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NEWS AND UPDATES

December 2nd, 2022

Baruch College Hosts Historic Fuzhounese American Conference

On October 8th, 2022, as the Baruch Performing Arts Center continues to reopen its doors and welcome all varieties of audiences back into its theatres, Baruch College hosted an unprecedented gathering. A self-organizing community made up of mostly the descendants of immigrants from Fuzhou, China came together for their largest ever in-person conference, “Take Out Only.” The conference was sponsored in part by Baruch’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program. Ken Guest, a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, was invited to give one of the keynote addresses. He’s been working with this community for 25 years.

“In the anthropological field, it’s what we call ‘longitudinal research,’” Guest said. “That’s a way of saying that you’ve devoted your whole life to something. I started working on the parents of this community that came to the US in the 90s and early 2000s. It is incredibly gratifying for me to see this new generation come together. And to be invited into their community as a researcher to provide a data driven perspective is really unique.”

Over the past 25 years, a wave of over half a million immigrants have come to the United States from Fuzhou, a large metropolitan area in Fujian, a province in southeastern China, revitalizing New York City’s Chinatown and changing the cultural and ethnic makeup of the Chinese American community. Guest’s first book, God in Chinatown, which began as his dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center, traces their journey by exploring their work in restaurants, garment shops, and construction, and the vast human smuggling network that often aids their arrival in the United States. His writing also addresses the role of Fuzhounese religious communities both here and abroad, the religious revival that has swept coastal China, the Fuzhounese role in the rapidly expanding U.S. network of all-you-can-eat buffets and take-out restaurants, and the higher education experiences of the Fuzhounese second generation, particularly at Baruch College.

Poet Donika Kelly Reads Her Award-Winning Poetry at Mishkin Gallery

Award-winning poet and former Professor in the Weissman English Department, Donika Kelly returned to Baruch College sponsored by the Weissman Dean's Office, the Black and Latino Studies Department, and the English Department. Reading from her award-winning book, The Renunciations, Kelly treated a full room of students and former colleagues to her deceptively simple and compact meditations on faith, love, and loss. Clearly as gifted an educator as she is a writer, Kelly mysteriously managed to mystify and demystify the poetic project all at once.

As an added bonus, the audience heard a selection of new poems which included frequent images of sea creatures—whales in particular. The reading, not to mention Kelly's apparel, nicely complemented Mishkin's acclaimed exhibition, "Who Speaks For The Oceans?" curated by Director and Curator of Mishkin Gallery, Alaina Claire Feldman and Professor David Gruber, which examines various human representations of marine life.

“Faiths, Conflicts, and Coalitions” Series

Baruch Gets Sneak Peek of "Sevap/Mitzvah"

In another installment of the “Faiths, Conflicts, and Coalitions" Series launched by President Wu, implemented by Provost Essig, and presented by the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center, Baruch students, faculty, and staff attended a private screening of the short, unreleased film “Sevap/Mitzvah.”

“Sevap/Mitzvah” tells the story of interfaith intergenerational humanitarianism. Beginning in the 1940s, the film beautifully depicts a Muslim family helping a Jewish family to survive genocide during World War II. Five decades later, the very same Jewish family helps the Muslim family escape the Bosnian genocide of the mid-1990s.

A lively talkback followed. Pictured above are Sabina Vajrača (right), the film’s director and a refugee of the Bosnian war who is currently based in the US, and Dr. Laura Cohen, director of the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, an expert on genocide and the Srebrenica genocide more specifically.

Read more and view a trailer of the film here.

FACULTY NEWS, PUBLICATIONS, AND MEDIA MENTIONS

Geanne Belton Releases Groundbreaking Research on Newspaper Prevalence Among NYC Public High Schools

Professor and Director of the High School Journalism Program, Geanne Belton released her groundbreaking study, Haves and Have Nots: Newspaper Prevalence Among New York City Public High Schools and has so far been profiled by:

Chalkbeat: 73% of NYC high schools don’t have a newspaper. Efforts are growing to fill in the gaps.

New York Daily News: Writes of passage: More NYC high schools need student newspapers

Politico New York: 73 percent of NYC high schools don’t have a newspaper. There's a push for more.

Between 2021 and 2022, Belton and a team of researchers surveyed almost every public high school in New York City to see whether or not they have student newspapers. They found serious disparities in newspaper access across the city by race, geography, and poverty status. The study was supported by the Google News Initiative.

Read the full study here.

Eric Mandelbaum in the Journal of the American Medical Association

Eric Mandelbaum, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, together with Professor Nicolas Porot published How the Cognitive Science of Belief Can Transform the Study of Mental Health in the November issue of the prestigious JAMA Psychiatry.

In it, they persuasively argue that in cases of monothematic delusions, the belief forming, storing, and sustaining mechanisms don't seem to be functioning any differently than in neurotypicals.

Dr. Sabrina Kizzie in The City

Dr. Sabrina Kizzie, a Doctoral Lecturer of digital media in the Communication Studies Department, lends her expertise to the article "From the MTA to the FDNY, New York City’s Extremely Online Entities Ponder Life After Twitter." The article focuses on city agencies’ usage of Twitter in sharing real-time information and the tenious future of this partnership.

Read the article here.

