News and notes from around the College of Liberal Arts…
ART & ART HISTORY: MFA candidate Maryam Rezaei was recently named the Grand Prize Winner of the Society of Korea Illusart International Illustration & Design Competition. Rezael was also selected for the “Rising Eyes of Texas” juried exhibition by the Rockport Center for Arts. … “Wolf,” the award-winning drama by Assistant Professor Ya’Ke Smith, is now available for digital download via iTunes, Vudu, XBox, PlayStation, Amazon and Google Play. View the trailer here. … Senior Lecturer Mihyun Kim has been selected as one of five winners in the 2014 EyeO Festival Artist Fellowship competition. … Last month, Kristen Semento was named as the McNair Scholar in Art History for the Spring 2014 program. … Associate Professor Bart Weiss, founder of “3 Stars Jewish Cinema,” participated in a Feb. 25 panel discussion regarding the life and work of exiled 20th Century composer Eric Wolfgang Korngold, the DallasOpera.org reported. … Dallas filmmaker Daniel Laabs preparing his latest short film, “Easy,” for the 2014 South by Southwest competition, CultureMap Dallas reported. Laabs’ film “8” won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Texas Short at SXSW in 2011. Laabs began his film career as a UT Arlington student where his short film, Sleet/Snow, was selected for the AFI Dallas Film Festival in 2009. … MFA candidate Gladys Chow won “The Excellence Prize Award” in the 2013 Society of Korea Illusart contest.
CENTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES: Dr. Stephane Dunn (Morehouse College) will present “’Scary Sistas’: Imagining Tough Black Femininity From Page to Screen” at noon Wednesday, March 5, in the Central Library Sixth Floor Parlor as part of Women’s History Month. The event is co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies program.
CENTER FOR MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES: Patricia de los Rios, a professor from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, was a guest speaker in the Center for Mexican American Studies’ Spring 2014 Speaker Series on March 3. Upcoming series guests include: Marcela Terrazas (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) on April 7, Antonio Flores (National Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities) on April 16, and Miguel Alvarez (a recent MFA graduate) on April 23.
COMMUNICATION: The Christian Science Monitor quoted Assistant Professor Dustin Harp about the decision by Sports Illustrated to put the Barbie doll on the cover of the magazine’s 50th anniversary swimsuit edition. The move has been criticized for objectifying women. “What I’m finding fascinating about this is that we’ve already had this Sports Illustrated ideal image of women that is unattainable and unreal – and literally unreal, because they’re always Photoshopped,” Harp said. “And now we’ve moved to just having an unreal woman.” … Associate Professor and Department Chair Charla Markham Shaw traveled to Spokane, Wash., last month to present a paper at the Walter Ong Conference at Gonzaga University. The paper is entitled “Creating Super Mom: Secondary Orality and Pinterest.” … Shaw is serving as a faculty guest speaker at this week’s Multicultural Affairs 7th Annual Diversity Week event at UT Arlington. She will present the Maversity Workshop: Communication Across Diverse Groups lunch discussion at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6 in the Guadalupe Room of the E.H. Hereford University Center. … Lecturer Melanie Mason received high praise for her role as Doris in the ONSTAGE production of “Same Time, Next Year” in Bedford last month, according to an online review. Mason is also directing a children’s production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at Creative Arts Theatre & School in Arlington. … Lecturer Julian Rodriguez was quoted in a La Estrella story about the impact of Gloria Campos, the longtime anchor who is retiring from WFAA/ABC8 this month. Rodriguez said the Spanish-speaking Campos was a representative for Hispanic people. … Andrew Pryor (’88) was recently appointed Chief Human Resources Officer of Anthelio Healthcare Solutions. … Erikka Neroes (’11) has a new position as the public information officer for Dallas County Health and Human Services (DCHHS). … Patrick Jackson (’12) has been named the national account manager for Echo Global Logistics in Dallas. … Bitty Reilly (’12) is now working in graphic design, web developing and technical writing for Synergy Industries. … Nicole Durham (’12) began her new role as account manager at Schaefer Advertising in January. … Andrea Condori (’13) started a new job as public relations/social media coordinator at Concussion Advertising last month. … Natalie Webster (’13), former editor-in-chief of The Shorthorn, is now a newspaper producer at the E.W. Scripps Company in Corpus