between gender, activism, and political culture online. First, Dr. Hollis examines "Biden memes," which use imagined text and images of former Vice President Biden as a humorous way to express leftist anger. Second, he examines a meme created by writer and performer Amanda Duarte and "Feminist Fight Club" author Jessica Bennett. This meme gives voice to a sex-specific form of anger directed at comments made by then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail. While both memes feature ideas about anger and gender, their difference in tone - one humorous, one not - suggests different relationships to time. Dr. Griffin's research questions reside in that difference. How do we understand the anger about politics that circulates on social media in relation to cultural mores regarding sex and gender? How does anger operate as a motivating force for activism? How does the intensity of anger relate to the sustainability of active efforts? Finally, what does the circulation of anger on social media tell us about gender and U.S. politics more generally? From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

As part of the Denison Summer Travel Seminars, seven students and two faculty members spent a month in Martinique to examine the complex identity issues shaping this French overseas department whose geographical, historical, linguistic, cultural, and economic landscapes vastly differ from metropolitan France. In addition to being hosted by local families and attending lectures at the Université des Antilles, students conducted individually designed research projects, providing them a unique internal perspective of Martinican society. Drs. Armstrong and Mokam will provide a brief overview of the travel seminar and its goals, after which students will share their experiences and discuss their various research projects, focusing on phytotherapy, Zouk music, Creole cuisine, the rum industry, and gay marriage. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

Does civil society in the US maintain an independent role to play in American politics? One of the more remarkable happenings of 2016 was the white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump - twice divorced, obviously ignorant about religion, certainly not evangelical, formerly supportive of abortion rights and gay rights, and downright crude. This made for a (painfully) banner time to study religion and politics in the United States and I was there to crunch the numbers. Were evangelicals just holding their nose to support anyone but Hillary? Why did the #NeverTrump movement fail to pan out? Were evangelical clergy platoon leaders helping to mobilize the faithful? The answers to these specific questions help us address much larger concerns about US democratic health: Is religion still an influential force on individuals? Does civil society in the US maintain an independent role to play in American politics? From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

When did North Korea become a global bandit and villain that deserves “fire and fury that the world has never seen before?” How has been this small country in the Korean peninsula used to justify America’s military expansion in Asia-Pacific? What does Christianity (Americanized Protestantism in particular) have to do with America’s militarized foreign policy in Asia? How can we, as a learning community, talk about America’s wars in foreign countries? Contemplating these questions, my presentation critically re-examines America’s memory of the Korean War, conventionally known as “the Forgotten War” and the War’s legacy, including the division and conflict between North and South Koreas, the U.S.—South Korea relations, militarized prostitution around U.S. military bases in South Korea, transnational adoption, effects of napalm and civilian massacres, Korean immigration to the U.S. and peacemaking activism. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The idea of a sanctuary city has been stirring outrage for a long time. Debates in the news might seem the product of modern concerns surrounding immigration, race, and economic inequality. But, the idea has recurred for millennia. This talk explores what we can learn about today’s sanctuary cities by looking at monastic “Cities of Refuge” in early medieval Ireland. These settlements were among the largest and most economically complex settlements of their day. But, they were also sacred sites that offered sanctuary from prosecution and refuge to marginalized populations. With its tangle of roles, cities of refuge became the focal point for concerns about the borders of human communities. Reflecting on the conversation over communal borders in medieval Ireland may help untangle today’s conversations about Chicago and San Francisco. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The black-white wealth gap in the United States looms ominously over all facets of social life in the United States. Am emerging literature has documented the links between household wealth and health, education, segregation, inter-generational poverty, psychological well-being, and prosperity. In this presentation, Dr. Uribe discusses the different theoretical explanations and some new empirical work that attempts to untangle this complicated issue. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The Tuesday Lunch Series presents Denison Debates, hosted by associate professor of history Adam Davis, discussing the topic “Should Colleges Have Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings?” Panel Members: Dr. Barbara Fultner, Dr. Rebecca Kennedy, Dr. Veerendra Lele, & Dr. Fred Porcheddu

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Sheilah Wilson, associate professor of studio arts, presenting “Project Based Learning through The Billboard Project,” with Gina Dow, Fareeda Griffith, Megan Hancock and Emily Nemeth.

In the wake of Dylann Roof’s attack on parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, the state of South Carolina immediately sought Roof’s execution. The state response also included lowering the Confederate Flag from a memorial outside the State House. Taken together, these two actions suggest a considerable tension between the traditional/customary legitimacy of white supremacy and the rational/legal legitimacy of rational/legal authority. Pool’s talk will suggest that South Carolina’s prosecution of Roof was less about cleansing itself of white supremacy and more about shoring up its sovereignty. Further, Pool will argue that the symbolism of removing the Confederate Flag is an effort to mask the embeddedness of white supremacy in law.

