COURSE DESCRIPTIONS 2020 - 2021 Academic Year Dr. Martha Easton: I grew up in a College small midwestern town. When I went What do you want to get out of college? to college, at Swarthmore, outside of What does it mean to be an educated Philadelphia, I was impressed (and person? How do you know if you are intimidated) by the worldliness of the “successful” at college? This class looks other students. It was in College that at the purpose of college, what education I first became interested in Sociology means, and how college works. We and studying our complex society. will debate whether college should be a Every country uses race, gender and “wall” to separate the educated elite from social class to divide people into groups everyone else, or whether college should with differential opportunities and be a “door” to give anyone a chance outcomes. Americans are trained to improve. Our material will include from an early age not to see our memoirs about education, essays arguing obvious inequalities, and we use social the supposed true purpose of education, institutions such as college to promote and research about the college experience. ideas of opportunity and success. I am We will also put a critical eye towards DR. MARTHA EASTON excited for the opportunity to teach a the messages that films and social media freshman seminar that looks at the idea send about college. Race, gender, and in of an “education,” particularly in terms particular social class will be themes of this of culture and social class. seminar. First generation college students may be particularly interested.

Dr. Mitchell Lewis: Reading Modern Short Stories literature has been my passion since my This course examines how modern short sophomore year in college, when I took stories reflect and comment on major an English course that changed my life. issues in the modern world. Students Currently, my research is focused on the will learn how writers frame these issues, interdisciplinary study of the modern often against the grain of mainstream novel. I am particularly interested society, and they will debate their veracity, in the topics of gender, humanism, as they critically examine their own modernity, and evolution. I regularly understanding of the issues. In the process, teach several courses in the history of the students will also learn how the craft of English novel, on great writers such as writing contributes to how we interpret the Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, D.H. meaning and significance of stories. Topics Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. I also will range across modern life, including regularly teach survey courses in English gender, race, ethnicity, class, work, literature and a number of special-topic religion, politics, family, marriage, love and courses, including Posthumanism; World sexuality. Science Fiction; and Horror, Gender and DR. MITCHELL LEWIS Sexuality.

Professor Jan Kather: In addition to Mashups & Other Collisions in Art the Freshman Year Seminar, I regularly & Literature teach media based courses for the Arts This course examines the conflicts created & Humanities Division: Photography, as a result of discrimination by race, Video Art, Electronic Art Studio, Crafting gender, religion, and cultural identity as the Vision and Digital Studio: Art described in both literature and the arts. without Borders. As a founding mother Students will be expected to participate in of Elmira College’s Women’s and Gender creative projects (mash-up collage, graphic Studies Program, I teach through lenses novel, video, photography, music, poetry, of gender, race, and identity awareness. dance, etc.) that will accompany their Having been part of the Center for Mark essays. Selections of coursework will be Twain Studies since 1983, I incorporate chosen to form a collaborative class book. ’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve and The War Prayer, as part of FYS readings. My artwork can be seen regionally at the State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca, NY. To view additional creative projects, as well as the creative course PROFESSOR JAN KATHER work of my students, please visit my website (www.jankatherphotography. com). Dr. Alexa Yesukevich: Crossings and Bridges I teach sociology and gender studies. This is a course about voyagers, travelers, I also coordinate the Women’s and immigrants, and refugees. People leave Gender Studies Program. Before coming their homes for many reasons: the promise to Elmira College, I studied at Mount of education, love, adventure, money, Holyoke and Brandeis, and then earned natural disaster, dispossession, war. We’ll a doctorate from Cornell. My degrees investigate the questions travelers of are in sociology, government, and all kinds carry with them: What will I something called “critical social thought.” take with me? What can I live without? This FYS centers on the experience of What parts of my story are my own, moving from one world to another, and which parts do I share with others? literally and figuratively. My family What does it mean to inhabit two worlds traveled extensively when I was a child, simultaneously? Can a person actually to places like Sri Lanka and Kenya and become a bridge? Can you ever go home Cyprus. I spent much of my childhood again? in Saudi Arabia, a country that is not easy to go back to today. I am now a We’ll read memoirs, histories, and DR. ALEXA YESUKEVICH cultural sociologist, which means that children’s literature while also learning I’m interested in the often-invisible value about the contexts in which they were systems that lie underneath our everyday written. We’ll consider stories of being behaviors. Currently, I investigate the first to cross into a new world and these value systems through historical stories of being the last to inhabit an old research and through classes like Media world. We’ll discuss modern-day political and Society, Medical Sociology, and situations that have left some people in Community Organization. two worlds at once, such as DACA, the Rwandan diaspora, and the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. Some of these “worlds” will be very literal, as with Gudrid, a Viking explorer who sailed across actual seas. Others will be more figurative, as with first- generation college students or scientists whose inventions shift paradigms and propel them into new realities.

