Author: Sara Sobota

Publications Editor, Edwards College at Coastal Carolina University
April 29, 2020 Faculty Voices Post a Comment

Art historian in action

Elizabeth Baltes has been awarded prestigious grant to continue her research on portrait sculpture in Athens, Greece.

What do faculty members do during quarantine? If you’re Elizabeth Baltes, you earn prestigious grants for international research projects.

Baltes, assistant professor of art history in the Department of Visual Arts, has won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant that provides for study of portrait sculpture from the ancient agora, or marketplace, in Athens, Greece. (The grant and related trip is being deferred to Summer 2021.) The NEH funded just 11 percent of submitted summer stipend proposals.

Baltes’ grant will fund an extension of a collaborative team book project that began in Summer 2019 with six weeks of field work studying excavated fragments in the Athenian agora. The team has a projected goal of finishing field work and research by 2024. Baltes explained in a recent interview the nature of the project and what she hopes to learn on her next trip.

What will you be doing on your research trip?

I’ll be doing two things. The first is working with my  team to actually look at sculpture. None of this has been studied systematically since the 1950s, and when it was studied then, the person studying it was only interested in portrait heads — because that’s the easiest thing to identify as part of a portrait. But there are thousands and thousands of fragmentary pieces of sculpture that have been excavated from this site, and so we’re working to go through all of them to try to identify  as many pieces that we can confidently associate with portrait sculpture as possible. And that takes time, and it takes teamwork, to actually look  at something and talk about it and figure out what it is and how it was working.

The sacred processional way that runs through the Athenian agora in Greece, facing south towards the Acropolis.

And what is the ultimate goal?

We’re broadly interested in reconstructing the history of portrait sculpture in Athens. A lot of the portrait sculpture from the Agora dates to the Roman period, essentially when Rome was in control of Athens.  So these are largely talked about as Roman portraits. And so the narrative has been traditionally that portraits in Athens were driven by what was going on in urban Rome. And so one of the things that we’re finding out is that that doesn’t seem to be the case, that these portraits of local people are representing very much local concerns and interests and they’re not closely adhering necessarily to exactly what’s happening in urban Rome. So it makes us question, ok, so, so traditionally these have been called Roman portraits, but what’s Roman about them?

Do you know others, including those on your team, who have applied for and/or won this grant?

I was the only person who applied for this because most of my team members are at institutions that have more plentiful research funds. For me, it was really important to get outside funding so I can continue this work as part of this team.

Otherwise, I don’t know anyone else who has won this grant.

Technically this grant was supposed to be for this summer, 2020. However, Greece has essentially shut down — none of the archaeological sites are open, so it isn’t going to be possible. But luckily, the NEH is allowing recipients of summer stipends this year to defer as late as next summer, so that’s exactly what’s going to happen, so the plan now is to tentatively shift everything a year forward. …..This grant will cover two months of work.

How does this work fit into your scholarship niche?

I’ve been working on various aspects of portrait sculpture since I was in grad school, and I’ve been working closely with material from the Athenian agora for the last few years, and so this is sort of a natural extension of the work I’ve already been doing, both at the agora on portrait sculpture more generally.

Will it apply to your teaching?

I’m hoping it will. I’m really interested in developing an upper-level seminar on portraiture because I am interested actually in public portraits from all eras. So I’m hoping that will happen in the future.

How did you react when you learned you received the grant?

I screamed a lot. It is a pretty big deal. It was really exciting to receive that kind of recognition and acknowledgement of the importance of the scholarly work that I do.

To learn more about Baltes and her research, visit https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/visualarts/elizabethbaltes/

April 29, 2020 Faculty Voices Post a Comment

A Battle of the Superheroes

Donna Corriher, lecturer in the Department of English, incorporated some fun into her English 102 course when she made the shift from in-classroom to the online atmosphere. In this piece, she explains how the study of argument and rhetoric became a classroom debate about the relative merits of two iconic superheroes.

