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How a History Class Changed One Student's Path
We're launching a new video series called "Why Weissman" on Weissman's YouTube channel. The videos are short testimonials from alumni explaining how Weissman made a difference in their lives and career paths.

Zoey Zhou, who graduated from Baruch as an accounting major with a history minor, cites a history course taught by Professor Charlotte Brooks as inspiring her to change direction and follow her heart. Zhou is now getting a PhD in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Watch her one-minute video here.

Here are three more "Why Weissman" stories, all under 2 minutes.
  • Aygul Islamova, a nurse who's also a fashion entrepreneur;
  • Katherine Chemas, a student at Cornell's veterinary school who credits her success in science to Weissman's small classes and caring professors (including Professor Pablo Peixoto);
  • and Yelena Dzhanova, who's making an impact as a journalist.

Do you know any undergraduate alumni who would be good candidates for "Why Weissman" testimonials? Email baruchwsas@baruch.cuny.edu with contact info.
Don't Miss Public Health and Climate Change Talk, 9/30
The Fall Semester "We Are Climate Action" speaker series kicks off this Thursday, September 30, 4-5:30 pm with "Climate Change: Health Impacts and Health Policy." Zoom registration here.

The event will be moderated by CUNY School of Public Health Professor Elizabeth Geltman with panelists Jeffrey Shaman, director of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health Climate and Health Program; Jeremy J. Hess, director of the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHanGE); and Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Scientist Kim Knowlton. 

The series' second event takes place a week later, Thursday, October 7, 4-5:30 pm: "Climate Change and Preparation for NYC Resilience." Speakers will be Brooklyn College and Graduate Center Professor Brett Branco, director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay; Jainey K. Bavishi, director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency; and Alice C. Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. Register here.

The series is organized by Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman (Psychology).
Film: Thirteen Jewish Driver's Licenses, Thirteen Jewish Fates

A film produced by Professor Elisabeth Gareis (Communication Studies) tells the story of a small town in Germany reconciling with descendants of local Jews.

Gareis is a native of the town, Lichtenfels, where 13 Jewish driver's licenses were found in 2017. The licenses had been confiscated by the Nazis in the late 1930s. In 2018, a local high school teacher had his students research the license-holders' fates. Some perished in the Holocaust, but some emigrated and survived, and their descendants were invited back. (The photo shows Gareis, on the left, with two of the license-holders' descendants.)

Gareis, her husband Ryoya Terao, who teaches video production at City Tech, and Brooklyn College film Professor Vinit Parmar, made a film to tell the story. Details here.
Faculty Publications, Media Mentions, and Honors
THAT TWEET ABOUT THE DROWNED RATS A tweet by Professor Chester Zarnoch (Natural Sciences) got picked up by Newsweek, the Daily Mail, and other outlets covering reports of rodents drowned by Hurricane Ida's floods. Responding on Twitter to Bronx Community College Professor Neal Phillip, who'd been tweeting about finding drowned rats, Zarnoch said he "also found some of these rats near our study site on the Queens side of the bay. I can't imagine the number of these that must have washed into NYC waters during Ida floods."

'LISTEN KID, IT'S THE GARBAGE' When the Young Lords asked people on 110th Street what they needed help with—housing? police brutality?—residents said: "Muchacho, déjate de todo eso LA BASURA!” (Listen kid, fuggedaboutit! It’s THE GARBAGE!), writes Professor Johanna Fernandez (History) in a new article for the History Channel's website. Fernandez’s book The Young Lords: A Radical History documents the work of the Puerto Rican activist group that rocked New York City in the '60s and '70s. Her article for History.com focused on the group’s “garbage offensive.”

Fernandez also added a new prize to The Young Lords' honors, winning an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She previously won the Organization of American Historians' prestigious Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Merle Curti Social History Award, and Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, along with The New York Society Library's New York City Book Award.
NATIONALISM, RACE, AND EDWARD HOPPER
Artist Edward Hopper is known for realistic paintings of landscapes, interiors, and ordinary American life (like the diner in "Nighthawks"). But a new article by Distinguished Professor Gail Levin (Fine and Performing Arts) unpacks the racist underpinnings of Hopper's fame and outlook.

In “‘Anglo-Saxon’: Nationalism and Race in the Promotion of Edward Hopper,” which appears in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Levin says Hopper was promoted early on as “the most inherently Anglo-Saxon painter of all times." She describes a black-and-white sketch from Hopper's early years (shown here) as depicting a "grotesquely bearded, long-haired angry man, which he captioned 'Anarchism,' a political current that at the time was often linked to immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe. ... Hopper portrayed many such discriminatory ethnic and racial stereotypes." 

Levin also recently published a book called Mongolia, Lost and Found about the life and works of Mongolian artist Zayasaikhan Sambuu, who often paints musicians while listening to music, along with an article about him in the Journal of Asian Art and Aesthetics.
VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA REVIEWER SALUTES THIS BOOK
“His willingness to write about what he suffered induced me to look at my own self-destructive shortcomings that I could have prevented,” writes a reviewer for Vietnam Veterans of America about War and the Arc of Human Experience by Professor Glenn Petersen (Sociology/Anthropology). Read the review here.

