Celebrating Disruptions in the Liberal Arts
Join a series of panel discussions on Friday, October 27, focused on critical topics in the liberal arts, including “Emergent Histories,” “Edges of Reason,” and “Unsettling Spaces.”
–President Anne McCall
Emergent Histories
10:15 a.m. | Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center
Facilitated by Christa Craven, Interim Dean for Faculty Development, Professor of Anthropology, and Chair of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at the College
Beatrice Adams
"Why the New Great Migration Matters?"
Beatrice Adams
"Why the New Great Migration Matters?"
An assistant professor of history at The College of Wooster, Beatrice Adams received her Ph.D. in African American and African Diaspora History from Rutgers-New Brunswick in the spring of 2021. While at Rutgers, she served as a researcher for the Scarlet and Black Project and contributed to three volumes of the project’s award-winning book series. She also served as a researcher for the Rise Up Newark Digital History Project—a public history project that explores the dynamics of the Modern Black Freedom Movement in the urban North. Her book in-progress, “We Might as Well Fight at Home: African Americans Claiming the American South,” examines the experiences of African Americans who remained in and returned to the American South during the Great Migration and the emergence of the New Great Migration. Her research has been supported by the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History and Religion & Philosophical Studies from Fisk University in 2012 and her Master of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2013.
Deborah McGrady
"Whose history is it anyway? LGBTQ efforts to free Joan of Arc"
Deborah McGrady
"Whose history is it anyway? LGBTQ efforts to free Joan of Arc"
Deborah McGrady, director of medieval studies and professor of French at the University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, is a specialist of late-medieval French literature and culture. Her work has dealt with key period writers, such as Guillaume de Machaut, the subject of her first monograph, Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Audience (Toronto University Press, 2006, rpt. 2012) and Christine de Pizan, the subject of her first edited collection, Christine de Pizan: A Casebook, co-edited with Barbara Altmann, Routledge Press (2003, rpt. 2016). Interested in the culture of material artifacts, she has explored in her research reader reception, the materiality of texts (from the codex to the digitized text), and the dynamics of literary economies. Her recent book on The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure? The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France (Toronto University Press, 2018) complicates current assumptions about the history of literary patronage through a study of author’s tempered reactions to the royal literary commission at the courts of Charles V and Charles VI of France. She is currently engaged in two book projects that explore new arenas: a monograph on the uses and abuses of Joan of Arc from medieval to modern times and a monograph on the “Poetics of Trauma during the Hundred Years War.” A strong promoter of new scholarship, she also serves as executive editor of Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures (Johns Hopkins UP).
Yalman Onaran '91
"Zombie Economies"
Yalman Onaran '91
"Zombie Economies"
Yalman Onaran ’91 is a research content manager at Barclays Investment Bank in New York and serves on the Wooster Alumni Board. Before joining the bank, he was a journalist covering banks worldwide at Bloomberg News. He was covering Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns for Bloomberg when they became the first to fall in the 2008 financial crisis. His first book, Zombie Banks, about the unresolved troubles of the banks in Europe and the U.S., was published in 2012. In his 23 years at Bloomberg, he also opened the financial news organization’s Istanbul and Ankara offices and wrote for its monthly magazine. Before joining Bloomberg, he worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press in the Middle East, covering wars as well as politics and economy in the region. In the early 1990s, his travels in Central Asia culminated in articles chronicling the challenges of the newly independent former Soviet satellite states for the Christian Science Monitor. He majored in economics and sociology at the College of Wooster before getting master’s degrees in journalism and international affairs from Columbia University. A native of Turkey, Onaran became a U.S. citizen in 2009 and lives with his husband and son in suburban New Jersey.
Edges of Reason
1:00 p.m. | Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center
Facilitated by Ravi Palat, Affiliated Scholar of the College
Margaux Day '06
“Democratizing climate finance: How the global response to the climate crisis can be more accountable to frontline communities”
Margaux Day '06
“Democratizing climate finance: How the global response to the climate crisis can be more accountable to frontline communities”
Margaux Day ’06, an alumni trustee at Wooster, is the policy director of Accountability Counsel, a non-profit organization that amplifies the voices of communities around the world to protect their human rights and environment. She leads the organization’s advocacy seeking to hold international financial institutions accountable for the negative environmental and human rights impacts of their investments. Before joining Accountability Counsel, Day was a judicial clerk for the Honorable Solomon Oliver Jr. ’69 of the Northern District of Ohio. She conducted anti-corruption and environmental investigations as an associate at the law firm Jones Day and continued to focus on corporate accountability as the deputy chief compliance officer of Diebold Nixdorf. Day then joined the Public International Law & Policy Group, where she advised parties engaged in peace negotiations and clients pursuing transitional justice. Day earned her degree at Wooster in international relations and completed her J.D. at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
Peter deSouza
"Conundrums of Democracy"
Peter deSouza
"Conundrums of Democracy"
Peter deSouza is the former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, India. He is currently a senior research associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS) at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research interests include exploring conundrums of democracy in India and South Asia, as well as the ‘colonization of the mind’ by the knowledge and governmental practices of the West, both in its colonial history and its after life. He also has a continued interest in the developments of science and technology, especially those that raise ethical questions and have significant societal impacts. Prior to his time at the ACEPS, de Souza served as the D.D. Kosambi Visiting Professor at Goa University from 2020 to 2022, where he had previously served as a professor and head of the Department of Political Science. He also served as co-director and senior fellow of the Lokniti Programme of Comparative Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi followed by two terms as director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Here, he developed the Tagore Centre and the International Centre forHuman Development. de Souza has continuously been engaged in issues of the freedom of expression, focusing on the case of the artist M.F. Husain, as well as the affirmative action policies of India and the U.S. and on the place of the university in the global South. de Souza has also served as a consultant to a variety of notable organizations, including UNESCO, International IDEA, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank, among others. He has published several journal articles and book chapters, including essays in the Economic and Political Weekly and The Indian Forum, and writes opinion pieces for publications such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, Scroll, and Goa Herald.
