April
Danna Agmon, History, was one of three Virginia Tech faculty members inducted into the university’s Academy of Faculty Service. She was recognized for her six years of dedicated service to her role as Faculty Principal of the West Ambler Johnson Residential College. Faculty nominated for membership in the Academy of Faculty Service must have successfully completed an elected or appointed term of office in university governance, completed the assignment or set of responsibilities associated with a university-level project, or made commendable service contributions at the university level outside of usual responsibilities and ongoing formal governance roles.
Two ASPECT doctoral students presented papers at the International Studies Association Conference, which took place March 2–5 in Chicago, Illinois. Sabrina Harris presented “Resistance of Reconfiguration: Organizational Governmentality and Counter-Conduct at the United Nations,” and Luther McPherson gave two papers: “Writing the National: Dramatic Performance, Martial Culture, and the Propaganda of Identity in 19th-Century Prussian Literature” and “Grand Strategizing as a State’s Theory of the Self: The Case of Precolonial Prussia as German Unifier.”
The 2025 ASPECT Graduate Conference titled “On Violence: Domination, Control, and Resistance” took place March 27–28 on campus and virtually. The following ASPECT doctoral students gave presentations: Arka Banerjee, “Receiving Cyberpunk Through Three Lenses: Control, Discipline, and Depressive Hedonism”; Jack Bernardi, “Patrilineality and Sacrifice”; Ana Maria Camargo, “Exploring the Migration Policies of the US-Mexican and Turkish-Iranian Borders Through the Critical Displacement Studies Perspective” with Dr. Alper Ekmekçioğlu; Marie-Lys/Jane Chambraud, “Theoretical Intersections of Resistance: Exploring Peoplehood, Survivance, and Indigenous Feminism Among the Eastern Cherokee Nation”; Sean Chambers, “Nonviolence in Black Rhetorics of Religion and Media”; Armin Firouzi, “Queerness Behind the Veil: Resistance and Censorship in Post-Revolution Iranian Cinema”; Hannah Gignoux, “The Fruits of Our Labor: Towards a Holistic Theory of Value”; Elhom Gosink, “University Commitments: Encampments as a Reclamation of Space on American University Campuses”; Erin Hammond, “An Overview of the History of Indian Agricultural Development and Extension Paradigms”; Sabrina Harris, “Improvement, Empowerment, and Good Governance: The Discursive Construction of Capacity within the UN’s Environmental Discourse”; Cory Higgs, “Futurity, Folklore, and Futurism of the Mothman: Rhetorical Future-Facing Transformations and Reclamation Through Cryptid Images”; Robert Hodges, “Alternative Examination of Transnational, Violent, Non-State Actors: Resource Mobilization and the Approach of Charles Tilly”; Trevor Jeyaraj, “Can Grief Act as a Critical Interlocutor of Anti Caste Violence?”; Bai Jiang, “Hyperlinks as Affordance: Readership, Digital Media Infrastructure, and Data Relations in Chinese Online Fan Communities”; Andreza Jorge, “Unidos da Nova Holanda-Carnival as a Grounding Experience”; Onur Karabicak, “The Map: Why Violence Re-occurs With International Intervention?/Proposing a New Conceptualization Into Responsibility Ethics of Laura Zanotti”; Jessica Long, “Echoes of Kyriarchy: From Antiquity to the American Evangelical Church of Today”; Vasilije Mesarovic, “Evolution of Race and Species in Fantasy Video Game Narratives: A 30-year Retrospective of the Warcraft Franchise”; Sara Naghibizadeh, “Iran and Foucault: An Exploration of Revolution and Subjectivity”; Shreya Hari Nurani, “The So-called Apsara: Identity, Tradition, and Cultural Crossroads in Cambodia”; Rebekah Mui Pei Ern, “Castration as Political Theology: The Disciplinary Politics of God’s Empire”; Michael Scipioni, “Dramaturgy and Truth-Telling: From Oedipus to Hamlet” with Estefania Perez-Vera; Michael Senters, “We’re All Goons Now: How the Rhetoric of Online Subcultures Came to Dominate Political Rhetoric in the United States”; Maria Siddiqui, “Construction of Legal Time in India”; Aline de Souza, “Analysis