For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications and scholarships include the following:

Presentations

Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library, gave an invited talk on June 10 at the symposium "Beatrix Potter in New London on the Thames River." This event, which was co-sponsored by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives at Connecticut College and by the Beatrix Potter Society, took place June 9-11 on the campus of Connecticut College in New London. Samuels Lasner's presentation, which was titled "Beyond the Bunny Books: Considerations of the Bibliography of Beatrix Potter," focused on the need for a comprehensive descriptive bibliography of the famous British author, illustrator and naturalist whose books have sold millions of copies, but have a complicated publishing history. Accompanying the symposium was an exhibition at the Charles E. Shain Library -- "The Passion for Fantasy: Animals in Late Victorian Children's Literature and Beyond" -- to which Samuels Lasner lent three drawings. These works, including Study of Two Rabbits by Beatrix Potter, are part of the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, which was recently donated to the University of Delaware Library. "Victorian Passions: Stories from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection," the exhibition celebrating this gift, which was curated by Prof. Margaret D. Stetz and which contains an additional drawing by Potter, remains on view until June 30 in the Special Collections Gallery on the second floor of UD's Morris Library.

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, gave an invited lecture June 9 as part of the AHA! Arts and Humanities Festival held in Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio, a three-day event sponsored by Cleveland State University. Among other presenters were the authors Isabel Wilkerson and Jonathan Safran Foer, along with John Frohnmayer, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Stetz provided an introduction to the second-night performance of the play Love, Loss and What I Wore by Nora and Delia Ephron. On the first night, the play was introduced by Delia Ephron herself. The Ephron sisters' Love, Loss and What I Wore is based on a graphic memoir by Ilene Beckerman, which documented the relationship between a woman's clothes and the important moments of her life.

Alice Ba, professor of political science and international relations, and also in UD's Asian Studies Program, provided the keynote presentation on a public panel discussion held on June 2 and hosted by the Asia Foundation, the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), and Jakarta's Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The panel discussed the findings and recommendations of the Asia Foundation's report "Asian Views on America's Role in Asia," which was released in November 2016, and the implications of U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump so far. Ba served as a member of the U.S. task force that contributed to the report. Also speaking on the panel were former Indonesian ambassador to the United States Dino Patti Djalal and CSIS executive director Philips Vermonte, both of whom contributed to the report as members of the Southeast Asian working group. The panel discussion was also the subject of a June 3 article in the Jakarta Post.

Publications

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has a chapter in an edited collection published by Brill Rodopi (Leiden and Boston). Her essay, “Looking at Victorian Fashion: Not a Laughing Matter," which examines a range of contemporary novels, films, cartoons, and fashion exhibitions that use 19th-century materials, considers the links between laughter at Victorian clothes and covert expressions of misogyny. The chapter appears in the newly released volume Neo-Victorian Humour: Comic Subversion and Unlaughter in Contemporary Historical Revisions, edited by Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben. It is part of an ongoing series on neo-Victorian literature and culture issued by Brill Rodopi.

SMART Scholarship

Sarah Jensen, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UD in 2017, has been awarded a Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service. Established by the Department of Defense (DOD) to support students pursuing degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, the program aims to increase the number of civilian scientists and engineers working at DoD laboratories. Jensen, who is now a doctoral student advised by Mark Mirotznik, professor of electrical and computer engineering, will be doing research on the use of additive manufacturing for creating radiofrequency electronics, with potential applications in wireless communications and radar. Jensen’s DOD sponsoring facility is CERDEC (Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center) under the I2WD (Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate) directorate. She will spend every summer at the facility until she completes her degree and then be employed there for five years.

To submit information for inclusion in For the Record, write to ocm@udel.edu.