Issuu

Anthropology Researcher's Book Examines Hidden Heroes of Rwanda Genocide

JUNE 21, 2023

ATLANTA — During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, conflict between two ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, resulted in widespread violence and mass killings. In the span of 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, were systematically murdered.

Jennie Burnet, associate professor of anthropology at Georgia State University, has studied the Rwandan genocide for 25 years. For her new book, “ To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide ,” Burnet and her team of Rwandan research assistants and translators devoted two years to intensive fieldwork in Rwanda. The team conducted more than 200 interviews across the country, some in places where no one had ever interviewed people about the genocide.

Burnet’s book shares stories of the courageous people who risked their lives to save others. Burnet, who is also director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies , explores the decisions these individuals made in their attempts to commit acts of heroism amid pervasive evil.

Q. In the book, you highlight that people’s roles in genocide are complex and can’t be categorized as strictly good or strictly bad. Why was that such an important point to make?

A. There’s a classic typology deployed in comparative genocide studies of victim, perpetrator, bystander and rescuer. I knew that that typology was useful but was not an explanatory model because people did shift or move from one category to another. Nonetheless, when I began this project on rescue in Rwanda, I was like, “Oh, people rescued because they’re good.” And what I found was the answer is much more complex because many, many, many of the perpetrators in Rwanda who killed people also helped people. And their reasons for killing some and helping others were not always simple. It wasn’t just that they helped people that they knew and killed people they didn’t know. It was often much more complicated than that.

Q. What was most surprising about this work?

A. One of the most surprising conclusions for me of the book — of the project as a whole — is that being a perpetrator of genocide actually gave you power to save people because appearing to the state, and those people in charge, that you are participating in the genocide actively made you not be under suspicion of helping people or saving people. Kabera, who I interviewed, appears early in the book because it was a very compelling interview. He was one of the perpetrators I’ve interviewed who was very forthcoming about all the terrible, terrible things he did and spoke openly about them, not in gruesome detail, but said, “Yes, I killed dozens of people. That’s very true.” And yet I was surprised to discover that he also saved people. The other really surprising finding for me is that I had assumed that rescuers rescued because they were good people and did good things. What I came to understand is that many of the people who were rescuers — and who only rescued and did not participate in the genocide — often had to make morally dubious decisions in order to succeed in rescuing people. There’s the example of the orphanage where some Italian priests rescued over 800 children, but they would not allow adult Tutsis from the community to come in and hide in the orphanage because it put the children in danger.

I also show that many of those people who saved because they were wanting to do good things, some of them lost their lives because they refused to compromise their morality. So, in a sense, successful rescue often depended, in part, on making morally problematic decisions.

Q. Why is it important to look at the good even in such dark times?

A. A motivating factor for me in writing this book — or even undertaking the research at all — is that I think those people who risked their lives or risked their families’ lives to try to help people during the genocide need their stories to be known.

Having studied genocide and its aftermath for 25 years now, it is important to remember that there are glimmers of hope and that there are these small acts of kindness that occurred in the midst of really terrible things. It was small acts of kindness, but also great acts of bravery or even small acts of courage. These things were there, and I think it’s important for us to identify them, recognize them and remember them so that we don’t lose hope.

Q. Can you speak to the value of this type of work on people who may not see themselves as connected to the genocide in any way?

A. I think portrayals of Rwanda, and the Rwandan genocide in the United States, unfortunately, have tended to reinforce very negative stereotypes that many Americans have of Africa and of Africans. And it wasn’t helped that in 1994, the media coverage in the United States of the genocide and its aftermath played into stereotypes of Africans being particularly prone to war or violence, or other kinds of things.

In both of my books and all my writings on Rwanda, one of my purposes that’s very important to me is to show that Rwandans are not any different as people than we are here in the United States. They may live in a different context, and they might have different problems, but they also have a lot of the same problems and a lot of the same difficulties.

I think, unfortunately, it’s easier for some Americans to see the similarities between themselves and, for instance, people now in Ukraine, or back in the ’90s, between themselves and people in Yugoslavia, because they imagine that Europeans’ lives are more similar to their own than Africans’.

And part of that is based on race or racism or racist notions of the world. But part of that is also just based on economies and being modern, industrial nations and those kinds of things. So, it’s not just racism. It’s more complicated than that. And yet the racism is still in there, unfortunately. One of the things I’ve learned from being friends with and working with Rwandans and doing research on Rwanda for so long is that the differences between Hutu, Tutsi and Twa in Rwanda the three ethnic groups or races — are almost entirely analogous to how race functions in the United States. It’s just that the physical markers on the body are much more subtle in Rwanda because it’s not about skin color, it’s about a lot of other, much more subtle physical markers.

And that could make us despair like, “Oh, humans are never going to get past these things,” or we could take from that lesson instead that if the shape of your nose is enough to distinguish what so-called category you belong to and your value as a person — and we think that’s absurd and ridiculous — then skin tone, and the kinds of things that we look at in the United States as markers of differences are just as inconsequential or absurd. Not that that’s going to immediately solve all our problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Q. What has been the most rewarding part of the research for this book?

A. One of the interpreters who worked with us and had worked with me also on my dissertation and first book research back in the late ’90s and early 2000s was a genocide survivor. We interviewed a man who was Seventh-day Adventist and he had saved a lot of people in the genocide. After the interview, she thanked the man for giving us the interview and said, “I never knew that people did such courageous things to help people because no one helped me in 1994.” She later elaborated on that to me about how just knowing that there were people like that out there helped her feel more hopeful about the future of the country and feel like at least some people were helped by others. So that’s one of the things I think I’m proud of, or that I think is an important contribution that the book makes. And any time I have Rwandans who read my work and who say, “You’ve gotten it right,” is also very rewarding. As well as then to hear from non-Rwandans, from Americans who’ve read it, and they’re like, “You opened my eyes to something new and I understand it better.”

