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SIS Newsletter


A Word from Dr. Venetria K. Patton

Dr. Venetria K. PattonDr. Venetria K. PattonDr. Venetria K. Patton

Dr. Venetria K. Patton is the Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. She is a Professor in English, African American Studies and the Interim Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

The School of Interdisciplinary Studies has had a busy year since our last newsletter. We have hired our first Religious Studies faculty member—Ashley Purpura who had been with us as a Visiting Assistant Professor is now our first full time Religious Studies Faculty member. Her hire will add important stability to an important program, while also contributing to other programs such as Jewish Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This year, our Film and Video Studies program has also enjoyed the services of Visiting Assistant Professor, Troy McKay. Dr. McKay has been teaching crucial production courses for the program. FVS continues to enjoy strong student interest and we expect the program to continue to grow.

Last year, I noted that we focused on the infrastructure of the school—we revised administrative roles and added new programs. Additional changes include the creation of an Associate Head position, currently held by Al Lopez. Dr. Lopez also serves as the Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies program and is an English and Comparative Literature faculty member. This new role has helped to enhance administrative agility in the school. The Asian Studies program has moved from SIS to the School of Languages and Cultures due to its strong affiliation with Asian languages. This move leaves SIS with sixteen interdisciplinary programs. We continue to move forward with digital humanities initiatives with the aim of developing a new digital scholarship certificate. SIS is the ideal home for Digital Scholarship in the college. Next year, I will be offering a special topics course team-taught with Computer Graphics Technology Professor, Vetria Bryd.

SIS has also been actively engaged in the College of Liberal Arts Degree in Three initiative. We developed three-year program maps for Asian Studies and Linguistics and are pursuing a three year plan for FVS as well. Ideally, we will have three-year degree options for most, if not all, of our majors. We are also in conversation with the Polytechnic Institute regarding possible Degree Plus options, which will allow students to complete a degree in one college and a major in the other college.

As you can see from the stories, which follow, this is an exciting time of growth and development for the school, and we hope our alumni will support our efforts by remaining engaged. We would like to hear about your successes and to connect you with our current students. Please visit our webpages to see what our faculty, students, and programs are doing. If you like what you see, we encourage you to donate to the school or a particular program to support our initiatives.


Highlighting SIS Grad Students

Pam SariPam SariPam SariPamela K. Sari: Pamela is a PhD candidate in American Studies and affiliated with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program and the Anthropology Department. Pamela was awarded a Service Learning Grant for “Feminism and Religion: Conversations between Intro to Women’s Studies Classes and Faith-Based Institutions in West Lafayette with her WGSS 280 course. A profile of Pam was featured in the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement, Volume 4, Fall 2017. This article highlights her dissertation research which examines a transnational connection between a Charismatic megachurch in central Java, Indonesia, and its American church partners, particularly Indonesian immigrant churches in southern California. Pam is interested in the intersectionality between religion and other facets of identity. The link to Pam Sari’s profile in the Purdue Journal of Service Learning and International Engagement can be found at

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=pjsl

lisa younglisa younglisa young Lisa Young: American Studies Alum, Lisa Young, won the 2017 American Studies Association Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize for “Lethal Housing: Reading Restrictive Covenants and Urban Black Women’s Grassroots Health Activism, 1930-1980.” Written at the intersection of American studies, black studies, black feminist theory, and literary studies, this interdisciplinary project offers a study of the effects of (and activism responding to) restrictive covenants in the twentieth century United States. The Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize is awarded annually to the best doctoral dissertation in American Studies, ethnic studies, or women’s studies. The awardee receives $500. The awardee was announced at the American Studies Association in November of 2017. 

Lisa was also awarded the 2017 College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Dissertation Award. This award recognizes individuals whose dissertations make significant contributions to knowledge. Among the evaluation criteria for the award were substantive and methodological quality of the dissertation, innovation, impact and effectiveness of the author’s writing style. As a result of this award, Lisa received an engraved plague and a monetary award of $500. Her accomplishment was also highlighted on the CLA website, along with her picture and a short biography.

Aria Halliday: On April 18, 2017, Aria successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled, “Fashioning Black Barbies, Princesses and Sexual Expression for Black Girls: The Multivisuality of Nicki Minaj.” Aria joined the Women’s Studies Program at the University of New Hampshire as a tenure-track faculty member this fall.

