2006 Allegheny College
Intramural Faculty Conference

Connect with Allegheny colleagues from other disciplines

4th Biennial Conference
Tuesday, May 16 and Wednesday, May 17, 2006
William Seward Inn
http://www.williamsewardinn.com/

A conference among Allegheny College faculty to share their research with colleagues and to provide an enjoyable opportunity for discussion among the disciplines. The Dean's office supported the first three conferences through a Mellon Foundation Grant and now provides direct support. What the participants gain from this experience is largely determined by their individual goals. Some benefits from participating are

• Gaining a general awareness of the scholarship work that is ongoing on campus
• Fostering ideas for collaborations
• Improving collegiality
• Receiving diverse perspectives on one's own work

2006 participants:

Proposal Abstracts

Courtney Bailey, Department of Communication Arts and Theatre
"'The Cheerleaders of the Revolution': Citizenship and the Body"

Started in the late 1990s, the group of activists known as the Radical Cheerleaders promotes queer, feminist, anti-capitalist, and anarchist perspectives at various political events around the world. By explicitly embracing deviant bodies, their performances challenge models of "normal" or "proper" citizenship. Such models often privilege distance from the body as a way to guarantee objective, disinterested, and rational modes of civic participation.

Bill Bywater, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
"Apprenticeship as a Moral Ideal"

Using the framework of Goethe's delicate empiricism, which was specifically designed for engaging with living things, I will enhance feminist philosopher Elizabeth Spelman's notion of apprenticeship, which holds that in order to create social justice those with privilege must apprentice themselves to those who are oppressed. Enhanced by delicate empiricism and its accompanying notion of participatory imagination, an expanded notion of apprenticeship serves as a moral ideal for mutual understanding while recognizing human diversity.

Jennifer Hellwarth, Department of English
"Charms, Female Healers and the Romance: Managing the Medieval and Early Modern Sexual Body"

My current project involves looking at the historical and literary context of medieval and early modern medicinal charms designed to manage the sexual body. To do this I examine the cultural interplay between ecclesiastical and civil laws designed to negotiate the sexual body and the social practice of female healers. I then explore the way these material forms and practices of religion, magic, law, medicine, and female healers emerge in literary contexts—through several medieval and early modern English Romances.

Teresa Herrera de La Muela, Department of Modern and Classical Languages
"Spain in the Eighties: TV, Democracy and Pleasure in the Democratic Transition"

After the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, the unsuccessful coup d'etat in February 1981 proved that Spain's young democracy was fragile. I explore how the popular 1981 TV series "Verano Azul (Blue Summer)" satisfies viewers of competing ideologies and encourages Spaniards to coexist peacefully.

Aimee Knupsky and Josh Searle-White, Department of Psychology
"Narrative Psychology: Applications for the Classroom"

Psychological research has suggested that we understand and remember information better when we hear it in story form. In this presentation we will briefly review some of the ways that psychologists have investigated the effect of narrative on listeners, including the ways that our pre-existing ideas shape the information we are hearing. We will then discuss (and, hopefully, demonstrate) the applications of these ideas, and their potential pitfalls, in everyday classroom teaching.

Ron Mumme, Department of Biology
"Scare Tactics in a Tropical Cloud Forest: An Evolutionary Tale in Black and White"

Conspicuous plumage patterns in birds usually function as social or sexual signals that are directed toward territorial rivals or potential mates. However, field research on the slate-throated redstart (Myioborus miniatus) in Monteverde, Costa Rica, has shown that this species uses its striking black-and-white tail as a foraging adaptation; conspicuous visual display of its contrasting tail startles insect prey that, once flushed, can be pursued and captured in flight. Additional experimental work suggests that geographic variation in the tail pattern of this species reflects evolutionary adaptation to regional habitat characteristics that maximizes foraging performance.

Rachel O'Brien, Department of Geology
"Field-based Mineral Weathering Rates for NW Pennsylvania"

Northwestern Pennsylvania is covered with a veneer of glacial deposits from the last ice age. These deposits range from ~200,000 to ~20,000 years in age. I'd like to begin work examining the differences between the deposits to produce field-based estimates of mineral weathering rates and compare this with laboratory rates of mineral weathering.

Laura Reeck, Department of Modern and Classical Languages

The Beurs (the sons and daughters of North African immigrants in France) have brought to the fore pressing and unresolved debates on integration, multiculturalism, and postcolonial identity in France. They have done so in part through fiction. I will read backwards toward the Beur corpus that originated in the 1980s in order to show its relevance today in light of the riots that broke out last fall in France. In particular, I consider the ways in which the Beur corpus points to the inadequacies of the French social model.

Caryl Waggett, Department of Environmental Science
"Mapping a Strategy to Improve Environmental Health and Justice in the Commonwealth"

I am currently helping to coordinate more than 15 partner universities, governmental agencies, and outside advisors through the Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy (PCIEP) to develop a multi-year plan to geospatially map and prioritize select environmental health risks. Within this large project, I am particularly interested in two components: (a) selecting specific environmental health associations to address within the project and (b) evaluating how the state currently defines "environmental justice" and how it implements various programs to ensure equitable treatment of all citizens.

Eleanor Weisman, Dance Studies Program
"Learning From Experience"

Dancers come together to improvise movement around a common theme. What does that experience teach us about ourselves, each other, and how to live ecologically in the world? My current research builds on the strategies of Action Research and art process as research. I emphasize personal experience and group process in the performance of the Women in Black, an Evolving Ritual.

For more information, contact this year's conference organizers, Eric Pallant and Eric Boynton.