of the Performance Recording of Ghali’s and Ratchopper’s Medley in the Sanremo Festival of 2024 in Sanremo, Italy”; Hannah Steinhauer, “Algorithms, Abortion, and Making Decisions”; and Zahra Modarres Vahid, “Advocacy Under Authoritarianism in Iran.” Presentations were also given by ASPECT Visiting Graduate Researchers Lianne Oliveira, “Violence Against Black Brazilian Women and the Judiciary’s Role in an Unequal Society,” and Joao Peleja, “Platform Workers’ Micro-Resistances Against the Experiences of Disrespect and Humiliation: Towards Neoliberal Governmentality.” In addition, the following graduate students in other units in the College gave presentations: Cameron Baller, Sociology master’s student, with Environmental Policy and Planning major Catherine Shewchuk and Environmental Conservation and Society major Meredith Grott, “Pipelines and Palestine: Articulating Solidarity from Appalachia to Gaza”; Ranger McKinney, Political Science master’s student, “The Bourgeois Sexual Ideology: An Examination of Class, Sex, and Ideology”; Elizabeth Mennitt, Political Science master’s student, “9/11 and Onset of the War on Terror: The Role of the Visual Image in Upholding Violence and Vulnerability”; Mallory Premock, Political Science master’s student, “‘We’re All Born Naked and the Rest Is Drag’: A Re-consideration of Butler’s Theory of Subversive Bodily Acts in Modern Drag”; Elena Roe, Political Science master’s student, “Drones and Demasculinization: The Gendered Logics of Drone Warfare”; and Tsung-Yen Tsou, Science and Technology Studies doctoral student, “Research of Marine Plastic Pollution, 1970–1979.”
Sweta Baniya, English, published “Navigating Immigration as an Alien: A Critical Interface Analysis of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Website,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 68.1 (March 2025): 22–40, with Jianfen Chen and Shyam Pandey.
Shannon Bell, Sociology, is collaborating with John Munsell, Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, to better understand the culture around Appalachian non-timber forest products. Munsell was awarded a $500,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to conduct a preliminary study. The collaborative work is part of a broader economic development strategy emphasizing local Appalachian stewardship and control over natural resources management and production.
The Department of History hosted the 28th Annual Brian Bertoti Innovative Perspectives in History Symposium. Organized by the History Graduate Student Association, the symposium featured 10 presentations by students from four institutions as well as comments from department faculty members and a keynote lecture. The following Virginia Tech students presented papers; all of them are master’s students in History, unless otherwise noted: Miles Abernethy, “Warriors for the South: White Confederate Characterizations of Eastern Cherokee and Catawba Martial Proficiency”; Paige Carter, “Purposeful Partners: Cross-Cultural Sexual Relationships in the Eighteenth-Century North Carolina Borderlands”; Kylie Edington, “Mapping Spatial Networks of Queer Pleasure Within New York City”; Mason Keyser, “Concealing the Crimes of Mortals: Nature and Memory at Appomattox Court House”; Grace Kostrzebski, History and Religion and Culture major, “‘From Insurgents We Have Now Become Disciplinarians’: A History of the History Department at Virginia Tech, Its Ties to the Social History Movement, and the Creation of New Historical Disciplines”; Hannah Schetselaar, “From “Noteworthy” to Missing: Jim Crow (Un)Representations at the Jamestown Festival of 1957”; and Maria Siddiqui, ASPECT doctoral student, “Public History and the Legal Construction of Past in India.” The symposium took place on March 22 in the Goodall Room of the Newman Library.
Brian Britt, Professor of Religion and Culture and Director of ASPECT, published “From Passion to Politics in the Literary Reception of Samson,” The Hebrew Bible in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry, ed. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2025), pp. 175–88.
The “Building the Future of Technology Implementation in Health Care: Human Systems Integration” team was awarded additional grant support from Destination Area 2.0 Phase II funding to develop solutions to complex global problems in the field. The Principal Investigators of the transdisciplinary team are James Ivory, English, and Sarah Parker, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Among the primary affiliated faculty is CLAHS faculty member Laura Halcomb, Sociology.
Katie Carmichael, English, published “New Orleans English,” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ed. Kingsley Bolton (New York, New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2025), pp. 2698–710.
Carol Cash, Education and an alumna of the University of South Alabama, received that university’s Distinguished Service Award. She was honored for her service as a K-12 educator for more than 30 years, both as a teacher and a principal, along with her 15-year career in higher education in the School of Education at Virginia Tech. Cash was recognized at the 20th Annual University of South Alabama National Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni and Service Awards, which were held on March 13 on campus in Mobile, Alabama.
Amanda Demmer, History, was awarded a $60,000 research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a biography on Ginetta Sagan. Sagan, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, was a leader in the international human rights movement after World War II; in 1981 she established her own organization, the Aurora Foundation, to research human rights violations and work on behalf of political prisoners. In addition, Demmer published “Refugees and U.S.-SRV Relations,” Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Vol. 3: Endings and Aftermaths, ed. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen and Pierre Asselin (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2024): 402–23.
Alexander Dickow, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, coedited Dictionnaire Max Jacob, Dictionaries and Summaries 31 (Paris, France : Classiques Garnier, 2025) with Patricia Sustrac. Dickow’s individual contribution to the volume was authorship of 72 entries and coauthorship of an additional 14 from among a total of 424 entries.
Curriculum and Instruction doctoral student Valerie Dunham and Dale Robertson, Education, published “Leveraging Digital Tools to Expand Teachers’ Access to Literacy Coaching: A Review of the Literature,” Research Handbook on Classroom Observation, ed. Sean Kelly (Cheltenham, United Kingdom, and Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar, 2025), pp. 294–309, with Christine M. Leighton.
The Virginia Tech Ethics Bowl Team competed in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl National Competition, which took place February 22–23 in Norfolk, Virginia. Hosted by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, 36 teams from among 200 at the regional level participated at the national level in the analysis and discussion of contemporary ethical dilemmas. The Virginia Tech team finished the competition with one win, one loss, and two ties. Members of the team were: Greyson Hunziker, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE); Gaurav Jones, Experimental Neuroscience; Jesse Macklin, Cognitive Behavioral Neuroscience and Philosophy; Sam Peden, Philosophy, Mathematics, and Political Science; Sean Scott, Computer Science and Philosophy; and Alisha Waddell, PPE and Sociology. The faculty coach for the team is Justin Horn, Philosophy.
ASPECT doctoral student Armin Firouzi published “Zoroastrianism in Yazd Reflections on the Right to the City and Politics of Cultural Identity,” Conservation Theory and Urban Realpolitik, ed. Solmaz Yadollahi, Kulturelle und technische Werte historischer Bauten (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2025), pp. 61–81.
The following CLAHS graduate students gave presentations as part of the 2025 Graduate and Professional Student Senate Research Symposium and Exposition, “Future of Research: Empowerment, Innovation, and Education,” which took place March 26: Saadia Ali, Curriculum and Instruction, “From Pixels to Polyglots: Translanguaging Meets Gamification”; Kamla Al Amri, Curriculum and Instruction, “Let us CARE: Care Adoption in Remote Environments”; Brooke Hypes, Public Administration and Public Affairs, “Towards a Humanist Administrative Ethic”; Jacqueline Maciel, Sociology, “Waiting on the Cleanup: The Superfund Program’s Impact on Local Governance”; A B M Nurullah, Sociology, “The Role of Climate-Induced Disaster in Multidimensional Poverty: A Systematic Review”; Mackenzie Rose, Individual Interdisciplinary Program, “Second Person Voice in Narratives: An Action Research Study of Therapeutic and Agentic Outcomes”; and Fariha Tabassum, Sociology, “A Qualitative Study on the Role of Companion Animals for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.” In addition, one CLAHS student presented a poster at the event: Emily Fuller, Planning, Governance, and Globalization, “A Multimodal Mentoring Mechanism for Supporting Early Career Scholars’ Research Agenda Development.”
