Washington College News Service

WC Hosts Book Talks with Roberto Lovato and Dr. Jennifer Rudolph in Celebration of Latinx Heritage Month

September 23, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College will be hosting two virtual book talks in honor of Latinx Heritage Month. Featured speakers include Roberto Lovato, whose new memoir Unforgetting is hailed as an urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life; and Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph, whose study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism and Performance of Identity, examines the perception by media and fans of Latino baseball players and the consumption of these athletes as both social and political stand-ins for an entire culture.

Dr. Rudolph’s talk entitled #PonleAcento: Major League Baseball and Latinx Identity will be held on September 30 at 7:00 PM on Zoom. To register, use this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqceCsrzstGNwG2WGclYQvBkQQKsfhQgvv

Her work considers the ambivalent and contradictory representations of Latino baseball players, seen both as a threat and as an example of the American Dream. Professor Rudolph sheds new light on the ambivalences of mainstream American media and fans towards Latinx culture.

Her book also analyzes the #PonleAcento (put an accent on it) campaign that was unveiled by Major League Baseball in response to LA Dodgers infielder Adrian Gonzalez’s push to properly display Latinx player’s names on their jerseys.

Dr. Rudolph will discuss her work and also participate in a Q&A.

Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College.

Goldstein Lecture Series: Roberto Lovato, Unforgetting

On Wednesday, October 7 at 7 PM, the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs is hosting a book talk with Roberto Lovato for his new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Grans, and Revolution in the Americas.

In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget.

According to Kirkus Reviews, “Journalist and activist Lovato delivers a memorable indictment of the civil war in Central America that drove a wave of migration to the U.S.—and spawned gang warfare in the new country…A provocative, revealing work of journalism that explains gang behavior but does not idealize it.” Learn more about Unforgetting here.

Lovato will both discuss the book and read passages from it, followed by a Q&A.

About Roberto Lovato

Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on the drug war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti, France and the United States.

Latinx Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15, and celebrates the multicultural and multiethnic nature of Latinx, Latino and Hispanic-identified communities.

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Washington College Offering Skills Training for Job Seekers

July 28, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College is offering a series of online seminars to the public to make young job seekers more competitive in a tough employment market. The Competitive Advantage initiative teaches a mix of technical abilities and leadership skills within four thematic “tracks,” most of which take three to six weeks to complete. The training is aimed primarily at recent graduates but is available to anyone who wants to stand out to prospective employers.

Participants can choose from 19 different modules within four tracks: Career Development; Becoming a Leader; Environmental Technologies and Technical Skills; and Geographic Information Systems. All modules include practical exercises such as budgeting, writing, or data analysis, in a mix of online meetings and self-paced work. A three-week module requires about 15 to 20 hours to complete, or five to seven hours a week.

Instructors are from Washington College’s departments of Academic Affairs, Career Services, and the Center for Environment & Society (CES). “The modules are designed and taught by staff and faculty who have experience not just in academia, but in the workplace,” said John Seidel, CES director and Lammot du Pont Copeland Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies. “They have lived this material and know how important it is. We know what employers are looking for and what they value.”

Training sessions are now underway. Fees are $250 per module for three- or four-week sessions, and $300 per module for six-week sessions. Participants taking five or more modules get a 20 percent discount, and Washington College 2020 graduates are eligible for an additional discounted rate.

“We think the bite-size and low-cost modules will make the program easier to complete, while offering a credential to show employers that graduates are savvy, well trained, and committed,” Seidel said. “That combination is hard to find.”

For more information or to register, visit www.washcoll.edu/academics/competitive-advantage-initiative.

From John Seidel:

“Washington College already does a remarkable job of providing what are graduate-level experiences to its undergrads. That comparative advantage is borne out by recent national surveys showing that entry-level salaries for our graduates in, for example, the environment, are among the nation’s highest. This program builds on that advantage by teaching skills that are critical, but too often ignored – how to communicate, how to read a financial statement, prepare a budget, write a contract or grant proposal, and why understanding leadership is essential, no matter what your role in an organization.”

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Assistant Professor Cole Jones to Speak at Washington College March 5

February 20, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Assistant Professor Cole Jones

The treatment of prisoners of war during the American Revolution, and how issues surrounding that treatment helped escalate the conflict’s violence, is the topic of a talk on March 5 at Washington College. Cole Jones, assistant professor of history at Purdue University, will speak on “The Problem of Prisoners of War in the American Revolution.”