Professor Gene Rendino Mindful Money I have had the good fortune, over my How important are ethics in your personal career, to find myself in one interesting life? What about in business? What opportunity after another. After a is the best business strategy? How can bachelor’s degree with a double major in we manage our personal finances, and Mechanical Engineering and Philosophy, business finances? How do all these I worked in industry for several years, topics overlap? In Mindful Money, we will before going back to school for an MBA address these questions and more. We will in Finance and General Management. have readings and discussions on ethical Then I joined Corning Inc., working issues, and think about how to apply the across a range of functions: engineering, lessons in our lives. We will also engage operations, finance, strategy, and basic questions in finance, and think marketing. I retired in 2015 and started about how to apply good practices in our teaching at EC in 2016. personal finances as well as in business. I have taught courses in Marketing, The first module of the term will be Finance, and all areas of Management, dedicated to understanding the framework including a few new courses I have for civil discourse, and how to engage PROFESSOR GENE RENDINO developed. An area of research for me is with diverse opinions and viewpoints. free speech, civil discourse, and the First We will talk about the First Amendment, Amendment, specifically regarding the specifically how it sets the stage for free applications, limits, and protections of free speech in our country; and we will explore speech on college campuses. I also enjoy reasons why free speech is valuable, limits competitive weightlifting and powerlifting, although as a masters-age lifter it to free speech, and attacks on free speech. doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. The goal of this first module is to develop the understanding and tools to have productive, civil discussions with people who might disagree with us. These are tools that will be useful throughout our personal and professional lives. Dr. Mary J. Mahoney: The Medical Humanities I am a professor because I am a writer. In this course, we will study what living That’s been my pitch for a long time is, beyond the scope of science, medicine, now. When we write (whether poems, nursing and allied health care practice. stories, plays, essays…) we’re examining Students will gain broad comprehension of the meaning of who we are in relation to “what living is” through literature, media, the world in which we live, the world we social sciences and art with the goal of inhabit through experiences, the world developing liberal manners of observation we inhabit in our imaginations, the world and analysis beyond empiricism. We will we inhabit through witnessing, the world explore a wide continuum of work (by we inhabit through memory. When we scholars, writers, practitioners, patients, publish this writing, we are participating and caregivers) that represents diverse in a literary art about representing perspectives on wellness and illness. human situations directly, abstractly, When read carefully these works clarify metaphorically or obliquely. In doing and complicate what it means to be so, we lend our voices to a much larger human, in particular relation to suffering, conversation that has so many essential personhood, our responsibility to each DR. MARY J. MAHONEY implications. other, empathy, compassion, self-reflection, and advocacy. I earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. I publish across genres. My publications and awards include The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Louisiana Literature, North Carolina Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Northwest Review, The Seattle Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Tampa Review, The Texas Review, Washington Square, Witness, New Orleans Review, Borderlands, Colorado Review, Pacific Review, PoemMemoirStory, Sentence, and The Nation. I am the recipient of numerous writing awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, The MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment of the Humanities.

