University community reports recent presentations, publications and appointments
For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Recent presentations, publications and appointments include the following:
Presentations
On Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023, Scott Abbott, policy scientist at the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA) and the assistant director of the Delaware Center for Civics Education, moderated a panel at the annual conference for the American Historical Association in Philadelphia. The panel focused on “The Ethics of Teaching History in Today’s K–12 Classrooms” and was presented by the National Humanities Center. Abbott led a panel discussion with co-panelists Tyrone Shaw (McKinley Technology High School, Washington, D.C.), Elizabeth Mulcahy (Albemarle County Schools, Virginia), Adam Davis (School District of Philadelphia) and Mike Williams (National Humanities Center, North Carolina). These secondary school teachers and school administrators shared the challenges they experience teaching history in K-12 classrooms today given the current political climate and discussed the question, “In this current polarized and politicized climate, how can history teachers balance their commitment to using history to make sense of our present reality with importance of preserving the ways in which the past was radically and qualitatively different?” IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
Video recordings are now available of two public lectures about the British artist and author Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) that were delivered on Oct. 7, 2022, by Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and professor of humanities, and by Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press. They can be viewed online here. Stetz’s talk, “In Bed with Beardsley,” considers the importance of images of beds and bedrooms in Aubrey Beardsley’s art and writing, linking these not only with Beardsley’s forward-looking ideas about sexuality, but with his medical history and early death. Samuels Lasner’s talk, “Beardsleyophily,” surveys the long and continuing story of why Beardsley has been the subject of obsessive interest on the part of book and art collectors while focusing, too, on how Samuels Lasner himself has acquired important examples of Beardsley’s work. Both lectures were held in conjunction with the exhibition Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young at the Grolier Club in New York City (Sept. 8–Nov. 12, 2022), which was curated by Stetz and Samuels Lasner and displayed 69 items, all of them drawn from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, which is part of the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press. (The published catalogue of the exhibition, written by Margaret Stetz, is available from the University of Chicago Press.) On Oct. 7, 2022, Stetz and Samuels Lasner gave an afternoon tour of the exhibition to a group of visitors from the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. In addition, Samuels Lasner conducted tours of the exhibition for the public on Oct. 12 and on Nov. 9, as well as a private tour on Oct. 28 to a group from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. He also delivered a virtual version of his lecture on “Beardsleyophily” to the Philobiblon Club, which is based in Philadelphia. Before the exhibition closed, it received a series of highly positive reviews in numerous print and online publications, including the New Yorker magazine, Artnet News and Artforum.
On Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, the annual Delaware Winter Freight Meeting took place at Chesapeake Utilities in Dover, Delaware, presented by the Delmarva Freight Working Group, which includes UD’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA), as well as the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), Dover/Kent County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), Salisbury/Wicomico MPO and WILMAPCO. Troy Mix, policy scientist and associate director of IPA, moderated and helped to organize the gathering. Presenters included Jared Shelton of Chesapeake Utilities, Dan Rattay of CBRE, Linda Parkowski of Kent Economic Partnership, Marilyn Smith of Dover/Kent County MPO, Mark Eastburn of DelDOT, Ian Ramsey of Dot Foods and Richard Hernandez of Perdue Farms. This annual meeting brought together regional freight, goods movement and economic development stakeholders to enhance awareness of major freight planning programs and initiatives, while also sharing information on significant freight and goods movement trends and encouraging public-private partnership development. IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
Publications
Daniel Kinderman, associate professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, recently published "’Free us up so we can be responsible!’ The co-evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility and neo-liberalism in the UK, 1977–2010" in the journal Socio-Economic Review. Kinderman uses examples from the United Kingdom to challenge the concept that corporate social responsibility and neo-liberalism are incompatible. The article was featured as one of the publication’s top 20 most appreciated articles in a special issue celebrating the journal’s 20th anniversary.
