Eileen Cleere, assistant professor of English, will deliver a public lecture titled "The Aesthetics of Hygiene and the Hygiene of Aesthetics: From Romantic Art to Victorian Dirt," at Southwest Texas State University on Feb. 4. Her presentation is part of SWT's annual Arts and Culture Lecture Series.

Melissa Johnson, assistant professor of anthropology, presented "Ambivalent Landscapes: Environments, Justice and Anthropology in the Lower Rio Grande Valley" with Southwestern University students Claire Campbell, Santiago Guerra and Emily Williams as part of a panel and roundtable discussion titled "Environmental Justice: At Home and Abroad" at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Nov. 2002.

Julie M. Thompson, assistant professor of communication studies, has been invited to join the Oxford Round Table at St. Antony's College in the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, for a 2003 summer session Round Table devoted to the topic of human and civil rights. Thompson and Holly Martin, senior majoring in communication and political science, recently had a paper accepted to a conference on "Representing Blackness: From the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to the Present" at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. Their essay focuses on counter-racist representations of "blackness" in Spike Lee's film, "Bamboozled."

Mary Young, professor of economics, published an essay in the most recent volume of "Feminist Economics." This special issue, on gender, race, class, and caste, was edited by Mary King and Rose Brewer. Young's essay reviewed income, socioeconomic status, and health: exploring the relationships and minority health in America: findings and policy implications from the Commonwealth Fund Minority Health Survey. Young also has been appointed to a new committee of the National Association of Forensic Economics (NAFE). The purpose of the committee is to study the extremely low representation of women in the profession, and to make recommendations for change.

January 23, 2003

John Chapman, professor of mathematics, attended the joint national mathematics meetings of the Mathematics Association of America and American Mathematics Society in Baltimore.

Alicia Moore, assistant professor of education, had her article, "African American early childhood teachers' decisions to refer African American students," published in "Qualitative Studies in Education" (Taylor and Francis, Dec. 2002), edited by James Joseph Scheurich and Angela Valenzuela.

La Vonne I. Neal, assistant professor of education, had a paper, "Movement Matters: The Need for Culturally Responsive Teaching," accepted for publication by "The Journal of the New England League of Middle Schools."

Cami Sawyer, assistant professor of mathematics, and Therese Shelton, associate professor of mathematics, co-authored a paper which Shelton delivered at the joint national mathematics meetings of the Mathematics Association of America (MAA) and American Mathematical Society (AMS) in Baltimore. The paper was titled "Sweet Fruits of Success in Preparing Student Talks" and focused on the five SU student talks (C.Miller, A. Milby, C. Douglas, A.J. Sloan, and D. Morris) delivered at MathFest, the national summer meeting of the MAA. These student talks described the results of the Summer 2002 Research Experience for Undergraduates, funded by the Fleming Collaborative Research and Creative Activity Program and supervised by Sawyer and Shelton.

Shelton also delivered a paper titled "Math Modeling Activities for a Variety of Undergraduate Courses" at the same conference.

January 16, 2003

Eileen Cleere, assistant professor of English, delivered a paper titled "Victorian Dust Traps" at the December meeting of the Modern Language Association in New York City.

Laura Hobgood-Oster, assistant professor of religion and philosophy, has been appointed co-chair of the Consultation on Animals, Religion and Ethics of the American Academy of Religion. She will serve as co-chair from 2003-2005.

Tim O'Neill, professor of political science, had his article, "Lawyers as a Commodity in International Trade," published in "Policymaking and Peace: A Multinational Anthology" (Lexington Press, 2003), edited by Stuart Nagel.

Ken Roberts, professor in the department of economics and business, had two articles accepted for publication in edited books. The first, "Rural Migrants in Urban China: Willing Workers, Invisible Residents," appears in "Migrant Workers in Pacific Asia," edited by Debrah Yaw and published by Frank Cass. The second, "The Determinants of Occupational Choice of Labor Migrants to Shanghai," appears in Urbanization and Social Welfare in China, edited by Amin Chen, Gordon G. Liu and Kevin H. Zhang, and published by Ashgate.

January 9, 2003

Eileen Cleere, assistant professor of English, has been invited by the Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Studies Group at Rice University to conduct a Dec. 14 seminar for faculty on her current research in Victorian art. Professor Cleere also will meet with graduate students in the English department to discuss the challenges and rewards of balancing teaching and research at a liberal arts college.

Psychology alumni Jennifer Knight '00, now in the I/O Ph.D program at Rice, and Associate Professor of Psychology Traci Giuliano recently learned that their article titled, "Blood, Sweat, and Jeers: The Impact of the Media's Heterosexist Portrayals on Perceptions of Male and Female Athletes," will be published in an upcoming issue of the "Journal of Sport Behavior."

Assistant Professor of English Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton and five students attended the National Conference for Peer Tutors of Writing at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in late October. Students Joe Munch, Haeli Colina, Sarah Simmons and Debra LaViolette presented a panel titled "Walking the Line: Dealing with 'Sticky' Situations in the Writing Center." Claire Campbell contributed to the proposal. Beth Moore also attended the conference.

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton also published a review of "Sexual Revolution in Early America: Gender Relations in the American Experience," by Richard Godbeer (Johns Hopkins University Press) in the Nov. 8 issue of "The Texas Observer." In recent months she's reviewed two other books in the Observer: "Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchican," (Aug. 2002) and "Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence" (July 2002).