Faculty Achievements
2023
December
Colleen Balance, associate professor of theatre, designed scenery for the South Carolina Children’s Theatre’s production of “Mary Poppins.”
Dr. Bill DeMars, professor of government and international affairs, co-authored a chapter in “Beyond Cooperation and Competition: A Relational Approach towards NGOs in Global Politics,” a forthcoming book by Oxford University Press. He also presented the paper “Mythopoeia: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Call and Perilous Journey to Reenchant the World” during a conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
Dr. Joshua Harris ’09, assistant professor of finance, co-authored the article “College Student Financial Well-Being: A Re-Examination of Cross-Racial and Ethnicity Differences” published in the fall issue of the Journal of Personal Finance.
Dr. Trina Janiec Jones, professor and chair of religion, and colleagues presented a section of their new translation of Vasubandhu’s “The Thirty Verses on Representation and Their Exposition” and Sthiramati’s commentary on Nov. 18 at the American Academy of Religion Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
Dr. Ryan Johnson, associate professor of accounting, gave two invited presentations for Michelin North America in September: “A Post-It Note Approach to Ethics” and “Occupational Fraud: What’s Old is New Again.”
Dr. Nicole Tobias, assistant professor of computer science, successfully defended her dissertation “Resilient, Sustainable and Secure Systems Support for Ultra-low-power Computational Things” on Nov. 10 at Clemson University.
Dr. Jessica Tomkins, assistant professor of history, presented the paper “Using Ancient Objects to Create a History Lab” during a workshop at the annual meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) in Chicago, Illinois. She also organized and chaired the session “Understanding Power in the Ancient Near East” at the ASOR annual meeting.
Dr. Gillian Young, assistant professor of art history, gave two invited talks on the video and performance artist Joan Jonas. The first was at the “Télé-Visions: Technologies of Ubiquity in the Visual Arts” conference at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. The other was at Converse University during the 2023-24 South Carolina Art History Lecture Series.
November
Dr. Amelia Atwell, visiting assistant professor of biology, published “Correlations of Catchment Landscape Features with Instream Environmental Conditions and Benthic Macroinvertebrate Assemblages in the Lookout Creek System (Tennessee River drainage)” in volume 22, issue 4 of Southeastern Naturalist.
Dr. Laura Barbas Rhoden, professor of Spanish, authored the chapter “Ecocriticism” in the “Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics.”
Rebecca Forstater, assistant professor of studio art, was a panelist in the session “Unstable Cinema: Standing in the Slippery” at the ASAP14 conference hosted by the University of Washington on Oct. 7. She also opened solo exhibition “Training Camp” at the New Image Gallery at James Madison University on Oct. 29, which is on view through December. In conjunction with her exhibition, she was an invited guest critic for the university’s studio art master’s program.
Dr. Cynthia Fowler, professor of sociology and anthropology, published “Pyrosociality: The Power of Fire in Transforming the Blue Ridge Mountain Ecoregion” in a special issue on Flood and Fire in the journal Environment and Society. She also was a panelist in the session “Management of Fires and Ecosystems and Implications for Green House Gas Emissions: Recent Past and Current Indigenous Fire Ecologies” as part of a National Academies of Sciences workshop on Sept. 13.
Dr. Jocelyn Franklin, assistant professor of French, published “Deceptive Benevolence: Witnessing Whiteness in Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Dance on the Volcano” in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. She also presented the paper “Migration, Survival, and Maternity in Jacques Stephen Alexis’s Les Arbres musiciens” at the Haitian Studies Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Patricia Nuriel, associate professor of Spanish, co-authored the study “A Comedic Yiddish Song on Unemployment (Argentina 1930s)” with Alan Astro, published in “Jews Across the Americas: A Sourcebook, 1492-present.”
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, gave an invited talk titled “Digital Repression: Sustaining and Spreading Autocracy around the World” at the University of Richmond in September.
October
Rebecca Forstater’s work was curated in the three-person exhibition “Flesh Machines” at Allegheny College Art Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, Forstater, assistant professor of studio art, gave a public lecture on her research and participated in a panel discussion at Allegheny College. Additionally, Forstater is one of 24 artists selected to exhibit their work in the 2023 South Carolina Biennial at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia. The exhibition be on view this winter.
