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2021-2022 News

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Summer 2022 Research in Mexico

The IIC-sponsored project is teaming scientists with Indigenous people to preserve and monitor the vegetation of their bio-rich ancestral lands and share knowledge with each other.  The project is centered in the trans-Mexican volcanic belt surrounding the southern end of Mexico City. 

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MLL Graduation Ceremony 2022

The Department of Modern Languages & Literatures honored its 2022 graduates at a ceremony on May 21st.

Public Policy celebrates Commencement 2022

Despite record hot temperatures, Public Policy faculty and students enjoyed a fantastic diploma ceremony last month as the program graduated 54 students during Commencement Weekend.

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Guest Lecture on Japanese Aesthetics

On March 25, Dr. Aoki of Ehime University gave a lecture on the meanings of cherry blossoms in Japanese poetry, manga, and anime.

W&M MPP Students are Finalists in NYU Policy Case Competition

The Public Policy Program is proud to announce that three Master’s in Public Policy (MPP) students, Maddy Humphries, BA/MPP ’23, Jennifer Hundley, BA/MPP ’23, and Lilly Potter, JD/MPP ’23, won honorable mention as 2022 finalists in the New York University Policy Case Competition.

The Grillmeister Retires

Professor Rob Leventhal retires after a long career at W&M's German Studies Program.

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Major's Club Hosts Ice Cream Social

On April 22, 2022 The Kinesiology Majors Club and the Department of Kinesiology sponsored an ice cream social in the shaded area in front of Adair Hall.

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2022 Med-Ren Research Symposium

The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program announces a Spring Symposium for undergraduate research (April 8, 2022).

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Brown Wins Loeb Foundation Grant

Professor Mitchell Brown has won a prestigious grant from the Loeb Classical Library foundation to support his research on the stagecraft of Menander.

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National expert on school choice and race visits Public Policy

William & Mary’s Public Policy Program and the School of Education recently partnered in welcoming to campus Professor Deven Carlson, the Associate Director for Education at the National Institute for Risk and Resilience and Presidential Research Professor at the University of Oklahoma.

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Tyler Lecture Series 2022

Disinformation, while difficult to define, is the information strategy of deliberately using falsehood, decontextualization, and distortion to sew disorder, chaos, and debilitating skepticism. While it is a matter of contemporary urgency, the Tyler Speaker Series this year investigates its long history.

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Full AAH Spring 2022 Events

Events happening throughout the Spring '22 semester in the Art & Art History department

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New Book Publication by Lu Ann Homza

Please join me in congratulating Lu Ann Homza on the publication of her book: Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608-1614, published January 19, 2022 by Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Randi Rashkover

Professor Rashkover joined the Religious Studies faculty in the fall of 2020. She is the Director of Judaic Studies and the Sophia and Nathan S. Gumenick Associate Professor of Judaic Studies. She specializes in Jewish philosophy, Jewish-Christian comparative theology, and Jewish political thought.

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Build Back Better: The Challenge of Selling a Hybrid on Capitol Hill

In an op-ed for The Hill (January 26, 2022), Chris Howard, the Harriman Professor of Government & Public Policy, highlighted the hybrid design of Build Back Better. It is financed like public assistance but distributes benefits widely like social insurance. If advocates want Build Back Better to have a fighting chance in the Senate, they need to explain why the country should adopt this new approach to social policy. You can read the piece on The Hill website.

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Dr. Rani D. Mullen Writes a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times

In a January 20, 2022 letter to the editor of The New York Times, Associate Professor of Government Rani Mullen argues that the choice between collaborating with the Taliban and facilitating Afghanistan’s collapse is a false one; the United States should pursue a more nuanced foreign policy that includes targeting Taliban leaders who are terrorists while providing humanitarian assistance. You can read her letter on The New York Times website.

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Discovery of ancient sheep DNA revises origin story for purported Viking colony

The Faroe Islands, an archipelago between Norway and Iceland, were once believed to have been settled by Viking explorers in the mid-9th century CE. Thanks to new analysis of ancient sheep DNA, the remote, North Atlantic islands are now shown to have been inhabited by British Isle shepherds centuries before the Vikings arrived.

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In ‘Nature’: The need to update neutrino models

Neutrinos may be the key to finally solving a mystery of the origins of our matter-dominated universe, and preparations for two major, billion-dollar experiments are underway to reveal the particles’ secrets.