Christi. … Rachel Snyder (’13) is a reporter for The Chickasha Express-Star. … Graduate student Katherine Bennett’s abstract was selected for presentation at the upcoming Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students (ACES) Symposium on March 26 in E.H. Hereford University Center. … Daniel Puente, a communication technology student, was recognized with a Citizen Certificate of Merit by the Arlington Police Department for his work in redesigning the volunteer page for the APD. … Cub Scouts from Troop 478 in Arlington toured the UTA Radio facilities on Feb. 22 in an effort to earn a badge related to communication and technology. The scouts, all first-graders, got to see a live, on-air demonstration. … Students in Associate Professor Thomas Christie’s fall 2013 public relations campaigns class were applauded for their efforts in assisting the North Texas Youth Education Town through a service learning project. The students created a public relations plan for the nonprofit after-school activities center, supported by the National Football League and Salvation Army. The students received a letter of recognition from Emmitt Smith, former Dallas Cowboys player and chair of the North Texas Youth Education Town. The Arlington center was built thanks to $1 million donation from the NFL.
CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Department Chair and Professor Alex del Carmen recently presented a yearly report on racial profiling incidents to the Midland City Council, finding no reports that met the definition of the Texas Profiling Law in 2013, the Midland Reporter-Telegram said. … Master’s cohort student Karen Donahue was recently named South District Officer of the Year for Arlington Police Department. … Shahrzad Pakbin (MA, ’10) was named “Technical/Exempt Professional Employee of the Year” by the Arlington Police Department. … The Center for Criminal Justice Research and Training, with partners from the Arlington Police Department, is working with owners of the social media application Nextdoor on a new research project. The goal is to measure the use of the application, its utility to inform, and citizens’ perception of crime. Participating faculty members include Professor Alex del Carmen, Assistant Professor Jaya Davis, Senior Lecturer Rhonda Dobbs, Senior Lecturer Randall Butler and Visiting Assistant Professor Chris Copeland.
HISTORY: While the headlines have focused on individual ballplayers punished for using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, a new paper by Assistant Professor Sarah Rose suggests that Major League Baseball and its profit-driven culture is to blame, Digital Journal.com reported. … Graduate student Kristen Burton has been selected as a 2014-15 fellow for the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. Her fellowship will begin in September.
LINGUISTICS & TESOL: Photos from the UT Arlington Student Conference in Linguistics and TESOL, held late last month, are now on the department’s Facebook page. … Assistant Professor Suwon Yoon and Masaya Yoshida (Northwestern University) will present a paper, “When are Clause-Final Verbs Facilitated in Korean?” at the East Asian Psycholinguistics Colloquium on Saturday, March 8 at the University of Chicago. … Doctoral student Nathan Eversole and Assistant Professor Jeff Witzel will present a poster on “Long-distance attraction effects in subject-verb agreement processing” at the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing on March 12-15 at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. … Doctoral student Ju-young Lee will present a poster at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference in Portland, Ore., on March 22-25. Assistant Professor Cynthia Kilpatrick, doctoral student Lori McLain Pierce and doctoral student Jessica Rohr will also present at the conference. … Rohr has a paper in press, “Training naïve learners to identify Chinese tone: An inductive approach” in the First Maryland International Conference on Chinese as a Second Language Conference Proceedings. … Adjunct Professor Keith Maurice, director of UT Arlington’s English Language Institute, will give an invited presentation at the 2014 TESOL Convention in Portland, Ore., on March 28. Two other ELI staff members, Vicki Sorensen and Gloria Munson, will also present at the convention. … ELI instructor Adam Stein and Sami Akkad (Taibah University) will present at the conference TESOL Arabia Conference in Dubai on March 14. … The Native American Times noted that the Oklahoma Breath of Life – Silent No More workshop is sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Documenting Endangered Languages, the Sam Noble Museum at the University of Oklahoma and UT Arlington’s Department of Linguistics. … Professor Colleen Fitzgerald is featured in a new article on the Linguistic Society of America’s website.
