Mark Duplass attended the first rehearsal of Into the Woods, directed by Jeffrey Bracco, on Tuesday, April 11. Pictured L-R: Pauline Locsin-Kanter (Theatre and Dance), Mark Duplass, Langston Wade '25 (Psychology), Ivy Wu '25 (Communication, Music), Mary Hemker '25 (Computer Science & Engineering), Ashwin Raman '25 (Computer Science & Engineering), Katy Wolff '25 (Communication, English), Deirdre Farrell '25 (Psychology).

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

We all know spring quarter is a busy time, and this week has proven the rule! We’ve had multiple department speakers, the Spring Career Fair for our students, Day of Giving, Mark Duplass on campus for part of his Sinatra Residency, and tomorrow is Preview Day! Whew! 

We had a great Day of Giving on Wednesday, bringing in about $139,000 for the College of Arts and Sciences. Thank you to everyone who made this 10th Day of Giving a success! 

I also want to give a shoutout to all of our wonderful staff, faculty, and students who will represent SCU and the College in person tomorrow for Preview Day. We have more than 730 admitted students registered for our department and college sessions, and that number jumps to nearly 1,800 when parents or guests are included.  This is a big day for our admitted students and we want to show them why SCU is the place for them – This weekend, our campus in springtime will truly be the locus amoenus (loosely: idyllic place) fondly heralded by some of the poets of antiquity, so let’s welcome the admitted students warmly!

Lastly, the Awards Committee has put out a call for nominations for the Class of 2023 University Awards, including the Nobili and St. Clare Medals, Richard J. Riordan Award, Student Life Award, and the Gracelyn Rillorta Bateman Inclusive Excellence Award for Students. Descriptions of these awards can be found online. I highly encourage you all to nominate our fantastic students! All nominations are due to scuawards@scu.edu by Wednesday, April 19. 

See you out and about!

Daniel

Highlights

History students Antonio Vargas '23 (History, Political Science), Hannah Hagen '23 (Environmental Studies, History, Spanish Studies), Rob Wohl '23 (History, Political Science), and Sean Chamberlain '23 (History, Philosophy) traveled to Johns Hopkins University over the weekend of March 24-27. There they presented independent research at The Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium. Their presentations included a wide variety of topics: "The Birth of the Operational Art: The Formalization of the Political-Military Relationship in the United States in the Civil War" by Antonio Vargas; “'We Didn’t Wait for the Boys to Decide About Us': The Women Pioneers of Coeducation at California’s Oldest Jesuit University" by Hannah Hagen; "Arresting the Current of History: The Political Philosophy of Joseph de Maistre" by Rob Wohl, and “'Patriots not Partizans': The Response of Independent Newspapers to the Rise of Political Parties in California" by Sean Chamberlain.

Image: Hannah Hagen, Antonio Vargas, Sean Chamberlain, and Rob Wohl

Chris Weber's (Physics) research group—postdoc Manita Rai and undergraduates Hannah Aguirre '23 (Physics, Spanish Studies), Javier Garcia de Castro '23 (Physics, Mathematics), and Yiyi Wang '23 (Physics)—traveled to the Diamond Light Source, a synchrotron in England, for eight days of experiments. They used X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to study thin films of the semimetal SrMnSb2. The work is part of the Weber group's ongoing efforts to use short pulses of light to reversibly alter SrMnSb2's electronic properties in much less than a nanosecond.

Image: Javier Garcia de Castro and postdoc Manita Rai work with the X-ray diffraction chamber.

Tom Plante (Psychology) served on the expert content panel for the United States Department of Health and Human Services (Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) for the recently released government publication, Moving Beyond Change Efforts: Evidence and Action to Support and Affirm LGBTQI+ Youth.

The report (1) provides an updated evidence-based roadmap for supporting and affirming LGBTQI+ youth, (2) comprehensively reviews key scientific studies, guidelines from major medical and other professional associations, and implications for clinical care, (3) offers guidance and highlights resources for health care providers, educators, families, community leaders, and others — to reduce behavioral health inequities facing LGBTQI+ youth and their families, and (4) explores policy levers and future research areas that can improve the behavioral health of LGBTQI+ youth.

A new article by Nathan Anderson (Anthropology), published in the Journal of Islamic Archaeology, is titled "The Archaeology of Islamization in Northern Madagascar."

This paper explores how recent archaeological investigations at the Islamic town of Kingany in Madagascar’s northwest help clarify the trajectories of Islamic ideological transmission to Madagascar and investigates how the identified Islamizing mechanisms might apply to the Mozambique Channel at large in the early 2nd millennium CE.

Image: Excavation Unit 2 at Kingany, Madagascar.

Nancy C. Unger (History) gave the Presidential Address at the luncheon of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Los Angles on March 31. Her address, dedicated to learning from past moral panics, was entitled “Legislating Morality in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: The ‘White Slave’ Case that Changed America,” which is the focus of her current book project. She also chaired the conference panel “Walter Nugent and the Broadening of U.S. History."

On March 21, Nancy was one of two panelists discussing "Is Today Like the 1890s?" as part of the Council on Foreign Relations virtual roundtable series "Threats to American Democracy." She also gave an illustrated virtual presentation "Surprising Reforms of the Gilded Age – Progressive Models for Today," on March 16 to the New York grassroots organization Let's Talk Democracy: Empowering Citizens Through Knowledge. 

Heather Clydesdale (Art and Art History) published "Earthly Beasts and Heavenly Creatures: Animal Realms in Medieval Chinese Tombs and Cave Temples" in The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia. This essay explains how the dwindling presence of animals in art signals a turn to anthropocentrism in a tumultuous period along the Silk Roads in western China. The depiction and placement of domestic, wild, and fantastical animals seen in tomb art of the third century show that people believed such creatures to be essential in maintaining political and cosmic harmony, which aligned with established Chinese philosophies codified in the preceding Han dynasty. Additionally, the art reveals the profound influence of pastoral customs on daily life in this ethnically-diverse region. By the sixth century, however, the spread of Buddhist doctrine augered the near-eradication of animals in art, which in turn points to changes in society and soteriological beliefs. As human figures proliferated in cave temple paintings, phalanxes of buddhas and bodhisattvas elbowed out images of animals. This divulges shifting attitudes about agricultural expansion and cosmopolitanism, along with visions of paradises in which animals are absent. The journal Arts featured the article on the cover of a special edited issue. Additionally, The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia has just been released as an edited book.

Theatre and Dance faculty Derek Duarte (lighting design), Heather Kenyon (scenic design) and Kimberly Mohne Hill (dialect coach) collaborated on the San Francisco Playhouse production of Clue! playing through April 22.

“A laugh riot! So funny, so elegantly performed, directed and designed, that nothing much else matters.” –Bay City News

Tripp Strawbridge (Modern Languages & Literatures) presented his paper "The relationship between social network typology, L2 proficiency growth, and curriculum design in university study abroad" at the annual conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Portland, OR. The presentation focused on the use of social network analysis as a means to describe the variable Spanish language learning outcomes of university students studying abroad in Spain. At the same conference, he also co-presented a paper with Prof. Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez (The Open University, UK), titled "The effect of instructor practices on student engagement in online second language coursework," which examined the relationship between Spanish language teaching pedagogy and student-teacher interaction and corrective feedback in online language coursework.

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar