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Department News
Communication Arts Sophomore public relations major Summer Cunningham's audition debuted on American Idol on Jan. 23. Summer has already completed at least one American Idol audition in Hollywood but cannot say how successful her time was in California. Music  The Georgia Southern Chroale presented the final concert of the Sacred Sound Sacred Space series at Woodlawn Untied Methodist Church in Augusta, Ga., on Jan. 12. The concert was a wonderful opportunity to perform for alumni, Chorale students' families, and prospective students. After the concert, the Chorale enjoyed a family-style Italian dinner at Buca di Bepo to begin the countdown to their tour of Italy and performance at the Vatican this summer. The Chorale also served in worship at WUMC on Jan. 13 and was selected to perform on the Prism concert at the annual Georgia Music Educators' in Service Conference in Savannah on Jan. 24. Southern Chorale will hold a rummage sale and raffle at Pittman Park United Methodist Church in Statesboro on Feb. 2 to continue to raise funds for its summer trip to Europe. Graduate students Maggie Alley, Brian Dyson, Kellye Watts, and Megan Moore - all majoring in music education - presented research at the GMEA conference in January. Dr. Laura Stambaugh also presented "An Examination of a MIDI Wind Controller for Use in Instrumental Research" at the conference. Sigma Alpha Iota had the highest GPA in the United Greek Council and ranked third out of 38 sororities and fraternities at Georgia Southern in Fall 2012. Clarinet Professor Dr. Linda Cionitti and students Caitlin Long, Corey White, and Jonathan Rud attended the Oklahoma State University Single Reed Summit in January. Cionitti performed a solo assisted by her students and played in a clarinet choir. Corey performed in a master class coached by Maurita Mead of the University of Iowa, while Caitlin performed a master class coached by Elsa Ludewig-Verderhr, and Cionitti coached a student from North Texas State University. Dr. Shannon Jeffreys, the director of choral activities, conducted the Georgia Music Educators Association's District 6 Women's Honor Choir in Peachtree City, Ga., on Jan. 19. Jeffreys will adjudicate the Lander University Choral Festival in Greenwood, S.C., on Feb. 1 and will serve as the clinician for the District 1 GMEA Women's Honor Choir at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah. Dr. Carolyn J. Bryan and her longtime duo partner Dr. George Weremchuk will perform the world premiere of Orlando Lakes for soprano and alto saxophones at the North American Saxophone Alliance Region 6 Conference at the University of Central Florida on March 2. UCF Composer in Residence Christopher Marshall wrote the piece for Weremchuk. Assistant Professor Dr. Stephanie Furry was the featured soloist with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra on Jan. 14. Furry performed Mozart's Second Concerto for Horn with the orchestra in a concert of music by the Classical masters, Haydn and Mozart. Professor Martin Gendelman's Shapes of the Wind for alto flute and vibraphone will be performed at the Society of Composer's National Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 15. Art Lecturer Julia Fischer began teaching a new course at Georgia Southern this spring. "Art and Crime" examines art theft, lotting vandalism, illegal smuggling, and the underground art market. Professor Derek Larson was featured in the Pulse: Art and Technology Festival at the Telfair Museum in Savannah. On display until Feb. 5, Larson's mixed-media and motorized works, along with his video and animated GIFs, were highlighted in his show Leveling the Genres, which was first exhibited at the Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia in 2012. History Student Brittany Partridge's article, "1989 Tiananmen Incident and U.S.-China Relations," was published by the Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History in January. Brittany is an advisee of Professor Juanjuan Peng. Student Lindsay Hall, an advisee of Professor Erica Hall, recently completed a semester-long internship working for Congressman David Scott in Washington, D.C. Professor Jonathan Bryant, working with the Georgia Southern University Garden of the Coastal Plain, was awarded a federal Title II Teacher Quality Service Grant for $30,850. The money will be used to continue the Places to People program, which began with a previous Title II grant for $26,000. The teacher workshops these grants provide utilize the Garden as a resource for the social, cultural, and environmental history of the region and support social studies instruction through student field trips to the Garden. Professor