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W&M team returns from iGEM competition bearing honors

William & Mary’s undergraduate iGEM team won a Gold Medal and was nominated for a major award at the iGEM Giant Jamboree, the annual conference and award ceremony of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation.

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W&M professors hone mixed-reality training to promote diverse hiring

Jason Chen, associate professor of education at William & Mary, is working with Professor of Theatre and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies Francis Tanglao Aguas are using a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a professional development curriculum.

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Lighting the Kimball: W&M Theatre gets creative in temporary home

Recent afternoons found Professor of Theatre Steve Holliday standing in various spots on the Kimball Theatre stage directing students either in the wings, on the catwalk or up on pneumatic lifts where to aim the lights.

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Decadence Beyond Borders in "Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran"

Narrated and performed by Javaad Alipoor and co-star Peyvand Sadeghian, RICH KIDS loosely follows the ill-fated story of lovers Parivash and Hossein (the first, a middle-class girl, the second, one of the show’s eponymous #richkids) backwards in time, from its end in a car crash back to its beginning as seen on Instagram, the audience’s window into the couple’s narrative.

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Interviews with the Student Diversity Fellows

The Government Department's Diversity Committee recently hired five students to serve as Student Diversity Fellows for the department. They spoke to us regarding their experiences as Diversity Fellows.

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Exhibit shares stories of first Asian students at W&M

Sumié Yotsukura ‘22 and Brian Zhao ’23 recently celebrated the installation of the exhibit, “Pu Kao Chen: Thoughts of 1923 U.S. & W&M,” at Swem Library. The exhibit was the culmination of their research project to unearth the stories of the first Asian students to attend W&M.

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Alum Wendy Gonaver wins the Simkins Prize

Wendy Gonaver recently won the Simkins Prize for the best first book in US Southern History over the last two years from the Southern Historical Association.

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DOE supports Ph.D. student Kovner’s continued QCD studies at JLab

Daniel Kovner, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics at William & Mary, will continue his investigation of quantum chromodynamics as one of 65 graduate students supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program.

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Prof. Jennifer Mellor Educating Students and Policymakers on Health Policy

Professor Jennifer Mellor wears many hats at William & Mary. She's a Public Policy faculty affiliate, Director of Graduate Studies for Public Policy, Director of the Schroeder Center for Health Policy, and member of the Economics Department. Recently, she was profiled in the W&M campus newspaper, The Flat Hat, for her wide ranging contributions to health policy research and teaching.

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People Are Missing: Andrea Wright Illuminates Inequities Faced by Indian Migrant Workers

The story of Indian migrant workers does not end with the individual lives of these men. It is also a product of greater systemic inequalities and power structures. “I began to see how race and nationality began to inform how workers were treated and the policies that emerged.” In a book she is currently working on, “Producing Labor Hierarchies,” Wright writes about her works analyzing labor laws and understanding the various intersections of race, class, caste, and other systems of oppression and their effects on the lives of workers in the Middle East.

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W&M philosophy professor makes a moral case for ignoring politics

Christopher Freiman, associate professor of philosophy at William & Mary, outlines his reasoning in his new book “Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics.” Just in time for the Nov. 2 elections, he makes an interesting yet controversial case.

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Interviews with 2021 VA Government Fellows

Last year, five William & Mary alums were selected to participate in the 2021 Governor’s Fellows Program. The Department of Government at W&M had the pleasure of speaking with three of the five alums to discuss their experiences in the Fellowship program this past summer.

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“little brown gIRL:" A Fall Awakening on the Asian Centennial Stage"

Rinabeth Apostol, award-winning West Coast-based actor, educator, director and activist, opens the workshop premiere of her solo show “little brown gIRL” this Tuesday October 12 in a special two-night engagement at the Kimball Theatre.

Phil Roessler on Facebook’s Recent Outage

Professor Philip Roessler, Associate Chair of the Government Department and co-director of the Digital Inclusion and Governance Lab, spoke to ABC News about Facebook’s recent six-hour outage and its immense significance for our society.

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Jeff Lunardi Talks about the State's Policy Role in Mental Health

Jeff Lunardi, a W&M graduate (BA, ’05; MBA, ’07) and Executive Director of the Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care (JCHC), gave a talk entitled “Addressing Behavioral Health in Virginia: State Policy Role.” 

