Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,
I hope each of you is enjoying the last few weeks before our students arrive. On campus, our busy summer continues. Yesterday marked the start of STARTALK, an Arabic language immersion program for high school and college students led by Anouar El Younssi, Assistant Professor of Arabic & Middle Eastern Studies. Just last week we wrapped up our second annual Summer Experience Program for 60 high school students from Newton and Putnam County. Thanks to Director of Community Relations Laura Gafnea for making this experience with our neighbors possible.
Last week, we were learned of the passing of Coach Pernilla Hardin. Our campus community continues to mourn her loss and celebrate her incredible legacy at Oxford both on and off the tennis court. You can read more below about her many accomplishments, as well as opportunities for remembrance, below. A reminder that resources are available for faculty and staff during this difficult time, including the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and the Faculty Assistance Program.
Best,
Ken
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Submitting to Campus Update
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To submit items for Campus Update, please email Julia Kim. The newsletter is distributed weekly on Wednesday. Please submit items by Monday afternoon.
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Oxford Communications is featuring a staff member each week to help us get to know our colleagues. To nominate a staff colleague to answer our five-question profile for publication in future issues, please contact [email protected]. You can also nominate yourself!
NAME: Lauren Braun
TITLE/DEPT: Assistant Dean Academic Affairs, Director of the Advising Support Center — Advising Support Center, Academic Affairs
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How long have you been at Oxford?
I have been at Oxford since October 2016 (at Emory since May 2014). As director of the ASC, I work with an amazing team to provide academic advising and support for Oxford College students.
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What do you like best about your job and about Oxford?
The best part of my job is serving as a witness to students' flourishing. I love helping students succeed and reach their academic goals, especially students who are undecided about major pathways and those who encounter unexpected difficulty.
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What is your favorite song/tv show/movie/restaurant/podcast?
As a grad student and parent to a toddler, I don't get much TV/movie time to myself (my son is obsessed with Bluey). I do love listening to podcasts while I drive. Two that I listen to each week include: Ask Iliza Anything (hosted by Iliza Schlesinger- a brilliant Jewish comic), and Mayim Bialik's Breakdown (hosted by Mayim Bialik—also a brilliant Jewish actor/comic).
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What makes you happy or brings you joy?
It's a total cliche, but I have to say at this moment in my life, my son is my greatest joy. I love watching him grow (he's huge) and develop into a little human. I also love spending time with my family and my fur-kids—my dogs (Duke and Cooper).
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Please complete this sentence: It might surprise people to know that I...
...grew up on a farm. I spent each summer bailing hay and taking care of livestock.
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Allie Daniel is the newest Marketing Specialist in the Office of Enrollment Services. She will be assisting with Oxford Enrollment Service's marketing and communication by supporting marketing deliverables, email communications, social media, and blog content. Prior to coming to Oxford, Allie was a a school social worker with Atlanta Public Schools, followed briefly by being a manager at Virginia Highland Books. She attended University of Georgia for her undergrad and Georgia State University for her masters, and studied social work at both universities. She spends most of her time reading or with her pets, and she is thrilled to join the Oxford community!
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Ken Carter, Interim Dean, was featured on the ABC Radio National podcast All in the Mind, where he talked about the dangers and thrills of high-sensation seekers from his book, Buzz!: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies. You can listen to the podcast here.
He also was featured in For the thrill of it, an interactive article from the Austrian Broadcasting Company where he explains the science behind a high-sensation seeker. You can read the article here.
Ken also participated in a podcast from GBH breaking down the psychology of "adrenaline junkies." You can listen to it here.
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David Gowler, Pierce Chair of Religion, recently wrote an article that was published in the National Catholic Reporter about Howard Thurman, Albrecht Dürer, and the parable of the Prodigal Son. The article is titled, What can Renaissance art and Howard Thurman tell us about the prodigal son? You can read it here.
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Purvi Aiyer 24Ox, Julia Rujie Bazata 23Ox 25B, Melody Wang 24Ox, and Callie Goins 24Ox are members of the Oxford College women's golf team. They have just achieved a major milestone by winning the 2023 National Junior College Athletics Association DIII Women's Golf National Championship. This is an incredible accomplishment, especially considering this is the team's first-ever national title in the program's short history. Let's all give them a big congratulations! You can read more here.