Q. Was there anything else you wanted to share?

A. The last thing I would say, and it’s something that comes out of both my first book and this book, is that I’ve always been amazed at how resilient humans in general are, but in particular, the Rwandans I’ve known for so long. No matter what terrible things happen in your life, it is possible to find a way to move forward and build a meaningful life and go on and find joy and those other kinds of things. Here, I went looking for hope in a very, very difficult circumstance. I think it’s something I keep coming back to as someone who

and very difficult topics to remind myself that when it feels

somewhere in there.

Interview by Stella Mayerhoff . This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AUGUST 24, 2023

ATLANTA — In her new book, “ Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership ,” Georgia State University researcher Monique Moultrie challenges prevailing notions of the interactions among race, gender, sexual identities and spirituality.

The book explores the oral narratives of Black lesbian religious leaders in the United States with the intent to “elevate the stories of Black women who proudly claim a lesbian and religious identity,” and shares how these leaders combat racism, sexism and homophobia, said Moultrie, an associate professor of Africana Studies and Religious Studies.

Through their life stories, Moultrie highlights the qualities that make these women role models for feminist leadership and illustrates how their authenticity, commitment to social justice, collaborative approach and spirituality promote change. Moultrie also explores how their advocacy for social justice can offer inspiration to anyone looking to become a more effective leader.

Question: What made you interested in stories about Black lesbian religious leaders in the U.S.?

Answer : I grew up in a very conservative Christian community and I spent a great deal of time as a high school student campaigning for all things conservative Christian agenda-wise, which included anti-gay everything. The book became my mea culpa, my trying to do recompense for how publicly wrong I was in the beginning and trying to show you can learn better, you can change your mind and you can still learn through life.

The second avenue, the more scholarly answer, is I started doing these interviews as a graduate student. The premise on which I was hired was, “Let’s tell the story of the first gay bishop of so-

and-so, the first ordained so-and-so.” And typically, those who are first in society are men so that’s what the story became.

One of the participants unexpectedly died and he had not told his story other places. That put a bug in my ear that these stories are transformative and they’re meaningful and they’re life lessons for other folks. I started thinking, “How could we amplify these messages?”

Q: What was the research process like in writing this book?

A: The process for doing oral history does involve that deeper exploration of a person’s life history. For me, the story I was interested in was this social justice activism and leadership. What does it mean to lead with an orientation towards healing the world and fixing the world? And that meant my prep work was, “Let’s learn where these folks are coming from. What are their biographies? What’s their story? What in their makeup made them amenable to giving a damn?” Because not everyone comes to the planet and cares about anyone else. So why did they? So doing that work of oral history is you do your biography work and then you make the ask of,

“Hey, I am a stranger to you, but I would like for you to tell me your most intimate stories.”

Recovering some of those pieces that may not be a part of how a person thinks about their story is the work of oral history. And then making some analysis of it. Once I had thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts, the goal was, “What’s the thread? What holds these very different people together? What’s the story here?”

Q: What surprised you the most about the process of this work?

A: In this work, I didn’t really delve into questions about the interiority of their lives. It surprised me because I wasn’t aware I was doing it until I looked at the bulk of the questions — and the responses in the transcripts — and I knew data that the transcripts didn’t show me. I had this decision to make, like, “Do you insert what wasn’t on record?” I chose not to. I stand by that ethical decision that I made. I think people don’t owe you all of themselves and that there’s a way in which society requires you to be sort of “on” all the time. And when you’re a great activist but a poor partner, people are stunned because you’re supposed to be this justice-seeking person on every avenue of your life and in every day of every moment of your life. And you know, like, what if Dr. King cuts you off in traffic or if I got flipped the bird by the president? What do I do with that? I felt like, sometimes we expect too much of our leaders, of our heroes. And I wanted them to have some pieces that were theirs that the public didn’t have access to. So that was surprising.

Q: How did sharing stories from women of different faiths provide insight into issues faced by Black lesbian religious leaders?

A: No matter which tradition these people came from, there was an innate spirituality within each of them. That was their source of restoration and perhaps even their catalyst for social justice animation, the feeling that there is something greater that we are called to do. And that they had these schisms of how their faith and their activism and their identities didn’t always reconcile for themselves and for others. And I think that was shared across religious tradition as well, that it wasn’t just, “Oh, this is a particular problem for Christians.” I heard it from Jews. I heard it from secularists. I heard it from Buddhists. I heard it from spiritualists. I heard it from African indigenous practitioners. They all have these tensions. They all have these schisms. I found that really fascinating — that there wasn’t any one right religion to go to. Because if the answer had been “All of these people have this problem in Christianity, but none of them have it in Buddhism,” then let’s send everyone to be trained to be a Buddhist meditator. That wasn’t the case. And that for me was helpful too, because, again, we want these neat packages. We want to be able to send someone to the place that gets it right or the movement that does it best. And the answer was there isn’t one. And I think that’s true to life. That’s true to life experience.

Q: You share this powerful image of “shattering stained-glass ceilings.” What do you mean by that?

A : What I found is that denomination wasn’t the issue. There is a Black, gay-affirming denomination. Well, there are several, but at the time when I was interviewing, there was one that was created by a Black gay man, Carl Bean, called Unity Fellowship. When I started doing interviews, I just thought everyone would be in Unity because, duh, it’s for us, by us. And the majority of my participants were like, “Yeah, I went there. It didn’t really rock with me.” And largely, that was around gender and patriarchy. For those who organized within Metropolitan Community Church, which is predominantly white, racism and sexism were their things to shatter in this stained-glass ceiling. But sexism was always there. It was always a component. So, if you were in an all-Black space, it was probably just sexism. If you were in a predominantly white space, it was definitely racism, but it was also sexism. So many of them noticed, like, “We’re willing to change everything else. We’re going to do differently. We’re not going to say that being gay is an abomination. We’re not going to say that our likes and loves are sinful. We’re totally rewriting the way we look at this biblical text. And yet, Paul was right about women in leadership.” Like, really? We have discounted three quarters of what Paul was saying but this is the thing he was right on? Seriously?

