News and notes from around the College of Liberal Arts…
ART & ART HISTORY: Work created by Professor Nancy Palmeri during her Faculty Development Leave this spring was included in a recent exhibition at Brookhaven College in Dallas. The exhibit ran from March 21-April 6. … Film professor Bart Weiss was one of several UT Arlington faculty and students tapped to speak at TEDxUTA last month. … The website, Art This Week, featured a videotaped conversation between Jeff Gibbons (MFA, ’13) and Visiting Assistant Professor Stephen Lapthisophon. … Assistant Professor Darryl Lauster‘s work is being exhibited at the Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas, Dallas Art News reported. … In a Dallas Morning News Pop Culture blog, Assistant Professor Ya’Ke Smith shared some of his thoughts about the feature documentary, “Evolution of a Criminal,” which showed at the Dallas International Film Festival. The film is an autobiographical portrait of Darius Monroe, who robbed a bank at 16, and chronicles his quest to find redemption years later. … Later this year, Fort Worth’s Wyeth String Quartet will perform and record the soundtrack to Heaven, a film directed by Smith, Fort Worth Weekly reported. Composer Micah Hayes, an instructor and music business area coordinator with the Department of Music, wrote the score. … In conjunction with the exhibition, “Let the Drip from the Ceiling Become an 8 Foot Hole in the Roof,” CentralTrak hosted several interviews including one with Visiting Assistant Professor Justin Ginsberg, Art This Week.com reported. … “Endeavour,” a short film by MFA candidate Brendan Feltrup-Exum, was selected for the 2014 Hill Country Film Festival in Fredericksburg. … A Dallas Observer question-and-answer piece featured William Sarradet (’13), a “need-to-know artist” in Dallas’ underground art scene. Of his time at UT Arlington, Sarradet said: “UTA afforded me time in a real studio with real tools, and also valuable conversations with art professionals and people that get paid within the art industry.” … Alumni Tim Lautensack, Jonathan Irwin and Ben Bologna of Star Conspiracy won 21 awards in the American Advertising Federation (AAF) ADDY Awards competition in February, including the People’s Choice Award and a special judges award for “Best of Interactive.”
COMMUNICATION: Univision Dallas interviewed Broadcast Lecturer Julian Rodriguez about the Women’s Conference hosted last month at UT Arlington by UTA News en Español. The one-day event will offer women information about immigration rights and the financial aid process. … Assistant Professor Karishma Chatterjee and co-author Paul Kozar have had a paper accepted for publication by the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy. The paper is entitled “Competing discourse surrounding primary caregivers of hospice patients.” … Assistant Professor Sabrina Habib traveled to Atlanta last month to present a paper entitled, “Accessing the Digital Muse: A Grounded Theory of Advertising Creativity,” at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Advertising. … Communication Specialist Jeff Williams also attended the conference to serve and moderate on a panel with co-author Habib entitled, “Wish List: From industry professionals to university professors.” The panel looked at the current state of advertising creative education from the industry point-of-view. … Advertising lecturer George Weems helped judge the AAF District 10 Club Achievement competition in February. … Students in Weems‘ advertising course participated in the “AAF Agency Crawl” last week. Members of Fort Worth ad agencies Ilfusion, Balcom, Warren Douglas, Pavlov, and Schaefer met with students and promoted internships. … Communication lecturer Stacy Salmon was the guest speaker at a workshop hosted by the Delta Sigma Pi pledge class and chapter last month. Salmon shared her communication expertise by providing attendees information and tips on organizing and delivering speeches. … Communication lecturer Carie Kapellusch hosted a recent workshop on resume building for Association for Women in Communications (AWC) members. Senior Lecturer Mindia Whittier spoke to AWC members about balancing work and home life for women in the workplace. … Dominic Bracco II (’08) received a Mongabay.org Special Reporting Initiative award for environmental reporting, Mongabay.com reported. His piece examined whether there is demand for sustainable fisheries’ products in China. … Brandon Hurtado (’11), an interactive marketing analyst at Exeter Finance, shared resume tips and tricks during PRSSA’s March 20 meeting. Hurtado provided one-on-one resume critiques for students who attended the meeting. … Jordan Victorin (’13) was promoted to co-host for “The Starting Lineup” at KCLE 1460 in Cleburne. … Matthew Howell (’12) was recently promoted to web application developer for Qualbe Marketing Group in Fort Worth. … Emily Suied (’11) has accepted a position as assistant account executive with Edelman Public Relations in Chicago. … Journalism student Lydia Regalado was interviewed by Michael Young, Dallas Morning News sports reporter for a story on the 20th anniversary of the Ballpark in Arlington. … Students from the Department of Communication were among those asked to participate in a Q&A session with Dr. Sanjay Gupta at UTA’s Maverick Speakers Series event. Dr. Gupta posed for a photo with students after the lecture concluded. … Broadcast major Jimena Fraga, tech director of UTA News en Español, has been accepted to FOX 4’s summer internship program. … Broadcast major Omar Castillon, tech director of UTA News, has been offered a position as morning newscast production assistant for CBS 11.
CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Reason.com cited a bullying study by Assistant Professor Seokjin Jeong in its article about Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. She is campaigning to ban the use of the word “bossy” to describe the behavior of assertive women. The article linked her approach to anti-bullying campaigns, which Jeong found can have the opposite of the intended effect whether dealing with verbal, emotional or physical bullying. … Associate Professor Tara O’Conner Shelley (Colorado State University) will talk about prescription drug abuse and law enforcement response at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, in the Red River Room of the E.H. Hereford University Center. The guest lecture is hosted by the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
ENGLISH: Professor Ken Roemer will be the keynote speaker at the Culture of Writing Festival at Mountain View College in Dallas this week. … Associate Professor Penelope Ingram received an honorable mention in for UT Arlington’s 2013-2014 Outstanding Academic Advisor Award. … Senior Amanda Galvin has been awarded a full tuition scholarship to attend the New York State Summer Writers Institute this year at Skidmore College. … Several English majors presented their research during the 2014 Annual Celebration of Excellence in Students conference last month. Participating students included Tiler Bates, Monica Marchi, Jennifer Omaña, Alison Torres Ramos, Rod S. Sachs and JennahRose Shakespeare.
HISTORY: History major Lindsey Anderson won the Provost’s Award for her undergraduate oral presentation last month at ACES, UT Arlington’s Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students. Her talk, “Creating Black and Brown Female Disability: Historical Assumptions and Independent Realities,” was mentored by adjunct instructor Ray Jordan II (Center for African American Studies). … Professor Thomas Adam told the German-language journal Die Stiftung that he wouldn’t recommend that foundations acquire government bonds as investments for their assets because of the German government’s poor track record safeguarding them. Die Stiftung is the central news publication for the nonprofit sector in German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). … Senior Brittany Graham has been accepted to Columbia University’s African American studies master’s program. … Graduate student Kristen Burton recently won the Marc Friedlaender Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The funding allows her to work at the society for four weeks this fall or winter.
LINGUISTICS & TESOL: Four Linguistics and TESOL students presented work in the Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students at UT Arlington on March 26, 2014. Doctoral students Darcey Browning and Libby Tatz, and undergraduates Devin Hornick and Nicholas Matthews, each present their research. … The DFW-ASLTA (American Sign Language Association) hosted a mini-conference on the UT Arlington campus April 4-5 for 70 educators and professors from Texas and Oklahoma. Lecturer Traci Weast (Ph.D., ’08) presented “Step-by-Step With Quizstar,” on online assessments and tutorials. … Two UT Arlington linguists presented at the inaugural Texas Digital Humanities Conference at the University of Houston this week. Associate Professor and Department Chair Laurel Stvan presented a poster on “Corpus linguistics of the vernacular: ‘catching a cold’ in text types that complement Google Books data” while doctoral student Darcey Browning presented a paper on “Information Packaging with Hashtags: Repair on Twitter.” … Doctoral student Mohamed Mwamzandi will present a paper, “Swahili Demonstrative Position,” on April 17 at the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at the University of Kansas. … The Language Documentation Crowd, a blog on crowd-sourcing documentation projects, covered February’s UTASCILT (UTA Student Conference in Linguistics and TESOL) event. … Wenhua Jin (Ph.D., ’08) recently received tenure at Kennesaw State University and was promoted to associate professor of Chinese.
MODERN LANGUAGE: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education noted the promotion of Sonja Stephenson Watson to associate professor of Spanish. She will also serve as director of UT Arlington’s Women’s and Gender Studies program next year.