I am also a registered nurse, which should elucidate my interest in the Medical Humanities. Sometimes I write about health care, nurses, doctors and patients. My essay, a memoir piece about working as a hospice nurse, “Hospice and the Intangible Wonders of Being,” was selected as a chapter in an international, multidisciplinary book on death and dying. Another essay, a reflection piece called “Notes on Nursing” was published in DoubleTake Magazine, selected by the physician Robert Coles. “Figures Less Than Greek,” a story about two nurses working at an AIDS treatment center in in the late 1980s, was recently re-published by Black Lawrence Press in an anniversary anthology for Art and Understanding Magazine. Lastly, I write about Long Island.

Dr. Matt Seybold: Who Watches The Watchmen? My primary specializations are American At the center of this course is Alan Moore Literature and American Studies, but I and Dave Gibbon’s dark comic satire of the teach a broad range of classes on literature, superhero narrative, first published in 1986, mass media, interdisciplinary approaches then adapted into a 2002 blockbuster movie, to finance and economics, and cultural and, most recently, an HBO series written history. As the resident scholar at Elmira and produced by Damon Lindelof. For this College’s Center for Mark Twain Studies, I class, students will read, watch, analyze, and edit MarkTwainStudies.org and participate discuss both the original Watchmen and in a wide range of events related to its adaptations, as well as supplementary Twain Studies, both on campus and off. materials which reveal its historical, Most of my scholarship focuses on how philosophical, and political contexts. Why economic theories intersect with popular does the HBO series begin with the Black Wall cultural forms. In 2018, I published a co- Street riots of 1921? Why do central characters edited collection of essays, The Routledge take on names like Rohrsach and Moloch? Companion to Literature & Economics, and Why do the creators put such emphasis on I am currently working on a book about time and symmetry? What do allusions to US DR. MATT SEYBOLD what Mark Twain’s experiences following political figures like Richard Nixon imply? the print revolution in the 19th century can We’ll practice critical reading with attention teach us about the recent digital revolution. to thematic and formal elements in both print I am a contributor to the Economics & and visual texts, while also considering the Finance Section of the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as a wide variety of creative challenges involved in the process journals for both academic and general audiences. You can link to all my work of adapting an existing narrative for new from MattSeybold.com. mediums and new audiences. Professor Derek Chalfant: From Contemporary Art & Design and casting molten metal in junior high the Spirit of Pop Culture: school to carving limestone in high This course examines the interconnected school in Southern Indiana, I have long relationships between art, design, popular been involved in artistic and creative culture and various forms of entertainment processes. I earned my Bachelor of Fine from 1980 to present. Topics include: Arts degree from Indiana University and visual and performance art, design, sports, my Master of Fine Arts degree from The entertainment, music, science, technology, University of Notre Dame. I am an artist gender, racism, consumerism, religion, and designer and spend much of my time consumer and producer. Students will be creating sculptures and furniture in a expected to participate in creative projects. variety of mediums. I teach a broad range Students will study the interplay of art and of courses at Elmira College including design, and popular culture within three Contemporary Art History, Bronze interrelated quests: the quest to understand Casting, First-Year Seminar, and all levels how the world works (ideas about the of Furniture Design and all levels of environment and nature), the quest to Sculpture. As an actively producing artist understand individual human behavior PROFESSOR DEREK CHALFANT and designer my work is in public and (ideas about justice, spirituality, gender, private collections around the US. I have free will, and motivation), and the quest to received grants, awards and scholarships understand human social behavior (ideas for my creative work. This art and design about social and political organizations), work has been included in national and to understand ideas of visual art. This international public art exhibitions, and in international publications as well. I seminar focuses on sharpening students’ have received many important commissions, including liturgical furniture at the skills in critical thinking, reading and University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, and in the newly renovated communicating. Cowles Hall on the campus of Elmira College. Most recently I was awarded a commission for a life-size bronze sculpture of American author EL Doctorow. I am also the recipient of two excellence in teaching awards, the John A. Kaneb Award in 2003 (University of Notre Dame) and the Josef Stein Award (Elmira College) in 2008. It is my desire for my sculptural work to be thought provoking as I attempt to create a richness of meaning with the ambiguities, enigmas, multiple layers and conflations of both form and content. In my research and art I hope to engage and reflect my questions and interests related to the human spirit and sensitivity toward all life forms.

