For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and achievements of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent honors, presentations and publications include the following:

Honors

Kaja Jasińska, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, has received the 2018 Young Investigator Award from the Society for functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Jasińska, who joined the UD faculty in January 2017, conducts research in the neural mechanisms that support language, reading and cognitive development across the lifespan. She explores questions such as how early life experience changes the brain’s capacity for language and learning, and she uses MRI and fNIRS neuroimaging technology, in combination with genetic and behavioral analyses, to gain new insights into the biological underpinnings of language, reading and human cognition.

Patricia Sloane-White, chair of women and gender studies and professor of anthropology, has received an Honorary Mention for the 2018 Distinguished Book Award of the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) for her book Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace, published by Cambridge University Press. The book offers insight into the modern Islamic corporation, revealing how power, relationships, individual identities, gender roles and practices -- and often massive financial resources -- are mobilized on behalf of Islam.

Presentations

More than 50 scholars from universities around the country presented their research Oct. 5-6 at the University of Delaware when the Department of Music hosted a joint meeting of the Allegheny, Capital, and Mid-Atlantic Chapters of the America Musicological Society on the campus.

Environmental justice research by Victor W. Perez, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, was recently featured in a WDDE radio and Internet news story. In the article about New Castle County residents concerned with environmental conditions in their neighborhoods, Perez discusses an anonymous survey he developed with the help of community members to provide an objective assessment of how they feel about these issues.

The University’s Department of Music is well represented at the National College Music Society Conference, set Oct. 11-13 in Vancouver, Canada. Alumna Adrienne Harding, who is music admissions coordinator, is presenting a paper on "Incorporating Dance in College Music Pedagogy".  Jennifer Shafer, assistant professor, is giving a paper entitled "One Bite at a Time: Writing in Harmony Class," and she is presiding over another session. Patricia Burt, assistant professor, is presenting a paper with a colleague from the Peabody Conservatory on "Game Design for the Music Theory Classroom," as well as moderating a panel on "Equity, Access and the Maryland Area Colleges of Music Association: Initiatives to Facilitate the Transfer of Community College Students to Four-Year Music Programs" that she proposed. Burt also contributed to a poster on "What is Inclusion and Diversity: Exploring Definitions and Practical Ideas from Students, Faculty and other Professionals." On Oct. 13, Christopher Nichols, assistant professor, Christine Delbeau, associate professor, and Eileen Grycky, associate professor, are performing two new works commissioned by a consortium that includes UD music faculty: Roger Zare's Zodiacal Light for flute, clarinet and piano and another work for the same instrumentation by composer Anthony O'Toole titled Finzi's Brain.

Publications

Anne M. Boylan, professor emerita of history and women and gender studies, has published three biographical sketches in the Black Woman Suffragist Database (Alexander Street Press, 2018), published online via Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, 22:2 (September 2018). The sketches —"Helen W. Anderson (Webb)," "Susie Estella Palmer Hamilton" and "Mary E. Taylor" —complete the project of researching and writing biographical sketches of 12 women who founded Wilmington's Equal Suffrage Study Club in 1914.  UD students completed five of the 12 sketches.

Leslie F. Goldstein, Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor Emeritus of Political Science, has published a review of Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? by Mark Golub. (Oxford University Press, 2018) in the Law and Politics Book Review, Vol. 28 No. 6 (September 2018) pp. 84-87

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