21st Annual Festival of Lights: Performed virtually by the SCU Chamber Singers and Concert Choir, with special guest Rhiannon Giddens, directed by Scot Hanna-Weir.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Happy December!

By the time you read this, I hope that you will have finished grading and are looking forward to some much-deserved rest until winter quarter starts. This is our last College Notes for the calendar year and there's no shortage of great work to report on.

I want to call out a couple great achievements from the Biology Department. Congratulations to Justin Whittall who received a grant from California Fish and Wildlife to study one of Santa Clara County's rarest wildflowers, Streptanthus albidus, which has a wonderful common name: the Most Beautiful Jewelflower (really, that’s what it’s called!). I also want to mention alumnus Omar Hamade '19 who has been named SCU’s second Schwarzman Scholar. Through this prestigious global program, Hamade will pursue a one-year master's degree and leadership program at Tsinghua University in Beijing starting next year.

No doubt 2021 will bring its challenges; however, I look forward to seeing you all in person many times in the coming year!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Jesica S. Fernández (Ethnic Studies) was invited to facilitate a workshop, entitled "Racial Justice Activism: Cultivating Sociopolitical Wellbeing via Participatory Action Research (PAR)," on the intersections of racial justice, wellbeing, and activism at the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Jesica's scholarship on youth activism, centered on sociopolitical wellbeing and racial justice, was also published in a co-authored paper with Drs. Ben Kirshner and Tafadzwa Tivaringe. The paper, titled “This was 1976 reinvented”: The role of framing in the development of a South African youth movement" was published in the Journal of Community Psychology, and focuses on documenting how local organizing campaigns transform into regional or national movements. Specifically, how youth constructed historical continuity frames that lent them legitimacy as upholders of the South African freedom struggle and flexible problem frames that linked young people's local struggles, such as inadequate school conditions, to a national policy agenda.

Amelia Fuller (Chemistry & Biochemistry) recently published a paper in the journal ACS Chemical Biology entitled "Multi-Institution Research and Education Collaboration Identifies New Antimicrobial Compounds." The paper is the product of a collaboration between five international colleges and universities and describes the preparation and identification of two new molecules with antifungal activity. Molecules detailed in this work were prepared by undergraduates enrolled in organic chemistry classes at these five institutions, and the paper details both the scientific and educational outcomes of this work. At SCU, students in Amelia's "majors' lab" have been involved in these research-driven projects over the past 10 years, and SCU alumna Kristiana Tenorio '17 (Biochemistry) was a co-author on this work. 

On 28th October 2020, Teresia Hinga (Religious Studies) was an invited panelist for the annual Flannery Lecture at Gonzaga University. The theme for the panel was Perspectives on Public Health and Theology: Covid19 where she offered African perspectives on the topic. You can watch the recording here.

Photo: Flannery Lecture Flier 28th October 2020 Gonzaga University

Amy Lueck (English) co-authored an article, "Educational Progress-Time and the Proliferation of Dual Enrollment," with Brice Nordquist of Syracuse University, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. The article draws on the historical research from her book to trouble the divide between high school and college, advancing critical approaches to dual-enrollment programs in the field of English.

On November 11, the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures welcomed associate producers and co-authors, Carolyn McCaskill (Gallaudet University), Ceil Lucas (Gallaudet University, Emerita), Joseph Hill (Rochester Institute of Technology), and Robert Bayley (UC Davis) for a film screening and panel discussion of "Signing Black in America: The Story of Black American Sign Language." "Signing Black in America" is the first documentary about Black ASL: the unique dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) that developed within historically segregated African American Deaf communities. Black ASL today conveys an identity and sense of belonging that mirrors spoken language varieties of the African American hearing community. Different uses of space, handshape, directional movement, and facial expression are ways that Black ASL distinguishes itself as a vibrant dialect of ASL. Signing Black in America was produced as part of the Language and Life Project at North Carolina State which aims to build awareness and appreciation of linguistic diversity in the United States.

Jimia Boutouba (Modern Languages & Literatures) was guest editor of a Special Issue titled: Genre, Sexualité et Politique dans le monde francophone (Gender, Sexuality and Politics in the Francophone World). Nouvelles Etudes Francophones (NEF), University of Nebraska Press. Volume 35:1, November 2020.

This special issue investigates how representations of gender and sexuality, and their politicization in different Francophone regions broaden current studies of gender and sexuality politics to include de-centered perspectives, and discourses informed by varied lived experiences and local understanding of power and resistance.