Angela J. Hattery, professor of women and gender studies and co-director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence, has published essay on the impact of solitary confinement on the staff who work in these units. The essay, entitled "Reform Solitary Confinement by Addressing the Impact on Staff," appears in The Crime Report, a comprehensive news service covering the diverse challenges and issues of 21st century criminal justice in the U.S. and abroad.
Saleem Ali, the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment and chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, who also holds a secondary appointment in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, has coauthored the book Adaptive Governance to Manage Human Mobility and Natural Resource Stress, published online by Cambridge University Press on Jan. 10, 2023. The book looks at connections between how resources and migration operate as a complex adaptive system rather than being premised in linear, causal mechanisms. “This study is part of a much larger global assessment on the linkages between human migration/mobility and natural resources, which I am leading for the United Nations,” said Ali. “We hope it can provide informed guidance to policymakers on a sensitive and divisive issue.” Martin Clifford, a postdoctoral research fellow with Ali on the project, is a coauthor of the book.
Yasser Payne, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, is the coauthor of a new book, Murder Town, USA: Homicide, Structural Violence and Activism in Wilmington, with Brooklyn Hitchens and Darryl Chambers, to be published by Rutgers University Press. The book uses a street-ethnography approach to tell the story of 15 people formerly involved with the streets in Wilmington, Delaware, who became activists related to gun violence. The book is scheduled to be released in July and can be preordered now.
Earl Smith, professor of women and gender studies, Angela J. Hattery, professor of women and gender studies and co-director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence, and Marissa Kiss, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University, have published an essay on the "hidden" hurdles that Black men who coach in the National Football League (NFL) face, when trying for the permanent head-coaching job. In a league that is more than 70% Black players, there are now two Black head coaches of the 32 teams. All 32 teams are owned by white men (or their wives when they die). Entitled “Black Interim Coaches in the NFL,” the article was published Jan. 9, 2023, in The Society Pages, an open-access social sciences project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.
Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, reviewed two books in the last issue of Lumină Lină“, Revistă de spiritualitate şi cultură românească, New York (An XXVII/ Nr. 4 Octombrie - Decembrie 2022): the literary text Clash of times - a novel by Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe (Warszawa, 2018) and the academic publication The Art of Interpretation - A Taiwanese Voice / Hermeneutic Philosophy and Reading by Paul Tseng (Taipeh, 2022). Meyer-Dinkgraefe, well known as theatre researcher, is a gifted storyteller. Haus said his distinctly nonpostmodern quality challenges the mindset of Gen Z — not that the characters feel so much as the reader. The cumulative effect isn’t necessarily a fully fleshed-out character but a fully emotional experience. Meyer-Dinkgraefe knows the importance of drawing readers into a scene. to see what has gone unseen, unspoken. The reader discovers unnerving whispers: Every day may be the last, relationships may end or at least prove less fulfilling than hoped, and the future seems more uncertain than ever. Tseng, the theological scholar, follows the worldwide dominating academia view that a methodology of interpretation contains a conception of the aims of interpretation and a system of principles of interpretation, including rules for the critical testing of interpretational hypotheses. Haus says both works have in common, what Brecht describes as "thinking capable of intervention.“
Appointments
Sean O’Neill, policy scientist in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA), was recently elected as president of the Delaware Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA). APA is a professional organization representing the field of urban planning in the United States, and it functions as a forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals who work in the field of urban and community planning. APA also publishes the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). Prior to joining IPA in 2017, O’Neill was an active member of the Pennsylvania and Maryland Chapters of APA and was named New Planner of the Year by APA Maryland in 2009. He has been a member of the APA Delaware Executive Committee since 2018. APA Delaware has approximately 160 professional members and a 17-person executive committee. O’Neill has assisted the chapter with communication efforts to improve the website and expand its social media presence. He actively served as vice president for the past two years while also contributing to several chapter sub-committees. The official presidential “passing of the gavel” ceremony took place at the chapter’s annual meeting on Dec. 14, 2022, at the Buena Vista Conference Center in New Castle, Delaware. IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
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