College of Letters & Science
IN FOCUS
March 2020, Vol. 10, No.3
Fake news: The lies heard ’round the world History professor explains the misinformation - and how to combat it By Sarah Vickery College of Letters & Science It looks like news. It reads like news. It sounds like news. But it’s as fake as it gets. Thomas Haigh is exploring options to fight back.’ Haigh is a professor in UWM’s history department who focuses on the history of technology. His wife, Maria Haigh, is an associate professor in UWM’s School of Information Studies. The two recently co-authored a chapter for the Sage Handbook of Propaganda detailing the latest threat to American democracy: Fake news. It became a familiar rallying cry during the 2016 election as politicians on both sides of the aisle were targeted, or bolstered, by news stories that were completely false. And that is what fake news is, Haigh said - information that is disguised as legitimate journalism disseminated in order to deceive those who consume it.
“These are documents that were posted on things that looked like news websites, and looked like news stories, and claimed to have reporting, and were mimicking the form of a news story, but were just completely made up,” Haigh added. Framing fake news In order to fight fake news, Haigh said, you first have to give it context. He and
Maria Haigh use the chapter to frame fake news in seven different ways, including as 1) a weapon of war; 2) online dishonesty; 3) a form of state propaganda; 4) profitable business; 5) extreme form of media bias; 6) a plot to delegitimize alternative media; and 7) part of a “post-truth” society. Continued on page 6
Pronunciation’s in
Contents Feature Stories
UWM linguistics instructor Dr. Kelsie Pattillo has a question: Do you want a bag of bagels?
History prof explains fighting fake news Linguist studies Wisconsin’s accent Communication alum shines with Bucks Students push frontiers with research Biology alum keeps WI livestock healthy
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She’s less interested in your answer than she is in how you pronounce the word “bag.”
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Pattillo sat down to talk about her research.
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So, this started out as a student project?
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Pattillo recently published a paper on a well-known Wisconsin linguistic quirk – the population’s tendency to pronounce words like ‘bag,’ ‘flag,’ or ‘agriculture’ with a long ‘a’ sound. Her work details the results of her students’ research, who spent their classes surveying friends and strangers about their pronunciation preferences.
They were supposed to interview people on campus. Students were supposed to get somebody to say, ‘I bought a bag of bagels,’ and then ask them where they were from and their zip code. And they were supposed to guess how old the speaker was (under or over 50). We used Google Sheets and had a big spreadsheet where everybody could upload their information from the interviews to the same place at the same time. Then they looked for trends and discussed what they’d found. I wanted to do something where students would practice what I talk about in class, but I wanted them to actually go out and do it. I wanted it to replace an assignment that they already did with more modern dialectology methods and something digital. I wanted them to produce something that would be useful for future classes. It worked out pretty well. Your results showed that about 48 percent of people in Wisconsin say “bayg” instead of “bag.” Is there a correlation between a person’s zip code or age and their pronunciation? No! It’s everywhere. With the research we did, I was able to see that this is really a Wisconsin thing; you get both pronunciations here. It’s common in Minnesota and North Dakota and even where I’m from in Seattle. As I read more about this after doing this as assignment with students, we know that this pronunciation has been in Wisconsin for at least 70 years. I don’t know if it started in Wisconsin, but this is where there’s the highest concentration of people using it.
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I was surprised that there was such a sharp line between Wisconsin and Illinois. People outside of the Midwest tend to group everybody from the Midwest as one accent, but it’s very, very diverse.