Sponsored by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and Washington College’s Department of History, the event at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge is free and open to the public. Jones will be discussing the research that has gone into his new book, Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

Jones will take listeners from the meeting rooms of the Continental Congress to the prison camps of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, revealing the factors that coalesced to transform the conflict into a war for vengeance and precipitously escalate its violence. During the eight-year conflict, American forces captured over 17,000 British and allied Germanic soldiers, as well as thousands more loyalist civilians and British mariners. The number of enemy prisoners in American custody often exceeded that of American soldiers in the Continental army. These prisoners proved increasingly burdensome for the new nation as the war progressed, creating a series of thorny political issues that compounded the logistical difficulties of confining, housing, feeding and caring for them.

A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New York Historical Society in 2015-2016, Jones is also the author of Loyalist Rising: The Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge (under contract, Westholme Press), as well as “Violence and Trauma” in The Cambridge History of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2021), and “Citizen for Citizen: The Problem of Political Prisoners in the American Revolution” in From Colonial Encounters to the Iraq War: Prisoners of War and their Place in American History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, forthcoming 2020).

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

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Preeminent Environmental Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil at WC Lit House Feb. 25

February 11, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil will be at Washington College on Tuesday, February 25, as part of the spring Literary House and Sophie Kerr Series entitled Writers as Editors. In this series, we will explore the writing lives of authors who are also editors of journals, literary magazines, books, and anthologies. This free and public reading will begin at 4:30 p.m. on the Literary House enclosed porch, and will be followed by a book sale and signing.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is Professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. Her newest collection of poems is Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). She is also the author of the forthcoming book of illustrated nature essays, World of Wonder (Milkweed, 2020), and three previous poetry collections: Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003)—all from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens (Organic Weapon Arts, 2014), a collaboration of nature poems with the poet Ross Gay. She is the poetry editor of Orion and her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry in both 2015 and 2018, as well as in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and Tin House, among others. Her honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pushcart Prize.

For more information, see the annual Literary Events Calendar brochure here: www.washcoll.edu/live/files/9229-2019-20-literary-events-brochure, or visit the Literary House website at www.washcoll.edu/centers/lithouse. More information about the Sophie Kerr Department can be found here: www.washcoll.edu/departments/english/sophie-kerr-legacy/.

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WC Alum Discusses New Book on Mental Illness on Feb. 19

February 10, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

David Finnegan-Hosey

The intersection of faith, mental illness, and healthcare will be the subject of a talk at Washington College on Feb. 19, when 2007 graduate David Finnegan-Hosey returns to his alma mater to speak about his latest book, Grace Is a Preexisting Condition: Faith, Systems, and Mental Healthcare. Emerging from his experience of living with a diagnosis deemed as a preexisting condition by insurance companies, the book explores the theological and spiritual dimensions of our public discourse around mental healthcare and mental illness.

The free public talk at 7 p.m. in Hynson Lounge is sponsored by the Goldstein Program’s Young Alumni series.

Finnegan-Hosey, who majored in international studies with a minor in philosophy, serves as the college chaplain and director of campus ministries at Barton College in Wilson, N.C., having previously worked with campus ministries at Georgetown University, American University, and the University of Hawaii. He holds a master’s in divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary and a unit of clinical pastoral education from the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. He is certified by Mental Health First Aid USA to provide initial help to people experiencing depression, anxiety, psychosis, and substance use disorders.

In 2011, Finnegan-Hosey was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a series of psychiatric hospitalizations. He now speaks and writes about the intersections among mental illness, mental health, and faith. He is the author of Christ on the Psych Ward (Church Publishing, 2018), and he blogs at Foolish Hosey. Profits from the pre-order of Grace is a Preexisting Condition will donated to RIP Medical Debt, which works to abolish unpaid medical debt.

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Henry Red Cloud, Kent County League of Women Voters Honored at WC

February 5, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Lakota Sioux elder Henry Red Cloud, who has worked to develop and share renewable energy technologies for Great Northern tribes to become energy independent, create jobs, and improve living standards for Native Americans, will receive an honorary Doctor of Public Service at George Washington’s Birthday Convocation on Feb. 21. The College will also honor Tina Bjarekull, retiring president of the Maryland Independent College & University Association (MICUA), with the Award for Excellence, and confer the President’s Medal to the League of Women Voters of Kent County.

Henry Red Cloud

The College’s annual spring semester Convocation begins at 3:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre of the Gibson Center for the Arts and is open to the public.

Born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Henry Red Cloud founded Lakota Solar Enterprises in 2004 through which tribal members manufacture and install efficient solar air heating systems for Native American families living on reservations across the Great Plains. Lakota Solar Enterprises has built and installed more than 1,200 solar heating systems that save low-income homeowners up to 30 percent on utility bills. In 2008, with support from the nonprofit partner Trees, Water & People, he opened the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, where Native Americans from around the country come to receive hands-on training in renewable energy technology and sustainable building practices from fellow Native American trainers. Among his many honors are the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s Annual Innovation Award, the World Energy Globe Award, the White House’s Champion of Change for Solar Deployment, and MIT’s Solve Fellowship.