I think, particularly in the Black church context, and this is something I know quite intimately, that patriarchy is one of the pillars. It’s one of the foundations of the tradition. I say that because Black church spaces are majority female. That remains true even when you’re talking about gayaffirming spaces.

So if we wanted to not hold up patriarchy, we could do it on a random Tuesday. I mean, literally a group call and say, “We’re not getting tithes, we’re not showing up, we’re not frying chicken, we’re not watching nobody’s kids, we’re not teaching Sunday school. We literally are doing nothing until the church acknowledges these women’s roles and women’s gifts. And the church would not open that Sunday.” So, the result of that is that innate patriarchy that women accept about themselves that has to be fought as well. And that doesn’t change in gay and lesbian spaces or predominantly heterosexual spaces.

Q: Do you have any sense of differences between generations? What do you expect (or hope) to see in the Black, queer religious community in the future?

A: The main difference I think I can see — and it’s perhaps too early to make conjectures from the younger leaders — is the ability to be out earlier in their lives, and to be authentically their selves earlier in their lives, gave them a wider platform of things that they could be concerned about. Most of the senior leaders that I interviewed had that, “I knew I was a religious leader. I knew I was called. And so I worked in the church until I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be called a fraud because I got this thing that I know is in my heart and in my mind. I like girls. I can’t say it to anyone.’” And so they worked in a religious space and then they stopped. I saw in their journeys this long period to get to, “I am a queer lesbian, religious leader, activist.” And it took many of them most of their lives to get there.

And these younger leaders start knowing this at 13, knowing this at 14, coming out at 18, coming out at 20. And so that whole division, schism process, because it starts so much earlier for them, they are more reconciled and I think are able to activate themselves in these multiple spaces at much earlier ages. I think we’re going to see a longevity in these movements and a collaborative longevity from these younger leaders because they’re able to be themselves sooner.

Q: What are you most proud of in your work and in writing this book?

A: I am most proud that the goal I had — to have them be as present as I was — was achieved. I literally set out with a goal that half the book would be just their words, would be their transcripts. And I achieved that. Over half the book — like 43,000 words — come from their transcripts. I’m proud of that because this is their story. I’m simply trying to amplify it.

My work is to hold the megaphone whenever I get an opportunity, to hold the beacon light and shine it on these women and say, “This is what we should be looking at.” And I’m proud in any endeavor that I get to do that, that I get to shine light, that I get to say loudly, “Listen to these women over here, the leaders we’re waiting for.” In every opportunity I get to do that, I’m proud.

Q: What are you hoping readers will take away from this book?

A: I don’t think I’m just writing a book for queer

who’s

do I change the world?” I

Georgia State Neuroscientist Earns Lifetime Distinction as AAAS Fellow

JANUARY 31, 2023

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact

Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded

$2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA — Geert de Vries, Regents’ Professor in Georgia State University’s Department of Biology and Neuroscience Institute , has been named an AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

De Vries received the honor for his “transformative contributions to the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology and the origins and functions of sex differences in brain and behavior,” AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh said in a prepared statement.

“AAAS is proud to elevate these standout individuals and recognize the many ways in which they’ve advanced scientific excellence, tackled complex societal challenges and pushed boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come.”

Since its conception in 1874, the lifetime distinction of AAAS Fellow has remained one of the most prestigious honors in the scientific community. Members of the AAAS Council elect scientists for the rank of fellow for their distinguished achievements in research and contributions to their field of study. De Vries is one of 506 scientists, and the only one from Georgia State, elected to the rank this year.

“We are pleased and excited that this honor has been bestowed on this outstanding member of our research community,” said Tim Denning, vice president for research and economic development at Georgia State University. “He truly embodies the innovative thinking and realworld impact that we strive for here at Georgia State.”

Sara Rosen, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences , said de Vries is “not only at the forefront of his field internationally, but he is also a valued leader at Georgia State University.”

De Vries currently serves as chair of the Department of Biology and has served previously as director of the Neuroscience Institute and associate vice president for research and economic development at Georgia State.

“He has been a strong leader in our larger and more complex units of the university, working to empower other researchers and instructors at the university to also do their best work,” Rosen said.

According to de Vries, his research career began with a chance discovery that led him to question the current understanding of sex differences in how the body functions.

“When you’d ask most people why we have sex differences in the brain, they’d say they make males and females behave differently,” de Vries said. “But I’ve come to almost the opposite conclusion.”

De Vries has found that differences often compensate for sex differences in other parts of the body. In this way, they ensure that in most cases males and females still behave and function rather similarly.

“Almost any physiological system does not differ that much in function,” he said. “If you’re an organ in the body and you have to get rid of substances you don’t need, you get the job done. But the way in which you do that is not necessarily the same.”

De Vries came to Georgia State in 2012, where he says his community of research collaborators enriched his research career.

Despite his own impressive career and achievements, he was quick to mention the work of others when asked about his reaction to becoming an AAAS Fellow.

“When I found out, I was just grateful and felt fortunate,” de Vries said. “This is something that should happen to many more people. I think I’m lucky.”

De Vries joins thousands of previously named AAAS Fellows, including sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, anthropologist Margaret Mead and astronaut Ellen Ochoa.

— By Stella Mayerhoff

COLLEGE

Georgia State Physics Professor Wins Prestigious DOE Early Career Research Award

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded $2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA—Yang-Ting Chien, professor of physics at Georgia State University , has received a highly-competitive Early Career Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Chien, who will receive a five-year, $750,000 award, is one of 83 recipients from across the U.S. selected by a panel of scientific experts to receive funding. The program supports early career researchers at U.S. universities or DOE national laboratories.

“Supporting America’s scientists and researchers early in their careers will ensure the U.S. remains at the forefront of scientific discovery and develops the solutions to our most pressing challenges,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in a prepared statement.

