Faculty Achievements: Early Fall 2020

Dr. Jane Gordon published a piece entitled “Critical Allies: On Contemporary Enslavement and Statelessness” in Volume 2 of the Statelessness & Citizenship Review. 

Dr. Evelyn Simien, Dr. Robert Lupton, and Dr. Meina Cai were each awarded Scholarship Facilitation Funds from the Vice President for Research.

Dr. Shareen Hertel and Dr. Mark Boyer were asked to participate in a virtual nine-week lecture series on “Politics In The Time Of Global Pandemic” sponsored by WGBH and Suffolk University last month.

Dr. Charles Robert Ventor Santiago has been asked to join a special state legislative committee to address issues concerning the re-opening of the state and its impact on Latinos/as and other minorities within the state.

Dr. Venator Santiago (along with Dr. Carlos Vargas-Ramos of Hunter College) completed a final report documenting Holyoke’s Response to Hurricane Maria during September of 2019.  The report is entitled “Anticipated Vulnerabilities: Displacement and Migration in the Age of Climate Change.” The report was included in the Georgetown Climate Center’s “Managed Retreat Toolkit for States and Localities,” which is used to advise states and localities on responses to climate events.

Dr. Alexander Anievas’s analysis of far right politics was featured prominently in a recent edition of UConn Today. 

Dr. Jeremy Pressman recently published his new book, The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (2020). On August 31, 2020, Manchester University Press held a book launch event hosted by Professor Mira Sucharov to celebrate the book’s recent publication.

Dr. Pressman and co-authors Erica Chenoweth, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Felipe G Santos and Jay Ulfelder penned an op-ed in The Guardian entitled “The global pandemic has spawned new forms of activism – and they’re flourishing” on April 20, 2020.  The op-ed was translated and published by El Diario in Spain as well.

Dr. Pressman, joined by Profs. Maha Darwasha and Avinoam Patt, also discussed the film Tel Aviv on Fire, which was screened on the Storrs campus this past March.

Dr. Pressman, along with Dr. Chenoweth and Dr. Lara Putnam, co-authored a piece in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage in June entitled “The Floyd protests are the broadest in U.S. history — and are spreading to white, small-town America.”  Those same three authors — joined as well by Tommy Leung and Nathan Perkins — had previously co-authored a piece in Vox evaluating media coverage of the anti-lockdown protests.

On October 9, 2020, The British International Studies Association (BISA) will host a Zoom panel discussion on “Curating Conflict: Political Violence in Museums, Memorials and Exhibitions.”  The roundtable, which gathers scholars from around the world, is in part a response to Dr. Christine Sylvester’s call for the international relations subfield to explore whose memories – and whose wars – feature in prominent museums, memorials, and exhibitions.  (Contact Dr. Sylvester for details)

Dr. Stephen Dyson and UConn alum Charles A. Duelfer (History B.A. ’74) recently published an article, “Assessing how the U.S. intelligence community analyzes foreign leaders” in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Duelfer is a 25 year veteran of the national security agencies of the U.S. government. His service includes a stint as Special Advisor to the Director of the CIA.

Dr. Zehra Arat published a journal article (“Economic Justice and Rights in The Qur’an”) in Human Rights Quarterly.  She also published separate book chapters in Why Human Rights Still Matter in Contemporary World Affairs (edited by Mahmood Monshipouri); in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Women and Space in Turkey (edited by Gönül Bakay); and in The United Nations and Human Rights, (edited by Frédéric Mégret and Philip Alston).  Finally, Dr. Arat addressed 177 young people from all around the world at a webinar on “Women’s Rights in the Face of Cultural Relativism,” organized by the non-profit Fundraising for the Girl Child this past August.

Dr. Jeffrey Ladewig will soon publish the article “Murder and Presidential Elections: A Cultivation-Based Issue-Ownership Theory of Local Television News and Its Geographic Structure” (forthcoming) in Presidential Studies Quarterly. 

Dr. Prakash Kashwan’s essay, “American environmentalism’s racist roots have shaped global thinking about conservation” was published in The Conversation on September 2, 2020.  The piece received over 18,000 clicks and was republished by nearly two dozen web portals within the first week of its publication.  Dr. Kashwan also published “Public-Facing Scholarship in India after Modi,” in  Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium; and he co-authored an article entitled “Anticipatory governance of solar geoengineering: Conflicting visions of the future and their links to governance proposals” in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.

Dr. Kashwan was appointed a Member of the editorial board of the journal Earth Systems Governance and was nominated as a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Policy Research, Pune.

Dr. Kashwan was invited to speak at two seminars during Spring 2019: (1) at the Solidarity Series organized by New Delhi-based Centre for Financial Accountability, he spoke on “Planetary Emergencies and the Prospects for Climate Justice”; and (2) at the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC) at University of York, he spoke on “Climate Justice Amidst Pervasive Transformations.”

Dr. Beth Ginsberg and Dr. Michael Morrell were recognized by the Provost’s office for their service on the 2019-2020 General Education Oversight Committee (GEOC).  Dr. Morrell completed his second year of a two-year term; Dr. Ginsberg still has a year of service remaining.

Dr. Morrell, along with Graham Smith of the University of Westminster and Paolo Spada of the University of Southampton, presented research at the summer virtual meetings of the International Society of Political Science and the European Consortium of Political Research.  The research, derived from the WeDialogue Project, considered the effects of argument visualization platforms and empathy induction on expressions of emotion in online news comments.

Emeritus faculty member Dr. Frederick Turner continues to support the Department of Political Science by donating his earned UConn Early College Experience stipend for “the good of the Department.”  Dr. Turner originally joined the department in 1965, and served for more than three decades before retiring in 1997.

Another emeritus faculty member, Dr. David Repass, recently published a book based on decades of research entitled Listening to the American Voter: What Was on Voters’ Minds in Presidential Elections, 1960 to 2016. (Routledge, 2020)

Dr. Paul Herrnson served as an expert witness in Rachel Miller et al. v. Hughs (United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, 2020). 

Dr. David Yalof published a book chapter entitled “The Presidency and the Judiciary,” in The Presidency and the Political System, 12th ed. (edited by Michael Nelson).

Dr. Evan Perkoski participated in a series at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum entitled “The Role of Civilians and Civil Society in Preventing Mass Atrocities.”  He also was awarded a non-resident fellowship at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity at the Marine Corps University.

Dr. Yonatan Morse published his article, “Rebuilding, Rebranding, and Competitive Landscapes: A set-theoretic analysis of authoritarian successor parties” online at the journal Democratization