Dr. Natalie Grinnell, Reeves Family Professor in Humanities, has been elected queen president of the Southeastern Medieval Association for a three-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2024.
Dr. Trina Janiec Jones, professor and chair of religion, spoke on a panel titled “Critical Pedagogies in the Interfaith/Interreligious Studies Classroom” at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. Jones also was a panelist at “The Black Buddhism Faculty Project,” a workshop sponsored by Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society and Religion.
Sheri Reynolds, John C. Cobb Endowed Chair in the Humanities, published a short story, “Unzipped,” in Streetlight Magazine.
Dr. Kaye Savage, professor of environmental studies, recently exhibited photographs and mixed media works at the Circle Gallery in Athens, Georgia, in the juried show at the Spartanburg Public Library, and at The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts in Highlands, North Carolina, where she also taught a workshop on photo transfers on handmade paper.
Dr. Yongfang Zhang, associate professor of Chinese, published two journal articles: “Implementing the Standard for Chinese Proficiency in International Chinese Language Education with Backward Design” in the Journal of International Chinese Teaching, and “Developing Novice and Intermediate Level Chinese Learners’ Cross-Cultural Communication Competence Using Backward Design” in Chinese Language Teaching and Studies.
September
Dr. A.K. Anderson, professor of religion, edited “Religion and Medicine from the Pre-Axial Age to Modernity: An Introductory Reader.” A preliminary/test edition was published in August, and the first edition will be released in mid-2024.
Dr. Laura Barbas Rhoden, professor of Spanish, published “Thick Relationality in Central American Texts: Storytelling for Reframing the Anthropocene,” in Forma: A Journal of Latin American Criticism.
Dr. Peter Brewitt, assistant professor and chair of environmental studies, and Hampton Randall ’23 published “A Case Study of Longleaf Pine Restoration by a Local Implementation Team,” in Land Use Policy. Additionally, Brewitt co-authored “Is that a wolf? Politics, Science, and Red Wolf Identity,” and “The Wolves of Yellowstone – Saviour of the Songbird or Piece of the Puzzle?” in The Wolf: Culture, Nature, Heritage.
Rebecca Forstater, assistant professor of studio art, opened her solo exhibition “Training Camp” at the Richardson Family Art Gallery. The exhibition will travel to galleries at James Madison University and the University of Montana later this year.
Dr. Cynthia Fowler, professor of sociology and anthropology, “Prescribed Fire Use Among Black Landowners in the Red Hills Region, USA.” in Ethnobiology Letters. She also co-authored “(Rain Falls, Water Rises): The Tyranny of Water Insecurity and an Agenda for Abolition in Kodi (Sumba Island, Indonesia),” in Frontiers in Human Dynamics Environment, Politics and Society.
Dr. Natalie Grinnell, Reeves Family Professor in Humanities, has been appointed as a section editor of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Also, Grinnell and Willow Conley ’25 have an article, “The Queer Temporality of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate,” appearing in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. The article is a result of a student-faculty summer research grant from Wofford in 2022.
Daniel Helman, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies, co-authored “Electrochemical cells from water ice? Preliminary methods and results,” for PLOS ONE.
Dane Hilton, assistant professor of psychology, and a colleague were awarded a three-year National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant to conduct a randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness meditation intervention for college students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Eric Kocher, assistant professor of environmental studies, is publishing the poems “Sunsetting This” in issue 41 of 32 Poems, and “Sky Mall” in issue 9 of Oversound.
Dr. Jessica Tomkins, assistant professor of history, presented the paper “Decolonizing the Early Egyptian State” at the 13th International Congress of Egyptologists in Leiden, The Netherlands.
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, was an invited speaker on the panel “U.S. Interagency and Multilateral Approaches to Peacebuilding and Democratic Resilience,” part of the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellows Roundtable Series.
Dr. Nancy Williams, professor of philosophy, published the article “Ethical Veganism as Quiet Resistance” in the Journal of Animal Ethics.
