College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
July 2019, Vol. 9, No.7
A UWM microbiologist is manipulating the genes in rice plants to reduce the world’s dependence on chemical fertilizers. Page. 6.
The solution to the growing problem
Contents Feature Stories
Student researches mass incarceration Collaboratory explores historical podcasts Microbiologist gene-edits staple crops Alum plans events for Jewish Museum Professor briefs Congress on black Brazil JAMS student starts his own podcast Professor tries to preserve hypertext
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Columns Urban Studies spotlight Alumni Accomplishments Laurels and Accolades In the Media People in Print
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A look be Urban Studies
The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but it holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The country’s current trend towards mass incarceration is especially apparent in the state of Wisconsin. An April 2018 article in Wisconsin Lawyer, published by the State Bar of Wisconsin, notes that the state has among the highest rates of racial disparity when it comes to incarceration, and the state’s prison system costs taxpayers more than $1.2 billion last year. But just how did these current circumstances come about? That’s the question driving urban studies graduate student Kayla Kuo’s research. She presented her work, “Mass Incarceration in the Land of the Free: A Look at Wisconsin Prisons and Criminal Injustice System,” at UWM’s annual Urban Studies Student Research Forum in May. Her work explores how historic legislative actions and public attitudes shaped our current prison system. The main culprit driving mass incarceration dates back to the 1970s, Kuo said. “Nationally, including in Wisconsin, we saw more toughon-crime policies as a backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. This goes hand-in-hand with the War on Drugs,” she said. “(Public perception) began to shift to think, we have to protect the citizens (i.e., white, middleclass people), rather than these ‘criminals’ (nonwhite and/ or poor citizens).” Beginning around 1976, Wisconsin began to enact tougher legal penalties, including for drug-related offenses. The public responded favorably; Kuo noted that, “If you were running as a governor or an elected official, you had to appear tough on crime. It wasn’t just talk; we saw a lot of that rhetoric going into actual practice.”
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2 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
That included in 1998 when then-state representative Scott Walker, who later sat as Wisconsin’s governor from 2010-2018, introduced Wisconsin’s Truth In Sentencing Act. The legislation, signed into law by then-governor Tommy Thompson, essentially abolished parole so that incarcerated people would serve the entirety of a prison sentence handed down by a judge.
ehind the bars
student tracks state’s history of mass incarceration “Legislators also introduced longer penalties and sentences. We see a lot more people in prisons for longer periods of time without any early release programs. We also see more people coming into prisons,” Kuo said. “Wisconsin has always (relied) on the solution of building more prisons to deal with overcrowding, and the state uses rehabilitation as the justification for the prison regime. But from what we’ve seen since the 1970s, we know that it doesn’t reduce crime, nor does it come close to ‘rehabilitating’ people since prisons can result in violent trauma for those incarcerated.” Today, Wisconsin operates 37 prisons, and Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed budget includes increased funding for the penal system. These tough-on-crime laws have had a huge social and economic impact, and black men in Wisconsin have been hit the hardest. Despite evidence that white and black people commit crimes at the same rates, Wisconsin sees black people incarcerated at 11.5 times the rate as white people. For comparison, said Kuo, the national average is 5.6. “It’s very clear that we can’t talk about prisons without talking about racial justice,” she added. “We can see the ways that race, socioeconomic status, and geographical location all are a significant factor in who … is going to be sent to prison, or will have more encounters with the police.” Kuo became interested in studying mass incarceration and prison reform movements when she volunteered with LGBT Books to Prisoners, a Madison-based organization that provides reading and educational materials to LGBT people who have been incarcerated. The more she learned about Wisconsin’s prison system, the more she wanted to research it so others could be aware of the size and scope of mass incarceration. “The fact that we don’t talk about it is a reason why this topic should be studied. It not only allows for dialogue, but it can become a seed for education and learning,” she said.
Kayla Kuo stands in front of her poster at the annual Urban Studies Student Research Forum in May. Her research focused on the history and effects of mass incarceration in Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Kayla Kuo.
