Faculty Friday Spotlight: February 2024

Joseph R. Gladden Public Lecture Set for February 8

Professor of Economics Li Qi has been honored this year with the Joseph R. Gladden Lectureship and will present her talk entitled, “See the Herd and Follow the Crowd: an Investment Decision Study,” on Thursday, February 8 at 5 p.m.

More Americans than ever own stocks due to an explosion in investment activities fueled by the pandemic and zero-commission trading apps. When it comes to investing, do you follow the crowd?

Professor Qi uses new eye-tracking technology to study the visual attention one allocates between private information, the crowd’s actions during stock trading and its connection to herding tendencies.

Come hear more at Professor Qi’s talk on Thursday in Graves Auditorium in Campbell Hall.

Smart Money

Professor of Theatre Toby Emert recently attended the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Columbus, Ohio, where he presented two sessions: “Image Theatre: Tableau Vivant as a Reading Comprehension Strategy” and “Forward-thinking: Considering NCTE’s History of LGBTQ+ Advocacy and What’s Next.” Emert’s production, “Million Bazillion: The Musical,” the project for which he and Bonnie Perdue received an NEH grant, is well underway and will debut on campus February 22-25, 2024.

Seminars and Publications

Finan Co-Authors Chapter

Regina Finan, assistant professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling in Graduate Studies, co-authored a chapter in the recently published text Identity as Resilience in Minoritized Communities. The text is part of the Emerging Issues in Family and Individual Resilience book series published by Springer. The chapter, Queer and Trans Resilience: Moving from Affirmation to Liberation in Our Collective Healing, was written by Finan, Anneliese A. Singh and Rebekah Estevez. In their chapter, the authors describe key constructs related to affirmative and liberatory helping approaches with queer and 2STNB (two-spirit, trans, nonbinary) people, as well as the implications for these approaches, including strength-based perspectives, family resilience, policy and practice intersections, and future directions.

Morris Recognized for Research Excellence

The Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council recently recognized associate professor of History and chair Robin Morris with the Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archives for her book, “Goldwater Girls to Reagan Women: Gender, Georgia, and the Growth of the New Right.” The Georgia Archives praised her work in their press release, “Morris uses original interviews and archival research in personal papers of women activists in the Georgia New Right movement to reveal the motivations and actions that transformed the state from blue to red. Rather than a male-dominated, top-down approach, Morris centers her historical account on the middle-class white women whose actions changed the political landscape of the state and ultimately the country.”

Professor Morris also attended the Oral History Association meeting in Baltimore, where she presented the Scottie Quarantine project. The session, “Big, Small, In-Person, and Online: Incorporating Oral History into Classrooms, Revisited,” focused on opportunities, challenges, and ethics of doing oral history in the undergraduate classroom. Through the Scottie Quarantine project, Morris worked with librarian Chris Bishop and her LDR 101 and Oral History classes to document the pandemic education experience of Agnes Scott staff, faculty, and students.

Johns Hopkins Welcomes D’Amico for Paper Presentation

Visiting Assistant Professor of French John D’Amico presented a paper entitled “Queer Temporal Passages: Andrew Holleran and the Remembrance of Things Past,” at the 48th annual 19th-century French Studies Colloquium hosted by Johns Hopkins University. His paper explored what he calls a “Proust Network” by studying the passage of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu—and its translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff as Remembrance of Things Past—into the literary creations of gay and lesbian American writers during the 1970s. In particular, he takes the singular encounter of Holleran with Proust’s text as exemplary of this broader phenomenon or “network.”

Ocasio Interviewed About Latest Book

New Books Network recently interviewed Charles A. Dana Professor of Spanish Rafael (Rafa) Ocasio, about his book, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum (U Florida Press, 2022). New Books describes the text: “Through a multidisciplinary approach bridging educational, historiographic and literary perspectives, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas illuminates how Arenas’s work remains a cutting-edge source of inspiration for today’s audiences, particularly LGBTQI readers. It shows how Arenas’s aesthetics contain powerful insights for exploring dissensus, whether in the context of Cuba, broader Pan-American and Latinx-U.S. queer movements of social justice, or transnational citizenship politics. Carefully dissecting Arenas’s themes against the backdrop of his political activity, this book presents the writer’s poetry, novels, and plays as a curriculum of dissidence that provides models for socially engaged intellectual activism.”

Iqbal Featured in Popular Blog, Other Things

Writer Tuve Floden recently interviewed Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Chair Roshan Iqbal for the blog Other Things, which focuses on lesser-known people, places, and things from Middle Eastern culture and history. The American Academy of Religion and the Luce Foundation gave Floden grant support for the “Interviewing Religion” project, in which scholars of Middle Eastern religions are interviewed about their research. Professor Iqbal’s engaging interview discusses her work and provides suggestions for other scholars, books and films.

New Translations Available of Wu’s Book “Awakening Dignity”

Associate Professor of History Shu-chin Wu’s book of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhist master Phakchok Rinpoche, Awakening Dignity: Awakening a Life of Deep Fulfillment, has been translated into Spanish and Chinese. Professor Wu tells us that the Chinese title is “You Are Love. No Need to Search Elsewhere.” Awakening Dignity was also a 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in the Spirituality category.

Uwaifo Oyelere Tackles Housing Crisis in Co-Authored Paper

Dr. Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere co-authored an online paper in the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy entitled “In Need of a Roof: Pandemic and Housing Vulnerability.” Using the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) launched by the U.S. Census Bureau in April 2020, Oyelere examines the correlates of housing vulnerability and explores heterogeneity in the evolution of housing vulnerability during the pandemic along demographic characteristics such as ethnicity and housing type–renter vs. owner. Her research found that Asians experienced a unique increase in housing vulnerability, more than other ethnic/racial groups, particularly for Asian renters, between 2020 and 2021. The research possibly shows a chilling effect on Asians during the pandemic (2000–2022).

Quick Bits