Noteworthy

Associate Professor of Biology Katherine Goodrich, who is also the Cynthia H. Sarnoski Science Faculty Fellow, presented a lecture at the Harvard University Herbaria Seminar Series on March 10. The invited lecture, "Flowers, flies, and fermentation: floral mimicry and pollination ecology of pawpaw," focused on Goodrich's research on the pollination of the pawpaw, a tree native to United States and Canada that smells of fermenting fruit to attract fruit-loving flies for pollination.

Share link: https://www.widener.edu/news/noteworthy/associate-professor-katherine-goodrich-presents-lecture-harvard-university

Dr. Catherine Kirn-Safran, an assistant teaching professor of biology, has recently co-authored two peer-reviewed research articles. One article, titled "Perlecan/Hspg2 deficiency impairs bone's calcium signaling and associated transcriptome in response to mechanical loading," was published in the February 2020 issue of Bone. The other article, titled "Trabecular Bone Deficit and Enhanced Anabolic Response to Re-Ambulation after Disuse in Perlecan-Deficient Skeleton," was published in Biomolecules in January 2020.

Share link: https://www.widener.edu/news/noteworthy/assistant-teaching-professor-catherine-kirn-safran-publishes-two-research-articles

Dr. Jordan Smith, assistant professor of history, has been awarded a prestigious $20,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The nationally competitive, semester-long fellowship will support him as he writes the final chapter of his book “The Invention of Rum” based on his research into the invention and production of rum in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.

Share link: https://www.widener.edu/news/noteworthy/dr-jordan-smith-awarded-national-endowment-humanities-fellowship

Widener awarded Professor of English Janine Utell and Librarian Molly Wolf a Faculty Development Grant for a Human Sexuality Archives project entitled “Early 20th-Century Sexuality and Culture: A Guide to the Archive.” A continuation of a Summer Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (SURCA) project led by an undergraduate student research assistant, the goal is to create a digital resource to be housed on the library website page for the Human Sexuality Archives and available to researchers interested in early 20th-century cultures and texts of sexuality and sexology. As there is a wealth of material in this area available in the Human Sexuality Archives the aim is to make this material discoverable and usable to other researchers through an annotated guide focusing on early 20th-century memoirs, marriage and hygiene manuals, and other sexological texts.

Share link: https://www.widener.edu/node/12831

Several students in adjunct English and writing professor Tamara Oakman’s ENGL 102 and 116 course had poems accepted in Moonstone Arts Center’s New Voices program for emerging poets under the age of 25. The program creates a platform for young poets by welcoming them into a larger Philadelphia poetry collaborative and giving them the opportunity to share their work with a wide audience. The published students include Alyssa Barlow, Richard Bearden III, Taylor Berkheimer, Emily Caruso, Emily DeLuca, Noah Gabay, Lazaros Gouvas, Kentz Gustave, Sara Khalil, Mitchell Mackesy, Aimee Schwartz and Jaime Zima. Caruso and Schwartz read their poetry at a related event on Nov. 17.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11661/

Annalisa Castaldo, an associate professor of English, participated in the Blackfriars Conference Staging Sessions at the American Shakespeare Center, where her pitch to have the company perform Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" was selected for future production.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11621/

Janine Utell, professor and chair of English, recently wrote a book "Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing," which was published by Bloomsbury. Exposing how modernist and late-modernist writers tell the stories of their intimate relationships though life writing, the book engages with the process by which these authors become subjects to a significant other, a change that subsequently becomes narrative within their works. Looking specifically at partners in a couple, Utell focuses on such literary pairings as Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11626/

Students and advisors from around the country came to Widener University for the eighth annual Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors Conference (FUSE) held Nov. 7-9. Highlights included a moving keynote performance and story slam workshop by Nimisha Ladva, an open mic hosted by senior English major Miranda Miller, and a journal showcase featuring Widener Ink, the university's in-house literary journal, and The Blue Route, the university's international online journal of undergraduate writing. Widener students were featured presenters for two sessions. Megan Corkery (English and creative writing), Kira Smith (creative writing and psychology), Mason Sontag (English and creative writing), and Ty Swinehart (English) led a collaborative workshop, and Widener Ink co-editors Sarah De Kok (English and creative writing) and Miller presented on their collaborations and work.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11666/

Stephanie Schechner, a professor of French, has translated to English the French novel "Camille in October." The novel by Mireille Best focuses on Camille as she struggles to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world of her coastal working-class neighborhood in 1950s France. The book was published by Seagull Books and was the first to make the publisher's Pride List, a series of books by LGBTQ authors. The book was distributed by University of Chicago Press.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11451/

Itzick Vatnick, professor of biology, environmental science and sustainability, and biochemistry; Louise Liable-Sands, associate professor of chemistry; Meghan Klems, assistant professor of chemistry; and Amy Yarlett, director of exploratory studies, presented at the Association of American Colleges and Universities STEM Conference in Chicago, Illinois on Nov. 8. They presented "A Multidisciplinary Faculty and Professional Staff Learning Community to Support Retention."

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11671/

Christine Woody, an assistant professor of English, gave a talk at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. The lecture "A Prehistory of Oversharing: The Romantic Magazine as Social Media" explored the dynamics and authorial practices of pseudonymous magazine authors in late-Romantic Britain.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11611/

Project Pericles announced that Assistant Professor of History Jordan Smith was selected for the first cohort of faculty members for the Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership Program in the Humanities. As a Periclean Faculty Leader, he joins a community of scholars, including Widener Associate Professors Marina Barnett and Bretton Alvaré, dedicated to incorporating civic engagement into the curriculum. This $4,000 grant will help with the development of the Fall 2020 course "HIST 388: Practices in Public History: History and Memory in Chester" that combines past experiences in the field of public history with more recent interests revolving around history and memory in Chester.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11396/

English Professor Mark Graybill published "Anxiety, Aestheticism, and Asceticism in the Fifties: Danger on the Postwar Home Front in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter" in the Studies in American Culture's October 2019 issue.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11606/

Patricia Dyer, a professor and director of the Writing Center, Jayne Thompson, an assistant teaching professor of English, and Ruth Cary, an adjunct professor of English, presented at the annual conference of the Coalition for Community Writing in Philadelphia in October.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11616/

Stephanie Schechner, professor of French, has been elected to join the Board of Directors for the French American Chamber of Commerce - Philadelphia, an organization that fosters a thriving economic relationship between the U.S and France and welcomes and supports French businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals in the region. Directors are elected to serve a two-year term and represent all sectors of the business community.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11411/

Widener Professor and Associate Dean of Sciences Loyd Bastin co-edited a book “Integrating Green and Sustainable Chemistry Principles into Education.” The book, published in July 2019, draws on the knowledge and experience of scientists and educators already working on how to encourage green chemistry integration into their teaching, both within and outside of academia. One of the book chapters on promoting political and civic engagement in a non-major sustainable chemistry course was written by Bastin and Chemistry Department Chair Andrea Martin.

Share Link: https://www.widener.edu/node/11416/