Eugene Marlow’s Feature-Length Documentary “Jazz in China” Wins Two Awards; “Official Selection” in 11 Film Festivals

Professor of Journalism Eugene Marlow’s new feature-length documentary, “Jazz in China” was officially selected by 11 film festivals and is the winner of the 2022 American Insight’s “2022 Free Speech Film Festival.” It also earned an “Award of Excellence” from the "2022 Depth of Field International Film Festival," which received over 400 entries from 23 countries. The film is based on Marlow's 2018 acclaimed book of the same name.

The central theme of “Jazz in China” is timely. It’s about jazz--a democratic form of music through improvisation—existing in a country with a long tradition of adherence to central authority—namely, China.

The documentary reveals the significant influence of African-American jazz musicians and twentieth century technologies on the spread of jazz in China and its appeal to a largely young audience.

The documentary includes interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians, sinologists, historians, and jazz club patrons in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, as well as archival and extensive contemporary performance footage.

Marlow's reflection on his journey documenting jazz in China was recently featured by SBO magazine, a publication that goes out to 36,000 educators.

Christina Christoforatou Publishes, Joins BSANA Leadership, and More

Publications and Acceptances

Associate Professor of English Christina Christoforatou’s review of the first critical edition and translation of a thirteenth-century romance, The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, appeared in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 97:4 (2022) in October. Speculum is the journal of the Medieval Academy of America.

Activities Accolades and Grants

Christina Christoforatou joined the leadership of BSANA. She was elected Vice President of the Association at its annual convention in Los Angeles last month. She also joined BSANA's Diversity and Inclusion Committee for another term and was appointed administrator of the Mary Jaharis Fund for Professional Development and Graduate Student Programming.

Conferences, Readings, Workshops and Presentations

Christina Christoforatou delivered a presentation at UCLA’s Center for Medieval, Renaissance and Early Global Studies (CMRS & CEGS) in November. The title of her talk was “Exalting Eros through Logos: Performing Passion and Imperial Power in Byzantine Fiction;” the abstract is available here. She also participated at the 48th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference as a speaker at a round-table discussion that brought together editors, publishers, and scholars to explore cross-disciplinary research and publishing opportunities.

Debra Caplan in The Seattle Times

Debra Caplan, Associate Professor of Theater in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts is quoted in the Nov. 14 issue of The Seattle Times.

Read the article on the continuing challenges of the pandemic here.

David Jones in The State

Professor of Political Science David Jones explains how New York became friendly turf for Trump-aligned candidates in last month's midterm elections.

Check out his insights here.

Arrivals...

From our partners in Portugal: the Baruch College and Mishkin Gallery names now grace the arrival hall of the Porto Airport.

Read more about the exhibition, Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022 here.

STUDENT AND ALUMNI NEWS

Current MA in Corporate Communication Student Lina Cruz is One of This Year's "40 Latinos Under 40"

Congratulations to Graduate Studies' MA in Corporate Communication student Lina Cruz on being named one of "Negocios Now NYC Latinos 40 under 40!"

Lina is currently the Senior Manager of Partnership Marketing at New York City Football Club (NYCFC) and has over 10 years of experience in the sports industry working on global brands alongside some of the most influential professionals in the field. She's especially passionate about multicultural marketing, communications, and corporate social responsibility.

Roz Bernstein Reporting Day Explores Queens

As part of this year's Roz Bernstein Reporting Day, Journalism Professors Gisele Regatão and Emily Johnson accompanied a group of Baruch College journalism students to Corona, Queens where they immersed themselves in the neighborhood's culture, history, and politics.

The project, which is named after Professor Emerita of Journalism, Roslyn Bernstein, is a testament to the Journalism Department's focus on experiential learning, exploring local New York neighborhoods and allowing students to see the complex factors that drive them.

Biology Students Present Original Research at MACUB Conference

Four Biology Students were invited to present their original research at the 55th Annual Metropolitan Association of College and University Biologists (MACUB) Conference.

The conference took place at the SUNY Old Westbury campus on Saturday, Nov. 5th. Focusing on an exploration of heavy metals, mircoplastics, and other hidden pollutants of our environment, students from the New York and New Jersey metropolitan areas presented over 100 posters illustrating their research.

Two students from Biology Professor Rebecca Spokony’s lab and two students from Biology Professor Krista Dobi's lab, presented their work.

Morgan Magee and Coco Lim are pictured right.

Upcoming Events

A Reading and Conversation with Roslyn Bernstein, Baruch Professor Emerita and author of the novel The Girl Who Counted Numbers - December 8th at 6:00 pm EST on Zoom. Register here.

"Generation, Generation" - Fall 2022 New Media Artspace Capstone Exhibition - On view December 12th, 2022 - February 3rd, 2023. New Media Artspace, Inside Newman Library, 151 E. 25th St.

2022-2023 Film Series: Discovering Crypto-Jewish Identities. Fall titles, free 48-hour streaming access. - 1618, dir. Luis Ismael, 2021: December 7th and December 8th. Contact: carina.d.pasquesi@gmail.com

Research & Creative Inquiry Expo 2023 -The Research & Creative Inquiry Expo aims to promote undergraduate research and creative expressions at Baruch College by allowing students to showcase their work and knowledge beyond their classrooms. Undergraduate students in all majors may submit either an individual or group project. The Expo will take place on Thursday, May 11, and projects will be due on Tuesday, May 2. For more information, please visit the Expo website.