Keturah NixKeturah NixKeturah NixKeturah Nix: Keturah’s dissertation traces the links between legacy and the commemoration of that legacy. One has to do with the active work of the individual or institution and the other is connected to how others interpret and memorialize that work. Using the posthumous commemoration of 20th Century African American Educator and entrepreneur Dr. Booker T. Washington, Keturah examines the generational connections of Washington’s legacy through the lens of three historical periods: the New Negro Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the BlackLivesMatter Movement.

Christopher Munt: Christopher’s research examines the evolution of sexual practices between men by focusing on one location within the urban sexual landscape: gay bathhouses. Although sexual encounters occurred in the so-called “ordinary bathhouses” of the late-nineteenth century, these liaisons posed numerous social and legal risks. By the early twentieth century, however, some establishments began to cater explicitly to men seeking sexual encounters with other men, offering a greater degree of privacy and protection. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Christopher blends methodological elements from textual analysis, historiography and ethnography to trace how these establishments developed and how they changed physically over time, as well as how those changes related to shifts in the sexual practices taking place within them.

Ryan Schnurr: Ryan, an AMST PhD candidate, recently released his new book, In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River. The book is a narrative nonfiction account of the history, culture and ecology of the Maumee River, told through the lens of a walking and canoeing trip that he made down the river in the late summer of 2016.

http://beltmag.com/watershed-journey-maumee-river/

Jennifer Sdunzik and Annagul Yaryyeva: Jennifer and Annagul, both AMST PhD candidates, published their experiences with their community engagement project “Cultivating Leaders of Indiana” (CLIP) in the most recent issue of the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement .


Graduations

Andrea Adomako: MA Non-Thesis in American Studies, Spring 2017
Salvador Gutierrez-Peraza: MA Non-Thesis in American Studies, Spring 2017
Aria Halliday: PhD in American Studies, Spring 2017
Michelle Lee: MA Non-Thesis in American Studies, Spring 2017
Kera Lovell: PhD in American Studies, Fall 2017
Megan Williams: MA Non-Thesis in American Studies, Spring 2017
Lisa Young: PhD in American Studies, Summer 2017 
Jiacheng Fan: MA in Comparative Literature, Spring 2017
Adam Hancock: PhD in Comparative Literature, Summer 2017
Monica O’Neil: PhD in Comparative Literature, Spring 2017
Christina Weiler: PhD in Comparative Literature, Spring 2017 
Maria Cupery: MA in Linguistics, Fall 2017
Emily Dick: MA in Linguistics, Fall 2017  
Wai Ling Law: PhD in Linguistics, Summer 2017
Joshua Perry: MA in Linguistics, Summer 2017
Chun Zheng: PdD in Linguistics, Summer 2017 
Ashley Albrecht: PdD in Phil/Lit, Fall 2017


WGSS Program Coordinator

Terry Knight Terry KnightTerry Knight Terry Knight, our new Program Coordinator in Womens’, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, was awarded a BRAVO award for her work on promoting and implementing the Cummings-Perrucci Lecture featuring Anita Hill. Terry brought together all the details surrounding Ms. Hill’s travel, lodging, venue and schedule. In addition, Terry worked with our donors, ushering them around to various activities and destinations on campus, a pre-lecture reception and a post-lecture dinner. Terry is a veteran Purdue employee and SIS is happy to have her join our staff.

WGSS Concentrations: WGSS has been going through the accreditation process with the Graduate School and is now able to offer a Womens’, Gender and Sexuality Studies Concentration for students earning Master’s or Ph.D.’s in the following areas of study:

  • American Studies
  • Anthropology
  • Communications
  • Curriculum and Instruction
  • English
  • History
  • Linguistics
  • Philosophy
  • Philosophy and Literature
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

If you are interested in pursuing this concentration, you can find information on the WGSS concentration at https://www.cla.purdue.edu/wgss/graduate.html and an application form at https://www.cla.purdue.edu/wgss/graduateapply.html.