William Allison presented "Bombing North Vietnam: Coercion, Airpower, and Grand Strategy in the Vietnam War" at the USAF Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB on Jan. 25. Professor Eric Hall's book, Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era, has been accepted for publication in 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Hall's article "Co-Learners and Core: Education Reform at Saint Joseph's College" is forthcoming in the International Social Science Review. Literature and Philosophy Professor Danielle Layne, Ph.D., secured funding for the Department's second Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. The March 20 event addresses the theme of "Pop Culture and Philosophy" and features keynote speaker Stephen Arp, Ph.D. Layne presented "Philosophical Prayer in Proclus" at the 1600th anniversary of Proclus' birthday in Instanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 12 and "The Good Dialogue Form: Neoplatonic Hermeneutics" at the American Philological Association in Seattle on Jan. 6. She published a 24-page dictionary entry on Socrates for the prestigious Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Professor Nicole Karapangiotis, Ph.D., had an article, "Cyber Forms, Worshipable Forms: Hindu Devotional Viewpoints on the Ontology of Cyber-Gods and Goddesses," accepted for publication by Hindu Studies, the biggest journal in the field of Hinduism. Writing and Linguistics Associate Professor Kathy Albertson, Ph.D., and Sally Brown, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the College of Education, have received word that their proposal "Building Literacy through the Common Core, Conflict Resolution and Empowerment" has been accepted for the No Child Left Behind Title II Part A Higher Education Improving Teacher Quality Grant. Albertson and Assistant Professor Ellen Hendrix, Ph.D., co-presented at the 11th annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. Their cross-disciplinary panel, "Internationalizing a Rural South College Campus: When Study Abroad Happens at Home," featured Kozue Kobayashi, a graduate student in Georgia Southern's College of Public Health and graduate assistant in the University's Center for International Studies. Assistant Professor Jared Sexton has published his first collection of stories, An End to All Things, with Atticus Books. Visiting Instructor Dayna Goldstein has been asked to join the Educational Board of the FORUM, hosted by the National Council of Teachers of English/Conference on College Composition and Communication. FORUM: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty is a publication on contingent, adjunct, and part-time faculty issues in college composition and communication. Psychology Professor Amy Hackney, Ph.D., and her students Victoria Allen, John LeMay, Grady Rose, and Rachael Rosenberg presented four posters, papers, and "data blitz" projects on aspects of social psychology and the law at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting in New Orleans on Jan. 19. Professor Brad Sturz, Ph.D., and coauthors published "Geometric cues, reference frames, and the equivalence of experience-aligned and novel-aligned views in human spatial memory" in Cognition. Professors Janie Wilson, Ph.D., and Rebecca Ryan, Ph.D., published "Professor-Student Rapport Scale: Six items predict student outcomes" in Teaching of Psychology. Professor Michael Neilsen, Ph.D., presented an invited address, "Religion in America: Islam and Mormonism," at the University of Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 27. The Department welcomes Monica Williams, Ph.D., Lee Ann Scott, Ph.D., and Preston Elder to its ranks for the semester. This is a "return home" for Scott, who studied under Georgelle Thomas, Ph.D, the namesake of the psychology graduate students' scholarship. Foreign Languages Professor Olga Amarie, Ph.D., published an article, "Le connexionnisme ou le fonctionnement de l'esprit humain dans Les Amn�siques n'ont rien v�cu d'inoubliable d'Herv� Le Tellier," in a collection of essays prepared by Carole Bisenius-Penin and Andr� Petitjean entitled 50 ans d'Oulipo: de la contrainte � l'œuvre. The essays appeared in La Licorne, which is published by Presses universitaires Rennes. Amarie was also recently elected by her national peers to serve as Southeast Vice President of Pi Delta Phi, the national French honor society for students. Xinbo Li, Ph.D., will join the Department in Fall 2013 as a lecturer of Chinese. Center for Americana Studies Professor Larry Griffin, Ph.D., was appointed the Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair of the Roosevelt Study Center in Middleburg, The Netherlands, for the Fall 2013 semester. | 