Kuo plans to continue her research on mass incarceration. Her Master’s thesis will focus on prison abolition and why it should be considered a family-centered issue. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
The changing sound of education: Sou Put away your textbooks and grab your headphones: There’s a new way to learn history. Podcasting is experiencing a boom as everyone from NPR to Trader Joe’s to UWM student Rashaud Foster records and releases their own digital audio stories. Historical podcasts have risen in popularity too, which made Chris Cantwell wonder: Could these podcasts have an actual place in history education? “For a long time, I have been interested in podcasts just as a consumer and a fan. Then I started thinking about what they could do for academic disciplines in general,” said Cantwell, an assistant professor of history. “And, it seemed like there was a critical mass of people at UWM interested in audio storytelling as well.” So, two years ago, he gathered a group of them and started Sound Inquiry, a “Collaboratory” supported by UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies that brings together scholars across disciplines to focus on a particular area of research. Sound Inquiry members include Cantwell; Digital Humanities librarian Ann Hanlon; associate professor of history Marcus Filippello; senior lecturer in journalism, advertising, and media studies Jane Hampden Daley; and Michelle Maternowski, mananging editor at WUWM Radio. “Slow Burn” and “Ben Franklin’s World” At their most basic, podcasts are digital audio files that are serially released and available for download on the internet. They cover a variety of topics and come in any number of formats, from candid political discussions to investigative journalism pieces to storytelling. When they began working together in 2018, Sound Inquiry members wanted to start their programming by bringing a podcaster to campus. They hit a homerun when the group hosted Leon Neyfakh, a Slate journalist and producer of the wildly popular podcast “Slow Burn,” which covers the events surrounding the Watergate scandal. “That was just a shot in the dark,” Cantwell said with a laugh. “It turns out that Neyfakh loves Milwaukee, and he was excited to come back. That was great as a way to start things off.” Neyfakh spoke to an audience of more than 200 UWM and Milwaukee community members about his work on “Slow Burn.” The next day, he 4 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
presented a workshop on the production of the podcast, including his research methods, using archival sound recordings, and how he puts the show together. This past April, the group hosted Liz Covart, the host of “Ben Franklin’s World” which discusses the early days of the United States. Her workshop focused on building and branding a podcast to take it from a few subscribers to hundreds of thousands of downloads, and campus and community again flocked to learn more. “It speaks to the ability of the medium to bring together these different communities at once. It has been rewarding to see that diversity,” Cantwell said. A beautiful partnership During each visit, Sound Inquiry partnered with WUWM. Mitch Teich, who was the host of WUWM’s “Lake Effect” show at the time, conducted each interview. Teich recently left WUWM for another NPR affiliate station in New York state. Staff from WUWM also spoke to Cantwell’s public history classes about podcasting, specifically how they produce the radio station’s “Bubbler Talk” series. “Podcasts are exciting because they provide a space for reporters and producers to experiment (with audio, with content, with style) and reach new audiences,” Maternowski said. “While podcasts can be super niche (Mitch Teich and I host a podcast just about pretzels!), listening to WUWM gives people a wide range of information - latest news, important conversations. The radio does the curation for you, so you can just sit back and listen, learn and be entertained.” If WUWM gives people a way to listen to podcasts, the UWM Libraries Digital Humanities Lab gives people a way to create them. Hanlon signed on to Sound Inquiry in part because the Lab was the perfect resource for people exploring what many have termed “audio pedagogy.” “The Digital Humanities Lab is an interdisciplinary space where we bring together people from all across campus for programming and workshops around integrating technology into the humanities and social sciences for research and teaching,” Hanlon said. “Over time, there has been growing interest in using sound either for teaching or research, so we’ve been especially interested in digital humanities in the things we can do through audio.” The Libraries opened the DH Lab’s audio recording studio to the campus for that reason; Hanlon said there’s a 75/25 percent split between students using the lab for schoolwork and faculty, staff, and students who are
und Inquiry unpacks podcasts What are your podcast recommendations? Michelle Maternowski: I highly recommend season two of “In The Dark” by APM Reports. Right now, I’m listening to the first season of “The City” by USA Today and Wondery... it’s got me hooked. Ann Hanlon: This is where people find out I’m a total fraud. “Slow Burn?” I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts. Digital Humanities librarian Ann Hanlon and assistant professor of history Chris Cantwell sit in the recording studio of the Digital Humanities Lab in the UWM Library. Photo by Sarah Vickery.
Jane Hampden Daley:
interested in recording their own podcasts in a professional-quality environment.
“The Daily” from The New York Times, “Trump, Inc.” from WNYC.
The pedagogy of a podcast Cantwell contends that learning history through podcasting is more than just listening to historical podcasts; it’s about making them as well. One of the first classes he taught at UWM was a podcasting class for graduate students in the university’s public history program. Instead of a final research paper, he tasked students with producing a 5-minute piece of audio scholarship for their final project. “I think we are required as educators to have our classrooms become laboratories to practice the skills students will be doing in the world,” Cantwell said. “If they’re to become consumers and producers of this content, then they need to learn how to critically analyze and make that stuff here.” Hampden Daley’s students are perfect examples; she created a class called Audio Storytelling
where she asks students to “analyze audio stories and podcasts by learning about natural and ambient sound, interviewing, audio transitions and production, then produce 3-4 of their own stories or podcast episodes,” she said. “Students love podcasts,” she added, “and there’s a podcast for every interest. They’re fascinated by sound and eager to learn how producers create audio stories. Some of my favorite teaching moments have been listening to audio pieces together as a class, sharing laughs or tears, and discussing them afterwards.” And, Hanlon added, understanding digital storytelling is a necessity for the digital age. “You get this finished product that you listen to, but understanding how that’s put together, what it means to edit sound, to edit in different historical pieces, is an important part of understanding what it means to be both a creator and user of knowledge,” she said.
Chris Cantwell: “Bundyville” was really good. It’s a history of the Bundy family who occupied a federal building a few years ago. “More Perfect” is a history of the Supreme Court and a look at some of the decisions that shaped the country. “Uncivil” is a history of the Civil War today. “Heaven’s Gate” is a good history of the Heaven’s Gate community, a new religious movement in the ‘90s. … Those are the big ones. “Archiver” is a podcast produced by the Kansas Historical Society. I could go on. I have quite a few. Sound Inquiry is currently on hiatus, but the audio studio in the Digital Humanities Lab remains open to all interested in podcasting. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
Food for thought on su Producing enough food is a national priority in populous countries like India. So much so that the government provides subsidies to offset the cost of chemical fertilizers. Farmers rely on the fertilizers to maximize crop production and keep food prices affordable. But UWM microbiologist Gyaneshwar Prasad, who is from India, worries. Early in his career, he studied bioremediation – natural ways of cleaning up pollution – and he could see the problems that came with such a reliance on chemical fertilizers. Making artificial fertilizers requires a disproportionately large amount of fossil fuel, and fertilizers become less effective once a certain saturation point is reached. Moreover, an estimated 20 percent of those chemicals end up in agricultural runoff that pollutes water supplies. “There’s got to be a way to feed the world in a more sustainable fashion,” says Prasad, an associate professor of biological sciences. Prasad’s research centers on finding such a
solution. To do so, he’s following a path that nature has already laid out, and it has tantalizing possibilities. For most plants, growth is limited by the amount of nitrogen available in soil, which is depleted over time. But legume crops – such as beans, peas, lentils and alfalfa – have a partnership with certain soil microbes. These microbes provide the plants with an unlimited supply of nitrogen in exchange for nutrients that the plant makes from photosynthesis. This process, known as nitrogen-fixing, creates a natural fertilizer for the plant, but it mainly happens with one kind of bacteria – rhizobia. Discovering how to transfer rhizobia’s nitrogen-fixing ability in legumes to other staple crops has become something of an agricultural holy grail. Half of the world’s food energy comes from varieties of three cereal crops: wheat, rice, and corn. “If we were able to reduce the amount of chemical fertilizer needed to grow cereal crops even just a little,” Prasad says, “the impact would be huge, especially in developing countries where individual farmers with small yields would benefit the most.” A long quest The idea of transferring rhizobia’s nitrogenfixing abilities to other crops is not new. Agronomists recognized the potential more than a century ago, and still, nobody has unlocked the mechanism behind it. When the soybean genome was sequenced about a decade ago, scientists expected they would find the fixation mechanism linked to a gene that other plants don’t possess. But that’s not what researchers discovered. In fact, the genes that legumes use for their symbiotic relationship with rhizobia also are found in the genomes of other crops.
Soybeans and other legumes interact with the bacteria rhizobia in a way that creates natural fertilizer for the plant.. (UWM Photo/Pete Amland)
6 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
ustainable agriculture Legumes recognize the rhizobia as friends, and they both communicate as such. Bacteria from the soil invade the root hairs of legumes. As the microbe touches a root hair, the hair begins to curl, and the microbe enters its cells. From this brief interplay, the plant builds a nodule on the root to house the bacteria.
“So, the mechanism could be a matter of how the legumes regulate those genes,” Prasad says. “What are they doing with their genes that other plants do not?” In 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation championed the problem, allocating $10 million for research at several universities in the United Kingdom and the United States. Prasad initiated a collaboration with UW-Madison agronomist Jean-Michel Ané, who received part of that funding, to investigate rhizobia behavior in rice. Although Ané has since moved his focus to corn, Prasad continues investigations into rice, specifically with how the microbe and plant talk to each other. Prasad created a biological model that allows him to probe deeper into the communication pathways that rhizobia might use in rice. With his model, he can manipulate changes in the genes of the bacteria and rice and compare the findings to gene behavior in soybeans. Just as bacteria in the human gut support a healthy immune system, the microbial communities in soil help promote Earth’s nitrogen cycle, which boosts crop yields. But they are extremely complex systems.
HOW LEGUMES AND RHIZOBIA HELP EACH OTHER
A symbiotic relationship exists between the legume and rhizobia bacteria in the soil, which results in natural fertilization. Rhizobia take nitrogen (N2) that penetrates the soil from the air and supply it to the plant. The bacteria do this by colonizing the plant’s roots and forming nodules, where they convert the N2 into a form of nitrogen the plant can use. In return, the plant makes food (carbohydrates) from photosynthesis and provides it to the bacteria.
“We only know about 1 percent of the bacteria in any system, not just in the soil microbiome,” Prasad says. One thing that scientists have known for some time:
The atmosphere is loaded with a gaseous nitrogen, called N2, that also permeates the soil. Rhizobia draw N2 into the nodules, where it turns the gas into a form of nitrogen the plant can use to make proteins, which is the first step in boosting growth. One plant can produce hundreds of nodules. Inside each one, up to a billion bacteria generate an enzyme responsible for the conversion. The missing piece, Prasad says, is how communication unfolds between plants and microbes: The plant would need a way of summoning bacteria from the soil and “telling” them to form nodules. Finding the Path Scientists thought that communication mechanism would be imprinted on a dedicated nitrogenfixation gene within legumes or rhizobia. Once that proved incorrect, they figured the mechanism must happen through an existing geneenabled pathway, such as one used by a fungus called mycorrhiza.
The fungus has a symbiotic relationship with nearly every plant and uses a plant’s “fungal interaction” genes to infiltrate and help them expand their root networks by ramping up hormones. Continued on page 8
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 7
Alum’s Jewish Museu Cassie Sacotte just spent the weekend in a circus tent in the name of art. Surrounded by hula-hooping lessons and face-painting, dancing lessons and balloon animals, Sacotte was in her element as the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The event was the “Big Top Chagall Shebang,” a circus-themed afternoon to celebrate the Museum’s current exhibit, “Chagall’s ‘Le Cirque.’”
After rhizobia bacteria colonize the roots of a legume, they create these root nodules. (UWM Photo/ Pete Amland)
Sustainable agriculture
“It was a great time. Everybody seemed really happy, which is what I was concerned with,” Sacotte said with a laugh. That’s her job: Create programming for the museum that will draw the Milwaukee community to the museum and keep them interested and learning once they arrive.
Prasad inoculated rice with rhizobia and found that the bacteria can, indeed, get into the rice plant using the same pathway that mycorrhizae do. And once inside the rice plant, rhizobia enhanced hormone growth in the same way these bacteria do in legumes. But some obstacles remained: The rhizobia microbes didn’t get inside the root cells in rice, as they do with legumes, and they didn’t stimulate the rice plant to make root nodules. “If we can get them inside the cell in rice,” Prasad says, “that will be the breakthrough. But it’s tricky. We’re trying to accomplish something that evolution has not.” His work toward that continues, encouraged by more clues from the rice-rhizobia interactions. When rhizobia use the mycorrhizae pathway, changes occur in the instructions delivered by the fungal interaction genes that are involved in messaging. These changes signal that activity is happening that wouldn’t without the bacteria’s presence. Prasad wonders if this could reveal the communication process between legumes and microbes. Prasad knows there are many approaches with potential to solve the nitrogen-fixing mystery. Other scientists are trying strategies like gene editing, which could bypass the need to figure out rhizobia’s secrets. Still, he believes that understanding the actual biology is important because of what else it might tell you. “There are many steps that need to happen before it can fix nitrogen,” Prasad says, “So, to find the answer, you follow where the basic science takes you.” By Laura Otto, University Relations 8 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
Art History and Jewish Studies alumna Cassie Sacotte is the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. Photo courtesy of Cassie Sacotte.
Jewish Museum Milwaukee is an organization
dedicated to telling the stories of the Jews of southeastern Wisconsin and in doing so, making connections between various communities throughout their own histories. The museum hosts three to four exhibitions each year, and Sacotte is responsible for creating additional programming and events around those exhibits to help visitors connect with the information. It’s the perfect job for a woman who double-majored in art history and Jewish studies. Sacotte graduated from UWM with her Bachelor’s degree in 2010. She was drawn to the majors for the same reason she was drawn to UWM: There was nothing like it in the small town where she grew up.
um Milwaukee job is a marriage of majors “It was super-duper tiny. There wasn’t a whole lot of city life or culture around,” she recalled. “I took a trip to Europe in high school, and it really opened my eyes to the world beyond what I had experienced in my tiny, tiny town. I also, in that tiny town, grew up with only Catholics and Lutherans around me. There were absolutely no Jews.”
Sacotte has designed programming around Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s current exhibit, “Chagall’s Le Cirque,” which runs through Sept. 8.
Though she is not Jewish herself, Sacotte connected with Jewish culture and religion and loved her classes in the major, as well as her art history courses. When she graduated, “I knew at that point that I wasn’t done learning. I hadn’t even scratched the surface of what art history is,” she said. So, she attended graduate school at UWM, earning a Master’s in art history in 2013. She worked at an art gallery and then an art consulting company before she heard about a rare opening on the Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s staff in 2016. “I had imagined working here when I was in school, but I had never thought it was a possibility,” Sacotte admitted. “Now that I’m here, I’ve done a lot of work to make it known that we exist and our programs are really valuable.” Under her leadership, Jewish Museum Milwaukee has seen its regular program attendance triple, and the events she plans occasionally sell out of tickets. Sacotte has planned programs around a variety of exhibits. For instance, when the “Allied in the Fight” exhibit came to the museum to showcase how some Jewish activists worked alongside black leaders during the Civil Rights movement, Sacotte organized a panel discussion with Wisconsin’s fair housing activists, planned a Freedom Seder to celebrate each group’s freedom from slavery, and screened a film called “From Swastika to Jim Crow,” among other activities. “I really enjoy doing programs that help take our audience’s education further and give them more information beyond what’s presented in the exhibits,” she said. For each event, Sacotte is not only responsible for putting together the activity, but also planning every detail, from catering to advertising. She was ready to handle the responsibility thanks to the lessons she learned at UWM. “Grad school prepared me to deal with the research and the intensity of an everyday museum job, and really helped teach me how to work with other people,” she said. “[Jewish Studies professor] Rachel Baum in particular was a huge resource in teaching me the difference between being a student and being a professional.” For a full list of special events and programming planned by Sacotte, visit the Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s events calendar. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
As politics shift, African Diaspora profes Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, an associate professor in UWM’s African and African Diaspora Studies Department, always expects a full inbox these days. Every day, she is inundated with emails about news from Brazil – a new anti-crime proposal, another report of police violence, or the latest remark by right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro. It’s part and parcel with her role as the president of the Brazil Studies Association, an international organization of scholars and activists, and as the leader of the AfroBrazilian committee of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil. As an expert on race and politics in Brazil, MitchellWalthour has been supporting the activism of black Brazilians as political tensions heighten in the South American country. Can you give us an overview of demographics in Brazil? Many people think of it as primarily a Latino country, but it’s much more racially diverse than that. Officially, today, Brazil is 54 percent Afro-Brazilian. Of course, that is an undercount because of the racial politics in the country. If you go by census numbers, most Afro-Brazilians identify as pardo, which is designated as racially-mixed people. There’s also the census category preto (black). Blackness is very stigmatized in Brazil, so some of those Afro-Brazilians will not identify as preto in the census. The category pardo is somewhat different than the category that we have in the United States. In general, when we talk about racially-mixed people, we’re talking about people who might have a black parent and a white parent, or a Latino parent and white parent. But in Brazil, people can identify in this category and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have two parents of different racial backgrounds; it could mean that they have a great-greatgrandmother who was white. Why are people so reluctant to identify themselves as Afro-Brazilian? “History” is really the answer to this question. At the outset, when the Portuguese came to Brazil, there were indigenous people already there, and then the Portuguese brought enslaved people from Africa. There was a lot of 10 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
sexual violence by European men against indigenous and African women. That’s the first step to racial mixture in Brazil. This is a violent history, but it’s often not discussed. Later, there were so many African descendants that they were beginning to outnumber Europeans. (Europeans) were concerned about the national image. They encouraged European immigrants to intermarry with African descendants. They even subsidized Italians and Germans to come to Brazil to work and encouraged this racial mixture. The reason they were encouraging this is because their ideal was that black people would disappear. Today, blackness is stigmatized, and there’s also stigma against racially-mixed people who may have black characteristics. People consider things like, how is your nose shaped? How big are your lips? What hair type do you have, in order to identify people. For those of us who haven’t been following international news, what is the current political situation in Brazil? [President Jair Bolsonaro] began his term at the beginning of this year. Before he was elected, people were already organizing because they knew his reputation. During his entire political career, he has been homophobic, racist, classist, sexist, and misogynist. Both activists and scholars can talk about all of the horrible things that he has verbalized over time but that’s just part of it. The other part is, what is he doing in practice? And who has he appointed in his administration who can enact and enforce those policies? The president campaigned as being tough on crime, which is attractive in a country that has problems with drugs and gangs. I just got an email today about an anti-crime proposal that they are trying to pass in Brazil that would loosen gun control and have stricter criminalization of gang members and drug dealers. But the other thing about Brazil is that many innocent people have been killed by police because they are suspected criminals, and who are those people? They’re Afro-Brazilian.
