Faculty Focus-December 16, 2024
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published journal articles, presented at academic conferences, wrote fiction stories, and were interviewed by international media.
Richard Lauer
Philosophy Lecturer Richard Lauer recently published a paper in Synthese, a top philosophy journal.
The paper, titled Macrostructural Explanation in the Social Sciences, contributes to the debate about the character of what are called “social structural” explanations. Social structural explanations, Lauer says, include that income inequality causes violence, structural racism causes residential segregation, and patriarchal norms cause differences in pay rates between men and women. However, Lauer argues that there exists a category of explanation that the philosophers contributing to this debate have yet to consider, which he calls “macrostructural explanations,” which give social structural explanations that draw on statistical information or abstract properties of groups, rather than detailed information about individual people.
His argument intends to show philosophers contributing to this debate that they can answer some questions more effectively when they engage more deeply with empirical work in the social sciences.
Pedro Ponce
Associate Professor of English, Pedro Ponce, published a fiction story in the Winter 2025 issue of BOMB Magazine. The story, titled The Shadow of the Monster, is part of a manuscript in progress about the many ways that humans relate to monsters – both literal and figurative. The stories in the manuscript range from science fiction to uncanny realism as different characters confront the various aspects of themselves embodied in the concept of monstrosity.
Gisele El Khoury
Gisele El Khoury, director of the language resource center and Arabic instructor, chaired a session and delivered a presentation at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) convention in Philadelphia.
Her presentation explored the integration of Artificial Intelligence with traditional storytelling forms, including folk narratives, graphic novels, proverbs, and films, to enhance language education.
El Khoury emphasized the transformative potential of AI in analyzing and incorporating these storytelling mediums into teaching, showing how it can make learning more engaging and enjoyable.
When used effectively, she argued that AI tools can foster cultural empathy, promote inclusivity, and introduce an exciting new dimension to the educational experience. In particular, El Khoury argued that the fusion of AI and traditional storytelling can help bridge cultural gaps and deepen students’ understanding of Arab culture.
Rafael Castillo Bejarano
Visiting Assistant Professor of World Languages, Cultures and Media, and co-Coordinator of the Caribbean, Latin American and Latino Studies program Rafael Castillo Bejarano, has published a peer reviewed article in the journal Hipogrifo, titled, "Visiones de El Escorial en tres poetas latinoamericanos: Girondo, Baquero y Mutis ante un símbolo del Siglo de Oro." In the article, Bejarano expands the symbolism of the Monastery of St. Lawrence of El Escorial by adding the perspective of Latin American poets Oliverio Girondo, Gastón Baquero, and Álvaro Mutis, who decentralize the patrimonialization of historical and cultural heritage, questioning recent national compartmentalization's and advocating for equal participation in a shared cultural heritage.
Also recently, the journal Caliope has published Rafael Castillo's "Un congreso abierto," an invited chronicle of the XVI Biennial Conference of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, held in Chicago in the fall of 2023.
Patti Frazer Lock
Mathematics Professor Patti Frazer Lock recently gave keynote or invited addresses at three conferences.
Lock gave an invited keynote address at the 24th annual New England Isolated Statisticians (NEISM24) conference in Boston titled "Modernizing the Intro Stat Course." She served on an invited panel at the Joint Statistics Meetings in Portland, Oregon, where she spoke on "Innovations in Introductory Statistics." She also gave an invited keynote address at the online Conference on Teaching Statistics (eCOTS) regarding "An Update on the College GAISE Revision Process."
Tyler S. Rife
Assistant Professor of Performance and Communication Arts, Tyler S. Rife, published an article in the journal Text & Performance Quarterly.
Titled, “Exorcising heteronormative trauma with The ConVersion: queer collaboration in (autoethno)graphic performance,” the article's abstract is as follows: Relaying an especially traumatic encounter with heteronormative violence in the form of a non-consensual conversion, our performance theorizes and stages collaboration as a means of communicating trauma beyond the individuated capacities of a sole performer. We figure our collaborative effort an (autoethno)graphic performance to capture its dual embrace of graphic approaches to storytelling and performative approaches to autoethnographic inquiry, wherein one performer’s written narrative coalesces with another performer’s illustrations to critically re-story the past. In queering author/illustrator relational dynamics, our processual discovery of performance through collaboration conjures a mode of queer worldmaking while offering a temporary reprieve from heteronormative trauma.
Howard Eissenstat
Howard Eissenstat, laurentian associate professor of history and department chair, was interviewed by Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel and Vienna’s Die Presse for stories on Turkey’s role in the Syrian Civil War and its relationship to the Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
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St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a regular roundup of noteworthy faculty news.