WGSS and Carolyn Perrucci Lecture Series Hosts Anita Hill Lecture

Anita Hill Anita Hill Anita Hill Anita Hill, a University Professor of Social Policy, Law and Women’s Studies at Brandeis University and faculty member of Brandeis’ Heller School for social Policy and Mangement, was the key lecture in the 2017 Perrucci Lecture Series co-hosted by the Womens’ Sexuality, Gender Studies program at Purdue University. Ms. Hill visited Katje Armentrout’s Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Class for discussion and questions prior to presenting her lecture that evening in Fowler Hall. Ms. Hill’s lecture on Inclusive Communities in the post Obama Era was a well-attended event.

Ms. Hill's visit to Katje Armentrout's class was featured in a Purdue Exponent article:  https://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/article_c9025a44-40f4-5c2b-b501-affc711bd602.html


Comparative Literature

Comparative Literature personComparative Literature personComparative Literature person Comparative Literature bookA ten-minute film of Book 2, Chapter 17 of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was shot on October 21, 2017, along the Wabash River at Fort Ouiatenon, just southwest of Purdue University. Last summer, at the suggestion of Joel Ebarb, Associate Dean of CLA, Charles Ross contacted the Theater Department for some ideas on how to dramatize Sidney’s work. Instead of a staged reading (turtle necks, music stands, scripts), or even a video, in the end, with the help of Jason Doty, we managed to produce an actual film of the scene that is the hitherto unknown source of Juliet’s mediation on Romeo’s name. You can watch a recreation of part of a paper on Sidney’s Arcadia and Shakespeare given by Charles Ross at the Renaissance Society of America, April 1, 2017:https://youtube.com/watch?v=6PAGRBQUAv8. The first rehearsals for the film were a real thrill. A clip of the director, Jason Doty, working with two graduate students, Brianna Lewing and Kenneth McNeil, and undergraduate, Kailey Merida, can be seen at https://youtu.be/g5k52AxsSb4


Critical Disability Studies

The Critical Disability Studies program hosted a visiting scholar, Alison Kafer, from Southwestern University. The visit was co-sponsored by the Honors College, where Kafer lead a seminar on her chapter, “At the Same Time, Out of Time: Ashley X.” Kafer’s public lecture was entitled “Access Rebels: A Crip Manifesto for Social Justice.”


Jewish Studies

The following awards were presented during the 2016-17 academic year:

  • Benjamin Stoller was named Outstanding Senior in Jewish Studies for 2017
  • Alabi-Michael Akande was awarded the Edward Simon Essay Prize is Jewish Studies for 2017
  • Matthew Kinzer, Joshua Rothenberger and Levi Starrett were awarded The Jerome Frumkin Scholarship in Jewish Studies for 2016-17
  • Erica Timmons and Stephen Sutton were awarded The Jerome Frumkin Scholarship in Jewish Studies for 2017-18

Latin American and Latino Studies

Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) is an interdisciplinary program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. It provides students with a way to contemplate transnational connections and to approach the study of Latin American and Latino societies and cultures from a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches.

LALS provides a minor to all Purdue undergraduate students as an opportunity to expand the breath of their knowledge regarding Latin American and U.S. Latino cultures. This 15-credit interdisciplinary minor consists of courses in Portuguese, Political Science, History, English and Anthropology. LALS offers an array of study abroad and internship opportunities that can satisfy required courses for the minor. During the summer of 2017, Latin American and Latino Studies traveled abroad to Lima Peru as part of their Study Abroad program.


Film and Video Studies

The Wrap, nominated repeatedly as the Best Entertainment news website, rated Purdue’s Film and Video Studies program as number 38 of the top 50 film schools in the United States https://www.thewrap.com/the -top-50-film-schools-of-2017-ranked/. Mentioned in the citation was film student, Mallory Gieringer’s award winning Esoteric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6bwc6BWSs&feature=youtu.be which was inspired by her French 330 French film course.