A theoretical nuclear and particle physicist, Chien’s special interest lies in understanding the contents of an atom’s nucleus, and the forces—known as the strong interaction—that bind those contents together.

Chien and his colleagues work with data collected from high-energy particle colliders including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, N.Y., and the Large Hadron Collider at the European Council for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Once built, they also plan to use the Electron-Ion Collider at BNL.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider consists of enclosed tunnels that run in a circle—like a hula hoop—with a circumference of more than two miles. At two locations along the circle sit detectors, which collect data that Chien uses to reconstruct the makings of a nucleus. Two gold ions—electrically charged atoms—are spun in opposite directions around the hoop until, at nearly the speed of light, they collide into one another directly at the center of a detector.

“It is like you’re shooting a needle from America to Africa and hit a piece of hair,” Chien said. “You need that precision. It’s almost like a science fiction experiment. And our excellent experimental colleagues make it happen.”

As the ions collide, a fireball of material called quark-gluon plasma forms and streams of particles, known as jets, are sent flying away from the collision. The detectors collect information from the fireball and jets, including which types of particles are present and how fast they are moving.

Like the way in which investigators can reconstruct a car accident by studying the remnants of a collision, Chien uses data collected by the detector to reconstruct the contents of the nuclei.

“Using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques designed to extract features from this final state data, I try to link that to what’s happening at the collision,” said Chien.

By exploring the contents and forces found within the nucleus, he is laying vital groundwork for future work in nuclear physics research.

“This sector still needs a lot of work,” said Chen. “Understanding the structure of the nucleus is a crucial step.”

— By Stella Mayerhoff

MORE THAN SMART: Computer Science Research Aims to Make Intelligent Vehicles Affordable and Eco-Friendly

Haoxin Wang’s research could help transform the way manufacturers design self-driving vehicles.

In Haoxin Wang’s eyes, once-futuristic visions of self-driving vehicles are closer to reality than many people think. His research is focused on trying to help revolutionize the design of those autonomous vehicles.

Advancements in self-driving technology in recent years have ranged from adaptive cruise control and braking to efforts to create fully autonomous vehicles.

Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University, is addressing the need for advanced vehicle computing power to make selfdriving technology more accessible and efficient.

The key, Wang says, may lie in edge computing and sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the way smart vehicles operate.

“We want to make sure that every vehicle has sufficient computation power when they’re running AI applications like self-driving algorithms or image processing,” said Wang, who refers to the work as “protocol and algorithm design.”

“In the future,” he said, “our vision is that all vehicles can have fully autonomous driving functions.”

That would mean a more equal and fair computing environment, making it possible for vehicles to have the most advanced technology regardless of price.

Through their research, Wang and Jiang Xie, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, could change the way intelligent vehicles function through automotive edge computing.

Edge computing refers to a system of servers and wireless technology that works like a remote computer for a vehicle. This approach allows the computational work to be offloaded from the car to external resources.

Recent advances in car technology rely on downlink connections (transmission from a computer server to a vehicle) or uplink connections (transmission of information from a vehicle to a server). Downlink connections support features such as streaming entertainment. Meanwhile, features that require cars to take in information from the environment, such as self-driving technology, are supported by uplink connections.

In some cases, both downlink and uplink connections are used. For example, navigation technology may use uplink technology to transmit location data from the car to the remote server, and then use downlink technology to send the updated route information back to the car. However, current vehicles are limited in computing power. As a result, manufacturers must choose how to allocate resources that support each of these functions.

Traditional network resources are considered asymmetrical. That is, they allocate more resources to downlink applications than uplink applications. In the future, this could become an issue, as uplink applications are vital for self-driving technologies.

This is where Wang sees an opportunity for improvement.

Using an algorithm to enhance the performance of existing edge computing technology, his research proposes a new model of resource allocation that includes external edge servers.

“The vehicle will be like the data collector,” Wang said. “It collects data from the surrounding environment and transmits the data to the edge server for processing. After it finishes processing, the edge server will return the results back to the car.”

Offloading the computational process to an external server would make the vehicle’s hardware limitations less restrictive. This technology could provide more equality across vehicles, regardless of their built-in computing power.

In addition to making these forms of technology more accessible, Wang wants to make them better for the environment. He speaks in terms of a sustainable artificial intelligence ecosystem.

“Most researchers today care most about the performance of AI, what the AI can provide,” Wang said. “What we’re caring about right now is the sustainability of AI.”

AI applications require a large amount of data and power, resulting in substantial energy consumption and carbon emissions. Wang is striving to make AI more environmentally friendly so that as it becomes more prevalent in the future — perhaps with the help of his research — it can become more sustainable.

“This kind of environment-friendly AI is very important for the future of AI. We need to make it environment-friendly and sustainable enough to support our community,” Wang said.

LEARN MORE

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recently published an article by Wang titled FAIR: Towards Impartial Resource Allocation for Intelligent Vehicles with Automotive Edge Computing .”

by Steven Thackston

Photos

Page-Turning Perspectives on

MAY 8, 2023

ATLANTA — For over three decades, a period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles claimed the lives of thousands of people. In 1998, after years of tense negotiations, the Good Friday Agreement paved the way for a new age of peace and hope.

In her new book, “ Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland ,” Georgia State University English Professor Marilynn Richtarik draws on years of research and conversations with writers and readers to demonstrate how literature played a crucial role in the peacemaking process, and that literary works offer insight into this pivotal time in history.

Since her first visit to Northern Ireland as a Rhodes Scholar in 1989, Richtarik has been fascinated by Northern Irish literature and its relationship to contemporary politics. In “Getting to Good Friday,” she uses texts by authors including Deirdre Madden, Bernard MacLaverty and Brian Friel to show how creative writers both responded to and attempted to influence the peace process. She argues that literature can be a valuable tool for understanding history, as it can offer personal perspectives that formal historical accounts may miss. Her hope is that better understanding of history might help younger readers appreciate what has changed and open conversations between generations.

Q. How did you come to take what you’ve called an “accessible narrative” approach when studying history?

A. My undergraduate training was a joint degree in American history and literature. It’s informed everything I’ve done since then.

Literary critics will often have some kind of historical backdrop, and historians have been known to illustrate a point with reference to literary texts. But I think what’s different about this book is the extent to which I use literary analysis of texts — consideration of their formal properties, not just what they have to say about a specific subject matter, but how they’re put together — to try to help readers understand what was going on politically in that particular historical context.

I wanted to write a book that someone who didn’t really know anything about Northern Ireland (and certainly nothing much about Northern Irish literature) could read and come away with a better understanding of what happened in those years leading up to 1998 — and why it mattered, and how it allowed peace to be made. My goal with this book was to reach a wider readership, not just academics.

Q. Can you speak more to the importance of combining literature and history? What do we miss when we look at history without addressing the literary work from the time?

A. I examine them together for a couple of reasons. One is that the two are very closely intertwined. Ireland has a long history of writers being politically active and involved, and writers often write about historical developments. Nationality has been such a contested theme in Irish history and in modern Irish life. Some of the writers I discuss in the book were close friends with some of the prime movers of the peace process. Others were simply following events, but actively responding to them. There are lots of different ways in which the two connect.

Q. What did the research process look like for this book?

A. It looked different for each writer. As I tell my graduate students, professional literary criticism is all about putting literature into a context. That’s what the researcher brings to it. And that can be different things depending on what their interests and expertise are. It could be historical context. Maybe you know a lot about the history at the time and knowing that helps you to show why certain details in the text are important. I do a fair bit of that kind of contextualization. Some of it might be theoretical. Although I don’t do much of that, it’s what some people do. Biographical research is also an important element of this book. I know most of the authors I write about, so partly it’s the personal connection. Conversations with them helped to shape the way I read their books, as did library archival research. Brian Friel’s papers, for example, are in the National Library of Ireland, including his notes and early drafts of his plays.

Q. When you were looking at these pieces of literature , they were written — in most cases — by people who were still alive. What is that experience like?

A. Once you’ve written about living people, you can’t be careless about anything you say about any writer ever again. You’re definitely conscious of that. Sometimes I had the opportunity to show this work to them, and in some cases, sadly, they died before I could do that. I was working on the Brian Friel chapter, but he died before I finished it. I did show Michael Longley and David Park what I wrote about them. And, luckily, they liked my analysis of their works. It would be difficult if they didn’t. But it’s wonderful being able to ask questions.

Q. Has your work at Georgia State with undergraduate and graduate students played a role in writing this book?

A. My teaching informs my work. Many of these texts I have taught, either at Georgia State, at Queen’s University Belfast, or both. When you’re teaching the texts, you’re talking about them with a random group of people. And I’ve talked about these works with lots of different kinds of people. I have an Irish studies book group that I run, and some of my former students are in it, and some members are just friends — people in the community who are interested in Irish literature or Irish culture. So, we’ll meet and talk. I had many of these books on the reading list, so I got lots of different perspectives. And that’s very helpful when you’re trying to decide, “What do I think about this work?”

Q. What do you want readers to take away from your new book?

A. I want them to understand what went into making the Good Friday Agreement. And I hope to inspire people to keep working toward a more cohesive society, as well as to appreciate the role that the arts play in political development.

When someone who didn’t know or care anything about the peace process reads this book and says, “Wow, I see this in a whole new way,” that’s what I'm going for.

Q. What advice do you have for those interested in learning more about world events and looking at them through a historical lens?

A. You can read history, or you can read literature. You can learn a lot about a time that way. I think of literature, in many cases, as a kind of emotional history. There’s a book by Anna Burns called “Milkman. It won the Booker Prize a few years ago, one of the biggest prizes for an Englishspeaking writer. It’s set in Belfast in 1979. Burns never names the place, but she captures the feeling of it in a way that a history book probably couldn’t. It helps you understand what it felt like to live in a claustrophobic situation. I’m a big fan of historical fiction.

Q. Recently, Northern Ireland has been in the news regarding Brexit. How might these historical events and the work of literary experts relate to current events?

A. There’s a bit of a tendency nowadays, 25 years on while Northern Ireland is still a deeply divided society, for some younger people to feel like the Agreement didn’t matter that much, that it hasn’t solved the underlying problem. But I think it’s wrong to disparage the Agreement. You have to understand what things were like before to appreciate what the Agreement did. And there is, of course, a difference between cold peace, like we have now, and true reconciliation. But there’s also a huge difference between a cold peace and a

I wanted people to appreciate this achievement and to understand what a painstaking process it was to get there, how hard it was to get there and how significantly certain people had to change their ideas of what they were after.

The relationship between peacemaking and writing is that both involve constant revision. There’s so much work still to do. As I keep saying, especially to Northern Irish people, Northern Ireland does not have a corner on political dysfunction.

Interview by Stella Mayerhoff . This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Study: Links Between Bullying

and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Recent Stories

ATLANTA —The experience of being bullied and its link to social confidence among young people with disabilities is complicated, and efforts to curb bullying shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, according to a recent study from Georgia State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The study findings may inform strategies to combat bullying in schools, also referred to as peer victimization, especially for students with developmental disabilities.

Erin Tone, lead author and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgia State, said bullying and social confidence are often related but not always in ways we would expect.

“It made sense to us that anxious kids may be vulnerable to bullying and bullied kids may be vulnerable to anxiety, but we don’t know much about the chicken and the egg story,” Tone said.

In collaboration with former GSU professor Chris Henrich, Tone examined the relationship between social confidence and bullying. The team analyzed data from the nationally representative Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study, which collected data on parents’ reports of their children being bullied by peers and student reports of their own level of social confidence over four years.

