Faculty Accomplishments

Steven Simon, professor in the practice of international relations, coauthored the paper "19 Years Later: How to Wind Down the War on Terror" that appeared on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace website. "The policy departures recommended in this paper are intended to thread the needle by reducing the scope and intensity of U.S. CT operations and increasing congressional oversight while retaining an effective capacity for self-defense," Simon and his coauthor, Richard Sokolsky, wrote.

A new paper, "Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research," by Associate Professor of Sociology Damon W. Mayrl and Avi Astor from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona's Sociology Department was recently published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. "Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call 'culturalized religion'—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual," writes Mayrl and Astor in their paper's abstract. "This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. ... In so doing, we develop an inclusive and dynamic approach to studying culturalized religion that clears the ground for further research into its diverse modalities and manifestations, as well as their points of intersection and interaction."

Professor of Education Adam Howard has coauthored an entry on "elite universities" for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Higher Education. Howard collaborated with his colleague Jane Kenway (Monash University, Australia) on the entry.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has been appointed to the Editorial Board of Regional Environmental Change. The journal publishes research on the interactions between human and natural systems at the regional level. It is currently ranked 33rd of 116 environmental studies journals and has an impact factor of 3.149. She will serve a three-year term.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Arisa White had her poem "My Beautiful People" published on the site Hoctok. The first stanza reads: we’ve seen this before, we’ve felt this before we’re standing on shoulders and someone’s standing on yours and crying heals and clears your vision, attunes the eyes on the back of your head, forges your insight with salt this is the beauty of being awake in your body your water whets the truth in yourself

Amber Hickey, faculty fellow in American studies, conducted an interview with the photographer Mikael Owunna for the magazine Aperture. Hickey and her co-interviewer Anney Traymany "spoke to Owunna about the gravity of this series, and how it might be mobilized as a speculative tool of creative resistance. Although most of this conversation was conducted prior to the murder of George Floyd, the video that circulated of Floyd’s death, repeatedly reposted, adds new weight to the question that drives Owunna’s photography: what is that space we can imagine beyond the limits of white supremacy, racism, and violence?"

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor Department of Anthropology, was a guest on the podcast None of the Above in an episode titled "Airstrikes in East Africa." In the episode, Besteman and Nairobi-based journalist Amanda Sperber "unpack why the United States is waging an unofficial drone war in Somalia and explore the history and human costs of this conflict. They discuss the evolution of Al-Shabaab (an affiliate of Al-Qaeda), civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes, and how Somalia exemplifies what many consider to be the strategic and moral failings of America’s global war on terror," according to the episode's landing page.

Professor of Latin American Studies Ben Fallaw has coedited a new book: State Formation in the Liberal Era: Capitalisms and Claims of Citizenship in Mexico and Peru (The University of Arizona Press, 2020). The book "offers a nuanced exploration of the uneven nature of nation making and economic development in Peru and Mexico. Zeroing in on the period from 1850 to 1950, the book compares and contrasts the radically different paths of development pursued by these two countries," the publisher reports.

In a new concept paper published in the journal Challenges, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson and her coauthors present a pre-analysis plan to undertake regional-level action research in the Pacific. The research will aim to help regional organizations work together to jointly access international financing for designing and implementing more effective climate change adaptation projects across the many small islands in the region.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, wrote an opinion piece picked up by Religion News Service titled "Kneeling to venerate hate: The meaning of a police killing in Minnesota." In the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Gilkes wrote, "America needs to understand that when we see a white police officer kneeling on a black body, squeezing the breath of life out of that body, we are witnessing an act of worship. It is an act of worship that honors the demons of racist hate and murder — a form of veneration deeply rooted in the American nightmare that is the underside of the American dream."  This piece also appeared in the Christian Century, Urban Christian News, and Black Christian News.