SDSU Departments of Classics and Humanities - Impact Summary FY2021-22

Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Academic Year 2021-2022

Department of Scholarship Classics and Humanities Impact Impact Report Report cal.sdsu.edu

Department of Classics and Humanities

ACADEMIC YEAR (AY) 2021-22 POINTS OF PRIDE

Message from Faculty

Academic Year 2021-22 saw us return to in-person teaching for the most part. The department is growing in exciting ways and is about to undergo some important programmatic innovation.

We concluded a successful tenure track search for a new public humanities scholar.

We received over 150 highly qualified applicants and are happy to report the hiring of Dr. Kishauna Soljour.

Kishauna Soljour, Ph.D., Public Humanities Scholar

Risa Levitt, Ph.D. Director, Jewish Studies Program Chair, Department of the Study of Religion Chair, Department of Classics and Humanities

Dr. Soljour received her Ph.D. in History from Syracuse University in 2019 and is most recently an Andrew W. Mellon Public Humanities Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Sarah Lawrence College, where she also leads a variety of humanities projects at the Yonkers Public Library. Her dissertation, “Beyond the Banlieue: French Postcolonial Migration & the Politics of a Sub-Saharan Identity,” highlights the roots of official immigration policy, the sociopolitical negotiation of successive waves of immigrants, and the spatialization of race in a self-described “raceless society.” This work won Syracuse’s All-University Prize and the Council of Graduate Schools & ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in Humanities in 2019. Her research concentrates on the nexus of cultural, political, and social change for diasporic communities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Embracing the mission of public humanities, Dr. Soljour utilizes her research and teaching experience to facilitate connections between academia and public service. Partnering with Humanities New York, the United Nations Volunteer Program, and local organizations, she has developed a number of initiatives to expand avenues for access for youth, immigrants, and marginalized groups. She is currently working with the Yonkers Public Library on their African American Oral History Project, centering Black Yonkers residents at the center of city history.

Impact on Student Success

Aaron Garcia, Humanities major, Class of 2022

Humanities major Aaron Garcia has been voted Outstanding Graduating Senior in the major by professors in the department. Aaron nominated Dr. Risa Levitt as his most influential faculty member.

College of Arts and

Letters

April Anson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Public Humanities Impact: Student Success and Fellowship

Fellow Achievements

Stepsay Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics 2022-23

David Wallace Hare, Friends of Classics (FOC) Schuch PostDoctoral Fellow Dr. Carly Maris, Ph.D. 2022-23 Stepsay Family Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics

Dr. Carly Maris (Ph.D. University of California, Riverside) comes to San Diego State from the University of San Diego, where she worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ancient History from 2021-22. Dr. Maris’ research interests include intersections between Rome, Persia, and Egypt; ancient spectacle; Late Antiquity; and Public Humanities. She is currently working on two articles on Roman triumphal parades, as well as an article on ancient Egypt in the 21st century. While at San Diego State, Dr. Maris will begin turning her dissertation into a monograph, which is a history of imperial parades of the ancient world. This work uses anthropological approaches to parades to explore the long history of imperial parades, beginning with tribute processions in the New Kingdom Egypt and Mesopotamia through the triumphal parade of Belisarius in the early Byzantine period. In addition to working on ancient parades, Dr. Maris also works in Public Humanities. Her work as a Public Scholars Fellow in 2017 led to a museum exhibition on Ancient Palmyra at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art. In 2020, Dr. Maris began creating educational content for social media platforms including TikTok, where she has accrued over 100,000 followers. While at SDSU, Dr. Maris plans to create a cross-platform web series on Cleopatra in the ancient and modern world. This series will be accessible to a general audience and appropriate for undergraduate-level courses along with a monograph.

Stepsay Postdoctoral Fellow Achievements

Andrew McClellan 2018-2020 Stepsay Family Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics

The latest piece written by Andrew McClellan, recently published in The Conversation, is on the new James Bond film and the literary history of the one-liner.

Congratulations to Andrew McClellan on his forthcoming chapter in the book, Latin Poetry and its Reception: Essays for Susanna Braund, ed. C.W. Marshall: chapter title: "Mens Humilis vs Superbia in Prudentius' Psychomachia."

Congratulations to our FOC Schuch Post-Doctoral Fellow, David Wallace Hare on the following new publications: "Bears as Benefactors? Bear Veneration as Apicultural Risk Management in Roman Spain" in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 14(3), 324–350 and “Pigs in the City, Bees on the Roof: Intraurban Animal Husbandry and Butchery in Roman Spain,” with K. Tardio, in Divergent Economies in the Roman World: Holistic Views on Habitual and Aberrant Practices, ca. 300 BC–AD 300, Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies, edited by D. Van Limbergen, D. Taelman, and A. Hoffelinck, Palgrave Macmillan: London, forthcoming.

Fellowship Impact (cont'd)

Philanthropy

Schuch Friends of Classics Postdoctoral Fellow 2022-23

Emi C. Brown, Ph.D. 2022-23 Friends of Classics and Barbara Schuch Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics and Digital Humanities

New Classics Faculty Member The James J. Stansell Classics Endowed Fund will provide funding to bring on a new Classics faculty member in the coming year or two.

Dr. Emi C. Brown (Ph.D., University of Southern California) comes to San Diego State University from the University of Southern California (USC) where she was a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in 2021-22. Brown, who is from Seattle, completed her BA and MA in Classics at the University of British Columbia before earning her Ph.D. in Classics at the University of Southern California in 2021, along with a certificate in Visual Studies. Her dissertation explored monumentality and the city in Martial's Epigrams and considered how Martial interrogates and undermines the Flavian ideological program through his allusions to the monuments of Rome. Brown’s research interests are Flavian and Augustan poetry, Greek and Latin papyrology, and the interaction between Roman imperial literature, material culture, and the natural world. At USC, she designed and taught a class entitled “Representations of Nature in the Roman Empire.” While at SDSU, Dr. Brown will be working on a project that explores the aestheticization and systematization of natural imagery in Augustan and Flavian art and literature. This project aims to explore how the depiction of the natural world, in particular works of art and literature, functioned on one level to systematize and make sense of a Roman world newly re-ordered under novel imperial schemata. On another level, the selected case studies reveal an interest in the re-mystification, complication, and problematization of rigid hierarchical conceptions of the human and natural world.

April Anson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Public Humanities Faculty Achievements Scholar of the Month

David P. Cline Professor, History

David P. Cline is a historian specializing in 20th and 21stcentury U.S. social movements, oral history, the digital humanities, and public history. From 2011 to 2017 he was Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Tech and Director/Associate Director of the Graduate Certificate in Public History. Since 2013 he has also been a Lead Interviewer and Research Scholar for the Civil Rights History Project of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. David was also the Associate and Acting Director of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2008 to 2011. His public and digital history projects include an augmented and virtual reality experience of a World War I battlefield site in Vauquois, France; an augmented reality, iPad-accessible application that helps teach African American history and the skills of historic inquiry; major national oral history projects and local projects focusing on African American, university, and LGBTQ history; and museum and historic site exhibits. David's most recent book is From Revolution to Reconciliation: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2016) of which CHOICE recently said: "Every academic and church library should acquire this timely, important book. "He is currently finishing Twice Forgotten, a book that uses oral histories to delve into the African American experience of the Korean War and to connect these to the civil rights movement.

The Jazz Bastard Podcast, recently featured on All About Jazz, is the brainchild of Dr. Michael Caldwell and Dr. Patrick Burnette. The podcast has totaled over 200 hours of content since its debut in late 2012.

Michael Caldwell, Ph.D., Humanities Co-Adviser

April Anson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Public Humanities

Congratulations to Dr. April Anson, who was named scholar of the month by The Association for Literature.

Anson spoke with Dr. Jessica Hurley about her new book Infrastructures of Apocalypse for Edge Effects podcast (Univ. of Wisconsin Madison).

Thank you for your generous support.

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