Critical thinking can only be truly critical thinking if it is self- critical thinking, thinking that keeps in mind at every moment that it might not be correct. How is it possible to believe something strongly, and indeed to act on that belief, while recognizing that nonetheless one might be wrong to believe it? The twentieth-century philosopher Karl Popper developed an account of what it is to think critically about one’s own views according to which what was crucial wasn’t finding evidence to support them – that’s too easy, he argued, especially given the human tendency to “confirmation bias” – but rather being able to specify what evidence would lead one to give them up, and then investigate whether such evidence could be found. This idea of falsifiability has important and surprising implications, and I’ll try to describe some of them.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Denison Life Trustee Dr. David Bayley ’55, distinguished professor emeritus at SUNY-Albany, presenting “The Crisis in American Law Enforcement.” America faces a crisis in law enforcement growing out of the shooting of African-Americans –“Black Lives Matter”. The crisis involves three elements: race, police training, and guns. Bayley will examine each and conclude with an assessment of the prospects for reforming the police.

There has been a lot of general interest in the foreign policy implications of presidential personality over the past few months. Interestingly, there has been renewed focus among foreign policy analysts over the past couple of decades in the systematic study of how individual characteristics affect decisions of state. What are the limitations of presidential influence on foreign policy? How have insights from psychology helped political scientists better understand how individual characteristics can shape US foreign policy?

How do you tell a story when those listening ultimately determine the outcome? How can narrative and interactivity co-exist? In this presentation, Anderson attempts to answer these questions. Among game studies scholars, questions regarding the roles and definitions of interactivity and narrative are hotly debated, but Anderson performed a study in which he examined how players tell their own experiences playing games. Ultimately, he discovered a novel form of gameplay narrative, what he calls extraludic narrative, which describes the stories players tell about their gameplay experiences. This concept brings together theories of online community, narrative, and interactivity in order to take gameplay, and the stories we tell about it, seriously.

What is the future educational landscape of Finland made of? Is it slugs and snails, sugar and spice, or joy of learning, use of technology and digital tools, participatory approaches and assessment for learning? This presentation views the main issues emphasized in the reformation of basic education in Finland as stipulated by Government decrees and the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014).

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Jonathan Maskit, assistant professor of philosophy, presenting “The Aesthetics of Sustainable Living.” Public space and forms of transit can be organized in myriad ways. Different forms of transit and spatial organization make possible different forms of social interaction and thus different forms of life. Our current dominant form of spatial organization, based on widely dispersed buildings connected by roadways, both fosters a less social form of life and more energy consumption than denser forms of spatial organization. Rather than seeing global warming as a threat to a clearly superior form of life, we might thus welcome it as an opportunity to re-think how best to organize space, transit, and the tempo of our lives in order both to make those lives more humanely fulfilling and less energy intensive.

Drawing on insights from participation earlier this year in the National Student Leadership Diversity Convention in Atlanta, this presentation will explore best practices in diversity student leadership and consider their implications for inclusivity and diversity within Denison student organizations. Drs. Griffith, Sears, Chester, and Henshaw were the faculty representatives for this project which was supported by the Intercultural Excursions Initiative. Come hear from participants about how they learned to facilitate greater integration of empowerment, equity, and diversity into organizational practice.

This talk will discuss various ways in which faculty can connect concepts and engage students using fine art and cultural material. We will examine how faculty are currently using museum exhibitions and the permanent collection, as well as opportunities starting next semester. From research, creative writing, science, sociology, language, or fine art practice, the Museum is working with faculty to create experiential and integrative learning experiences linked to classroom content.

In keeping with the idea that “you don’t know a person until you’ve walked in his shoes,” in the spring of 2016 Rebecca Kennedy’s Ancient Greece class put on their figurative Greek sandals to learn about the life and culture of Athens in 403 B.C. In an experiential role-playing exercise called “The Threshold of Democracy,” students learn through concrete experience. This is part of a larger program, “Reacting to the Past,” which began at Barnard College, and has now spread to over 300 colleges and universities.

Manufacturing exports have been at the center of the Mexican development strategy since the mid-1980s, however this strategy has not resulted in higher economic growth when compared with the 1960-1980 period. This paper seeks to understand the reasons behind the mediocre results of this development strategy and its distributional implications. We use Input-Output analysis to study the empirical relationship between trade, inter-industry linkages, wage inequality and employment in the manufacturing sector in post NAFTA Mexico (1995-2011). Our results reveal that: 1) the manufacturing subsectors that produce for the export market tend to demand the least amount of inputs from the domestic economy, this means that these sectors tend to import intermediate inputs from abroad. Hence ignoring the importance of domestic value added (via strong BW linkages) has been an ineffective growth strategy, 2) these manufacturing subsectors tend to pay the lowest wages within the manufacturing sector and yet employ around half of the manufacturing working population. Therefore, contrary to the mainstream view wages in labor intensive sectors have not been increasing while wage inequality has been rising, 3) trade does not provide job security to workers since is not a stable source of jobs. I conclude this paper discussing the policy implications of the findings.