Professor Joel Stoker: I never The Religious Imagination imagined majoring in Religious Studies Religious fiction addresses historical and when I began my studies, but I quickly contemporary social problems that give rise switched my major after taking courses to moral reasoning, spiritual reflection, and in American Religions and World religious transformation. From mysteries Religions as a student. I have refined surrounding popular religious narratives my interests over the years to historical to cultural and religious revolutions, this and social aspects of lived religion across course leads students through diverse the globe. Due to the transdisciplinary literary approaches to personal and social nature of the academic study of religion, concerns by appropriating religion in I work with not only religious concepts, imaginative ways. It also highlights the role but philosophical, sociological, and religion can play in giving hope to believers anthropological ideas as well. Recently, in times of oppression and desolation on I have conducted research on the one hand, and how religions can contribute emergence of hybrid religious identities to those issues on the other. In this course in the Indian Ocean among traditionally we follow a diverse approach to religious PROFESSOR JOEL STOKER Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim conceptions of Buddhism, Christianity, communities. I also enjoy researching Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Paganism the impact of technological revolutions through the themes of gender, modernity, and religious ideologies and the changing mythology, pluralism, race, religion, religious demographics resulting from secularization, and utopia. those shifts. I work with local religious communities and teach courses that run the gamut of religious expression: Hinduism and Buddhism, Chinese Religions and Islam, Religion and Popular Culture, Religion and the Modern World, Old Testament, New Testament, Indigenous Religions, and Ancient Religions. Dr. Rebecca Page Johnson: Our Bodies, Ourselves I began my career in education over Should teenagers learn about sex from 20 years ago as a college teacher in their teachers or is this a job for the parent? the People’s Republic of China. After What information about sex is necessary completing my master’s degree in Applied to know? Why should public dollars pay Economics at I began for conversations about sex? Is sex about my public school teaching career at reproduction, disease, or pleasure? What Ithaca High School as a Global Studies story does our curriculum tell? and Economics teacher. Although I loved teaching high school, I felt called to Our Bodies, Ourselves examines the field of return for my PhD so that I could work sex education from pedagogical, historical on the policy issues that I cared about and sociological perspectives. The course and hopefully encourage young people provides students with a history of how to become teachers. My love for travel and why sex is discussed in schools and has inspired me to offer Term III trips at society, offering a look at the competing EC to France, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, views of appropriate sexual education. By Norway and Sweden. Locally, I have examining K-12 sex education curriculum, DR. REBECCA PAGE JOHNSON developed partnerships with Horseheads young adult literature about sex and Intermediate School, the Johnson Museum sexuality, and internet sources, we will of Art at Cornell University, and the reflect on how policy decisions about sex Alternative Science and Math School in education reinforce social inequalities. Corning. My research has always centered on how public policy decisions impact the lived experiences of everyday people, and I am particularly fascinated by the work curriculum does in telling us who we are and who we are allowed to become. I was honored in 2016 to receive the Excellence in Teaching award at Elmira College.

