In the College of Arts and Sciences, there are always big things happening. Here are some highlights from September 2017:
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
Johnson Cancer Research Center
Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Art
Daniel Warner was honored as a “poster master” for his contributions to the field. His feature interview is available at posterposter.org, the design community’s central hub for the poster format. Eighteen other international designers currently share this honor including Stephan Sagmeister, Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Pablo Kunst, and Peter Bankov.
Assistant Professor Rebecca Bahlmann (Rebecca Hackemann) will be a speaker and round table conversation co-chair at The Society for Photographic Education’s West Conference (TahoeLab) in November, together with California new media artist Matt Garcia and California photographer Daniel Mirer. Her topic will be “Between Art and the Practicalities of Media Education.” Hackemann’s artwork was also recently featured in the Foley Gallery, (“Digital versus Analog“) in New York, the Center for Fine Art Photography, (“Black and White” curated by Ann Jastaab) in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California.
Associate Professor Erin Wiersma will be showing work in the Viewing Room Gallery at the Robichon Gallery in Denver. The work is a series of complex, monochromatic abstractions utilizing densely layered acrylic and graphite on paper.
Assistant Professor Nick Geankoplis recently published an essay about teaching, creating, and living in Beijing. The article appears in the July/August edition of Studio Potter Magazine.
Biology
Dr. Alice Boyle was elected a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society based on exceptional and sustained contributions to ornithology and service to the community.
Boyle’s core research interests lie in understanding ecological and evolutionary aspects of bird movement strategies. Her work on the altitudinal migration of tropical birds provides one of the few comprehensive assessments of the drivers of alternative migration strategies in wild bird populations.
The American Ornithological Society is the largest society devoted to the study of birds in the western hemisphere.
Dr. Boyle has also been invited as a plenary speaker for the upcoming joint meeting of the Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation, and the International Partners in Flight meeting to be held in San José Costa Rica, November 2017.
English
University Distinguished Professor Philip Nel published the advice article “Resolutions for a New Academic Year” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Undergraduate and graduate student tutors and faculty tutors from the Writing 
Center shared their research at the Greater Kansas City Writing Center’s Project Annual Conference at JCCC on August 26. Presenters included:
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- Catherine Williams (MA ’18), Christopher Remple, and Jamie Teixeira (MA ’18) presented “Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Recognizing Effective Strategies for Multi-Lingual and Generation 1.5 Learners in Kansas Writing Centers”
- Matthew Champagne (BA ’18) presented “Enacting Safe Space in the Writing Center”
- Jessica Cotter (BA ’18, Education and English Minor), Kristin Feezor (BA ’18, Education and English), Margaret Lang (BA ’18, Physics and English Minor), and Emily Moore (BA ’18, English and Journalism) presented “Ciphers in the Center: Decoding Specialized Writing Language”
Professor Joe Sutliff Sanders won a research grant from The University of Florida to conduct research in children’s literature at the George A. Smathers Libraries in Summer 2018.
Assistant Professor Tosha Sampson-Choma is the new Book Review Editor for the College Language Association Journal.
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
Assistant Professor Valerie Padilla Carroll published two works on U.S. back-to-the-land movements and women’s domestic labor. In “Fables of Empowerment: Myrtle Mae Borsodi and Back-to-the-land Housewifery in the Early Twentieth Century” published in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of American Culture, Padilla Carroll explores how early back-to-the-land proponent Myrtle Mae Borsodi attempted to write women into the back-to-the-land political project by merging patriarchal gender expectations with feminist empowerment rhetoric in more than 30 articles in magazines, newspapers and trade publications during the 1920s and 1930s. Padilla Carroll’s second publication, “Writing Women into Back-to-the-Land: Feminism, Appropriation, and Identity in the 1970s Magazine Country Women” appears in the book, “Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment” (Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey, eds.; Routledge, 2017). In this chapter, Padilla Carroll looks at the ways that racism and a hierarchical human/nature binary remained unchallenged in the feminist back-to-the-land publication “Country Women,” a reader-contributed newsletter that explored feminist issues alongside do-it-yourself articles for the modern back-to-the-land farmer.
Assistant Professor Harlan Weaver published “Animal Affect” in the MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbook Gender: Animals, which was officially published in July 2017. Weaver analyzes scholarship in the field, and contends that affective relationships between humans and animals produce gender. He defines affect as bodily movements and intensities that reshape bodies, related to emotion but rooted in sensations that precede definitive emotional states. Affect is shown to be key to the ethics of human/animal relationships, as various theorists argue for an ethics of vulnerability rooted in compassion, sharing suffering, witnessing, and embodied empathy. The chapter concludes by arguing that the development of an affective ethics regarding human/nonhuman animal relationships, a project critical to challenging human exceptionalism, must incorporate in its analysis attention to the ways that affective relationships between humans and nonhuman animals both produce and change experiences of gender, race, sexuality, nation, species, breed, and more.