ssor looks out for black Brazilians In 2016, 4,222 people were killed by police in Brazil. In 2017, it was 5,225. And in 2018, it was 6,160. These are huge numbers! When you look at the percentages, most of them are Afro-Brazilian. This is why these universal anti-crime policies that may not seem so bad to the general public make activists call this crime bill “genocide.” They already know who the innocent people are who are dying due to policies like these. Fifty black organizations in Brazil are organizing now to protest this bill. What are some of the administration’s other policies that concern you and Afro-Brazilian activists? Another issue is education. The current president cut 30 percent of funding for public, federal universities. The former president, who was impeached, signed into law in 2012 that public federal universities have to implement affirmative action. There are quotas for students that come from public schools, which are attended mainly by Afro-Brazilians, and then there are sub-quotas for indigenous and Afro-Brazilian students. Some of these universities have been very critical and vocal about the government. This is a way to punish them. Bolsa Família is is a conditional cash-transfer program that lifted millions of people out of poverty. Most of those people were Afro-Brazilian. The president has stated in the past that children in Bolsa Familia households have lower intellectual development. When he was elected, he tried to assure people that he was supportive of the program, but that’s a program that’s definitely under threat, just given his past statements. Also, in Brazil, there were many quilombo communities – communities that enslaved people, when they ran away, established throughout Brazil. In the 1988 constitution, legislators ensured land titling for those people. This is extremely progressive, but the problem is, there hasn’t been much funding allocated for land titling. In fact, the funding has decreased. That’s something that’s also under threat. You’ve been to Washington, D.C. in the past few months to brief members of Congress about the state of Afro-Brazilian politics in Brazil. What was your goal, and what do you hope Congress does with the information you presented? The goal was to make people aware of the impact of the current administration’s policies on Afro-Brazilian communities and to connect with African Americandescendant politicians who might also be empathetic to what’s going on in Brazil. Fortunately, Gwen Moore, from Wisconsin, has been very supportive. Every small stride
African and African Diaspora Studies professor Gladys MitchellWlathour briefed members of Congress about the circumstances of Afro-Brazilians in April. Photo courtesy of Gladys Mitchell-Walthour.
is a success, and our goal is to make people aware and committed to what we are doing. The second is to get general Americans to know what’s going on in Brazil. We also want to include black activists in the U.S. It’s so easy for Americans to think about the racial issues here as only happening in the U.S., but so many of these issues, like police violence, transcend borders. Making these connections explicitly and strategically is important. We’re not saying, “We’re Americans and we have the answers.” But we can show our ally-ship and we can support people, and for me, that’s really important and fulfilling work to do. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
New graduate perfects his craft with his ow Rashaud Foster found his voice at UWM. A new graduate who majored in journalism, advertising, and media studies, Foster has his own podcast, “Raw Lingo,” focusing on entertainment and pop culture. He’s also had two radio internships – at 88.9 Radio Milwaukee and KISS-FM. While he’s tended to focus on audio as his medium for telling stories, UWM has helped him make sure he has a well-rounded skill set, he said, with classes in writing, editing, broadcasting, social media, and other areas of communication. Foster, who graduated in May, has a minor in communication. “In this industry, you have to be well-rounded,” he said. “You can’t just be focused on one thing, so I wanted to make sure I’m versatile and hitting all my targets.” Foster became interested in journalism while growing up in Chicago. He and his family moved to Milwaukee, and he finished high school in Wauwatosa. Early on in high school, he decided he wanted to be a journalist and cover the entertainment world. “Growing up, I loved watching and listening to interviews. I always loved the award shows with the red carpets, and the aspect of a reporter being a storyteller. I knew this was a career I wanted to be in.” UWM a good fit An opportunity to job shadow Channel 4’s Vince Vitrano when Foster was a senior in high school cemented his decision. Vitrano and other professionals he talked to suggested he look at UWM for further education in the field. UWM turned out to be a good fit, Foster said. “UWM has taught me everything I need to be successful in my field. It just was overall a good fit for me. I looked at other colleges before UWM, but overall, I’m glad about the choice that I made to come here.” JAMS instructors Jessica McBride, Jane Hampden Daley, Rachel Jurek, and Jessie Garcia were particularly strong mentors, Foster said. “I was able to take a class with all of them. They’ve all had experience with different areas of journalism. “I love the interactions with professors,” he added. “They’re really good with helping and networking. They want to see you succeed.” During his junior year, he did an internship at KISS-FM,
12 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
Rashaud Foster works on his podcast in a UWM audio lab. (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey)
starting with social media and then moved to an onair role. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be an on-air personality.” The first part of his senior year, he had to opportunity to intern at 88.9 Radio Milwaukee. Podcast born in JAMS lab When Foster decided to start his own podcast, he did research on streaming platforms and figured out how to get his show up and running from the JAMS lab. “I wanted to do something that represented me and what I like to do in journalism. I wanted to perfect my craft and grow.” His podcast, “Raw Lingo,” is low key and conversational, bringing in Foster’s own experiences as well and pop and celebrity culture. “I wanted it to be entertaining, so I do a lot of lifestyle scenarios, beauty tips and essentials as well as a little bit of celebrity news because everybody likes to be informed what is going on with the celebrities,” Foster said. “I’m loving the feedback I’m getting.” He’s not sure exactly where he wants to go after graduation, but said he wants to start in radio and maybe
wn podcast
Preserving the history of hypertext literature In the early 1980s, a 20-something Stuart Moulthrop had a Commodore VIC-20, the legendary 8-bit home computer that preceded the alsolegendary Commodore 64. He experimented with creating an early form of electronic-based literature, collectively known as hypertext works. They were like computerized versions of the “Choose Your Own Stuart Moultrhop Adventure” books that flourished in the ’80s. Rather than going straight through a story on a single plotline, readers were given choices that sent them down branching paths. In hypertext works, they navigated the stories by clicking hyperlinked phrases, which brought up the next part of the story on their computer screen. Moulthrop, now a professor of English, was among a small group of pioneers in this electronic form of literature and released one of its canonical works in 1994, the novel-length “Victory Garden.” Some of those early pieces of literature are still available online, or on modern computers, in updated forms. But many are only accessible using their original platforms, such as an Apple IIe.
move into television. And, even though it’s not his favorite way of storytelling, Foster said he’s comfortable with doing news stories also. Aiming for big things He’s hoping to find an opportunity in Milwaukee, then in a larger market. “I like Milwaukee, but I’m from a big city and I feel like I have a lot to offer there, so I do see myself leaving eventually.” New streaming services have made it much easier for podcasters and other entertainers to find an audience, he added. “Technology is one great thing. You can drop a record or anything you want on a SoundCloud or iTunes to get out to a greater audience.” Whatever happens or wherever he goes in his professional career, he’s happy he got his start at UWM, Foster said. “UWM surely changed my life for the better, and I am just thankful for everything the school and my department has offered me being a student here.” By Kathy Quirk, University Relations
To help preserve and document these early forms of electronic literature, both for the public and for scholarly pursuits, Moulthrop helped create the Pathfinders project with startup support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Maintaining the literature also means preserving those early computers. In some cases, that means never turning them off. “Because,” Moulthrop says, “we’re afraid we won’t be able to turn them back on.” Moulthrop has also explored how reading the literature on its original platform or in its updated, often-web-based version, changes a user’s experience. With research partner Dene Grigar of the Washington State University-Vancouver Electronic Literature Lab, Moulthrop found that the platform differences mattered. “Important cultural and artistic features were lost in the migration to the web,” he says, ranging from how stories were loaded into the computer to how they were displayed on the screen. The interactive fiction genre has enjoyed a recent rebirth, thanks to mobile technology. This has been helped by a program called Twine, which arrived in 2009 and streamlined the hypertext literature creative process. Moulthrop is researching Twine’s impact on electronic literature, interviewing creators and surveying their works. Says Moulthrop, “Another generation has arrived.” By Matt Hrodey, University Relations College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
Urban Studies Spotlight This year’s Urban Studies program’s 24th Annual Student Research Forum showcased student research, a panel on environmental justice histories, and scholarship on early exclusionary zoning practices. On May 3 in the UWM Golda Meir Conference Center, urban studies majors enrolled in the Capstone Seminar presented their semester-long research during a juried poster session along with graduate students in urban studies and several other graduate programs. •
Urban studies major Fiona McGilligan won the Undergraduate Best Poster award for her poster, “Neoliberalism, Act 10, and Changes to Education: A Milwaukee Educator’s Perspective.”
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Urban studies major Abigail Lynch won the Undergraduate Service Learning Project award for her poster, “The Poverty and Eviction Crisis in Milwaukee: How Legal Advocacy is Facilitating Social Change One Case at a Time.”
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Minji Kim, a PhD student in Geography, received the Graduate Student Best Poster award for her poster, “The Paradox of New Urban Tourism and the Conversion of Disadvantaged Neighborhoods into Tourist Destinations: Residents’ Perceptions and Experiences.”
Part of the afternoon event included a panel on Writing Environmental Justice Histories. The discussion was part of crafting the UWM exhibit for the Humanities Action Lab Initiative on Climate and Environmental Justice that draws on the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) living archives, community voices, and student research. This year’s keynote speaker was Dr. Paige Glotzer, assistant professor and the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair in the History of American Politics, Institutions, and Political Economy in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In keeping with the event’s theme of exclusionary spaces, her talk examined the first planned community to develop racially restrictive covenants in the U.S. Utilizing extensive archival research, Dr. Glotzer detailed how Baltimore’s Rolland Park Company’s planned suburban development was influenced by British investors to legally zone for whiteonly residents. The Rolland Park development quickly became a model that spread to other cities and shaped early suburban development and housing segregation in the U.S — the effects of which continue to this day. Glotzer’s forthcoming book is Building Suburban Power: The Business of Exclusionary Housing Markets, 18901960 (New York: Columbia University Press. April, 2020). 14 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
Fiona McGilligan won the Undergraduate Best Poster Award at the Urban Studies Annual Student Research Forum in May.
Panelists on the Writing Enviornmental Justice Histories panel included Teonna Cooksey, undergraduate research fellow, architecture; Camille Mays, community leader and organizer with the SPCA, Founder of Peace Garden Project; Kelly Marie O’Brien, urban studies graduate student; Rebecca Schnabel, history graduate student; and associate professor of architecture Arijit Sen.
Dr. Paige Glotzer from UW--Madison delivered the keynote address, “Building Suburban Power: The Business of Exclusionary Housing.”
Alumni Accomplishments Ellen Censky (’79, BS Biological Sciences) was named the president and CEO of the Milwaukee Public Museum in June. Censky held the position in an interim role since September of 2018 after the resignation of the museum’s previous president, and she now becomes the first woman in the museum’s 137year history to hold the title. https://bit.ly/2IaAR30
Graduate student Giselle Pu (Communication) won the Emerging Scholar Research Award in the Mobile Interest Group of the 69th International Communication Association Conference for her project, “Touch Screens, Mobile News Consumption, and Fake News.”
Ellen Censky
Sam Leichtling (’09, Master of Public Administration and Master of Urban Planning) was named a co-winner of the Jean B. Tyler Leader of the Future Award by the Wisconsin Policy Forum in the 2019 Salute to Local Government awards. Leichtling is a long-range planning manager for the city of Milwaukee and has been instrumental in investing millions of dollars in Milwaukee’s neighborhoods and engineering the city’s response to the 2008 foreclosure crisis. https://bit.ly/2MhSRwo Lara Fritts (’95, MS Urban Studies) was named the president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, a regional economic development organization in Virginia. The organization recruits businesses to the city of Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover, and Henrico counties. Fritts was previously the head of the economic development department in Salt Lake City. https://bit.ly/2Ksi7OY
Laurels and Accolades
Gwyn Wallander (Letters & Science advising) was recognized by the Milwaukee Justice Center for her volunteer work with the Milwaukee Justice Center Run for Justice when the organization presented her with the Administrator Jon Allen Pace Setter Award. The award acknowledges individuals who have “set the pace” in their Gwyn Wallander volunteer roles through their service, commitment, care, and kindness. Wallander was specifically honored for recruiting many UWM students to join the organization’s family forms clinic as interns. Carol Hirschmugl and Marija GajdardziskaJosifovska (both Physics) took third place in the Advanced Manufacturing Category of the 2019 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest. Their company, SafeLi LLC, discovered and patented new materials for lithium ion batteries that can be used for more stored energy, faster charging times, and safer batteries for use in vehicles, power tools, and electronics. https://bit.ly/2WsqsIS
Lara Fritts
Christopher Fink (’00, PhD English) recently released his second novel, Add This to the List of Things That You Are. The book follows what Fink calls “deplorable” characters in a series of short stories that are inspired by Fink’s own push-and-pull relationship with the Midwest. https://bit.ly/2F46cCm
Jackie (Murphy) Erdman (’16, MA Art History and certificate in Museum Studies) was appointed as the new executive director of the Sheboygan Theater Company, a volunteer community theater nonprofit. Erdman was previously the public programs administrative assistant at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. https://bit.ly/31nvPb1 Zach Navin (’17, Masters of Public Administration) was named the new director of the Department of Public Works in Columbus, Wisconsin. Navin will oversee sidewalk repair, street projects, and local infrastructure. Navin previously was the safety coordinator in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. https://bit.ly/2XP2BzG
Tami Williams (Film Studies) was appointed to the board of the Women and Film History International, a clearinghouse for the scholarly study of all periods of women’s film history worldwide. Through her duties on the board, she will be contributing to the development of conferences, along with other important scholarly and professional opportunities.
Tami Williams
Furrow, the undergraduate literary magazine sponsored by the Department of English at UWM, has won the National Program Directors’ Prize for Content from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). AWP is the foremost organization of academic creative writing programs in the United States. Valerie Laken (English), who is the magazine’s faculty advisor and who teaches the annual Furrow course through which much of the magazine’s work is done, was instrumental in the publication’s success. Furrow now attracts submissions from hundreds of undergraduate writers around the country and beyond. The magazine will receive $1,000 in prize money. College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
In the Media and Around the Community As America’s trade war with China escalated in early June, Avik Chakrabarti (Economics) advised consumers to make their purchases before tariffs forced prices higher on Fox 6 News. (https://bit.ly/2QHvISy). He also noted in a Conley Media article that, though many American families’ financial security has increased in recent years, a significant portion of the population would still have difficulty handling an unexpected $400 expense. https://bit.ly/2L3VfVx
When Joy Harjo was named as the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, Kim Blaeser (English) spoke about the significance of her appointment to the American Indian community on NPR’s segment “The Takeaway” (https://bit.ly/2LnGcpN). One of Blaeser’s poems was featured as a “Poem of the Day” on Poets. org in June. (https://bit.ly/2X9BSSb) In a guest post for Academe Blog, Patrick Fessenbender (’07, MA Philosophy) proposed some novel solutions to ending the jobs crisis in academia: Too many PhD graduates competing for too few tenure-track positions at universities. https://bit.ly/2WocvLL Genevieve McBride (emerita History) gave a brief recounting of the women’s suffrage movement at the celebration of “100 Years of Votes for Women: Wisconsin Leading the Way to the 19th Amendment,” hosted by the Milwaukee County Historical Society in June. https://bit.ly/2Z7Oo0Y
Doctoral student John Thurgood (English) read from his work at the launch of writer Fred Schmalz’s new book, “Action in the Orchards,” at the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana in June. https://bit.ly/2ZxzVvd An EPA decision to exempt parts of the Milwaukee area from strict air quality regulations will have a detrimental impact on the atmospheric environment and human health, Jonathan Kahl (Atmospheric Science) told WUWM. https://bit.ly/31CPMur U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was “absolutely correct” to describe migrant detention centers as “concentration camps,” Rachel Buff (History) told Newsweek. https://bit.ly/2IEVjcC 16 • IN FOCUS • July, 2019
As the 2020 U.S. Census draws closer, news outlets from around the country turned to the nation’s foremost expert on the history of the Census, Margo Anderson (emerita History), including Fortune Magazine (https://bit.ly/2FB3moJ), the Tampa Bay Times (https://bit.ly/2Fea3Nk), Jefferson Public Radio (https://bit.ly/2LneLMH), and the Monroe News (https://bit.ly/2X4nt4F). Chia Vang (History) spoke about Hmong immigrants’ experiences in Wisconsin and their cultural tendencies in an article published in the Milwaukee Independent. https://bit.ly/2YhZ8JW
Kathy Dolan (Political Science) talked shop on WUWM as she explained various aspects of political science, an increasingly relevant topic as another presidential election looms large. https://bit.ly/2IRYz4x Dave Edwards (WUWM) was interviewed in Current for the publication’s series highlighting retiring media professionals. Edwards will retire as the general manager of the WUWM radio station next year. https://bit.ly/2X6OBzS
Modern science has unfairly labeled ancient Celts as unsophisticated compared to other civilizations like the Greeks, Bettina Arnold (Anthropology) said in a piece run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation exploring the early drinking habits and imports of the Celts. https://ab.co/2XuCJfu
Widespread flooding and above-average rainfall beset the Midwest in the month of May. Forbes quoted Clark Evans’ (Atmospheric Science) theories about why the region got so wet. https://bit.ly/2WZygBm
Richard Leson (Art History) presented on “Objects and Memory in Gendered Contexts” at a conference on Gender, Memory and Documentary Culture, 900-1200, sponsored by the John Rylands Research Institute. The conference brought together experts in gender and documentary culture between the tenth and twelfth centuries. It was held at the University of Manchester in England in June.