“We chose a population that we knew was likely really vulnerable,” Tone said. “These are kids with a varied array of disabilities, from those that are pretty invisible, like dyslexia, to those like autism spectrum disorder or orthopedic disabilities that may be highly visible, either because of behavior or because of observable physical limitations.”

The findings show that students fall into three groups, based on the observed relationship between peer victimization and social confidence over time.

One group, which was more likely to include younger girls with a range of disabilities, showed little relationship between social confidence and peer victimization, as group members reported high social confidence despite high levels of being bullied.

The second group was a small set of students who were more likely to have disabilities associated with visible physical limitations or behavioral differences. Tone said these students were the most likely to be bullied.

Finally, members of the largest group were more likely to be older and to have invisible disabilities. For these students, Tone and Henrich were surprised to find that having been bullied early in the data collection was associated with higher social confidence years later.

“The key point is that we really do see variability. You can't just say, ‘Kids with disabilities are more likely to get bullied, so they're more likely to be socially anxious.’ It's a much more complicated picture,” Tone said.

The findings suggest that efforts to combat bullying should recognize the unique risks of each individual to foster a more informed approach.

Tone said more work needs to be done to understand why some youth with disabilities may gain social confidence over time, despite having experienced early peer victimization, while others do not. It is possible, for example, that some bullied children get helped in ways that provide them with social skills that prove useful later.

“It’s opened up a lot more questions for us than it answered,” Tone said. “But we were hoping that it gives people working with disabled kids some impetus to think about positive-focused interventions and who might benefit particularly from those.”

The article, “ Peer Victimization and Social Confidence in Youth With Disabilities ,” was published by the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.

— By Stella Mayerhoff

Featured Researcher

Erin Tone Professor Neuroscience, Psychology

Dr. Tone is a clinical psychologist with special interests in the ways in which emotional states, particularly anxiety, affect social behavior in both adults and children. Current research projects in the lab examine the ways in which anxious people behave in social situations and the cognitive, emotional, and neural processes that contribute to both their adaptive and their maladaptive interactions.

Study: White, High-Income People

More Likely to Move Farther from Family

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded

$2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA — While most people have continued to live close to family as they pursue educational and job opportunities, high-income white people have moved farther from family over time, according to a recent study from Georgia State University.

The research challenges common perceptions about the breakdown of American families and how individuals choose where to live.

Amy Spring, lead author and an associate professor of Sociology at Georgia State University, says that the notion that people are increasingly moving far away from their families is not as universal as commonly believed.

"That narrative is so often a white narrative and a high-income narrative that we accept societywide,” Spring said. “But for most people, that’s not even close to true."

Spring and her research team — including graduate students Sarah Roche and Dionne Parris — are among the first to analyze long-term shifts in family networks using a nationally representative sample and look beyond nuclear family ties.

They found that apart from white, high-income families, other racial and income groups tend to live near at least one family member.

The team analyzed data collected over 40 years from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longterm study started in 1968, to determine how race and income affect familial proximity.

“We broke it down by race and income — looking within those groups—because we understand that racial groups are not a monolith and there is variation within them,” Spring said.

While previous research has focused on closest kin members, such as parents and adult children, Spring looked at the entire family network.

"There’s a lot of good evidence that people have different relationships with their extended kin — grandparents, cousins — that varies by race,” Spring said. “So, the focus on adult children and their parents might miss an important part of the story."

The study found notable differences across racial and income groups. While white, high-income respondents increased their distance from family members over time, other race-income groups’ distance from family remained relatively stable. The findings suggest that family proximity is an important component of choosing where to live, even while institutions such as schools and daycares take over roles once held by family members.

According to Spring, these results also combat a commonly held bias that equates success with geographic mobility. The findings suggest that people who stay close to family are not merely unable to leave, but actively choose to do so.

“Black, high-income families were still living close to their families. They presumably have the resources and education to move away from family, but they may stay living near family for many different reasons that relate to family bonds, family culture, norms and expectations to stay close, or the racism they face in the wider society,” Spring said.

The implications of Spring's findings extend beyond proximity to family, highlighting the need for more research on inequality and the differences between white, high-income families and other groups.

"We need to think very critically about what it means when this group is on a different trajectory from everybody else and what it foretells about inequality," Spring said.

The article, “ Keeping kin close? Geographies of family networks by race and income, 1981–2017 ,” was published by the Journal of Marriage and Family.

— By Stella Mayerhoff

Featured Researcher

Amy

Amy Spring is a demographer and urban sociologist whose research centers on neighborhood context, residential mobility, and spatial inequality. Her current work investigates how social networks, residential histories, and contextual circumstances influence residential decisions.

Study: Interviewers Show Racial Bias When Reporting Survey

Respondents’ Political Knowledge

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded

$2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA—Whether Black people’s political knowledge is accurately reported in survey research depends on the race and skin tone of the interviewer conducting the assessment, according to a new study co-authored by a Georgia State University researcher.

The findings raise questions about how to ensure that political science research accurately captures the knowledge and attitudes of diverse survey respondents.

“For decades now, we’ve been underestimating the political knowledge of non-white respondents,” said Judd Thornton, associate professor in Georgia State’s Department of Political Science

Thornton and co-author Adam Enders of the University of Louisville published their findings in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Past research offers evidence that Black respondents answer fewer political questions correctly when asked by white interviewers as compared to Black interviewers. However, this discrepancy in performance is often attributed to respondents’ behavior without much consideration of interviewers’ contributions.

Looking to examine interviewers’ role in this effect, the authors analyzed data from the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES). The nonpartisan research group serves social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists by producing data drawn from surveys it conducts on voting, public opinion and political participation, according to its website.

During pre- and post-election surveys, interviewers administered an objective knowledge assessment in the form of political questions (such as, “Who is the U.S. Attorney General?”) and subjectively rated respondents’ overall political knowledge on a five-point scale. Interviewers also reported their own racial identity and skin tone on a 10-point scale, as well as the respondent’s race and skin tone.

In their analyses, the authors first looked at differences in Black respondents’ knowledge ratings based on interviewer race. In theory, trained interviewers’ assessments of respondent knowledge should be highly aligned with performance on the objective assessment. As a respondent gets more answers correct, the interviewer should rate the respondent as being more knowledgeable. However, the authors found that interviewers’ assessments of respondents’ political knowledge were more closely correlated with interviewer race than the factual accuracy of the answers. Overall, Black respondents were rated as more politically knowledgeable by Black interviewers than by white interviewers even when controlling for objective performance.

“Not only is racial bias systematic,” the researchers wrote, “but it is seemingly capable of overriding other considerations that should guide interviewers’ assessments of political knowledge.”

The researchers then employed a measure of relative skin tone calculated by finding the difference between the interviewer and respondent skin tones. Whether the interviewer was Black or white — and regardless of the respondent’s performance — respondents with darker skin tones than the interviewer received lower scores.

“The interviewers … are rating darker-skinned respondents as less knowledgeable, even controlling for objective knowledge,” said Thornton.

While previous studies have asserted that fear of negative perception from white interviewers may decrease Black respondents’ performance, these findings provide evidence of interviewer bias on subjective assessments of factual knowledge.

Given the use of interviews in determining levels of political sophistication (also known as “political awareness” or “political expertise”) and the effects of interviewer bias on reported political knowledge, the ability to capture Black public opinion and political involvement appears flawed. Thus, Black individuals are not accurately represented in the impactful political work that relies on this information.

“It seems like so many things are driven by political sophistication but if we’re not properly classifying how sophisticated individuals are, then our conclusions are going to be mistaken,” said Thornton.

— Story by Stella Mayerhoff

Judd

Supporting Caregivers of Kids With Developmental Disorders: There’s an App for That

OCTOBER 12, 2022

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded

$2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA — A web-based app shows potential for advancing the communication skills of children with developmental disorders in low- and middle-income countries, according to a recent study co-authored by Georgia State University researchers.

The self-guided app, designed to be used by caregivers in South Africa, provides structured activities that encourage caregiver-child communication and can be implemented into daily routines.

“It has the potential to make a difference in how families interact with their children with significant communication disabilities,” said lead author MaryAnn Romski, Regents’ Professor in Georgia State’s Department of Communication and Department of Psychology.

Romski and co-author Rose Sevcik, Regents’ Professor in Georgia State’s Department of Psychology , have been collaborating with researchers in South Africa since a 2002 College of Arts & Sciences faculty trip to the country. They saw firsthand the differences between the United States and South Africa in the degree of communication support offered to children with developmental disorders.

“The children receive intervention once a month for 30 minutes,” Romski said. “In the U.S., it would be two to three times a week for an hour.”

This contrast is due to a limited number of speech-language pathologists in South Africa. Furthermore, many families lack the means to bring children to the hospitals where support is provided. To combat this issue, Romski, Sevcik and their colleagues set out to create a more accessible alternative.

“The purpose was to develop an app to be used by rural families,” said Romski. “We took the intervention protocol we’d developed in the U.S. and modified the material for an app.”

The team of U.S. and South African researchers, including University of Pretoria Professor Juan Bornman, conducted focus groups in which they asked families and speech-language clinicians in South Africa for their input in developing the software.

What they created was a web-based, self-guided app with instructions in both English and Setswana, one of several official languages of South Africa, that provided caregivers with structured activities they used at home with their children.

The app consisted of 48 sessions in three topic areas: creating communication opportunities, modeling communication and responding to the child’s communication. In their own homes over the course of 12 weeks, caregivers and children completed the guided activities together.

The app was given the Setswana name “Nna le wena,” meaning “me and you.”

Researchers recruited families whose children were receiving speech-language therapy at local hospitals. While half of these families continued with therapy only, the other half were asked to use the app, installed on a tablet provided by researchers, in addition to therapy.

According to the study, published in a special family-themed issue of the Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities , there was a modest difference between groups in their objective measures of progress, which the authors noted could be a result of sample size and the standardized assessment measures.

However, the feedback from caregivers was encouraging. More than half of those who completed at least 44 of the 48 sessions reported that their children showed progress in their communication skills, such as using words instead of crying.

“While it seems minor, they’re actually big leaps in what a child can do,” said Romski. “The children become more intentional in how they’re communicating.”

While caregivers had previously relied on a professional to help their child only once a month, “Nna le wena” offered caregivers in South Africa a blueprint for supporting their child’s development at home.

“This framework may also have usefulness in other countries around the globe, including the U.S., to support and empower caregivers as the drivers of early communication interventions,” the authors wrote.

Stella Mayerhoff

— Story by

Featured Researcher

MaryAnn Romski Regents' Professor Communication, Psychology

MaryAnn Romski is the Director of the Center for Research on Atypical Development and Learning (CRADL). Her research examines how children with severe communication disorders develop language and communication skills.

THE COMEDY OF SCIENCE

By Stella Mayerhoff

While science and humor appear to be mutually exclusive ﬁelds, Dr. Lew Lefton

Faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Associate Vice President for Research Computing at Georgia Tech, has bridged these two seemingly distant worlds by performing science comedy and investigating the science of comedy. Lew began performing standup as a hobby while a graduate student in the 1980s, just as cable television roused a public love for comedy. “As a performer,” Lew says, “you’re there to serve the audience.” Catering to his audiences from the scientiﬁc community and the public, his sets highlighted aspects of both his professional career and what was then an emerging hobby. Today, Lew continues to bridge these two passions, making science the subject of his comedy; “Comedy is the noun; science is the adjective.”

THE SCIENCE OF COMEDY

All the time spent crafting science comedy led Lew to become increasingly interested in the inverse relationship between the two: comedy science, a ﬁeld still relatively unstudied. Some who study the subject propose that comedy is unique to humans due to psychological phenomena associated with humor. For example, humans demonstrate theory of mind—or the ability to consider the perspective of others—but there is debate as to whether (and the extent to which) other animals exhibit this cognitive ability.