Courtney Thompson
"What Moves at the Margin"
Courtney Thompson
"What Moves at the Margin"
Dr. Courtney L. Thompson, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Africana Studies, joined The College of Wooster in Fall 2022. She completed her PhD in American Studies at Purdue University and her BA in English at Hampton University. Before joining the College of Wooster, she was an Associate Professor of American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of the South, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College and Dickinson College, and a Visiting Scholar and Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston. Her interdisciplinary training and research draw together the fields of Black (Women’s) Studies, American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Literary Studies. Her writing has been published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Women, Gender, and Families of Color; Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, Feminist Media Studies; and the International Journal of Africana Studies. She is a proud UNCF/Mellon (Mays Undergraduate) Fellow and alum of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers.
Unsettling Spaces
2:30 p.m. | Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center
Facilitated by President Anne McCall
Paul Edmiston
"Unsettled Proteins Confined to Nanopores: Use of Visual Art to Inspire Science"
Paul Edmiston
"Unsettled Proteins Confined to Nanopores: Use of Visual Art to Inspire Science"
Paul Edmiston is the Theron L. Peterson and Dorothy R. Peterson Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The College of Wooster. Known for his patented organosilica materials for water treatment, environmental remediation, and personal care, Edmiston researches advanced materials for water purification and the development of chemical sensors based on molecularly imprinted materials. He has been featured in over 50 publications, the most recent being in Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts, Catalysis Today, and Journal of Catalysis. He was awarded the Top 10 Breakthrough of the Year Award from Popular Mechanics Magazine in 2011, as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Clean Energy Prize in 2009, among several other recognitions in his career. Since 1999 Edmiston has received over $5.2 million in grant research funding. Recently, he received a significant federal grant from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, a partnership between the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency, to study the mitigation of “forever chemicals,” or chemicals that don’t break down in the environment and are found in many consumer products. Edmiston also has 12 patents, the most recent of which was acquired in 2022. At Wooster, where he’s been a member of the chemistry faculty since 1997, Edmiston teaches a variety of courses, including Instrumental Analysis, Analytical Chemistry, Chemistry and the World in Which We Live, and many others. Paul holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Pepperdine University and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Arizona.
Tate McCoy '93
"Evolution of Culture in the Workplace"
Tate McCoy '93
"Evolution of Culture in the Workplace"
Tate McCoy ’93 is the CEO of the Mountain West Series of Lockton Companies, a global professional services firm that specializes in risk management, employee benefits, and retirement services. As CEO, he leads a team of more than 500 associates and is an expert on real estate, private equity, construction, and manufacturing. Before being promoted to the position in 2018, McCoy served as the executive vice president. He was named to Denver Business Journal’s 40 under 40 in 2009. He previously served the College as a Wooster presidential fellow. As a student, he was an English major, a member of Phi Omega Sigma, and a lacrosse player. McCoy and his wife Eileen, a fellow Wooster alum, have four sons and currently live in Denver, Colorado. He is active in the community, including serving on the board of directors for Colorado Open Lands, which protects land and water.
Jordan Walters
"The Making and Unmaking of Queer Belonging"
Jordan Walters
"The Making and Unmaking of Queer Belonging"
Jordan Biro Walters, associate professor of history at The College of Wooster, received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 2015. Her research focuses on racial and heteronormative underpinnings of American citizenship, the relationship between mobility and queer identity formation, and the intersections of artistic and sexual freedom. Walters published her book, Wide-Open Desert; a Queer History of New Mexico, in 2023 and has authored several articles featured in historical review publications, such as Pacific Historical Review and New Mexico Historical Review. She served as the director for the Wooster Digital History Project from 2017 to 2019, co-directing in 2022, and is still involved as a public historian, working in conjunction with the College’s Special Collections, the Wayne County Historical Society, and the Wayne County Public Library to document a comprehensive and representative account of Wooster’s history. Walters is also a board member of the Wayne County Historical Society. Outside of her work at Wooster, Walters acts as an oral historian of the Bennet Hammer LGBT Collection at the Center for Southwest Research in the University of New Mexico, an exhibit featuring testimonies of LGBT community members and activists from New Mexico during a period of significant development of LGBT issues and policies. She has taught a variety of courses during her time at Wooster, including but not limited to The Craft of Public History, Civil War: Gender & Commemoration, A History of Native America, and LGBTQ+ History of the Twentieth Century United States.