Faculty Accomplishments

Tiffany Creegan Miller, assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, has published the book The Maya Art of Speaking Writing: Remediating Indigenous Orality in the Digital Age (University of Arizona Press, 2022). The result of nearly 10 years of fieldwork, the book "draws from Maya concepts of tz’ib’ (recorded knowledge) and tzij, choloj, and ch’owen (orality) to look at expressive work across media and languages."  

Recently, Miller has been invited to give presentations on her book at institutions such as Williams College, California State University-Northridge, and the University of Maine. On Nov. 21, she engaged in a conversation about the book on Contacto Ancestral, a Spanish- and Kaqchikel-language radio show based in Los Angeles.

The latest book by Professor of Government, Emeritus Walter Hatch has been published by the University of Michigan Press. Ghosts in the Neighborhood: Why Japan is Haunted by its Past and Germany is Not, explores the idea that "Germany, which brutalized its neighbors in Europe for centuries, has mostly escaped the ghosts of the past, while Japan remains haunted in Asia," according to the UMichigan Press. Hatch's book rejects conventional wisdom on the topic and instead "rigorously defends the argument that political cooperation—not discourse or economic exchange—best explains Germany’s relative success and Japan’s relative failure in achieving reconciliation with neighbors brutalized by each regional power in the past."

A poem by Professor of English and Creative Writing Adrian Blevins was included in the Village Soup's latest "Poets' Walk" column, written by Judy Kaber, poet laureate of Belfast, Maine. Kaber turned to Blevins's "Pastoral" to complement the column's focus on wildness and "a taste for country." The poem "tries to make a case for this more natural mode of being in a world still struggling to understand difference," wrote Kaber.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates has published an article titled "Enabling an Equitable Energy Transition through Inclusive Research.” Bates is joined by leading energy and justice scholars across the country to lay out a progressive research agenda for energy equity and justice. Appearing in the journal Nature Energy, the authors outline an interdisciplinary research agenda centering frontline communities and address the intersecting dimensions of equity. The authors conclude with action items for funding agencies to operationalize an equitable energy transition to meet national priorities such as the White House Justice40 initiative.

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, authored an essay titled "Where to Begin: Marking Race in Surveys of American Art" that appeared in American Art, the journal of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "The pedagogical strategies presented in this essay aim to address the racial biases and foundations of American art history as a field and, more broadly, to expose and undermine the enduring power of Whiteness," according to the essay's abstract.

Assistant Professor of Education Pei Pei Liu was the first author in a paper titled "A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Mastery Goal Support in 7th-Grade Science Classrooms" recently published in the journal Cognition and Instruction. "Mastery goal structures, which communicate value for developing deeper understanding, are an important classroom support for student motivation and engagement, especially in the context of science learning aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards," according to the paper's abstract." In the study, Liu and her team "aimed to provide a stronger understanding of how middle school science teachers can support students’ mastery goal orientation, facilitating the effective implementation of NGSS instruction and deeper learning in science."

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has been selected to organize and host webinars for the Addison Gallery's "Collection in Dialogue" series. The series invites "leading scholars of American art to analyze objects in the Addison's permanent collection." Sheehan has identified "collection areas and speakers with the aim of demonstrating the museum's commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion," the gallery reports. The first webinar is Dec. 1  at 6 p.m. and is titled "The Art of HIV/AIDS." These virtual webinars are free and open to pre-registrants.

Professor of Biology Cathy Bevier was the lead author of the paper "Early Life of the Mink Frog (Rana septentrionalis): From Fertilization to Metamorphosis," published in the journal Ichthyology and Herpetology. The paper reports on the team's "initial efforts to describe larval Mink Frog development by inducing breeding of wild-caught adults in the laboratory, then sampling tadpoles from fertilization until the subsequent spring," the paper's abstract states. "Our approach here demonstrates that Mink Frogs can be captive bred for use in laboratory experiments, and our work provides a novel larval series from egg mass to metamorphosis for this secretive, understudied species."

As part of the University of Pennsylvania's Climate Week activities, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson delivered a short lecture on October 12 titled, "Climate justice in an unjust world." In it, she highlighted the challenge of climate change in Caribbean small island developing states and called for a recognition of the uneven impacts of climate change, debt relief from the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions, and increased transparency in climate funding allocations.