Every semester, in English 102, I have my students debate which superhero, Batman or Superman, has most impacted American society. Although it may not appear to be the best, most collegial topic to debate, it becomes so because I require students to find only peer-reviewed articles in support of their character, using Kimbel Libary’s databases. You would be surprised at the amount of scholarly research that has been published about those characters.

During a “typical” semester, I allow students to draw the name of the superhero they will “represent.” I allow them to work in groups as they find articles, using their laptops in the classroom. Five students are assigned to be the jurors and judges, and they are required to research both superheroes.

Since we had to shift our classes online, I tweaked the debate. I assigned students to teams (groups) within Moodle, and provided each team with a private forum. I then assigned each team a superhero, AND two databases in Kimbel. Each student on each team had to discover one article and post the MLA citation for and an excerpt from that article into a team forum. Then, the team was required to read each other’s articles and “reply” to each other in the forum or communicate with each other via email to determine one great article to submit to a “Courtroom Forum” as that team’s “evidence.” I, the judge, selected the six, in my opinion, best, most credible articles and posted them into another Moodle tool, “Choice.” I listed the pertinent info about the articles and required all students to vote/choose which article they felt to be the best article, considering Ethos, Logos, and Pathos; i.e., the most convincing article. Students voted anonymously. The winner was determined to be Batman.

I used the time restrictions on Moodle for all tools, forums and choice.

To announce the winner, I created a PowerPoint that included cartoons and music, acknowledgements of team members and articles, and, eventually, named the winner.

See the Powerpoint Here: Batman VS Superman Spring 2020 (1)

This assignment allows students to actively engage with the core skills of Critical Reading, Writing, and Information Literacy. Students practice using the basic rhetorical tools of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos as they determine the best article in support of their superhero. Students read articles written for a specific audience, scholars, and do so in a way that not only engages them, but also surprises them and evokes curiosity. They learn how to locate credible source materials using sophisticated databases, thus laying eyes on the extent of databases, disciplines, and fields of study. They must critically read the articles, analyzing the material as they seek out the very best quote that they can find to submit in support of a particular superhero.

Students learn the value and importance of group work as they communicate within the forums. The forums are timed, so students must practice self-discipline and timeliness in order to successfully submit an article to the Courtroom forum.

Student grades were based upon whether or not they individually submitted to the initial Team forum, and provided all of the required information in a timely manner—a correctly formatted MLA citation (reinforcing the necessity of providing source information), and an excerpt from the article (reinforcing the need to correctly format in-text citations).

The only aspect of the assignment that I will change is to weight the assignment more heavily. The debate was a low-stakes assignment, and I graded student submissions within the Participation category in my gradebook, a category that did not seriously impact grades, and thus, some students did not participate at all. I also attribute some lack of participation due to my offering extensions on most assignments for the semester, due to our unusual circumstances, and some students put it off until it was too late.

Fifty-three of sixty students participated. I had hoped for 100% participation, but was pleasantly surprised that two students who had basically disengaged from the course suddenly reappeared and submitted articles. One of the students who had selected a winning article sent me an email within minutes after I announced the results, asking me to vote for his article. Students were waiting, enjoying a little competition.

It’s amazing what a little comic relief will do for you.

Donna Corriher, Teaching Associate

dcorriher@coastal.edu

April 17, 2020 Faculty Voices Post a Comment

Behind the scenes with Kris McIntyre

Kris McIntyre, lecturer in the Department of Theatre, took a moment to share her thoughts and experiences transferring her instruction to a fully online model. On the way, she made great use of her professional network, discovering a wide array of materials available that guided and inspired her. Ultimately, she passed on that collaborative spirit and approach, offering her own expertise to other instructors and teachers. Meanwhile, her students keep her busy and motivated as she continues her innovative practices in teaching acting and voice in an online environment.

From Professor McIntyre:

Welcome to “A View from a Desk”! I teach in the Theatre Department, which you can imagine makes for an interesting transition into online teaching. This semester, my academic load consisted of teaching two core courses: THEA 130, Principles of Dramatic Analysis, and THEA 149, Acting for the Non-Major; and three majors courses: two sections of THEA 242, Vocal Production, and one section of THEA 142, The Speaking Voice. In addition, I was working with BA senior Shaughnessy Burns on overseeing her direction of the Second Stage Production of The Women of Lockerbie, which was also to be her Honors Thesis project.