Further motivations for Purdue’s ranking are Mallory’s work as assistant director on the Student Academy Award Finalist film, Continuance. Also, Purdue senior Domink Gliatis’s Refugees on the Rhine, which he shot during his Study Abroad in Germany won first place in the Administrators’ Student Production Awards. https://vimeo.com/180748836. Yet another winner, 2017 alumnus, Nathan Scott, won AHECTA’s First Place for Narrative Short Film with his 360 video, Bump in the Night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Ip6jbUrUc

Professor Patricia Hart, former Director of FVS, created a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) built on her online Spanish 330 course, Spanish Cinema. Her early reports show 4,000 students; 21,000 video lecture views, 36,000 total activities posted and 6,000 comments posted. Learners from 81 countries thus far have become acquainted with Purdue Film Video Studies through her course. The project was completed with the assistance of the Purdue Team featuring video director and editor, Vincent Hornbach; course designers and facilitators, Jeff Chicki and Tuhin Dey; project developers, Maricel Lawrence, Cody Conner, and Jacob Askeroth. Also supporting this project were Professors Jon Harbor, Ben Lawton, Patricia Hart, Madeleine Henry, Marcia Stephenson and CLA Dean, David Reingold.

Purdue’s Film and Video Studies, with support of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, the School of Languages and Cultures, and African American Studies, sponsored a screening and Q&A of Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blacks in Cinema, by African Italian director Fred Kuwornu. The director described the film as a “diasporic, hybrid, critical and cosmopolitan dimension documentary that uncovers the careers of a population of entertainers seldom heard of before: African-American and African descent actors in Italian cinema. BlaxploItalian cleverly discloses the personal struggles classic Afro-Italian and African diasporic actors faced, correlating it with the contemporary actors who work diligently to find respectable and significant roles.


Asian American Studies:

Inna CuntapayInna CuntapayInna CuntapayInna F. Cuntapay: Inna is graduating this Fall, 2017 with a minor in Asian American studies. In reflecting on the role and impact of CLA, the Honors College, and Asian American Studies on her personal identity and future career trajectory, Inna had this to share:

“Being a part of both the College of Liberal Arts and the Honors College allowed a lot of flexibility when it came to my curriculum. Originally, I enrolled in Introduction to Asian American Studies in order to fulfill my degree requirements. However, as the course progressed, I found myself engaging with the course material in ways that I had not in my other classes. Growing up in Indiana, it was never a priority to me to express my Asian American identity. After learning of the significance of ethnic studies and deciding to pursue an Asian American Studies minor, I felt my ‘in-between’ identity validated. As a Political Science major, when I had the opportunity to intern for the Indiana House Democratic Caucus, I directly felt the impact of the lack of Asian American voices in the legislative process. In the future, I hope to use the knowledge that I’ve gained through the Asian American Studies Program and integrate it with my Political Science background in order to champion for Asian American involvement in all facets of U.S. government.”

Upon graduation, Inna hopes to bring her knowledge to Washington D.C., and work in some legislative capacity. She has applied to Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly’s Washington, D.C. office’s internship program and is currently waiting to hear back.


Religious Studies

Professor Ashley PurpuraProfessor Ashley PurpuraProfessor Ashley Purpurahierarchy bookProfessor Ashley Purpura has published her first book, God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018). Beginning with its Christian coinage by Dionysius the Areopagite in the early sixth century, this book explores the theological development of ecclesiastical “Hierarchy” through Byzantium. The book suggests a common underlying assumption is at work in the religious maintenance of hierarchy for Byzantine Christians: that only divine power is believed to be authentic, and only divinely reflective authority is legitimate. Acknowledging such an interpretation of power not only has the potential to reframe historical understandings of Orthodox leadership, but also prompts a rethinking of the ways religious power is understood by modern theorists.

Dorsey ArmstrongDorsey ArmstrongDorsey ArmstrongDorsey Armstrong, professor of English, Comparative Literature, and medieval studies, was the recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in Memory of Charles B. Murphy. The Murphy award is Purdue’s highest undergraduate teaching honor and is accompanied by a $10,000 cash award. Professor Armstrong will be inducted into Purdue’s Teaching Academy, which provides leadership for the improvement of undergraduate, graduate and outreach teaching. A recipient of the Liberal Arts’ Kenneth T. Kofmehl Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award as well, Professor Armstrong has published numerous articles in journals such as Exemplaria and Arthurian Literature, and chapters in various academic books. She is the author of Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur: A New Modern English Translation Based on the Winchester Manuscript and Mapping Malory: Regional Identities and National Geographies in Le Morte Darthur.

Venetria Patton: The head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies is featured in the Fall 2017 issue of THiNK Magazine. She talks about being involved and giving back within your community.

