Faculty Achievements
2022
November
Dr. Laura Barbas Rhoden, professor of Spanish, gave a keynote address at the Latin American, Iberian and Latinx Studies at a Crossroads symposium held at Skidmore College. She also published “El mal de la modernidad: el nexo eco-psicosocial en el cine contemporáneo” in “Imaginarios ecológicos en América Latina.”
Lexington Books will publish the monograph “Radio and the Great Debate over U.S. Involvement in World War II” by Dr. Mark Byrnes, professor and chair of history.
Rachel Grotheer, assistant professor of mathematics, and collaborators had the extended abstract and poster “Automatic Infectious Disease Classification Analysis with Concept Discovery” accepted to the Machine Learning for Health Symposium. Grotheer also presented “Uncovering Patterns in a Tapestry of Data” at the Furman University Math and Munchies Seminar.
Dr. Kimberly Hall, associate professor of English, published the article “Empire of the Self: Life Writing and the Professional Persona of the Lifestyle Blogger” in the journal “Persona Studies.”
Dr. Jessica Tomkins, assistant professor of history, contributed the chapter “Provincial Elite Burials in the Old Kingdom: A Reflection of Changing Power Dynamics?” to the Festschrift “In the House of Heqanakht: Text and Context in Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honor of James P. Allen.”
October
Dr. Natalie Grinnell, Reeves Family Professor in Humanities, has published the article “The Challenge to Dominance Theory in Patricia Briggs’s and Carrie Vaughn’s Paranormal Romance Novels” in the journal “Femspec.” The article is the result of a summer 2021 faculty-student grant with Sam English ’22.
Dr. Begoña Caballero-García, associate professor of Spanish, and Dr. Alysa Handelsman, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, spoke about their community-engaged approaches to pedagogy and research at the Public Humanities in Community Colleges and Research Universities Conference in El Paso, Texas. They were part of a roundtable on community-based work and the South Carolina Centro Latino. Additionally, Handelsman graduated from Spartanburg County Foundation’s Grassroots Leadership Development Institute.
Dr. Dane Hilton, assistant professor of psychology, and a colleague contributed the chapter “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Second Wave Conceptualization and Intervention” to the book “Behavior Therapy.”
The article “Interfaith and Interreligious Pedagogies: An Assessment” by Dr. Katherine (Trina) Janiec Jones, professor and chair of religion, and a colleague was published in a special edition of the “Journal of Interreligious Studies.” A symposium and workshop on the article and responses was scheduled for December.
Dr. Geoff Mitchell, associate professor of biology, and colleagues have published the article “SEAS CURE: Exploring Coral Biology Across Scales” in the online, peer-reviewed journal “CourseSource.”
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, gave an invited presentation at the Air War College, Maxwell Air Base, to over 200 military officers on “Trends in Great Power Competition: Democracy and Authoritarianism.”
September
Dr. David Alvis, associate professor of government and international affairs, delivered the lecture “A Government of Laws? The Politics of Judicial Review in Marbury v. Madison” during the annual Constitution Day observation at Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Ga.
Dr. Laura Barbas Rhoden’s article “Ecology, Coloniality, Modernity: Argentine Fictions of Tierra del Fuego” was chosen for inclusion in the special archival issue of “Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal.” Volume 54.2 of the journal, a collaborative project with Dutch artist duo Bik Van der Pol, features a dozen articles selected from those published during the last 50 years. Barbas Rhoden is a professor of Spanish.
Dr. Christine Sorrell Dinkins, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Philosophy, wrote the foreword for “Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Health and Social Care Research.”
Dr. Courtney Dorroll, associate professor of religion and interim co-director of the Center for Innovation and Learning, and Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, published the article “Teaching, Self-Care, and Reflective Practice during a Pandemic” in the journal “Political Science and Politics.”
Dr. Amanda L. Matousek, associate professor of Spanish, published “Selling Spectacle and Airing Identity: Latinidad in American Dirt and Juliet Takes A Breath” in Volume 12 of the journal “Label Me Latina/o.” Her article “Selena Schema: Sharing Space through Stories about Selena Quintanilla Pérez” will be published in a special edition of “Camino Real: Estudios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas” from the Editorial de la Universidad de Alcalá and El Instituto Franklin on Latinx Performance in the 21st century.
Dr. Jeremy Morris, assistant professor of biology, and co-authors published the article “Impacts of conservation activities on people who are incarcerated: a case study based on qualitative and quantitative analyses” in the journal “Ecology and Society.”
Dr. Patricia Nuriel, associate professor of Spanish, published the article “Jevel Katz y sus paisanos: una recuperación del espectáculo ídish argentino de los años 30” in “Mundos del hispanismo: una cartografía para el siglo XXI.”
August
Dr. Laura Barbas Rhoden, professor of Spanish, had the chapter “Environmental Humanities Approaches to Central American Texts in Undergraduate Curricula” published in the volume “Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context.”
Dr. Philip Dorroll, associate professor of religion, and colleagues edited the publication “Māturīdī Theology: A Bilingual Reader.”
Dr. Alysa Handelsman, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, and Sarah Buckmaster ’24 received a $3,000 grant from the North Spartanburg Rotary Club to support Spartanburg Housing’s after-school programs at Prince Hall and Camp Croft apartments. Sustainability seminar students like Buckmaster have worked with Spartanburg Housing since 2019 to develop, implement and run this program during the school year.
Dr. Dane Hilton, assistant professor of psychology, and colleagues published the article, “The importance of executive functioning for social skills in college students: a relative weights analysis,” in the “Journal of American College Health.”
Dr. Trina Janiec Jones, professor and chair of religion, published “Reconnecting,” the second of two articles for The University of Chicago Divinity School’s “Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion” blog.