In her theoretical introduction to the special issue, titled “Genre et Sexualité dans le Monde Francophone: Entre pratiques esthétiques et combat politique,” Jimia provides an overview of recent developments in the field of gender and sexuality theories, highlighting their potential, but also limitations and blind spots when applied to differing cultural contexts. The article points to an urgent need to decolonize approaches to gender and sexuality which, oftentimes, fail to adequately engage the politics of difference as embedded in specific local contexts. It proposes a decolonial framework for a situated reflection, and advocates for a historical, intersectional, and contextually diverse approach that enables gender and sexuality studies to be a site of localized contestation.

Danielle Morgan's (English) book, Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century, was the central piece in a KALW Crosscurrents episode titled "Black Satire." In addition to Morgan's interview, the episode also featured Bay Area comedians Dara M. Wilson and Alexandria Love.

Aligned vertically from left to right: Tess Gunnels and her Reishi Herbal Supplements; Tim Butler (left) and his new species of CA mustard; Julie Herman (center) and the Ben Lomond Wallflower with pollinator; Jose del Valle (left) and the subject of his Ph.D., the Spanish Beach Campion; Justen Whittall (left) and the subject of his newest grant, the Most Beautiful Jewelflower.

The Justen Whittall (Biology) lab has been productive amidst campus closure. They have five recent publications and a new grant!

1. Tess Gunnels '19 (Biology) partnered with Oregon Wild Harvest to use molecular markers to investigate adulterated herbal supplements in her PLOS ONE paper "The ITS region provides a reliable DNA barcode for identifying reishi/lingzhi (Ganoderma) from herbal supplements." 
2. With the statistical help of Brody Sandel (Biology), Tim Butler '10 (Biology), Ph.D. and Cindy (Dick) Lowy's '08 (Biology), Ph.D. research describing a new, cryptic species of California mustard is finally in press at the American Journal of Botany.
3. Julie Herman '14 (Biology) collaborated with a Spanish Ph.D. student to reveal the distribution of genetic diversity in an endangered wallflower from the Santa Cruz Sandhills described in a recent paper Genome skimming and microsatellite analysis reveal contrasting patterns of genetic diversity in a rare sandhill endemic (Erysimum teretifolium, Brassicaceae) in PLOS ONE.
4. & 5. In collaboration with Spanish scientists, we recently published two studies, "Stability of petal color polymorphism: the significance of anthocyanin accumulation in photosynthetic tissues" and "UV radiation increases phenolic compound protection but decreases reproduction in Silene littorea," describing the role of floral pigments in the Spanish Beach Campion.
   
   The Whittall lab just received a $95K grant from CA Fish & Wildlife to study the nature of flower color variation in one of Santa Clara County's rarest wildflower, the Most Beautiful Jewelflower.

Jane Curry (Political Science) gave a talk on "Communism and the Transformation in Europe and Russia" at an international conference of the Center for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw using, of course, the Google version of zoom as they too are on lockdown. She was recruited to be and was the "Inaugural Fulbright Distinguished Chair" there in 2003-4. It is an institute that was formed to teach graduate students from Central and East Europe and the former Soviet Union about the area and democratization- neither of which were developed fields in the universities of the area.  So, after teaching in the MA program that year, Curry return yearly to teach in the summer session for students from that program and also just from the area itself. In the process, she learned a lot about what is actually going on in their countries. In the past, she also arranged for one of our students to study there and for a student from Uzbekistan to come and go to the law school at SCU.

Paul J. Schutz (Religious Studies) published an article, "Fire of Justice, Breath of Life: Exodus 3 as Foundational Narrative for Ecopolitical Theology" in The Heythrop Journal. The article examines the history of the interpretation of the names given by God to Moses in the Burning Bush and presents Schutz's own interpretation of the name, which draws on the sights and sounds of the story-world to link the name YHWH with ruach, God's lifegiving breath. This interpretation seeks to challenge bourgeois Christian indifference with a proclamation of justice for all creation. The essay concludes by suggesting some applications of this interpretation to the intersecting realities of ecological, economic, and racial injustice.

On Monday, December 7th, Paul served on a panel entitled "Broadening the Vision of Theology and Science: A Roundtable Session with the Authors of the T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences in the Science, Technology, and Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion. The panel discussed the future interplay of science and religion from various disciplinary angles and in light of the historical complicity of science in structures of oppression.

On December 12th, Erick Jose Ramirez (Philosophy), Jocelyn Tan '15 (Electrical Engineering), Miles Elliott '19 (Philosophy), Lia Petronio '21 (Psychology, Philosophy), and Mohit Gandhi '21 (Philosophy, Computer Science) presented a white paper "An Ethical Code for Commercial VR/AR Applications" at the European Alliance for Innovation's 2020 Intetain Conference. Their work integrates existing ethical codes on VR and AR ethics with research emerging from their own investigations on the moral psychology of user experience to provide a framework for VR and AR developers to better design simulations that avoid harming users and that reduce ethical and social risks introduced by these technologies.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar