Faculty/Staff Accomplishments & News Briefs 9/23/20

In this issue we celebrate accomplishments of faculty in psychology and religious and ethical studies, and share a news brief about this year’s Constitution Day observance.

Professor of Religious and Ethical Studies Steven A. Benko had an essay (“The Good Other”) included in The Good Place and Philosophy. His essay uses the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas to argue that the show’s focus on the moral rights of others need not only be read through the lens of Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other. Instead, the ethics of otherness and alterity developed by Levinas can be used to explore how the different characters became responsible for each other’s moral growth.

Associate Professor in Psychology Joseph Mazola recently had a commentary accepted for Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice entitled “Building the ‘Field of Dreams’: Pop culture as a means of reaching students.

News Briefs

Meredith College 2019-20 Year in Review Video Released
The Department of Marketing and the Division of Institutional Advancement recently collaborated on a Year in Review video that is an overview of Meredith College’s fiscal year, which ended in June 2020. The academic year ended very differently from what anyone could have imagined, but there were opportunities for everyone to celebrate, to practice resilience, and to support the Meredith community.  Watch the 2019-20 Year in Review video on YouTube.

Constitution Day Acknowledged with Virtual Event

The Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies acknowledged Constitution Day 2020 with a virtual event. Constitution Day is the annual commemoration of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Geoff Pollick of Radford University presented an online talk for Constitution Day. In his paper entitled “Ordination as Emancipation,” Pollick examines how the ordination of women, and their status as professionals, tied to respectability and the pro-suffrage argument at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.  Watch the presentation on YouTube

Pollick’s presentation was originally planned for Meredith’s Snapshot 2020 symposium on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The symposium has been adapted to a virtual format. Visit meredith.edu/history/symposium for information on additional virtual events.