In recent years, I completed the Distance Learning program through CeTEAL, as well as received a grant from the COOL office to create Dramatic Analysis as a fully online course, so I initially felt prepared to go to online instruction with my literature course. Moodle has been integrated into all of my courses for years, and knew I would be proficient in making ECHO 360 videos of me teaching from home, uploading audio-guided Power Point lectures, creating assignments for my students to be able to upload videos and journals and connect with their peers, and in linking library resources and videos to easily supplement their learning.

But how to teach my performance classes was another thing altogether. Theatre is an interactive discipline, and I needed to see and hear my students while working on their monologues to help them clarify choices, adjust their posture, make distinctions in articulating sounds, and other factors. How was I going to teach scansion and iambic pentameter to 53 voice students, many of whom had not performed Shakespearean text before?

Just when I reached the peak of my consternation, which literally consisted of walking around my house saying, “How do I teach voice and acting classes online?!?”, I noticed that hundreds of theatre friends across the country were on Facebook expressing the same quandary. It prompted the creation of the Theatre Education Distance Learning (Resource Sharing and Support Network), where every day people were adding hundreds of links to online teaching ideas, portals, software, streaming services for theatre…you name it! It not only made me feel far less alone, but I gleaned many ideas for how to maintain a sense of connectivity and interaction among my courses. And the theatre community world-wide has truly come together to provide free streaming videos of world-renowned theatre, music, and dance performances for educators, as well as all arts lovers. One common theme that has come from this that keeps motivating me is, “When the world is in a crisis, and we are looking for a little bit of connection to our humanity, where else would we turn but to the arts?”

So, in that week we were given to prepare for going fully online, I decided to turn my angst into assistance. I work for innumerable secondary theatre teachers through my service as the Vice President of the Southeastern Theatre Conference and as the South Carolina Theatre Convention’s auditions coordinator, and I told them that if any of them could use a “guest teacher,” I would be happy to host a class for them. I have since held sessions on Shakespearean text, how to audition for college theatre programs, selecting a monologue, and applying tactics to text work, and I’ll be doing many more of these before the school year has concluded.

This thinking helped me to prepare better for my own courses, which are now a combination of prepared lectures that I can upload, ECHO 360 video tutorials of me teaching them a specific skill, video and homework submissions from them that I can correct and scan back to them for review, and my favorite part: Zoom classes. Each week my students and I log into Zoom, an online meeting portal in which every person who logs in can be seen and heard in real time, and I answer their questions, watch and provide feedback on their monologues, and just check in with them as human beings. It is now the highlight of my week, although I am limiting it to one hour a week with each class so as to not overload them with obligations. They love being able to check in with their classmates and see each other’s work and progress.

Zoom has also been the way we have been maintaining committee meetings, watching the teaching demos of job search candidates, and weekly faculty meetings.

While I would normally be working long hours every day due to rehearsals in the evenings after my days spent teaching, I am now working long hours because most lessons must be taught in four different ways, and the amount of emails from students has grown incredibly. I have managed to maintain my sanity by turning my spare room into an office, complete with a spare bed-turned-filing-system, regular breaks for walks with my family, and a never-ending supply of snacks! And while my previous office mate in the Edwards  building, Shawna Roessler in the Department of English, was a fabulous person to share a space and time with, my new office mate, my miniature dachshund Fiona, is incredibly adorable, and it has made my students happy to see her in the background of our Zoom meetings.

For more information on Professor McIntyre: https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/theatre/kristiraumcintyre/

For more information on the CCU Theatre Department: https://www.coastal.edu/theatre/

April 16, 2020 Faculty Voices Post a Comment

Behind the Scenes with Jen Boyle

Jen Boyle, professor in the Department of English and co-creator of the Digital Culture and Design program, is a prolific scholar as well as a dedicated professor. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from Brown University, the Folger Institute, and the Dibner Library for History of Science and Technology, as well as CCU’s 2018 HTC Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer.