Dr. Kirsten Krick-Aigner’s article “Crossing Borders in Marianne Gruber’s Erinnerungen eines Narren,” and her translation of Judith Nika Pfeifer’s short story “Incident” have been published in the volume “Passages. Crossings. Borders. Openings. In Conversation with Austrian Writers.” Krick-Aigner is professor of German.
Dr. Dave Pittman, professor of psychology, published two research manuscripts this summer: “A Glucokinase-linked Sensor in the Taste System Contributes to Glucose Appetite” in the journal “Molecular Metabolism,” and “Further disentangling the motivational processes underlying benzodiazepine hyperphagia,” with four student authors, in the journal “Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.”
Sheri Reynolds’ novel, “The Tender Grave,” has been named as a finalist for the Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. Reynolds is the John C. Cobb Professor of Humanities.
Dr. Charles Smith, associate professor of biology, and a colleague published “Tail movements by late-term fetal pitvipers resemble caudal luring: prenatal development of an ambush predatory behavior” in the “Royal Society of Open Science.” Smith also presented two posters – “Tail movements by late-term fetal pitvipers resemble caudal luring: prenatal development of an ambush predatory behavior,” and “Does rattlesnake rattling resemble the defensive tail motor patterns of non-rattlesnake colubroids?” – at the Biology of the PitVipers 4 Conference in Rodeo, New Mexico.
Dr. Katherine Steinmetz, associate professor of psychology, and Brandon Edwards ’23, along with collaborators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have published the article “Investigating social connection as a protective factor against exam stress in college students” in the “Journal of American College Health.”
Dr. Yongfang Zhang, associate professor of Chinese, published the chapter “Developing a PCA-Informed Learning Spiral for a Beginner-Level STARTALK Chinese Program” in “Performed Culture in Action to Teach Chinese as a Foreign Language: Integrating PCA into Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment.”
April
Dr. Ken Banks, associate professor of history, has published a review of “The Death of the French Atlantic” by Alan Forrest in the American Historical Review.
Dr. Peter Brewitt, assistant professor and chair of environmental studies, and Lawson Giles ’21 have published the article “Red wolf science and identity storylines in an online discursive community” in Environmental Science and Policy.
Dr. Trina Janiec Jones, professor of religion, was invited to write for the University of Chicago Divinity School’s Craft of Teaching blog this semester. Her first post, “Rediscovering Joy,” was published on March 18.
Dr. Ingrid Lilly, assistant professor of religion, published the article, “The Corporeality of the Self: The Example of Bitter Nefeš as an Ethnomedical Syndrome” in the peer-review journa, Dead Sea Discoveries.
Dr. Dawn McQuiston, associate professor of psychology, was invited to present her work on the science of eyewitness memory at the South Carolina Circuit Court Judges Conference in May.
Dr. Jeremy Morris, assistant professor of biology, co-authored the article “Scaling of fibre area and fibre glycogen concentration in the hindlimb musculature of monitor lizards: Implications for locomotor performance with increasing body size” in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The article appears in a special issue titled Building New Paradigms in Comparative Physiology and Biomechanics. Morris also co-authored the article “Reversing the lens on public engagement with science: Positive benefits for participating scientists” in the journal BioScience.
March
Dr. Rachel Grotheer, assistant professor of mathematics, and co-authors have published the article “A Simple Recovery Framework for Signals with Time-Varying Sparse Support” in Advances in Data Science.
Dr. Aaron Harp, assistant professor of music, has contributed an interview with Henry Leck to the book “In Search of Inspiration: Interviews with Notable Choral Conductors.”
Dane Hilton, assistant professor of psychology, and co-authors have published the article “Are brief behavioral parenting group interventions effective in rural communities? A feasibility study in Central Appalachia” in the Journal of Rural Mental Health. Hilton also has been appointed to the editorial board of Journal of Rural Mental Health as of Jan. 1, 2022.
Dr. Trina Janiec Jones, professor of religion, recently published the article “A Theology of Increasing Adequacy: Process, Practicality, and Relationship” in the Journal of Interreligious Studies. This article was part of a special edition of the JIRS titled “The Spiritual But Not Religious and Theology Without Walls.” Additionally, Jones was part of a day-long symposium in February sponsored by the Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University titled “Translating Sanskrit Buddhist Philosophy for the Philosophy Curriculum.” The symposium focused on the work of the Vasubandhu Translation Group (VTG), of which she is a member, and their draft translation of Gupta period Buddhist scholastic Vasubandhu’s “Twenty Verses and Exposition.” She served as the respondent to the symposium’s keynote address.
Dr. Charles Smith, associate professor of biology, has co-edited the book “Reptiles of the Trans-Pecos Texas” by Michael S. Price.
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor of government and international affairs, and Dr. Courtney Dorroll, associate professor of religion, recently published the article “Teaching, Self-Care, and Reflective Practice during a Pandemic” in PS: Political Science and Politics. In response to the article, the University of Kentucky Political Science department invited Vanderhill and Dorroll to give a talk in April as part of their teacher training lecture series.
February
Dr. Kirsten Krick-Aigner, professor of German, co-published the article “Environmental Justice Modules: A Case Study Approach for Intermediate and Advanced German Learners” in the journal Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German.
Dr. Brian Piggott, associate professor of mathematics, co-authored the paper “Symmetrical vibrations of higher dimensional nonlinear wave equations,” which has been accepted for publication in Selecta Mathematica.
Dr. Katharine Putney, assistant professor of biology, co-authored the paper “The effects of varying nutrient availability on females and hermaphrodites of the gynodioecious Geranium maculatum,” which has been accepted for publication in the journal Castanea.