MUSIC: Senior Keiohna Allen will compete March 7 at the South Central District Negro Business and Professional Women’s Club’s annual Vocal Arts Competition for Emerging Artists in Fort Worth. The winner will compete in the national competition in July.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: Associate Professor and Department Chairperson Rebecca Deen presented a paper, “Flipped Learning: a springboard to the deep end of learning?”, at the American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning conference last month. … KTVT/CBS 11 interviewed Professor Tom Marshall about what are believed to be the first, legal gay marriages in Texas. “It will be interesting to see if the state tries to intervene in this at all or upper appeals courts in Texas to try to reverse this decision,” Marshall said. … In a story about the upcoming primary elections, Professor Victoria Farrar-Myers told the Dallas Morning News that the vast majority of Dallas-area congressional incumbents don’t seem to be in much danger from challengers. “If you look at the campaign coffers, all of them have raised significant amounts of money,” Farrar-Myers said. “None of their competitors are anywhere near shooting range.” … Assistant Professor Heidi Hardt examines international organizations’ response times to foreign conflicts in her new book, “Time to React: The Efficiency of International Organizations in Crisis Response,” News-Medical.net reported. … Marshall was quoted in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram story about the race for Tarrant County prosecutor. Marshall said long-time prosecutor Tim Curry is gone, and his successor Joe Shannon is too politically damaged to select his replacement, leaving a wide-open race for what many people consider the most powerful office in the county. … Associate Professor Allan Saxe was included in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram story about Republican primary candidates linking themselves to Sen. Ted Cruz. “He is very popular among the Tea Party people and is really a charismatic public figure to those that like him,” Saxe said. … Associate Professor Brent Sasley participated in an online forum about boycotting Israel for The American Prospect.
SOCIOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGY: Tech, the NBC Today Show website, referenced a book by Professor Ben Agger (Sociology) in an item about a photograph taken of oneself, or ‘selfie.’ The female-dominated selfie phenomenon represents “the male gaze gone viral,” said Agger, author of “Oversharing: Presentations of Self in the Internet Age.” … Professor Karl Petruso (Anthropology), dean of the Honors College, delivered a public lecture Tuesday, March 4, at T&P Tavern. The event was sponsored by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
THEATRE ARTS: Faculty and students of the Department of Theatre Arts and The Maverick Theatre Company will present work and chair sessions of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) conference in Fort Worth on March 26-29. Specialist Michelle Harvey is co-commissioner of the Scene Design & Technology Commission and will chair the Distinguished Achievement session honoring Broadway designer Eugene Lee. She will be exhibiting in the Design Expo and her work with the department’s new 3D printer is the main editorial theme of a full-page ad in the prestigious Stage Directions Magazine which will be distributed at the conference. … At the USITT conference, Costume Studio Supervisor Kris O’Brien will present her costume designs featuring natural dyes from UTA’s spring production, “As it is in Heaven.” Assistant Professor Anne Healy will present a seminar titled “Creating a Collaborative Language.” And Theatre Arts seniors Alohilani Valdez and Heidi O’Ferrall have both entered the Student Design Expo for costume design. … Lecturer Laurel Whitsett is working on an independent comedy, “Code Enforcer.” The film is being actively funded by Seed&Spark and shooting is in Austin. … Sophomore Shannon Cox is assisting on a saga/graphic novel/movie, doing special effects for makeup. The film is called “Deadfall: Ground Zero” by Remy St.Paul. Cox has also assisted on a second film with the same director titled “Prey for Me,” due to be finished this fall. … Senior Elia Madrid-Onofre‘s cartoons featuring Political Science Associate Professor Allan Saxe won first place in he Columbia Scholastic Press Association digital media awards, beating out more than 40,000 entries. … Shelley Ohmes (’10) is performing in “The Foreigner” at Frisco Community Theatre. … Alan Pollard (’10) was cast in WaterTower Theatre’s entry for the 2014 Out Of The Loop Fringe Festival.
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