Profiles of Faculty Scholarship
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Profiles of Faculty Scholarship HIGHLIGHTS OF RESEARCH, PUBLICATIONS AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY September, 2016 – September, 2017 Published May 2018 FOREWORD We are pleased to present the annual edition of this publication to honor the creative, community and scholarly work of Fitchburg State University faculty and librarians. This booklet offers an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the intellectual and creative achievements of our faculty and librarians. These activities both spring from and feed our central teaching mission. Reflected in these pages is the dedicated work of a community of scholars. Politics in Verse For DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld, poetry is a political statement, even if that’s not its primary function. “Poetry still has to be beautiful,” she said. “It still has to entertain, even if it’s about tough subjects. But to ignore politics is a disservice.” Politics has been on Bellinger-Delfeld’s mind a lot since the 2016 election and the challenging cultural conversations that have emerged since. Among her recent poems are works that explore themes of race and gender. “All writing is entering into a greater conversation. That’s been the case since Beowulf,” she said. “My poetry has certainly gotten more political as I’ve For these faculty highligh pages, use the following gotten older.” paragraph styles: And while one of her pieces was published in Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of *faculty name 1 Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017), a volume *FACULTY DEPARTMENT 1 that took its name from a very current political DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld phrase, Bellinger-Delfeld knows the themes of ASSISTANT PROFESSOR *text faculty bio 1 sexual harassment and discrimination explored in ENGLISH STUDIES the work will transcend this moment in time. *faculty pull quote 1 Poetry is a good medium for such exploration, she said. “Poems are immediate and get to the essence of an idea on the page,” she said. “Poems She’s also developing a scholarly paper on are pure. Nietzsche said, ‘We have art to save cultural appropriation, looking at how to write about ourselves from the truth.’” other cultures—including gender Bellinger-Delfeld said her “All writing is entering into and sexuality—with appropriating, classes have done a good job “exoticizing” and controlling that a greater conversation ... discussing political poetry culture. She hopes the finished without anyone resorting to My poetry has certainly piece will inspire thought about proselytizing, even though diverse gotten more political as writing toward an exchange rather opinions are expressed. than an adoption or interpretation “My students handle the I’ve gotten older.” of a non-dominant culture. “I also poems we read well and find good talk about who has agency to write ideas in them,” she said, adding she’s even more about whom, and when should we write about other impressed by what happens when students embark cultures,” she said. on creative writing sessions in class. “I’m always Bellinger-Delfeld communicates with her students amazed at what our students can do in 15 minutes.” frequently about her own writing and its associated Beyond verse, Bellinger-Delfeld is exploring challenges. “When it’s relevant, I talk about the themes of race and culture in other linguistic forms. research I do for both creative and academic work,” She is currently revising a novel about a father who she said. “I talk about my writing process, about still believes that his privileges are being threatened (by having the need of peer reviewing, and I talk about having a black president, or the prospect of a woman revising. I feel more comfortable in the classroom president). “The book tries to answer the question when I am able to offer examples of my writing life or of how such a person would respond to a supposed the writing lives of fellow friends.” threat from the other,” she said. Their team-taught course was first offered in 2012 but both professors were dissatisfied with the available textbooks on the subject. “There wasn’t anything that covered the subject area the way For these faculty highligh pages, use the following we wanted to cover it,” Gordon said. paragraph styles: Elizabeth Gordon “Climate research is ever expanding, and historians have established environmental history as *faculty name 1 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CHAIRPERSON a major field, but we found that the books available EARTH AND GEOGRAPHIC SCIENCES *FACULTY DEPARTMENT 1 to provide an overall guide for students were lacking for a variety of reasons,” Lieberman said. Benjamin Lieberman So they decided to write one of their own, *text faculty bio 1 PROFESSOR, ECONOMICS, HISTORY, with the project becoming sabbatical efforts for *faculty pull quote 1 AND POLITICAL SCIENCE both professors in 2015 and 2016. Climate Change in Human History was published in January by Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. Filling a Void The finished volume provides an up-to-date and Professors Ben Lieberman and Elizabeth Gordon co- concise introduction to the relationship between authored their book about the relationship between human beings and climate change throughout human beings and global climate history. Spanning hundreds of out of a sense of need. “The book arose out of thousands of years, it illustrates “The book arose out of a a team-taught class that how natural climate variability team-taught class that brought affected early human societies, together our fields of geophysical brought together our fields and how humans are now able science and history to focus on of geophysical science and to alter climate drastically within a topic of extreme importance,” history to focus on a topic much shorter spans of time. Lieberman said. “It is invaluable, The book explains how human in my opinion, for Fitchburg State of extreme importance.” civilization thrived during a students to have the chance to comparatively stable period in take these kinds of interdisciplinary courses.” climate and how fluctuations in climate also created Gordon agreed. “It not only covers an important risks and challenges. It concludes by outlining the key topic in the geosciences, but it teaches students how human role since industrialization in bringing about to integrate the methods and evidence from different accelerating climate change. disciplines to address a critical issue,” she said. “To Professors Gordon and Lieberman’s co-taught reach across disciplines was really fascinating, and class on climate change and human history will next gave me a new approach to climate science.” be offered in fall 2018. Scholarship for Community Jane Huang said the applied scholarship model she has explored in her research emerged from necessity. “Many incoming students don’t understand the value of geography,” she said. “The only way to help them understand this is through application.” That approach has been embodied in several recent projects that have been valuable for her students as well as the city in which the university resides. The multi-agency ReImagine North of For these faculty highligh pages, use the following Main initiative, seeking to improve quality of life paragraph styles: in neighborhoods including those abutting the Fitchburg State campus, sought Huang’s assistance. *faculty name 1 With a team of students, she helped create detailed *FACULTY DEPARTMENT 1 maps for spatial analysis of the neighborhoods and their conditions. City leaders and planners praised the work and the functionality of the tool that Huang *text faculty bio 1 and her team created for the ongoing revitalization *faculty pull quote 1 initiatives. Huang was also part of a contingent of nine Jane Huang faculty who worked with teams of students on a pair PROFESSOR of interdisciplinary, grant-funded research projects EARTH AND GEOGRAPHIC SCIENCES exploring public health and environmental health in the region. She oversaw students who identified fitness and recreation resources available in the The success of Huang’s applied scholarship city—from parks to hiking trails—resulting in maps model is also tied to fostering good relationships that were given to more than 100 city residents who with the community. Too often academia can have were surveyed by team members. a condescending tone, she said. The results of the analysis led to “I hope students realize “Instead, we work with (clients) on recommendations designed to they can apply what what they want,” she said. help improve park usage in the city. Huang has looked for ways The health of the Nashua they’ve learned in class.” to bring her research interests River that runs through the city to the classroom throughout her was the focus of another grant-funded project. time at Fitchburg State. “I hope students realize Geographic information systems applications were they can apply what they’ve learned in class,” she used to examine changes in land use and to simulate said, noting many of her students have found paid terrain through two- and three-dimensional models. internships and jobs in the field after their projects. Taken together, these tactics will help analyze the “The word’s starting to spread, which is helping the environmental health of the river itself. The project department grow.” continues this summer. “We had to start fundraising, and I took on that responsibility,” he said, recounting a grueling marathon of writing grant applications to support production of the film. Among their successes was securing a competitive LEF Foundation Moving Image grant. McCarthy collaborated with the director over the next 18 months of production, shooting scenes and interviews, while working with the rest of the creative team to develop the arc of Lautzenheiser’s unfolding story. Following the completion of filming, the documentary was in post-production For these faculty highligh pages, use the following for a year, during which McCarthy labored to raise paragraph styles: additional grant funds while helping shape the final edit of the film.