TJ BoisseauTJ BoisseauTJ BoisseauTJ Boisseau: Professor T.J. Boisseau, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies received the Center for Humanistic Studies appointment. Her project is the completion of a historical monograph, "Women with the World at their Feet". This book will be the first to offer a holistic, intersectional feminist, and longitudinal analysis of the significance of world’s fair and international exhibitions to the development of ideas about modern American womanhood and the emergence of American feminist ideology. Her study conveys how foundational gender as a register of experience and meaning was to the effect that world fairs and expositions had on visitors, and how consequential world fairs and expositions have been in the unfolding of the history of American women’s efforts to organize themselves politically.

In the mid-nineteenth-century, world’s fairs became the primary venue for American women’s transnational organizing and a critical political stage for their activism. Perhaps of even greater impact were the visual representations of women’s bodies and faces that were sutured into every nook and corner of the experience of a world’s fair. Manifestation of the “woman question” as linked to the “race question” in the late nineteenth century, “new” womanhood and Black women’s “uplift” emergent at the turn of the century-all served as lightning rods, provided visual prompts, and gave physical form to what was most at stake at all world fairs and expositions: the nature of modernity itself.

Professors Ronald Stephens, Jennifer Freeman Marshall, and Valeria Chapman and advisor, Lupita Acosta-Roberts were successful in obtaining an Innovate grant to develop CLAIM Learning Community: College of Liberal Arts Inspired, Mentored & eMpowered. The LC targets first generation students and uses Intro to African American Studies, Literature of Black America and a new Campus and Community excursion course.

Dr. Ray FouchesDr. Ray FouchesDr. Ray FouchesDr. Ray Fouché’s new book, Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports, examines a variety of sports paraphernalia and enhancements, from fast suites, athletic shoes, and racing bicycles to basketballs and prosthetic limbs. He takes a look at gender verification testing, direct drug testing and the athlete biological passport in an attempt to understand the evolving place of technoscience across sport. Dr. Fouché is an associate professor in interdisciplinary studies and the Director of the American Studies Program.

Jean Beaman: Jean Beaman, a faculty affiliate in the African American Studies and Research Center and the Global Studies Program had her first book, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press) published in September 2017. This book is an ethnographic examination of France’s North African second-generation and issues of upward social mobility, race and ethnicity, and cultural citizenship. Jean’s other research and teaching interests consist of urban sociology, sociology of culture, HIV/AIDS, international migration and ethnography, and qualitative methods. Professor Beaman is an assistant professor of sociology and received a 2017-18 grant through the Clifford B. Kinley Trust. Her proposal for this award is called, “From Ferguson to France: Understanding Black Lives Matter in France.”

Maren Linett: Maren Linett, the founding director of the Critical Disabilities program, has published her second monograph, Bodies of Modernism: Physical Disability in Transatlantic Modernist Literature (University of Michigan Press, 2017). A new article has appeared (on-line first, in print in 2018) in the Journal of Medical Humanities: “No Country for Old Men’: Huxley’s Brave New World and the Value of Old Age.” The article is part of her book-in-progress entitled "Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human."

A cuzaA cuzaA cuzaAlejandro Cuza: Alejandro Cuza is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics and the new director of Linguistics. His research centers on the psycholinguistic nature and dynamics of second language acquisition, heritage speaker bilingualism and bilingual first language acquisition. More specifically, he examines the extent to which child and adult bilinguals develop target knowledge of morphosyntactic patterns, including tense and aspect distinctions, interrogative subject-verb inversion, differential object marking, gender assignment and agreement and object clitics among other structures. Although he works primarily with Spanish-English bilinguals, he also conducts research on the acquisition of Spanish among Brazilian-Portuguese, Chinese and Catalan speakers. Other interests include child bi-literacy development, language contact and change and Cuban Spanish. His work has appeared in international peer-review journals including Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Lingua, Second Language Research, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Hispania, and Heritage Language Journal, among others. His most recent publication includes a volume on Cuban Spanish dialectology with Georgetown University Press.


Faculty Promotions and Additions

Congratulations to the following SIS faculty and affiliates who received promotions or are new additions effective the 2017-18 academic year.

Monica Trieu promoted to Associate Professor of American Studies and Asian American Studies. Professor Trieu is also serving as the Program Director for Asian American Studies.

