The Academic Minute for 2021.11.29-2021.12.03

The Academic Minute from 11.29 – 12.03

Monday, November 29th
David Bray – Florida International University
Mexico’s Community Forests
David Barton Bray is a professor in the Earth and Environment Department at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. He carries out research on community forest management in Mexico and Central America. He has taught at Tulane University in New Orleans, worked in international development for the Inter-American Foundation in Arlington VA, and since 1997 has been at FIU. He has received research funding from the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and the US Agency for International Development. He has also consulted for the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is the lead editor of the book The Community Forests of Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2005) and is widely published in academic journals, as well as the New York Times and the Miami Herald. He has been invited to give presentations on research by himself and colleagues for high-level Chinese forestry officials in Beijing, the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico, and at Yale University, among other venues. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Ecologic, a Cambridge, MA NGO. In November, 2020 he published In November 2020, he published Mexico’s Community Forest Enterprises: Success on the Commons and the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene.

Tuesday, November 30th
Robert DiNapoli – Binghamton University
Easter Island Myths
Robert DiNapoli is an archaeologist who uses computational modeling and geospatial methods to study the interaction between human populations and the environment. His primary research focuses on the island societies of Polynesia, in particular questions surrounding ancient migrations, demographic patterns, emergence of social complexity, and sustainable resource use.

Wednesday, December 1st
Mark Canada – Indiana University Kokomo
Poe In His Right Mind
Mark Canada, Ph.D., is Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Indiana University Kokomo. A longtime champion of student success, he was a leading participant in the national Re-Imagining the First Year project, sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. At IU Kokomo, he leads the KEY, an experiential-learning initiative that provides all students with opportunities to learn through internships, retreats, research, community projects, and educational trips to businesses, museums, and natural and historic settings in Chicago, Louisville, Detroit, New York, Yellowstone National Park, Disney World, Silicon Valley, and other destinations. A professor of American literature, he spent many years in the classroom at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where he was a recipient of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. His six books include Edgar Allan Poe: Master of Horror (forthcoming from Audible), Thomas Wolfe Remembered (University of Alabama Press, 2018), Introduction to Information Literacy for Students (Wiley, 2017), and Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). His articles on student success, truth in the media, Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Allan Poe, and other subjects have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Change, The Academic Minute, The Conversation, Southern Cultures, American Literary ReaMark Canada, Indiana University Kokomo – Poe In His Right Mindlism, Edgar Allan Poe in Context, and other outlets.

Thursday, December 2nd
Jacqueline Rifkin – University of Missouri Kansas City
How Nonconsumption Can Turn Ordinary Items Into Treasures
Jacqueline Rifkin is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at UMKC’s Henry W. Bloch School of Management. Jacqueline earned her Ph.D. in Business Administration in the area of marketing at Duke University and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Jacqueline is interested in consumer psychology and consumer well-being. Her research explores how marketing and consumption affect well-being on both an individual and societal level. She is currently exploring how consumers manage their resources–their time, money, and experiences–and the impact this has on decision-making and well-being. Her research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, and has been featured in popular press outlets including Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, NPR, Der Spiegel, and Swedish Public Radio

Friday, December 3rd
Heather Houser – University of Texas at Austin
Infowhelm
I’m an associate professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin and hold affiliations with American Studies, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, and Rapoport Center for Human Rights & Justice. My first book is Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (Columbia UP, 2014), which won the 2015 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2014 British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) Book Prize. My new book, Infowhelm: Environmental Art and Literature in an Age of Data, appeared with Columbia UP in May 2020. In 2019-20, I am chair of the Organizing Committee of Planet Texas 2050, UT’s first Bridging Barriers grand research challenge. I’m also the Associate Graduate Advisor for English in 2020-21 and an associate editor at Contemporary Literature.

My research has been supported by external fellowships from the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah (2018-19), American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2013-14), Mellon Foundation (2010-11), Whiting Foundation (2009-10), and US Department of Education Jacob K. Javits Program (2004-08).