For 17 years as president of MICUA, Tina Bjarekull has been independent schools’ advocate among Maryland legislators, lobbying to preserve the Sellinger formula that provides need-based grants and scholarships to undergraduates at Maryland’s private institutions. She has been a key influencer in Washington College’s successful applications for capital project funding and has steadily represented the independent colleges’ point of view at the state and federal level. With her deep belief in higher education, college access and affordability, and the promoting of diversity and women’s empowerment on our campuses, Bjarekull has artfully married data and the power of storytelling to demonstrate the enormous benefits private institutions provide.

Tina Bjarekull

Active since 1976, the League of Women Voters of Kent County, Maryland (LWVKC), is a non-partisan community organization with a mission to encourage active participation in government. It achieves much of this goal through its work to educate voters about candidates running for public office at all levels of government through Voter Guides produced for each primary and general election, and public forums for candidates running for offices that will impact the local community. The LWVKC also advocates for legislative priorities based on research, discussion, and consensus of the membership, and emphasizes local priorities and policies that benefit the Kent County community. These include education, housing, and growth while maintaining Kent County’s rural heritage and environment.

Additional honors to be conferred at Convocation will be the College Years of Service Recognition, the Joseph L. Holt Distinguished Service Award, the Alumni Service Award, the inaugural Innovation in Teaching Award, and presentation of new Phi Beta Kappa members.

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Race and Communication Infrastructure on Feb. 17 at WC

February 4, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College’s Communication and Media Studies (CMS) speaker series welcomes Robert Mejia on Feb. 17 to discuss “Race and Urban Communication Infrastructure.” The event, which is open to the public, begins at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall.

An assistant professor of communication at North Dakota State University, Mejia is a critical cultural scholar invested in understanding how politics, economics, culture, and technology are embedded within each other. His article documenting the racial history and infrastructure of contemporary propaganda, “White Lies: A Racial History of the (Post)Truth,” was awarded the 2019 National Communication Association’s outstanding article award from the Critical and Cultural Studies Division.

In this talk, Mejia will examine the city as a complicated confluence of uneven political, economic, cultural, and environmental interests. “Critical geographers and sociologists have documented how the inequitable power dynamics governing these relationships have led to segregated cities. This public lecture builds upon this research to illustrate how communication infrastructure is a fundamental element of urban planning, and how an emphasis on communication can help us to design better cities capable of combating racism and other forms of systemic discrimination.”

Mejia’s talk is supported by the William James Fund, the Communication and Media Studies Program, the Center for Environment & Society, and the Department of Environmental Science and Studies.

For more information about the CMS speaker series see https://www.washcoll.edu/departments/communication-and-media-studies/cms-speaker-series/

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WC Gets $1 Million Grant to Endow River and Field Campus Directorship

February 1, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College has won a $1 million grant from the Department of Commerce’s Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund (MEIF) to establish an endowed directorship of its River and Field Campus, an award matched by $1 million an anonymous donor.

It’s the fourth time in four years that Washington College has won an MEIF grant, and it will mark a turning point for the River and Field Campus (RAFC), which will become a research and experimental hub for a holistic rural land management model that supports the co-existence of sustainable land conservation and profitable agriculture. Already a research center for faculty and students in disciplines ranging from biology to anthropology, RAFC is now poised to launch ground-breaking work focused in innovative agriculture, natural resource management and restoration, and agro-ecotourism and recreation.

“Supporting innovation in Maryland is an essential part of keeping our state competitive, spurring business growth, and paving the way for the jobs of the future,” Maryland Commerce Secretary Kelly M. Schulz said on Friday announcing the awards. “Funding from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative will help four of our leading colleges and universities continue the important research that helps move our state forward.”

“Once again, Washington College is leading the way in environmental and sustainability studies, this time in the completely unique and unmatched living laboratory of the River and Field Campus,” says College President Kurt Landgraf. “We could not have accomplished these remarkable goals without the immense and consistent support of Harry Sears, who foresaw decades ago how agriculture and conservation must work hand-in-hand to the benefit of all, and then provided us the unparalleled property to explore answers to the questions that arise from that challenge.”

WC students on a field course at the River and Field Campus.

Michael Hardesty, currently Director of Programs and Staff at the College’s Center for Environment & Society (CES), will be named the new Director of the River and Field Campus. With over 15 years of experience in agriculture development and policy as well as environmental restoration and policy, Hardesty has overseen RAFC programming and development since 2012.

