Buzz Around IAC

Faculty members at the School of Modern Languages recently hosted the 17th North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition. It is the second time Georgia Tech has served as a university site for the competition. Hongchen Wu and Kyoko Masuda led the School's efforts under a grant from the Atlanta Global Studies Center for their project, "Introducing Linguistics to Atlanta High School Students."

Paige Miller, Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, discussed the "dark academia" aesthetic on the  Lost in the Stacks show on Georgia Tech student radio station WREK.

Hongchen Wu, assistant professor of Chinese, gave a virtual poster presentation on Jan. 8 to the Linguistic Society of America's annual meeting on her first-authored research, "Prosodic Disambiguation of Wh-Indeterminates in Mandarin Chinese."

"Sustainable Collaboration: A Co-taught, Client-based Course Sequence Integrating Computer Science and Technical Communication." was the lead article in the December issue of Programmatic Perspectives, the journal of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication. Co-written by former Writing and Communication Program (WCP) Director Rebecca E. Burnett, current Director Andy Frazee, and former Brittain Fellows Amanda K. Girard, Liz Hutter, Halcyon M. Lawrence, and Olga Menagarishivili, the article discusses the course sequence in depth and serves as a history of the now 10-year-old collaboration with the College of Computing.

A new edition of School of Modern Languages Professor Dina Khapaeva's 2007 book on Russian President Vladimir Putin has been published in French. Crimes sans châtiment: Aux sources du poutinisme (Crimes Without Punishment: The Roots of Putinism) is an updated translation of Goticheskoe obshchestvo, Morfologiia Koshmara (Gothic Society: A Morphology of Nightmare), first published in Russian. Khapaeva, a professor of Russian, wrote a new 20-page preface for the edition.

Lisa Yaszek, Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, has been invited to serve as a juror for the 2024 Philip K. Dick Award. This award celebrates the best science fiction paperback novel published in the U.S. each year. 

The third edition of School of Literature, Media, and Communication Professor Philip Auslander's 1999 book, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, has been published. In the book, Auslander "explores live performance and asks what relevance it has in contemporary culture dominated by mass media." Auslander discussed the book in a recent Lost in the Stacks podcast episode with Ivan Allen College alumnus and Georgia Tech librarian Charlie Bennett.

Auslander also recently had his essay, "Digital Liveness: A Historico-Philosophical Perspective," published in Turkish in the web journal Mimesis. The English version is available from PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art.

Anjali Thomas, Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, wrote a commentary for The Carter Center exploring the root causes behind what experts call India’s backsliding and the paradox of how democratic means can play a role in democratic decline.

University of Georgia climate scientist Marshall Shepherd gave his Project Drawdown colleague, Regents' Professor Marilyn Brown, a shoutout in his Forbes commentary on the growing presence of the electric vehicle industry in Georgia. In it, he noted how Project Drawdown — led by Brown, had identified increasing the share of electric vehicles on Georgia roads would help make significant inroads in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
 

Lisa Yaszek, Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies, was an invited participant in a roundtable discussion of university-based science fiction archives at the 7th annual CUNY City Tech conference, where she talked about the science fiction initiatives and events she has hosted at Tech over the past two decades to raise the visibility of the institute's science fiction collection, which is one of the top 20 collections of its kind in the world. 

Lisa Yaszek, Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication led a panel discussion about student research in the Georgia Tech science fiction archives at the seventh annual CYNY City Tech Science Fiction Symposium. This panel featured research on science fiction in historic Black newspapers by science fiction minors Edeliz Zuleta, Killian Better, and Laurence Copeland and a science fiction play-in-progress by LMC major Val Barnhart.

Lisa Yaszek, Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, delivered the opening keynote lecture for the 2022 Science Fiction Foundation Conference on Friday, Dec. 2. Her talk explored the role of the literary anthology in the construction of science fiction as a unique popular genre, especially as ideas about the genre change in tandem with widespread ideas about the relations of science, society, and sex and gender. 

School of Public Policy Ph.D. student Monica Novoa spoke to the Women Economic Forum Caribbean in Puerto Rico on the importance of increasing women’s participation in STEM, including the social and economic benefits of greater diversity. Novoa is on the organization's board of directors. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, distinguished professor of the practice in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, signed an op-ed in "The Hill" titled, "Argument Against More Aid to Ukraine Is Woefully Shortsighted." The authors urge Congress to approve new aid for Ukraine in its fight against Russia. "The United States has for over four generations understood that its security and Europe’s are indivisible. The lessons of World War and Cold War still stand, and the United States should stand with Ukraine, fighting for their freedom and ours," the authors wrote in the opinion piece.

Publications including the Chicago Tribune, Scientific American, and 4 Columns have published reviews of The Future Is Female! Volume Two, The 1970s: More Classic Science Fiction Stories By Women, the newest book edited by Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies Lisa Yaszek. Additionally, the original "The Future is Female" was recently published in Spanish, and has received reviews in El Pais and El Espanol.

Kaye Husbands Fealing, dean and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, has joined the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Public Administration. Husbands Fealing was elected as a fellow of the Academy in 2019.

The move follows one earlier this year which saw Husbands Fealing named the vice chair of the National Science Foundation's Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE). In that role, she helps guide the committee's work advocating for policy and programs that encourage the "full participation of women, underrepresented racial/ethnic populations and persons with disabilities within all levels of the nation’s STEM enterprise," according to the CEOSE website.

Dina Khapaeva, a professor in the School of Modern Languages whose expertise includes death studies, published "Displaying Our Skeletons," an article in "Project Syndicate" discussing the explosive rise in Halloween's popularity in recent years.

Richmond Wong, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, co-authored a commentary titled "How the Tech Sector can Protect Personal Data Post-Roe" published Oct. 27, 2022, by the Brookings Institute.

Priti Bhatia, director of Facilities and Capital Planning, has been selected to be a part of the sixth cohort of the Leading Women@Tech, a program to facilitate women’s professional development as academic and administrative people leaders. Throughout this program, participants will strengthen their leadership competency through workshops, dialogues, and executive coaching with national and international thought leaders.

John P. Walsh, professor in the School of Public Policy, has co-authored a chapter on "Non-R&D Innovation" in the "Elgar Encyclopedia on the Economics of Knowledge and Innovation."