Dr. Gillian Young, assistant professor of art history, published “Beyond the Screen: Joan Jonas’s Television by Other Means” in the Oxford Art Journal.
Dr. Yongfang Zhang, associate professor of Chinese, has been awarded a 10th STARTALK grant from the National Security Agency. The grant will offer Chinese language and culture day camp on Wofford’s campus in June 2024.
April
Dr. Matthew Cathey, professor of mathematics, is a co-author of “Contemporary Mathematics,” a new textbook for liberal arts mathematics classes. It is published by OpenStax, which means the book is available for free at openstax.org/details/books/contemporary-mathematics. Cathey wrote the chapters on probability and statistics.
Dr. William DeMars, professor of government and international affairs, wrote a chapter, “The Cosmopolitan Education of Hobbits: Friendship and Political Deliberation in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring,” in the upcoming book “Liberal Education and Citizenship in a Free Society.”
Rebecca Forstater’s, artwork, “All the Winners,” is currently on view at the Hangaram Design Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Her work will also be exhibited by Paradice Palase Gallery at Future Fair during New York Art Week in NYC. She is an assistant professor of studio art.
Dr. Ingrid Lilly, assistant professor of religion, published the essay, “The Critical Potential of Spirits: Hebrew Philology, the Poetics of Relation, and Unfamiliar Selves” in the journal Ancient Jew Review.
Dr. Jessica Tomkins, assistant professor of history, presented the paper “Rethinking Models of Early Kingship” at the 74th annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 21-23. She also is giving an invited public lecture on her current research for the Philadelphia chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt on May 7 at the Penn Museum.
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, presented two papers at the International Studies Association annual conference, “Digital Democracy & Digital Repression: Understanding the Regulatory and Legal Environment,” and “Sharp Power: A Failure of Authoritarian Soft Power?” in Montreal, Canada.
March
Dr. Jocelyn Franklin, assistant professor of French, interviewed Michaëla Danjé, activist, beatmaker, writer and editor of Afrotrans: Perspectives, entretiens, poésie, at kwazmanvwa.com.
Dr. Kimberly Hall, associate professor of English, participated in the online panel discussion “Nonlinear Career Trajectories in Academia.”
Dr. Timothy Terrell, Stackhouse Professor of Economics and Business, gave the presentation “Economics from the Ground Up: Intellectual Community in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” at the 2023 Austrian Economics Research Conference hosted at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Ala.
February
Dr. Patricia Nuriel, associate professor of Spanish, published the article “Singing the 1930s Doldrums: Jevel Katz’s Argentine Yiddish Parodies” in the journal Latin American Jewish Studies.
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of government and international affairs, gave the invited keynote address, “Democracy vs. Autocracy: Great Power Competition in the 21st Century,” at the South Carolina Political Science Association Annual Meeting. She also gave an invited presentation, “Decentralization Under Authoritarianism,” for USAID.
January
Dr. Jonathan Davis, assistant professor of biology, presented the workshop, “Now Stream-ing! Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences in Aquatic Ecology,” at the National Association of Biology Teaching conference in Indianapolis, Ind.
Dr. Courtney Dorroll, associate professor of religion, published the chapter “Between Memory and Forgetting and Purity and Danger: The Case of the Ulucanlar Prison Museum” in the book “Neo-Ottoman Imaginaries in Contemporary Turkey.”
Dr. Phil Dorroll, associate professor of religion, published “Enjoyers of the Divine Nature: Theosis According to Theodore Abū Qurra,” in the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.
Rebecca Forstater, assistant professor of studio art, and collaborators have been approved for a $10,000 National Endowment of Arts Grant in the 2023 Media Arts Category on behalf of the New Media Caucus for their project “New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists.”
Dr. Grace Schwartz, assistant professor of chemistry, and co-authors published a critical review article, “Environmental Impacts of Coal Combustion Residuals: Current Understanding and Future Perspectives,” in Environmental Science and Technology.
Dr. Jessica Tomkins, assistant professor of history, co-authored “Maat in the Egyptian Controlled Southern Levant,” in Ägypten und Levante 32.