People in Print H. Kim and Uk Heo (Political Science). 2019. Economic Globalization and Democracy Development in East Asia: The Indirect Link. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53(2): 248-266. Uk Heo (Political Science) and S. Yun. 2019. South Korea in 2018: Summit Meetings for the Denuclearization of North Korea. Asian Survey, 59(1): 54-62.
Erica Bornstein (Anthropology). 2019. The Report: A Strategy and Nonprofit Public Good. Humanity, 10(1): 109-131. Jordan K. Karsten, Robert J. Jeske, Richard W. Edwards, David Strange (all Anthropology), Kayla Kubehl, and Jeffery A. Behm. 2019. Assessing subsistence and cultural relationships in the late prehistoric Upper Midwest: a new perspective provided by dental health. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 168(4): 1-14. https://bit.ly/2wqNXCw Uk Heo
H. Sung Deuk and Uk Heo (Political Science). 2019. History and Territorial Disputes, Domestic Politics, and International Relations: An Analysis of the Relationship among South Korea, China, and Japan. Korea Observer, 50(1): 53-80. Uk Heo (Political Science) and M. Ye. 2019. US Military Deployment and Host Nation Economic Growth. Armed Forces and Society, 45(2), 234-267. Katherine A. Niessen, Mengyang Xu, Deepu K. George, Michael C. Chen, Adrian R. Ferre-D’Amare, Edward H. Snell, Vivian Cody, James Pace, Marius Schmidt (Physics), and Andrea G. Markelz. 2019. Protein and RNA dynamical fingerprinting. Nature Communications, 10. https://go.nature.com/2Uod9E8
Seyedali Banisadr, Adebola Oyefusi, and Jian Chen (all Chemistry and Biochemistry). 2019. A Versatile Strategy for Transparent Stimuli-Responsive Interference Coloration. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 11(7): 7415-7422. https://bit.ly/2JvOoVI Valerie Cronin-Fisher (‘18, PhD Communication) and Erin Sahlstein Parcell (Communication). 2019. Making sense of dissatisfaction during the transition to motherhood through relational dialectics theory. Journal of Family Communication, 19(2). https://bit.ly/30VaZiZ Andrew F. Kincaid (English). 2019. Review of Emilie Morin’s “Beckett’s Political Imagination” in Milwaukee: Modernism/Modernity, 26(2): 451-454. Valerica Raicu (Physics). 2019. Ab Initio Derivation of the FRET Equations Resolves Old Puzzles and Suggests Measurement Strategies. Biophysical Journal, 116(7): 1313-1327. https://bit.ly/2EIvtSu Nan Kim (History), 2019. Contemporary History and the Contingency of the Present. (Tina Chen and Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Eds.). Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 5(1): 108-113. https://bit.ly/2QBhJOe
Natasha Sugiyama (Political Science). 2019. Transformations in Social Policy: Progress toward Social Inclusion and Human Development. (Barry Ames, ed.). Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics. New York & London: Routledge. Sangyeon Kim, Mike R. Allen (both Communication), and Raymond Preiss. 2019. Meta-analysis of the curvilinear relationship between rate of delivery and message persuasiveness. Communication, Society & Media, 2: 1-14. https://bit.ly/2W2ahN9 Sarah Riforgiate, Ali L. Gattoni (both Communication), and Erika L. Kirby. 2019. Organizing the organizational communication class: Content and pedagogical recommendations. Journal of Communication Pedagogy, 2: 7-11. https://bit.ly/30SLEGh
Rebekah Carnes and Sarah Riforgiate (Communication). 2019. Female Peace Corps Sarah Riforgiate leaders’ fight for community mobilization: One billion rising against gender-based violence. SAGE Publications. Online. https://bit.ly/2GbUK99
Ryan B. Holifield (Geography). 2019. Review of Christopher W. Wells (Ed.), Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018). Journal of Historical Geography, 63, 115-116. Jiao Li, Jinyong Ying, and Dexuan Xie (Mathematical Sciences). 2019. On the analysis and application of an ion size-modified Poisson-Boltzmann equation. Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications, 47: 188–203. https://bit.ly/2Xn8cNu
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee •17