The Graduate School recognized outstanding master’s and doctoral degree students as well as faculty mentors with awards of excellence during the Graduate Education Week awards reception, which took place March 27. The outstanding graduate student award winners in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences were master’s student Elena Roe, Political Science, and doctoral student Savannah Mandel, Science, Technology, and Society. Jacob Robinson, Sociology, was recognized with the Service Excellence Award. Matthew Fullen, Education, was honored as the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Outstanding Mentor. Additional information about the award winners is available here.
Aarnes Gudmestad, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, published “Mixed-effects Modeling with a Multinomial Dependent Variable,” Language Learning 75.1 (2025): 212–49, with Thomas A. Metzger.
Matthew Heaton, History, presented the keynote titled “‘Feeling of Death at All Times and Thinking That This World is Not the Place for Me’: Psychiatry, The Humanities, And My Mid-Career Crisis” on March 28 at the 24th Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas at Austin.
Farida Jalalzai, Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and Engagement, published “More Than a Journal: Politics & Gender and the Study of Women as National Leaders,” Politics & Gender 21.1 (March 2025): 126–30.
Javiera Jaque, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, published Identidades fronterizas: Encuentros coloniales en los márgenes del imperio español en Chile (Border identities: Colonial encounters on the margins of the Spanish empire in Chile) (Santiago, Chile: Cuarto Propio, 2025).
Timothy Luke, University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, published “A Clash of Accelerationism and Adjudication: DOGE’s Attacks on the Administrative State,” Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 210 (Spring 2025): 161–64.
Rachel Midura, History, published Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2025).
Carol Mullen, Education, received the Mary Anne Raywid Award from the Society of Professors of Education (SPE). Named for a past president of the society, the award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the study of education. Mullen will be recognized at the awards ceremony during the SPE Conference on April 26 in Denver, Colorado. In addition, Mullen published “Creative Learning and Expression in College Classrooms Across Different Cultures,” Journal of Creative Behavior 59.2 (2025), e70013.
The 2025 volume of The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Review was published in association with Virginia Tech Publishing; the journal publishes work by current and recent undergraduate students worldwide and is housed in the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). The editor in chief of this year’s volume is Eireann Maybach, Political Science and Communication. Associate editors are Chloe Ebert, PPE and Philosophy; Annie Frietsch, PPE; Sydney McCarthy, PPE; Delaney Moran, PPE and International Trade and Development; and Phoebe Scarborough, PPE. The contents of the volume are available here.
Katrina Powell, English and Director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies, was named Alumni Distinguished Professor. The 10-year appointment recognizes faculty who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishments and academic work across teaching, research or creative activity, and engagement. A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 2006, Powell has published numerous articles and multiple books. She is the founding director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies, which provides research opportunities for students and faculty to help find solutions to various types of forced relocation, working closely with communities locally and globally. She also codirectors Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia, a project funded by a $3 million Mellon Foundation grant that is focused on creating monuments that highlight histories of people in the region whose stories have been silenced or excluded. Powell earned her bachelor’s degree from Mary Washington University, a master’s degree from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Louisville.
ASPECT doctoral student Hannah Steinhauer presented “Information Technologies and the Production of Abortion Ignorance” at the Eastern Sociological Annual Conference, which took place March 6–9 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dimitris Tsarouhas, Political Science, published “Negotiating the Recovery and Resilience Facility: The Emergence of Coordinative Conditionality, Comparative European Politics 23 (2025): 18–39.
Vinodh Venkatesh, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, published “Migrant Masculinities in the Spanish Sitcom,” Masculinities and Migration in Latinx and Francophone Literatures and Cultures, ed. Brandon P. Bisbey and Adrián Herrera Fuentes (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature/Palgrave MacMillan, 2025), pp. 65–83.