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

Recent honors and publications include the following:

Honors

Claire DeMatteis, a University of Delaware trustee, was presented with the Order of the First State by Delaware Gov. John Carney on Jan. 6, 2025, her final day of service as the leader of the Department of Corrections.  The Order of the First State is Delaware’s highest honor, bestowed for meritorious service. A member of the Board of Trustees since 2018, DeMatteis serves as chair of the Committee on Public Affairs and advancement. She earned her undergraduate degree from UD and in 2012 received the UD Alumni Association's Outstanding Alumni Award.

On Jan. 14 at Delaware Ag Week, Kali Kniel was awarded the Career Distinguished Service Award for her contributions to Delaware’s fruit and vegetable industry. The award was given by the Fruit and Vegetable Association of Delaware. Gordon Johnson of UD’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences presented the award to Kniel, a professor of microbial food safety in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences.

Polly Zavadivker, associate professor of history and director of the Program in Jewish Studies, has been named a finalist by the 74th annual National Jewish Book Awards for her book A Nation of Refugees: Russia’s Jews in World War I (Oxford University Press), in the category of Writ­ing Based on Archival Material. 

Publications

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and professor of humanities, is the author of a new scholarly article, “Documenting War Crimes Onstage in Kyo Choi's The Apology,” which has just been published in the November 2024 issue of Humanities Bulletin, 7: 2, a journal sponsored by London Academic Publishing, U.K. In this essay, Stetz uses the example of a 2022 play based on the real-life process of collecting testimony about the WW II-era war crime of military sexual slavery in Asia to consider how theatre can serve as an alternative form of documentation for audiences and a spur to political activism.

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