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University Research Committee Grants & Fulbright Scholar
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Three Oxford faculty members have been awarded the University of Research Committee Grant, and one Oxford faculty member was named a 2023-24 Fulbright U.S. Scholar. Please congratulate them and read more below:
Anouar El Younssi — Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies
Anouar El Younssi will be utilizing his URC grant to provide a two-course release in Fall 2023, which will enable him to complete a book project titled, The Experimental Turn in the Moroccan Novel 1974-1989. This monograph, based on his doctoral dissertation, examines the literary history of the Moroccan experimental novel from the mid-1970s to the late-1980s. The experimental novel appeared in the literary Moroccan scene post-1967, after Arab armies suffered a crushing defeat in the six-day war with Israel. This historic defeat impacted, in a major way, Arab and Arab-Amazigh societies, particularly the intelligentsia, and left its mark on literary activity in Morocco and the larger Arab/Arab-Amazigh world. The experimental Moroccan novel thus reflects this historic turning point and transitional cultural landscape. It laid the ground for a different vision of literature, an important feature of which was the intent to surpass the traditional realist model and its European point of reference. This new vision seeks to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political. This formalization of the political is thus intricately tied to the idea of crisis—broadly conceived—as it pertains to such terrains as culture, politics, and identity.
Alix Olson — Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Olson received an University Research Committee Grant for her book project, The Promise of Resilience: Pessimism in Crisis (under contract with Columbia University Press, 2024). The book offers a critical examination of the rise of discourses of “resilience” in political life and the ways the concept is fundamentally re-ordering people’s understanding of themselves, the world, and possibilities of action. She grounds her analysis in a wide breadth of empirical case studies, from institutional policies governing women-led development and forced migration and poverty in the Global South to U.S. based self-help literature and NASA/Space X plans to colonize Mars. Olson points to the emergence of a novel rationality of late liberal governance that she calls “promising pessimism,” paired with the new subjectivity of "homo resilient," through which enhancing resilience is cast as the solution to the “inevitable” crises of 21st Century globalization. Ultimately, the book argues for refusing to relinquish the vital tenets of resilience by setting it in opposition to resistance, drawing upon a range of contemporary activisms in order to develop resilience as a conception of- and for- sustainable political struggle and collective world building.
Maren Jill Adams — Associate Teaching Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Director of Global Learning and Undergraduate Research Programs
The URC-Halle Institute Global Research Award will provide an opportunity to integrate her teaching, research, and program administration goals on the ground in Japan through her project, "New Technologies of Transmission in Post-Bomb Japan." The project focuses on innovations in the ways Hiroshima and Nagasaki communities transmit wartime memories--and why and how they do so--to audiences that are further removed from those events. The URC award will also provide support for a teaching leave in Fall 2024 to work on her book manuscript.
Adams also was named a 2023-24 Fulbright U.S. Scholar. For the Fulbright, Adams will be affiliated with Hiroshima University (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) in Hiroshima, Japan for Spring and Summer 2024. She will teach courses on comparative memory and memorialization for the graduate International Peace and Co-Existence Program and the undergraduate Integrated Global Studies program. The Fulbright allows her to bring together U.S. and Japan-based university students for dialogue and collaboration on these enduring issues affecting both nations and their neighbors. Adams is excited to see what she can bring back and offer for Oxford students when she returns, and is beyond grateful for the wealth of support that has carried her to this point. You can also read more about her research in the article here.
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A Celebration of Life Service
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A Celebration of Life service will be held for Oxford's tennis coach, Pernilla Hardin, who died on Sunday, July 2 after a lengthy and courageous fight with ovarian cancer. The service will be held on Saturday, July 15, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. in Williams Auditorium on the Oxford College campus. Everyone is invited to attend and honor her life at this special service. Her service also will be live-streamed. You can access it here.
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Celebration of Life Service
William's Auditorium | 1:00 p.m.
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To submit a news item for the next Campus Update, please email Julia Kim.
The newsletter is distributed weekly on Wednesday. Please submit items by Monday afternoon.
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