Boyle took a moment to discuss her teaching, scholarly, and home lives during the time of COVID-19.

While she’s familiar and experienced in the online teaching environment, other elements of Boyle’s professional roles – such as coordinating both the B.A. in digital culture and design and the minor in new media and digital culture — have posed challenges.

“Currently, I am teaching 2 sections of ENGL 231: New Media, Film, and Digital Culture; the media unit of WGST 105 for three weeks; and DCD 488 Capstone,” said Boyle. “I teach online quite a bit (I just completed a COOL grant to retool my ENGL 231 class for the online environment!), but other aspects of my work as a program director have been more challenging in the online environment. For example, I do a lot of one-on-one advising with students. I am using Zoom to create conversation possibility spaces, despite being remote. I think when people hear “digital” in our program or professional titles that it means we embrace the virtual everywhere, when in reality, our studies and teaching instruct us on the limits of online interactions. One of the positives that may emerge from this very difficult time is a more nuanced conversation about what we can do with digital spaces — and what we can’t do.”

Boyle talked a bit about her academic field and current projects, including how they impact the classroom.

“I teach and write about media transformation and theories of mediation. My books and digital installations explore ‘new’ media objects and performance, bodies and technology, and the mediated flows of objects and information through networks, from the seventeenth century to the digital present,” said Boyle. “I am currently writing a textbook (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan) on approaches to teaching with new media and working with archival and regional collections as an alternative learning model. The textbook will be both in print and a digital open resource that professors and universities can utilize to import project based new media curriculum.”

And, during all that time at home? What’s Boyle been up to?

“I am reading and writing, BUT, also catching up on all those films and series I have been wanting to work into my classes (minor binging: Black Mirror; BBC detective series; movies I missed),” said Boyle. “I am also cooking–a lot! Cooking is one of those activities that is solitary but always connected in some way with the idea of togetherness, of breaking bread with others. Even when that fuller scenario is not possible, cooking keeps me connected to those ideas, those future get togethers.”

For more information on Dr. Boyle, visit her faculty profile: https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/english/jenniferboyle/

For more information on Dr. Boyle’s scholarly work, visit http://jenboyle.squarespace.com/about-me/

For more information on CCU’s Digital Culture and Design program, visit https://www.coastal.edu/dcd/programs/digitalcultureanddesignba/

April 8, 2020 Faculty Voices Post a Comment

Behind the scenes with Christina Selby

Christina Selby, associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Culture, is keeping her academic, scholarly, and family lives all spinning during the COVID-19 isolation period.

From her home office, Selby teaches two upper-level health communication classes and a communication capstone course. Though she’s experienced in online teaching, she’s expanded her pedagogical repertoire this semester.

“I have learned new tools through this process that have allowed me to interact on a more personal level with all of my students, especially in the virtual format,” said Selby.

Selby’s scholarly field is health communication, and her work is quantitative, survey-based research. Her current project is on children and eating habits – a particularly relevant topic these days of home-based cooking and eating.

“Right now, I am knee-deep in research about factors contributing to healthy/unhealthy eating and picky eating among children,” said Selby. “My colleagues and I are wondering, who has the control over children’s diets?  Is it the parents (or caretakers), the kids themselves, the media, or is it some other influence? Who has the most influence – female or male caregivers?  How is this influence different for younger and older children?  We are currently digging into our data and drawing some interesting conclusions.”

A mother of two, Selby is also becoming experienced in home schooling as well as spending time with family and (one at a time) friends.

“I have currently been brushing up on cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals (or some other topic that I have not thought about in decades) while homeschooling my second grader; social distance walking outside with a friend; cooking dinner every night, which I previously did not have time to do; spending time with my husband and kids (we are usually pulled in some many different directions); and establishing new norms and a new routine.”

To learn more about Selby and her research, visit https://www.coastal.edu/academics/facultyprofiles/humanities/communicationmediaandculture/christinaselby/

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