Associate Professor of History and American Studies Steven Harris was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in an article about a new housing development in a residential area of Kiev, in Ukraine. The article, entitled “Soviet housing was famously drab. This Ukraine complex is all about color,” states, “‘Scholars say housing is one realm where the Soviet Union did what the United States could not: provide cheap, reasonably decent housing for everyone.’ ‘They actually did solve the housing question,’ said Steven Harris, a historian at the University of Mary Washington and author of Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life After Stalin.”
Waters Featured in Inside Higher Ed on Technology-Enabled Learning
Assistant Professor of Biology Parrish Waters was featured in an article in Inside Higher Ed entitled “Looking Back on this Year’s Classroom Experiments.” In a previous article from last fall, professors across the country shared the technologies they were planning on testing in the classroom; now they reflect on their successes and shortcomings. According to the recent article, Waters said that he tried “encouraging student engagement with help from a formative assessment tool, which he’d used in the classroom previously, but without a cohesive strategy.” Read more.
Wilson Comments on the Psychological Effects of Mass Shootings
Assistant Professor of Psychology Laura Wilson recently commented in the national media on the psychological effects on survivors of mass shootings.
Wilson, the co-author of the The Wiley Handbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings, said the following to Buzzfeed News in an article entitled “If You Graduate Right After A Mass Shooting, Good Luck: You’re On Your Own”: “The biggest concern I would have for them is the disconnect from people who have gone through similar things.”
She also said, “Simply by definition, mass shootings are more likely to trigger difficulties with beliefs that most of us have, including that we live in a just world and that if we make good decisions, we’ll be safe,” in an article entitled “An Anniversary We Would All Like to Forget-But Never Will,” in the Post Newspaper in Texas.
In an article entitled “The Long Reach of Grief After Gun Violence” on yr.media, she said, “A lot of what we see among survivors is that they struggle to understand why they survived when others didn’t, because they made the same decisions everyone else made.” She explained that each survivor and their recovery is unique and cautioned against generalizing survivor experiences or regarding them as “typical.”
Schiffrin Quoted on Parents Excessive Involvement in College Course Choices
A study completed by Professor of Psychology Holly Schiffrin was cited in an article in The News Minute entitled “How Much Freedom do Students have while Choosing their Undergraduate Course?”
“One study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found that parents’ excessive involvement in their children’s lives yields unfavourable results. The lead author Holly Schiffrin argues, ‘Parents are sending an unintentional message to their children that they are not competent.’ This is in turn, could result in feelings of depression and dissatisfaction.”
Richardson Column in The Free Lance-Star
Read College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson’s latest column in The Free Lance-Star: The Imposter Syndrome.
Much has been shared in recent years about what is called Imposter Syndrome. Haven’t heard of it? You may not know the name, but you know the concept.
Imposters don’t think they belong in their jobs (or other parts of their lives, but we’ll focus on the workplace here). They have a lot of negative self-talk. “I’m not ready for this promotion.” “Was there no one else to take this role, as everyone knows I don’t have the experience to do it well?” You get the point. Read more.
Farnsworth Comments in the National Media
Political Science Professor Stephen Farnsworth continues to provide daily commentary in regional and national media on breaking news items. View a few of his current interviews: As Virginia Primaries Near, Progressives Get Ready For A Fight on WAMU; Trump vs. China on CTV News Channel; Cuccinelli as a Czar, Northam Yearbook on WRVA Newsradio; and Scandals Shake Up Political Fundraising and Spending and Analyzing What Turnout May Look Like for This Year’s Primary Elections on WVTF Radio IQ.
Gately Performs with the National Symphony Orchestra

Doug Gately will perform with the National Symphony Orchestra in the National Memorial Day Concert on May 26.
Doug Gately will perform with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jack Everly. The National Memorial Day Concert returns live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on May 26 for a special televised 30th anniversary broadcast, hosted by Tony Award-winner Joe Mantegna and Tony-nominated actress Mary McCormack.
The all-star line-up also features: distinguished American leader General Colin L. Powell USA (Ret.); Academy Award-nominated actor Sam Elliott; Grammy Award-winning legend Patti LaBelle; multi-platinum selling singer, performer and songwriter Gavin DeGraw; acclaimed actor Dennis Haysbert; Broadway and television star Christopher Jackson (Hamilton, Bull); multi-Grammy Award-winning bluegrass icon Alison Krauss; SAG and Olivier Award-winning and Grammy Award-nominated actress and singer Amber Riley (Glee, Dreamgirls); platinum-selling country music star Justin Moore; television star Jaina Lee Ortiz; and Patrick Lundy & The Ministers of Music. American Idol Season 17 finalist Alyssa Raghu will open the show with a special performance of the national anthem.
Grothe Quoted in Article on the Effects of Melting Sea Ice
Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Pamela Grothe was quoted in an article on MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) entitled “Melting sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic may be an economic boon, but it spells doom for sea life.” She said that Polar regions are important for regulating global temperatures. “Sea ice is highly reflective and when it melts, it exposes more ocean surface to absorb the sun’s energy, causing even more warming. This will then accelerate even more sea ice loss.”
Morris Quoted in Chronicle of Higher Education Article
Sean Michael Morris, director of UMW’s Digital Pedagogy Lab and Digital Learning, was quoted in an article on addressing student anxiety published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Love in pedagogical work is an orientation,” Morris wrote. “It is a decision to commit first to the community of learners and second to the material we’ve come to teach.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Best-and-Worst-Ways-to/246226?cid=wsinglestory
Haffey Publishes Book on Literary Modernism and Queer Temporality
Kate Haffey, Associate Professor of English, has just had her book, Literary Modernism, Queer Temporality: Eddies in Time, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Per the summary on the back of the book, “This book explores the intersection between the recent work on queer temporality and the experiments of literary modernism. Kate Haffey argues that queer theory’s recent work on time owes a debt to modernist authors who developed new ways of representing temporality in their texts. By reading a series of early twentieth-century literary texts from modernists like Woolf, Eliot, Faulkner, and Stein alongside contemporary authors, this book examines the way in which modernist writers challenged narrative conventions of time in ways that both illuminate and foreshadow current scholarship on queer temporality. In her analyses of contemporary novelists and critics Michael Cunningham, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, and Eve Sedgwick, Haffey also shows that these modernist temporalities have been reconfigured by contemporary authors to develop new approaches to futurity.” Details are available at https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030173005.