Dr. Daniel Kjar: I have always After Darwin: been interested in history and how Throughout history the interaction of the development of skepticism western civilization and science has and materialism, particularly post- been complicated. Advances in our ability enlightenment, has contributed to to do science starting in the early 17th western civilization. My research is century - and exponentially increased focused on the ecology of ants and in the centuries following have had sampling methods. I am interested in strong influences on the development of how environmental changes affect ant western societies. As we apply this new populations, distribution, and diversity. knowledge of the world brought to us Ants are important ecosystem engineers through scientific investigation, individuals and changes to the abundance or species and groups have pushed back against these changes and against the process of composition may alter arthropod and scientific discovery. In this course you plant communities. I focus my research will critically examine the interaction efforts on the island of San Salvador, the of science and society shortly before . I teach a variety of courses publication of Darwin’s “The Origin of in biology at Elmira College, including Species” and explore how that book has Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Marine both improved our understanding of the DR. DANIEL KJAR and Island Ecology (on San Salvador world and resulted in people rejecting Island) and Developmental Biology. a scientific understanding of the world. We will explore these ideas by reading and discussing books that cover the development or impact of important scientific advances before, during, and after Darwin’s publication as well as readings that will allow us to critically explore the reaction of society to our ever-expanding knowledge and its application. Dr. Missy Volino: Bouncing Back –Why Perspective I graduated in 1993 with a BSN from Matters Mansfield University and began my career Why do some individuals demonstrate as a nurse on a cardiac stepdown unit. It resilience and cope with adversity better than was on this unit where I discovered that others? What personality traits and behaviors I loved patient education. I worked with help individuals bounce back from adverse patients during and after adverse cardiac events? What does it mean to be resilient? events and was always inspired by their Is mental toughness a skill that can be resiliency. In 1998 I earned a MSN from developed? and certification as an There are many examples throughout history adult nurse practitioner. It was at this time of people of all ages and backgrounds who that I also gave birth to very premature overcome immense obstacles in spite of twins. This life event changed my career precarious odds. These courageous people course and resulted in me taking some demonstrate resilience in desperate situations. time to care for my children. Ultimately, In addition, these same individuals often my past positive experience in patient possess a mental toughness that enables them education and new time constraints of to see past a failure, gain a new perspective, DR. MISSY VOLINO a growing family led to me pursuing and move forward. They do not allow the teaching as an adjunct faculty member. By adverse event they are experiencing to define 2002 I had accepted a tenure track position them or be detrimental to their existence. at Elmira College teaching medical- Instead they use the experience to become surgical and critical care nursing courses. even more resilient and mentally tough. In I then went on to pursue my PhD in nursing and graduated in 2014. I was this course we will examine the concepts honored by Elmira College to receive the Excellence in Teaching award in 2016 of resilience and mental toughness across and the Catherine McGraw Rock Award in 2019. I am currently the Director of the lifespan and in a variety of situations. Nurse Education at Elmira College, but I still teach a few courses a year. I still We will explore these concepts through a hold true to my educational beliefs that we are all here in life to learn from each diverse selection of books, articles, film clips, other. My research interests include chronic illness, health behavior change, stress and hands-on activities. The focus of this management, nursing licensure success, and more recently resilience in college course will be to understand what it means students. In addition to my role at the College I am married with four adult to have resilience and mental toughness children. I am also an avid gardener and animal lover. and recognize ways these attributes can be developed for personal growth.

Dr. Betsy Smith From Sappho to Sam Smith: LGBTQ I am a professor of chemistry, teaching lives throughout history general and introductory chemistry This course will examine the lives and as well as biochemistry and electives experiences of people throughout history in biology and chemistry. I especially who we might today see as members of the enjoy leading Term 3 travel courses and LGBTQ community. Is it reasonable to even have taught ecology courses in Alaska, call someone from the 17th century “gay” or Hawaii, and the Bahamas. Outside of “transgender”? What would life have been the classroom, I compete in triathlons like for those people? What was it like to be and have three cats. I also have a a gay or transgender person in 1970? What second-degree black belt in Taekwondo actions and identities were accepted, or not, and am the advisor and coach of the in various civilizations throughout history? Taekwondo club on campus. I have How did people come to start identifying always been someone who enjoys as LGBTQ, and how is that continuing to learning about all subjects, and I am change? Particular focus will be on the early especially interested in women’s and gay rights era in the US, but it will include DR. BETSY SMITH LGBTQ history, which led me to take an examination of much earlier time periods many elective classes about them in and other locations as well. Students will college. My FYS course was developed practice critical reading of both fiction out of these interests. and non-fiction texts, engage in group discussions, write short essays, and give an oral presentation on a research topic.