Comedy often relies on theory of mind; the comprehension of another’s point of view can help an audience understand the humor in a comedian’s story or a comedian recognize whether the audience might ﬁnd a joke too offensive or outdated. It’s these complex cognitive abilities that may prove humor to be the ultimate Turing test, as they can’t be coded precisely through machine learning. However, progress in this research is difﬁcult without a way to measure and quantify humor.

WHAT MAKES COMEDY FUNNY?

Lew and his colleagues—including Georgia Tech faculty member Dr. Pete Ludovice—have worked to address this obstacle through the Humor Genome Project. As their database of humor-related content grows, so does their ability to perform quantitative analyses on various components of humor. The science of comedy has already boasted important results–including beneﬁts of humor in coping with anxiety and depression–and has potential ﬁndings in numerous areas such as human health and social behavior.

One group already jumping into these data are Lew’s students; he offers a project-based data analytics course at Georgia Tech in which students analyze data on humor from the Humor Genome Project. This creative approach to studying machine learning, computational analysis, and theories of behavior and cognition has great promise for gaining a better understanding of the science behind comedy.

“Things that make you laugh and then think—that’s the sweet spot.”

Beyond illustrating the relationship between science and comedy, Lew also emphasizes the ways it can benefit both comedians and scientists. He suggests that comedians take note of the science around them; not only can they benefit from understanding the science of comedy but understanding science will only give them a more informed voice to use on their platform. Scientists, on the other hand, should not only consider comedy another tool for telling their research story but also a great form of entertainment to enjoy. After all, anyone can benefit from a good laugh—there’s science to prove it! As for his personal take on what makes for great comedy, he suggests, “…things that make you laugh and then think—that’s the sweet spot.”

HOW TO GET INVOLVED IN ATLANTA COMEDY

Atlanta has a rich comedy scene with a diverse array of opportunities for performing. Though joining the comedy scene as a ﬁrst-time performer may seem daunting, Lew recommends learning by doing! Fortunately, Atlanta offers opportunities for aspiring comedians to practice in both improv classes and open mic nights. If you’re not up for being in the stage lights, numerous Atlanta venues offer comedy shows. Science for Georgia offers comedy events that will let you sit back and enjoy the humor in science and comedy.

Thank you to Lew Lefton for sharing his time and expertise on comedy! You can see more about Lew Lefton’s work here and explore his impressive collection of April Fool’s jokes here

Dr. Lew Lefton

Tracking Seizures: Brain Research Aims to Improve Epilepsy Treatment

JANUARY 19, 2023

Recent Stories

Georgia State University, City of

Atlanta Partner On New Community Research Grant

Negative Coverage Can Impact Opinion On Climate Engineering Research, Study Finds

Through the Eyes of Adam Schultz

Study: Links Between Bullying and Self-Confidence in Youth With Disabilities Are Complex

Computer Science Professor Awarded

$2 Million to Support Prescribed Fires

ATLANTA — A measure of brain activity known as causal flow can help locate the source of seizures before they occur, according to a new study co-authored by Georgia State and Emory University researchers.

The study , published in the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, could reduce the need for invasive procedures in treating drug-resistant epilepsy.

According to the World Health Organization, about 50 million people worldwide live with epilepsy. This neurological disorder is marked by recurrent seizures — sudden bouts of abnormal electrical activity in the brain.

“Seizures are often described as electrical storms in the brain,” said co-author Mukesh Dhamala, an associate professor in Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy . “And that can take over normal functioning. Patients can lose consciousness and control of their behaviors for seconds to minutes.”

While some cases of epilepsy can be treated with medication, about 30 percent are considered drug-resistant. These cases require surgical intervention on the brain area where the seizure starts, known as the seizure focus.

Neurosurgeons look for areas of abnormal activity using intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG), a procedure in which electrodes are surgically implanted into the brain for the duration of the test. To work, the patient must have a seizure while the iEEG is recording.

This approach to locating the seizure focus is successful only 40 to 60 percent of the time for multiple reasons. First, the patient must have a seizure while the iEEG is recording. When seizures occur sporadically and without warning, this can be a problem. Second, the iEEG can miss a focus region or detect multiple regions of abnormal activity. In these cases, it can be difficult — if not impossible — to visually interpret the iEEG recordings.

“That’s where we come in — to help neurosurgeons by analyzing recorded data,” Dhamala said.

Rather than looking at the output from each individual electrode, Dhamala and his team have started to combine data from each point to get a broader picture of the brain’s activity. Like using seismographs to determine the location and strength of an earthquake, these data points can be used to determine causal flow, a measurement that quantifies the activity of this broader network.

Previously, Dhamala and his colleagues used high-frequency activity known to be present during seizures to show that causal flow can locate foci. In its recent study, the team was able to do the same using low-frequency activity, which occurs before a seizure starts. Their findings suggest that using low frequencies to determine causal flow could help locate a seizure long before one occurs.

“The method can potentially open up a whole new possibility of localizing seizures with a...noninvasive approach,” Dhamala said. “That’s the idea.”

In the future, neurosurgeons may be able to locate foci without waiting for patients to have more seizures and do so even with less invasive techniques. The team is now conducting research on the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures low-frequency activity, as an alternative.

Dhamala co-authored the paper with Sushma Ghimire, a recent graduate of the Georgia State doctoral program in physics, and Dr. Charles Epstein, a neurophysiologist and professor at Emory University.

by Stella Mayerhoff

Story

—

Featured Researcher

Mukesh Dhamala

Associate Professor Neuroscience, Physics and Astronomy

Mukesh Dhamala studies the neural mechanisms of human decision-making, epileptic seizures, brain restoration after stroke and rehabilitative treatments and neuronal network oscillations and synchronization.

COLLEGE