David C. Atkinson promoted to Associate Professor of History, American Studies and Philosophy/Literature.

Thomas Mustillo promoted to Associate Professor of Political Science and Latin American and Latino Studies.

Beate I. Allert promoted to Full Professor of Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature and Film Studies.

Thomas F. Broden promoted to Full Professor of Languages and Cultures, Philosophy/Literature, Comparative Literature and Film Studies.

Alejandro Cuza-Blanco promoted to Full Professor of Languages and Cultures, Linguistics and Latin American and Latino Studies. Dr. Cuza is also the Director of the Linguistics Program.

Maren T. Linett promoted to Full Professor of English and Director of the Critical Disabilities Studies Program.

Ashley Purpura joins Purdue as an Assistant Professor in Religious Studies. This is a first faculty line for this growing program. For the past three years, Dr. Purpura has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Purdue in the Religious Studies Program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. She is affiliated with Jewish Studies, Womens’ Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program. Her research focuses on Eastern Christianity and investigates how historical religious practices and ways of thinking shape power structures and complex identities for past and present religious communities.


SIS Welcomes our New Associate Head

Alfred j. lopezAlfred j. lopez Alfred j. lopez José Martí A Revolutionary LifeProfessor Alfred J. López has accepted the appointment as Director of Latin American and Latino Studies and Associate Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Alfred López is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. He is the author of four books, most recently José Martí A Revolutionary Life, which has been hailed as the definitive Martí biography. López’s essays have appeared in American Literature, Comparative Literature, Cuban Studies, and South Atlantic Quarterly, among other journals, and he is a contributor to the Huffington Post. He was also the founding editor of The Global South, a leading journal of globalization studies. His translation of Martí’s “Nuestra América” appears in the current edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature.


SIS Alumni

Brian McCammack: Brian, an AMST Alum, recently had a book published, Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago. This book traces the contours of a black environmental consciousness that runs throughout the African American experience.

Jared Miracle: Alum, Jared Miracle, has returned to the U.S. after a number of years traveling the globe to pursue further studies. He picked up a M.Ed and PhD along the way, published a book based on his research and at one point found himself riding horseback across Mongolia with nomadic herdsmen. Even though SIS was not formally in existence when Jared graduated in 2008, he has followed an interdisciplinary route thanks to the encouragement of much of the current faculty. He emailed us in March 2017 to say that he remembers Dr. Patton’s class on the Harlem Renaissance, still keeps a dog-eared copy of Jean Toomer’s Cane in his travel bag and revisits Langston Hughes like an old friend. In times of trouble, he still turns to Zitkala-Sa for solace. Because of Interdisciplinary Studies, Jared shook Sherman Alexie’s hand and felt a part of his rise to national prominence. He lived at a Taoist temple in China because we read Laozi and sang Irish folk songs with the Communist Party members in Japan.

These days, Jared has settled in Eugene, Oregon and is working for a local community college. Thanks to his time at Purdue, he knows that those years spent with a backpack and a notebook weren’t wasted, because “the road itself is home.” Because of Interdisciplinary Studies, Jared says he had known rivers and his soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Scott Thompson: Scott, a 2011 Film and Video Studies alumni, works for Apple working with and developing features for disabled customers.

Lauren Tomlinson: Lauren, a 2014 Political Science and Linguistics alum, moved back to her hometown of Phoenix and started a year of service with AmeriCorps. She worked for a nonprofit called Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH), which provides holistic services to highly motivated at-risk youth from the start of 6th grade through college graduation. BHGH has a 100 % high school graduation rate and an 86% college graduation rate thanks to their comprehensive college preparatory programs. After her AmeriCorps term, Lauren stayed on to work as a Development Manager with BHGH because she was so inspired by the scholars and their mission. Approximately six months ago, Lauren moved to Flagstaff to start with St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, which is one of the largest food banks in the United States and the first food bank to ever be created! She is helping to coordinate efforts by St. Mary’s Food Bank and other partner agencies in various cities to try to make sure that everyone who needs food has access to food.

It is now even easier to donate to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program using Purdue-gift. Purdue-gift makes it simple to make a gift by credit card to Purdue. Go to the following web address: http://Giving.Purdue.edu/sis

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