Rolling Back History: Professor Claire McKinney on Abortion Politics in Texas

On September 1st, abortion politics in America entered a new chapter as a blatantly unconstitutional law banned abortions in Texas after 6 weeks of pregnancy. S.B. 8, “The Texas Heartbeat Act,” asserts Texas’s interest in the life of an “unborn child” and prohibits abortion after detection of a “fetal heartbeat.” Importantly, the law also pioneers an enforcement mechanism never before seen statewide: private civil action.

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Christian Bale on Military Assets and Good Government

Public Policy alum Christian Bale (BA '14, MPP '15) published a recent article in the Monkey Cage Blog at the Washington Post analyzing the challenges the U.S. military confronts in keeping track of its numerous assets scattered across all 50 states and dozens of countries around the world.

Kennedy on Army leadership

Prof. Alan Kennedy, Lecturer of Public Policy, recently published a co-authored piece with his colleague Kevin J. O'Neil, in the U.S. Army peer-reviewed publication The Army Lawyer.

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W&M 2021 Governor’s Fellows Accept Jobs in State Government

Last year, five William & Mary alums were selected to participate in the 2021 Governor’s Fellows Program. The Department of Government at William & Mary is delighted to announce that all of them have accepted positions in the Office of the Governor, the administration, and within the Virginia State government.

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Variety of arts is on offer at W&M for fall

A full slate of performances, writing talks and exhibitions open to the university and local communities is planned for the fall at William & Mary.

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Dr. Stephen E. Hanson Publishes Opinion Piece about the Resistance to COVID Mandates

Dr. Stephen E. Hanson of the Government Department recently co-authored an opinion piece titled “Why can’t we mandate anything” with Dr. Jeffrey S. Kopstein for The Hill. In this article, Dr. Hanson and Dr. Kopstein describe the drive behind the resistance against the COVID vaccines and other COVID mandates as “[t]he resistance to standard health measures is part of a broad global decline in how people see the legitimacy of apolitical, rational state bureaucracies.”

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Interview – Chitralekha Zutshi

Chitralekha Zutshi is Class of 1962 Professor of History at William & Mary. She has written widely on nationalism, religious identities, and historical traditions in South Asia, primarily in the context of Kashmir. Her books include, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir; Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination; Kashmir: Oxford India Short Introductions, and the edited volume, Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation.

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Romantic passion, social justice and the Brontës

For years, Professor Deborah Denenholz Morse’s classes on Victorian fiction and the Brontës have been popular with W&M students from a variety of majors. Now, anyone can experience Morse’s fascinating lectures through her new course on Audible.

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An epidemiologist’s guide for back-to-school planning

As elementary and high school students head back into classrooms, W&M News spoke with Carrie Dolan, an epidemiologist, an assistant professor in health sciences, member of William & Mary’s Public Health Advisory Board and director of the interdisciplinary Ignite global health research lab. She is currently advising the local school district and preparing her own family for going back to school.

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A trip down the garden path leads a historian to...cryptozoology?

Holly Gruntner, a Ph.D. candidate in William & Mary’s Harrison Ruffin Tyler Department of History, recently completed a short-term fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, delving into the society’s vast collection of original documents for material to complete her dissertation on kitchen gardens in early America.

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U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: A Q&A with Rani Mullen

Rani D. Mullen is an associate professor of government at William & Mary. Her research and teaching focus is on democratization and development in South Asia, and democracy and state building in India and Afghanistan in particular.

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Dr. Jaime Settle Offers Insight on "Outrage Politics" in NPR Interview

Dr. Jaime Settle, Associate Professor of the Department of Government, spoke with NPR's All Things Considered on outrage politics as a business model. More specifically, the story focused on Ben Shapiro, a conservative podcast host, and the success and popularity his website, The Daily Wire, has found on Facebook.

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W&M names Rachel Bardon as 2021-22 Beales Scholar

Rachel Bardon, a 2021 graduate of Buckingham County High School, is the 2021-2022 recipient of the Harriett Pittard Beales Scholarship at William & Mary.

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New online tool helps better serve environmental justice

The Elizabeth River Project (ERP) has teamed with researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and William & Mary to build an online mapping tool that can help the non-profit and other community partners better incorporate environmental justice issues into planning and restoration efforts.