Faculty Focus - May 3, 2021

 Recently, faculty shared their expertise through authoring published articles, taking part in virtual panels, and presenting at annual meetings.

Professor of Geology Antun Husinec delivered a virtual seminar for the Virginia Tech Geoscience Department on Friday, April 23. Husinec, whose expertise is in sedimentology and stratigraphy, presented the results of a 10-year research project in which a dozen St. Lawrence students have actively participated in. 

Their research examined the rock, fossil, and chemical signatures of the climatic and sea-level changes over an approximately 5 million years long period preceding and during the first of the “big five” mass extinctions of Earth's history. Their findings help answer questions about past climate and sea-level oscillations to better understand drivers of major environmental change in the past and enable projections for the future. 

Husinec has researched in many locations such as Poland, the Appalachian Basin, St. Lawrence lowland, Wyoming, the Caribbean Region, and the supergiant oil fields of the Arabian Plate. Among the courses he has taught at St. Lawrence are Oceanography, Regional Field Studies in Jamaica, and Tropical Coastal Environments.  

Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Rafael Castillo Bejarano participated in a panel at the Renaissance Society of America 2021 Virtual Conference on Tuesday, April 20. In his talk, Castillo Bejarano analyzed the ethics of masculinity in the work, Las Dos Doncellas by Miguel de CerVantes. The event was sponsored by the Cervantes Society of America.

Castillo Bejarano’s research focuses on medieval and early modern Iberia, early modern subjectivity, 16th and 17th Hispanic poetry, transatlantic connections, theory of the lyric, and poetry and music. He regularly teaches Spanish courses at St. Lawrence and is currently working on a book manuscript.

Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat, whose recent work focuses on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, discussed the likelihood of President Joe Biden publicly recognizing Armenian genocide in a conversation with Nicholas Danforth from the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy on Tuesday, April 15.

“While I'm generally leery of governments making pronouncements on historical matters, I think the reality of an ongoing and well-funded program of genocide denial on the part of the Turkish republic sort of changes the game and makes it more reasonable for other states and entities to make that case,” said Eissenstat. “And I think given the ongoing pain and in fact, the ongoing repression of minorities within Turkey, it sort of crystallizes for me, the need for states and non-state actors to state what's clearly the historical consensus.” 

The conversation was featured by Conversation Six, a new platform for creating short-form podcasts from world-leading experts in their field. 

Eissenstat's research focuses on nationalism and Islam in the 19th century Ottoman Empire as well as the history of the Turkish Republic. His recent work has focused increasingly on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, especially on issues of rule-of-law, minority rights, and the reshaping of political culture under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In addition to traditional academic work, Eissenstat served for over a decade as a Turkey Country Specialist for Amnesty International-USA. He has lectured at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. military, and the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, as well as given testimony to the Canadian Senate and offered briefings to Congressional Committees.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Alanna Gillis presented her research paper on students' experiences with the emergency remote transition in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, at the Southern Sociological Society's annual meeting on Thursday, April 8. 

Gillis, whose research focuses on inequality in higher education, analyzed how the remote transition impacted students' living arrangements, finances, mental health, and academics, finding that inequality by social class background, race, and international status all grew as a result of the pandemic. Gillis was the lead author of the work and was joined by coauthors Renee Ryberg, Sara McCauley, and Myklynn LaPoint.

Gillis’ work examines academic, social, and political decisions, and behaviors of college students, during college and after graduation. Her published works have appeared in Sociological Forum, Qualitative Sociology, Socius, and Teaching Sociology. Gillis regularly teaches courses related to inequality and education and is currently working on multiple projects about how the pandemic is impacting college students academically, socially, and with their mental health.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Yesim Bayar published an article in the British Journal of Sociology on Wednesday, April 7. In the article Bayar, whose research focuses on understanding the process of social and political change, examines how Armenian citizens of Turkey employ names and naming strategies in their everyday life to navigate a nationalist social landscape. The British Journal of Sociology is one of the most prestigious journals in the discipline and is published by the London School of Economics. 

Bayar’s work spans a variety of interrelated issues including nationalism, ethnic and religious minorities, citizenship, constitution-writing, and language policies. 

St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a new regular roundup that features noteworthy faculty news. Submit news for an upcoming edition.