“Our River and Field Campus is a national gem; there is nothing like it in higher education,” says John Seidel, Director of CES, which oversees the programming and research at RAFC. “Its varied habitats provide myriad opportunities for teaching and research, while innovations in habitat restoration and agriculture provide models for others. This grant and generous matching gift will help us maximize the benefits of RAFC for our students and for the region.”

The River and Field Campus, located about a 10-minute drive from the College’s main campus, includes 2.5 miles of Chester River waterfront, 1,700 acres of forest containing ecologically unique Delmarva bays, and a 90-acre waterfowl sanctuary. Nearly all of it is protected from development—a result of Sears’ decision in 2001 to partner with The Conservation Fund to create the largest conservation easement in the state of Maryland. A member of the College’s Board of Visitors and Governors, Sears for decades has invited scientists and researchers from multiple institutions to conduct innovative environmental research and projects there. In 2017, he turned oversight of the property and its research over to the College.

RAFC is home to a working farm as well as programs and research overseen by the CES including Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory, the Natural Lands Project, the Grasslands Restoration project, and part of the Chester River Watershed Observatory. It is also the location of the Eastern Shore Food Lab’s new wild food outpost.

Dozens of College students already study and work at RAFC with faculty, where they conduct field research on diverse projects including studying the parental care of field sparrows (a species that comes to the property specifically for the restored grassland habitat there); analyzing surface runoff to better inform land managers of the best locations and methods to trap pollutants before they reach the Bay’s tributaries; comparing soil profiles in riparian and upland habitats; and surveying seed dispersal and tree diversity.

Ultimately, RAFC will also provide a venue for expanding WC athletics including the College’s varsity trap and skeet team, equestrian team, and development of cross-country and track and field opportunities. The entire property will also become more accessible for students, faculty, and staff who want to spend time immersed in the natural world. It is the perfect venue for both recreation and the applied, hands-on learning that has become a hallmark of Washington College’s environmental programs.

This is the fourth consecutive year the College has successfully pursued an MEIF grant with matching support from donors—a prerequisite for the award. In 2018, the state awarded WC $1 million, matched by $1 million from The Hodson Trust, to establish an endowed directorship for the College’s GIS Program. In 2017, the state awarded $944,000, matched by $1 million from private donors, to create an endowed chair for the College’s new Eastern Shore Food Lab. And, in 2016, the state granted $1 million to match private funds to create an endowed position in CES aimed at creating entrepreneurial opportunities for students in the sciences.

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Archaeologist John Seidel to Speak at WC Feb. 10

January 28, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Nothing lasts forever, and civilizations rise and fall. Their collapse, whether in ancient Rome, Mesopotamia, or the world of the Maya, evokes both mystery and drama. But often overlooked is the amazing longevity and resilience of human communities, even in places that push the limits of technology and capacity. Join archaeologist John Seidel in exploring examples of both resilience and collapse across time and around the world, asking what lessons we can learn from the past and how they might be applied today, in a time of rapid change and shifting climate.

The free and public presentation on Feb. 10 will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Litrenta Lecture Hall in Washington College’s Toll Science Center.

Seidel is the Director for the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College and the Lammot du Pont Copeland Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies. His areas of interest include environmental archaeology, maritime archaeology, historic preservation, natural and cultural resource management, remote sensing, GIS and computer applications in resource management, benthic habitat and coastal zone assessment, and long-term climate change.

For more information on these events or the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, visit the website at www.washcoll.edu/centers/ces, or visit our Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CenterforEnvironmentandSociety/.

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

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Unique, Behind-the-Scenes Experience in Colonial Williamsburg with WC

January 23, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Ever wondered what life was like for soldiers and civilians during the American Revolution? Had the urge to try your hand and blacksmithing, tin work, wood crafting, or firing flintlock muskets? If so, we have an experience for you!

Participants will spend 9 days in Williamsburg, the world’s premier open-air living history museum, interacting with expert craftsmen and historians. Using experimental archaeology and period technical skills, you’ll go behind the scenes and work with internationally recognized curators, skilled tradesmen, and specialists in the study and use of a wide range of 18th century domestic and military material culture. You will make items in the various trade shops and then have a chance to put them to use in the field at the end of the week.

This unique opportunity is part of a semester long course offered at Washington College. Due to popular demand, the experiential portion of this course will be opened to non-students for the very first time.

SPACE IS LIMITED – only 7 spots available to the public.

The fee for this program is $1,875, with a $500.00 non-refundable deposit due no later than January 20, 2020. The fee includes facilities pass, hotel room (double occupancy – singles available at additional cost), all meals, and course-related expenses for the week in Colonial Williamsburg.

For more information, contact Professor John Seidel (410-708-5094), jseidel2@washcoll.edu, or Chuck Fithian (302-222-0863) cfithian2@washcoll.edu for more information.

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