Do you know what the word “grammar” means? If you have ever learned a language in a classroom, you might have felt that the grammar you were learning was much easier than the one of your first language. Why? Because you were learning a pedagogical grammar, of course. But what if you had to dig deeper into the new language, and also into your first language? Would “grammar” be so easy and clear? This presentation will explore how online corpora (or corpuses?) helped with analyzing language variation in a Spanish as a second language classroom and understanding what kinds of perceptions language learners hold about variation and corpora. Did they know what “grammar” meant?

This past Summer, Micaela Vivero went to do an artist residency at Canac in the small village of Marnay-sur-Seine, 1 hour south of Paris. She stayed there for 1 month and produced 4 artworks. Find out more about these works and her stay in this edition of the Denison's Tuesday Faculty Lunch!

Sixteen years ago Dick and other faculty from Ohio State and Denison (including Mike Mickelson, John Jackson, Susan Richardson and Joan Novak) organized community meetings protesting the presence of the Moundbuilders Country Club on the Newark Octagon. Since then he and a team of others have been very busy working to change the way we understand American History by focusing upon 2000 year old earthen enclosures here in Ohio. In addition to the Newark Earthworks Center they have created networks that include the leaders of the federally recognized American Indian tribes that were removed from Ohio in the nineteenth century as well as archaeologists and academics in a wide variety of fields. In addition to creating new university courses, including one which features a 70-mile pilgrimage walk from Chillicothe to Newark, they have hosted numerous symposia and published a book with the University of Virginia Press. With a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities they created an amazing website www.ancientohiotrail.org. And the list goes on ....

Abstract: The question of gender rights seen as something else than human rights has been a universal reality. Islam has been under severe criticism regarding gender issues. It has been due to the conservative exegeses by Muslim themselves furthered misunderstanding. I t is not Islam that does give rights to women, it is the male mindset, like anywhere in the world continues to subjugate women as the expression of power. One can confidently establish a premise That this is a result of short sighted superiority and lack of consciousness about equal gender roles. In Muslim societies the denial of modernity drove them to being social rejects in international community. The western perception is basically dependent upon this attitude and the need of the moment requires to clear the webs of ignorance by highlighting the objective contours. We have to understand that every religion generates values for cultural norms., and we have to address this cultural sensitivity in the perspective of diversity. Bio: An eminent professional, culture expert, literary critic and analyst, gender and human rights activist, educationist and social analyst, Dr. Arfa Sayeda Zehra has gained prominence in society due to her exemplary work in these areas. Her achievements in literature and history are attributed to her skills to articulate her intellect with eloquence. She takes pride in being a humble student of life and honors in her roots that lie in the great literary tradition and glorious history of South Asia.

The Bluecoats Drum Corps is a highly selective, international music and dance ensemble that has trained at Denison since 2006. During the 2016 training at Denison, color guard and low brass Bluecoats participated in experiments exploring the neural basis of their artistic expertise. This talk will provide a glimpse into how Bluecoats tick.

Alison Williams, Associate Provost for Diversity & Intercultural Education, shares what is happening to make Denison an inclusive & diverse community. She highlights new initiatives, upcoming programming, and solicits input from members of the audience about their perspective on diversity on campus.

Cancer is a disease of the old – its occurrence increasing as the average age of a population increases. However, cancer has been noted in medical history for more than four thousand years, described in the writings of Egyptian physician Imhotep (~2625 BCE). The first recorded tumor surgery was performed by a Greek slave on the Persian queen Atossa around 400 BCE. For centuries cancer was thought to be caused by an excess of “black bile,” one quarter of the four humors used to explain the workings of the human body, first popularized by Hippocrates (~400 BCE) and Cladius Galen (160 CE). Early treatments for the disease were limited to one of two options: extirpation, if the cancer was recognized as an operable tumor, or “remote sympathy.” It wasn’t until the twentieth century that new treatments were devised, namely radiation and chemotherapy. Since the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, and the rapid pace of biochemistry and molecular biology research, significant progress has been made in our understanding of the biological mechanisms of cancer, and as a result, many specific targeted cancer therapies are being investigated.

The Back-to-the-Land movement of the 1970’s consisted of a subculture of young people who consciously chose to ‘return’ to living more simply in the countryside of Atlantic Canada. These urban turned country dwellers often chose to do without modern amenities, such as running water or electricity, as part of a self-sustaining ideal --- manifested in the gardening, home building and community that was developed among the likeminded. ‘Sweetly the Pilgrim / Slowly the Way’, commissioned for the show Back- to-the-Landers: Doing it Our Way at the Confederation Centre in Prince Edward Island, investigates this legacy, attempting to disentangle it from the nostalgia and glorification of the past. I will talk about the process of interviewing back-to-the-landers and documenting their homes, and the challenge of how to visually represent the complexity of shared experience.