The Graduate Center, where Petersen holds an appointment, published a story about his life journey, from being a 10th grade dropout who flew planes in Vietnam to earning a PhD at Columbia as Margaret Mead's last graduate student.

Petersen will be the lead speaker at a November 9 pre-Veterans Day event where President Wu will make introductory comments. We're looking for student and alumni veterans to participate in the event as speakers, particularly those who've served since 9/11 and those who can help represent the diversity of Baruch and of our military. Email baruchwsas@baruch.cuny.edu if you know someone whom we should invite.
WARSHIP HISTORY BOOK WINS AWARD Professor Thomas Heinrich (History) has won a 2020 John Lyman award for his book Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding, 1922-1945. The Lyman awards are given annually by the North American Society for Oceanic History. Warship Builders won for best book about naval history. The book is the first scholarly study to examine the U.S. naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II.

EXPLORING DEEP SEA BIODIVERSITY Professor David Gruber (Natural Sciences) won $195,077 from the Schmidt Ocean Institute for ROV (remotely operated vehicle)-based 3D reality capture, specimen encapsulation, and tissue voucher sampling to explore midwater biodiversity in the deep sea. In August, he and collaborators from Harvard, the University of Rhode Island and Monterey Bay Aquarium undertook an expedition on a vessel operated by the Schmidt Institute to test technologies for ocean exploration.

GOSPEL OF SHOPPING Professor George González (Sociology/Anthropology) will keynote the Implicit Religion Conference in the United Kingdom, likely at the 2023 meeting. He’ll also present his research on the American ritualization of consumer capitalism at Princeton's Religion colloquium. Gonzalez has been doing ethnographic fieldwork with the radical performance community Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir since late 2016, and has also conducted historiographical research into American marketing history. He’s working on a book under contract with NYU Press tentatively titled The Religion of Everyday Life.

ENVY AT WORK Professor Yochi Cohen-Charash (Psychology) was quoted in an article in Knowable Magazine titled: "The two sides of envy at work."
Activist Ady Barkan on Wasserman Center Fall Calendar

Political activist Ady Barkan, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2016, will speak November 1 at 5:30 pm at an event organized by the Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center.

The Wasserman fall calendar kicks off October 12 at 5:30 pm with a talk by author Corie Adjmi, and concludes December 7 with journalist Sayed Kashua. For Zoom registration links, email Carina.Pasquesi@baruch.cuny.edu.

The center is also hosting a Jewish/Latinx film series co-sponsored by the Department of Black and Latino Studies, ISLA – the Initiative for the Study of Latin America, and Baruch Performing Arts Center, with free 48-hour streaming access to the Mexican film Nora's Will, October 7-8; Leona, also a Mexican film, November 3-4, and Mr. Kaplan (Uruguay), December 5-6. Details here.
EVENTS THROUGH OCTOBER 15
  • September 27-29, International Conference of Undergraduate Research, hosted by Baruch and 15 universities around the world, with presentations by 28 Baruch students. Register on the ICUR app here or through the website
  • September 29, 12:30 p.m. Culture Share: Celebrating Latinx Voices. Tell us about the countries and cultures you feel most connected to. Zoom link here
  • September 29, 12:30 pm: Professor Erica Richardson (English) presents a chapter from her book-in-progress, Empirical Desires: Data, Dispossession, and the Aesthetics of the Negro Problem to the Marxe Fall Research Seminar, 135 E. 22nd St., Room 301, or attend via Zoom
  • September 30, 1-2 pm. A Trip Around Las Américas. An introduction to Latin American/Caribbean culture, traditions, food, music, and history. Register here
  • September 30, 4-5:30 pm. Climate Change: Health Impacts on Health Policy. Zoom registration here
  • October 1, 11 am-1 pm: NYC Latin American History Workshop at Baruch. Jesse Zarley (St. Joseph’s College), “Redefining Puelmapu: The Borogano Mapuche and Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1825-1835.” Pre-registration required; email mark.rice@baruch.cuny.edu
  • October 4: Interactive online exhibition opens featuring work by New Media Artspace artist kate-hers RHEE
  • October 7, 4-5:30 pm. Climate Change and Preparation for NYC Resilience. Zoom registration here
  • October 12, 5:30 pm, Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center presents author Corie Adjmi. For Zoom link, email Carina.Pasquesi@baruch.cuny.edu
  • October 14, 11:45 am- 1 pm. Social media workshop for faculty with Baruch communications manager Beth Harpaz. We'll offer tips for rookies as well as veterans on best social media practices for scholars and researchers. Co-sponsored with the CUNY Graduate Center, which has presented this workshop a number of times. Zoom registration here
Student and Alumni News
Class of 2015 alumna Daphne Palasi Andreades' novel Brown Girls (due out in January) is a featured title in the American Booksellers Association's Winter/Spring 2022 Indies Introduce program.

Milena Deleva, who earned a master's degree in arts administration in 2018, has been named executive director of the Association of Arts Administration Educators.

Farah Javed '23, a creative writing, journalism, and political science major, wrote an article titled "Asian Americans Aren't a Monolith, but COVID-19 Data Treats Them All the Same" for WhoWhatWhy.org.
Subscribe to the Weissman Blog
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Past newsletters here. Next newsletter: October 12.