St. Lawrence in the News - July 12, 2021

Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat, whose recent work focuses on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, commented on the detention of Egyptian academic Alia Mossallam and called for her immediate release in an article published by Middle East news outlet, Middle East Eye on Monday, July 12. 

On Wednesday, May 7, Eissenstat was quoted by Finnish news outlet MTV Uutiset and weighed in how the Gülen movement has failed to address its role in human rights issues and Turkey’s pursuit of dissidents abroad. 

Eissenstat's research focuses on nationalism and Islam in the 19th century Ottoman Empire as well as the history of the Turkish Republic. His recent work has focused increasingly on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, especially on issues of rule-of-law, minority rights, and the reshaping of political culture under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In addition to traditional academic work, Eissenstat served for over a decade as a Turkey Country Specialist for Amnesty International-USA. He has lectured at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. military, and the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, as well as given testimony to the Canadian Senate and offered briefings to Congressional Committees.

Associate Professor of Sociology Alanna Gillis' research focuses on inequality in higher education. In her opinion piece published by Inside Higher Ed on Wednesday, June 23, she examines how racialized advice from peers impacts college students of color when choosing majors.

“My research suggests that college students in general, not just white students, internalize racial stereotypes and unknowingly reproduce them in conversations,” writes Gillis. “Students receive racialized advice from peers, unaware of its biases, and they use that to help to make decisions about majors. All of this leads to more segregated fields of study and the reproduction of inequality.”

Gillis’ research focuses on inequality in higher education. She is currently working on multiple research projects about the pandemic's impact on higher education, including how the pandemic impacted first-year students' transition to college at St. Lawrence, the effectiveness of simultaneous remote and in-person teaching, and the impact of the emergency remote transition in Spring 2020 on classroom pedagogy and students' lives.

In an interview with NCPR published on Wednesday, June 23, Visiting Assistant Professor of European Studies Carolyn Twomey shared how she collaborated with faculty from the nearby Associated Colleges to incorporate hands-on historical practices such as Renaissance letter writing as well as ink, and paper making in the classroom. 

“I do a lot of experiential things like this in the classroom at St. Lawrence,” Twomey said. “I’m a medieval historian so, I do things a couple of centuries before this particular type of Early Modern inks and prints with parchment and animal skin. This is relatively new for me–dealing with the pulp and papermaking, but it’s an extension of some of the similar things that are really of interest in my period of the Middle Ages and what my students are currently doing.”

Twomey’s research is interdisciplinary between the fields of history, art history, archaeology, and religious studies of the early Middle Ages. Her work focuses on the cultural and religious meaning of objects and places. At St. Lawrence, she teaches introductory courses on European studies that emphasize hands-on learning about physical and digital medieval objects.

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