ASE Faculty Achievements, Fall 2023 and Spring 2024
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Evelyn Alsultany’s book, Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion has been chosen as the Arab American National Museum’s Honorable Mention for the Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Academic Award for 2023.
She also received the Richard A. Yarborough Mentoring Award from the American Studies Association. Selected by the ASA Minority Scholars Committee, the award recognizes Dr. Asultany’s impact on the next generation of scholars. See: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news-briefs/faculty-recogntion/2023/12/evelyn-alsultany/
Professor Evelyn Alsultany won two prestigious awards:
- Alsultany is the recipient of the “General Education Teaching Award” for excellence in teaching in the GE curriculum for 2022-23. She taught the following GE classes.
AMST 200, Introduction to American Studies and Ethnicity
AMST 215, Race and Mixed Race
AMST 325, The Middle East in Hollywood.
- Alsultany has also received a USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Science research grant for her creative project “Secrets and Hard Truths.”
Prof. Evelyn Alsultany’s first book Arabs and Muslims in the Media was just listed in the LA Times’ “The 50 best Hollywood books of all time.” Here is the link:
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Alicia Chavez won the 2023 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Adjunct Faculty Fellowship award.
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Professors Juan De Lara(co-investigator) and Andrew Lakoff (PI) were awarded a grant for their proposal, The City of Life Support: Los Angeles as a Laboratory for Planetary Health, by the USC Office of Research and Innovation (OORI) Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences (HHSS) award program. The award will support an initiative that brings together USC faculty in the humanistic social sciences in collaboration with environmental health researchers to generate a public humanities project focused on the challenges of planetary health as they are experienced in Los Angeles. (September 2024)
De Lara received the USC Faculty and Students Awarded Arts in Action Grants to Promote Social Change (February – December 2024).
Artful Maps for Action is a joint initiative between the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), a community organization in Skid Row, and faculty and students from USC. Its objective is to create geo-data collection methods at the grassroots level and find ways to analyze and map the data. Experts including François Bar (USC Annenberg), Juan De Lara (USC Dornsife), Annette Kim (USC Price), and Andrzej Rutkowski (USC Libraries), will provide opportunities for participation by students enrolled in related coursework and those interested in art and advocacy work. LA CAN’s executive director Pete White and food and wellness organizer Todd Cunningham will play a crucial role in co-creating artful maps of Skid Row to increase the visibility of community resources, articulate community demands, and support community action for its most vulnerable members.
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Sarah Gualtieri published this short essay “Lying Down to Stand Up for What is Right” about the die-in at USC to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/lying-down-to-stand-up-for-what-is-right/
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Amelia G. Jones published a new book, co-edited with Jane Chin Davidson entitled A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework. See the link here: https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/A+Companion+to+Contemporary+Art+in+a+Global+Framework-p-9781119841807
Professor Amelia Jones won the prestigious Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students at USC.
The award recognizes: “exceptional individuals who go above and beyond what is expected, fostering an engaging, supportive, and inclusive academic environment through their mentorship of colleagues, graduate, and undergraduate students. Professor Jones’ mentorship is extraordinary and is most deserving of this honor.”
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Dorinne Kondo participated in two panels at Harvard University:
- “Notes from the Field and the Archive: Building Classroom Communities in the Humanities”, Department of English, Harvard University, and invitation from Mahindra Humanities Center, in conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer, and Prof. Glenda Carpio, Chair; October 18, 2023.
- Invited Participant, “A Celebration of Marcyliena H. Morgan,” Ernest E. Monrad Prof. of the Social Sciences, Prof. of African American Studies, Founder of the Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard. Hutchins Center for African and African Research, Harvard. Panel on “Women of Color Speaking.” December 15, 2023.
Dorinne Kondo reprised her role as dramaturg for the 30th anniversary production of TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum in the spring of 2023.
Kondo’s comic drama SEAMLESS was chosen as one of four plays featured in workshop productions for Morgan-Wixson Theater’s New Work Festival, upcoming in late September through mid-October. Based on Kondo’s interviews with her parents, SEAMLESS stages the indeterminacy of history and memory, the afterlife of trauma, and the (im)possibility of knowing the people we love most. Tickets available here: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/1221
Kondo’s concept “reparative creativity” will be a featured concept at a keynote/ plenary event at the RACE conference, sponsored by the X at Johns Hopkins University in October.
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Oneka LaBennett received the “2023 USC Dornsife Dean’s Emblem Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the space of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.” The award honors scholars for publications, research, or engagement with the public or academic community that address issues of access, representational diversity, the impact of marginalization or discrimination, and/or building inclusive communities. Her book, Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond will be published by NYU Press in April 2024. https://nyupress.org/9781479827022/global-guyana/
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Natalia Molina published an essay in the Los Angeles Times. See it here.
Natalia Molina won the Weber Book Prize given annually for the best non-fiction book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association.
Molina published an essay, in honor of her brother, David, who recently passed away. She writes: “But sports talk can also transcend small talk and become a shared field of memories, a tie that binds.”
She also published an essay here:
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2023/08/14/tulum-instagram-colonialism-tourism/ideas/essay/
Professor Natalia Molina won the prestigious Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students at USC.
The award recognizes: “exceptional individuals who go above and beyond what is expected, fostering an engaging, supportive, and inclusive academic environment through their mentorship of colleagues, graduate, and undergraduate students. Professor Molina’s mentorship is extraordinary and is most deserving of this honor.”
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Professor Lydie Moudileno won the prestigious Ordre des Palmes
Académiques (Order of Academic Palms). This is a national honor conferred by the French Republic honoring the invaluable contributions of eminent academics and educators in academia, education, and scientific inquiry. -
Viet Nguyen’s new book, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Nguyen will be giving six lectures at Harvard as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry.
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Manuel Pastor was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He views election to the academy as a call for scholars — particularly those early in their careers — to bring their work to bear on societal challenges. He writes:
“In a world that faces multiple crises — climate change, widening inequality and the fragility of our multiracial democracy — we need more academics to enter what USC Dornsife has termed the ‘public square.’ Fortunately, this next generation of scholars wants to do exactly that,” he said. “This award — which notably was given in the category of public affairs — gives all of us both a permission slip and a mandate to make sure our work makes a difference.”
See the Dornsife story here: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/manuel-pastor-elected-member-american-academy-arts-sciences/
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Nayan Shah has been offered the 2024-25 Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship from the Huntington Research Library.
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Karen Tongson received the “2023 Communicator of the Year Award” in the Humanities. The award honors scholars who contribute significant time and effort to meaningfully improve the public’s understanding of issues, influence policy, and/or raise the level of public discourse around research and scholarship conducted at Dornsife.
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Jackie Wang received two fellowships:
- American Democracy Fellowship at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center
- Policy Scholar at Howard University’s Center for an Equitable Economy and Sustainable Society
She also published a new essay collection with Semiotext(e) / MIT Press titled Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735767/alien-daughters-walk-into-the-sun-by-jackie-wang/
In addition, Prof. Wang was in conversation with Christopher Soto in the L.A. Times. They discussed artificial intelligence and the craft of writing. See: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-08-23/will-ai-replace-writers-christopher-soto-jackie-wang-game-out-the-future
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Francille Wilson was awarded the Carter G. Woodson Scholar’s Medallion from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). It will be presented at the 108th Annual Conference of ASALH, the oldest scholarly society dedicated to African American History and Culture on September 23rd.