Visiting Assistant Professor Angela Towne presented a lecture titled Sexual Anatomy for Trans Masculine People: Foundational Knowledge for Empowered Decision-Making at the 2017 Philadelphia Trans Health Conference. In order to empower trans masculine people to make informed choices regarding medical transition, this talk addressed foundational knowledge about sexual anatomy using non-binary language. Then, building on ground level knowledge, audience members learned about anatomical changes that could occur during hormonal and surgical gender confirmation.
K-State alum Dani Leon (Journalism and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies) interviewed Interim Department Head Angela Hubler in a WIBW story on rape culture at K-State. Hubler and GWSS graduate student Gabi Hull also spoke to KSNT reporter Austin Barnes about Betsy DeVos’ plan to roll back Title IX protections for survivors of sexual assault.
Geography
Jida Wang, assistant professor, and colleagues published “Little Impact of the 
Three Gorges Dam on Recent Decadal Lake Decline Across China’s Yangtze Plain” in Water Resources Research 53: 3854-3877. The paper has received substantial press coverage in local and regional newspapers as well as national and international scientific outlets. Because of his recent work, Wang was invited by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (French National Space Agency) to present at the “Lakes and Climate: The Role of Remote Sensing” workshop in Toulouse, France this summer. Wang’s research involves the use of satellite imagery to inventory global freshwater resources.
Johnson Cancer Research Center
The 4th Annual K-State Fighting for a Cure Day is Oct. 14.
Show your pride in K-State cancer research with a Fighting for a Cure shirt, and wear it to the home football game that day.
Enjoy the K-State Marching Band’s halftime salute (see their 2016 “Beat Cancer” formation) and cheer on the ‘Cats with us at the College of Arts and Sciences Tailgate Party in Cat Town.
Join K-State Football’s first lady Sharon Snyder and the Snyder family, Emmy Award-winning actor and K-State alum Eric Stonestreet, former K-State and Kansas City Chiefs football player Kevin Lockett, K-State President and First Lady Richard & Mary Jo Myers, Band Director Frank Tracz and many others in celebrating the university’s fight against cancer and honoring its cancer survivors and researchers.
All shirt proceeds support cancer research and education programs at K-State. Learn more and buy shirts.
The Rob Regier Memorial Golf Tournament will be Fri., Oct. 20, at Colbert Hills. This tournament honors Rob Regier, a 1988 K-State pre-dentistry alum who died of cancer at age 26. It is hosted by Rob’s family, of Overland Park. It’s a 4-person scramble and includes prizes and a steak dinner. The tournament has raised more than $293,000 for K-State cancer research and education. Learn more here.
Modern Languages
Las guionistas: A Biligual Anthology of Mexican Women Screenwriters, an anthology edited by Modern Languages faculty members María Teresa DePaoli and Laura Kanost was recently published by Arizona State University Press.
Physics
Physics doctoral student Adam Summers was recently invited by Department of Defense (DoD) Director of Basic Research Dr. Robin Staffin to serve as a featured speaker at the inaugural Science, Technology, and Innovation Exchange (STIx) event. The event was held in Arlington, Virginia on Aug.24-25 and showcased the impacts made by extensive science and technology investments, outcomes, and innovations from across the U.S. Defense enterprise. It allowed 
scientists and researchers to share ideas about DoD-sponsored science and its implications to improving national security.
Summers’ talk “The Extreme Edge of Ultrafast Optical Science” discussed his current work to produce new technology in optical laser science. He featured examples of how he is measuring the evolution of plasmas formed by exploding nanoparticles and the generation of some of the most intense broadband pulses created in the long wavelength infrared regime. Read more and see the recording of his presentation here.
Associate Professor Eleanor Sayre received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation for her research project on PhysPort, an online professional development tool used by physics professors internationally. Sayre’s project, in collaboration with the American Association of Physics Teachers, investigates the effect PhysPort has on the practice of teaching physics. Kansas State University and the association jointly designed the tool to support physics faculty in using research-based teaching and assessment methods through expert recommendations, teaching method guides, assessment resources and online workshops. Read more about Sayre’s research and grant here.
Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
L. Susan Williams, Edward L.W. Green, William Chernoff, and Kelli Grant recently conducted research at Hutchinson Correctional Facility to measure perceptions of prison climate among staff and inmates,which is currently a critical issue in Kansas prisons. The research will continue with other facilities. Dr. Green, a K-State alum, flew in from Chicago as a consultant. Drs. Williams and Green‘s research will appear in the 2018 Handbook of Corrections in the United States, to be released in December 2017. Their contribution is “When Women Are Captive: Penal Culture Within Women’s Prisons.”
Dr. Nadia Shapkina presented the paper “Mobilizing and Depoliticizing: Social Movements Theory and Global Anti-trafficking Movement” at an annual international conference on human trafficking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, September 7-9.
Chardie L. Baird and Ethan Bernick presented “How Does Gender Inequality in STEM Fields Happen? Academics’ Narratives about the Process of the Male-Domination of STEM Fields” at the Society for the Study of Social Problems in Montreal.