MUSIC: Josef Bobula (’06) and his wife were included in a New York Times article about entertainers who work a variety of jobs. … Chicago Jazz magazine online interviewed saxophonist Caroline Davis (’04) about her rising status and recent move to New York City. The UT Arlington alumna credited her teachers, including Bill Snodgrass, former director of jazz studies, for helping her along her musical path.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: Associate Professor and Department Chair Rebecca Deen was quoted in a San Antonio Express-News story about a tweet by the campaign for Sen. Wendy Davis that linked the equal pay for women issue with a picture of Greg Abbott lifting a chain. “It’s inflammatory — which maybe is what you want on Twitter. But I’m not sure that it helps you,” Deen said. … The Press-Enterprise.com (Riverside, Calif.) noted that Professor José Angel Gutierrez was part of a panel discussion last month at California State University, San Bernardino focused on Latinos in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. … Associate Professor Brent Sasley wrote a guest piece for the political science blog, Political Violence @ a Glance, on group emotions and violence. Sasley was also quoted in an Agence France-Presse report on politics and upcoming elections in Turkey. … Russia holds all the political cards in the ongoing controversy surrounding the Ukraine and Crimea, Associate Professor Allan Saxe told KTXD Channel 47. The Texas Daily show interviewed Saxe on that political debate. … Political Science major Kelly Walters was one of several UT Arlington faculty and students tapped to speak at TEDxUTA last month. … International Law Reporter blog noted the new book by Assistant Professor Heidi Hardt, Time to React: The Efficiency of International Organizations in Crisis Response, which examines the efficiency of international organizations in crisis response.
SOCIOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGY: Professor Karl Petruso (Anthropology), dean of the Honors College, was interviewed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Life & Arts section in anticipation of the new Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibition at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. … Professor Ben Agger was quoted in the Brazilian magazine Galileu in an article on “selfies,” the popular practice of shooting one’s own picture and posting it on social media. Agger said photos like this won’t replace written communication and are often open to interpretation. Agger was also quoted for a German website in an article on the same topic. … The new curator at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology, former Visiting Assistant Professor Matt Taylor (Anthropology), wants the museum to emphasize El Paso’s archaeological past, instead of focusing on the general Southwest, the El Paso Times reported.
THEATRE ARTS: Specialist Michelle Harvey‘s backdrop from the Maverick Theatre Company’s October 2013 production of “The Government Inspector” was exhibited at the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) national conference last month as part of the stage expo in the inaugural juried scenic painting exhibit. … Senior Lecturer Julienne Greer and Harvey co-authored an article, “University of Texas at Arlington’s 3D Model of Education,” for the March issue of Stage Directions Magazine. The magazine was distributed at the annual USITT conference in Fort Worth last month. … Greer will perform in the production of “The Other Place” by Sharr White through May at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth. … Senior Lecturer Brandi Andrade will perform in “Fox on the Fairway at Onstage in Bedford. The show opened last week. … Assistant Professor Anne Healy was awarded the 2014 Theatre Arts Educator Award by the Live Theatre League of Tarrant County. Healy will officially receive her award at the Scott Theatre in Fort Worth on April 14. … Healy will attend and present at the 15th Biennial Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference on North American Studies in Helsinki, Finland, on May 12-16. The title of her accepted paper is “Cultures Colliding: Musical Dramatization of Americans in the World.” … Lecturer Laurel Whitsett will interpret two productions in MavPlays through sign language. Whitsett will be at the April 16 shows of “No Lifeguard on Duty” and “Gruesome Playground Injuries.” … Glenn Long (’15) will perform in the play “Lend Me a Tenor” at the Frisco Community Theatre, April 25-May 11. … Elia Madrid-Onofre‘s (’14) cartooning and graphic skills were selected by The Daily Dot to participate in a Valentines Day comic which pairs up writers and artists who don’t know each in a “blind date.” … Senior Jorge Lanuza has been offered the Master Carpenter position at the Jenny Wiley Theatre this summer. … Senior Jailene Torres will be working as a costume intern for Uptown Players in Dallas this summer. … Senior Courtney Gwosdz worked on a new short film, “Film Noir,” which is finishing up post-production and will premiere shortly. … Sophomore Emma Luke recently completed extra work on an NBC pilot show, “Salvation.”
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