the bag: Linguist explores WI accent Do you have any guesses why the “bayg” pronunciation is so common in Wisconsin? No. When we have an ‘ng’ at the end of a word after an ‘a,’ like in ‘hang,’ we use this vowel of ‘ay’ instead of an ‘a’ sound where we’d use the ‘ack’ – for example, the word ‘back’ versus ‘bang’. It seems like when this vowel comes before a ‘g’ sound, that it’s becoming more like this ‘ng’ sound, which is made in the exact same place in the mouth as the ‘g’ sound. Because of the similarities, it seems to be working, but why for people in Wisconsin and not other places? I don’t know. That’s how sound change works: Sometimes it happens in one place and not others. How did you get interested in this type of research? I’m a linguist and so we talk about language variations in many different ways. Usually, if you talk about variation, people are familiar with different words or different pronunciations. I’m not from Wisconsin, for example, so moving here and hearing someone ask about a bubbler, or the first time my husband said that he had to go to a Tyme Machine, I laughed hysterically. As a linguistics student, these are things that were interesting to me. When I first came to UWM, I was aware of a linguist who used to be here named Bert Vaux. He is now at the University of Cambridge in England. He did a lot of work on the Harvard Dialect Survey, and UWM actually houses his results from that. The New York Times a few years ago had a language quiz that you could take. My students still use it to see what words they use and whether it can predict where they’re from. They were using Vaux’s data from these dialect maps. I’ve used the maps in classes that I’ve taught and learned about them as a student, but nobody here has done anything like that since he left. As I started teaching, I realized that I could do that work just as well as he can. So, tell us – who’s right? Is it “bag” or “bayg?” What I teach in this class is there’s not really a correct pronunciation; it’s just variation and we can find patterns to these variations that line up with social things. I say, ‘they’re both right!’ and people don’t like that. People have a really strong opinion about this particular word. I think that most of the time if you go out of the area, or you go inside and that’s not your pronunciation, people tease each other. What’s next for you and your students? In the future, going towards more digital work, I plan on creating Google Surveys with students and we’re going to look at variations in place name pronunciation. There
are a couple of examples from here on campus – one is Lapham Hall, which is named after a person. Do you say Lap-ham or Laf-ham when you first come to campus? Is it Klo-chee or Klotch-key? If you don’t have that local knowledge or haven’t heard it spoken, you might pronounce it different ways. Students really enjoy this. One of my goals was that students would go out and talk to people about what they were learning in the class and hope that they have to talk about linguistics outside of class. Language is great that you can observe it any time you talk to somebody or read something. As much as I can do to get students to do that sort of work, the better. I want to keep that going, and there’s a lot that hasn’t been explored. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 3
Shining from the side
UWM alum defines her own r
Most of the jobs Tyra Eiland has held have one thing in common: They didn’t exist before she asked to make them. The first time it happened was when she was a student at UWM. Eiland had attended a Milwaukee Bucks basketball game and was intrigued by the master of ceremonies, who worked the crowd and ran on-court games and promotions with the fans. She wanted that job, so she approached the UWM Athletic Department and asked to do the same thing for the men’s basketball team. “They came back and said, ‘Well, we’d love to have you, but we’d have to pay you,’ which is the best situation to end up in,” Eiland said. “The announcer would still do all the reads and sponsorships. I would do all the in-game promotions. If there was a contest between two fans, I was the one to facilitate that on the court.” That was the 2013-14 season, when the Panthers made it into the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Eiland was there through it all, traveling with the team and gaining experience. Then she put it to work for the Milwaukee Bucks – first as an intern, and then, after she graduated from UWM in 2016, as a full-time employee in the team’s community relations department, now called the Corporate Social Responsibility Department. And when the Bucks began expanding, adding a G-League team called the Wisconsin Herd and starting the Bucks Gaming e-sports team, Eiland was granted the opportunity to explore the broadcast space in all new roles. Today, she’s fulfilling, yet again, a newly-created role – this time as a sideline reporter for the Herd and as a gaming correspondent for Bucks Gaming. And late last year, Eiland was offered a fulltime role as talent under the Milwaukee Bucks. “They created the role that I now am in. It’s the Multimedia Content Creator. It’s a fancy way to say ‘broadcast talent,’ in my opinion,” Eiland said. A talent for communication Eiland actually started her college career at another university, but she transferred to UWM because of its proximity to Milwaukee’s sports teams – and hopefully, job opportunities with those teams. She also found a major 4 • IN FOCUS • March, 2020
she loved: Journalism, advertising, and media studies. “UWM gave me the opportunity to major in something I really enjoyed versus something I felt pressured to do,” she said. “Media Studies was not a track that I would have been able to do (at other schools). I was able to study media and public relations, journalism, law, all in that same bucket, and enjoyed it. I was able to do internships that I would not have had access to at other schools in Wisconsin.” That included internships with ESPN and TMJ4’s Morning Blend, which led to an internship with the Milwaukee Bucks and an opportunity to MC for the Lakeshore Chinooks, a minor-league baseball team based in Grafton, Wisconsin. Eiland also had another well of experience to draw from as she began her forays into the sports world: From 201316, she competed in pageants, winning her first title in 2014. As a contestant, Eiland was required to champion a platform. She selected women’s empowerment, creating Tyra Eiland delivers a sideline report during a Wisconsin Herd game. Photo courtesy of Tyra Eiland.
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roles with the Milwaukee Bucks Tyra Eiland has forged her own role with the Milwaukee Bucks organization. She is now the team’s multimedia content coordinator. Photo courtesy of Tyra Eiland.
programs that encourage young women to be themselves. Later in her journey, she focused on mental health to address the experiences she faced as a child and having a mother who struggled with depression. That advocacy prepared her for the community relations internship with the Bucks while she was in college, leading to her current role as a Multimedia Content Creator. Pageantry also prepared Eiland for something else - owning her own business, Invisible Beauty. She’s still advocating today. Eiland enjoys connecting with Milwaukee businesswomen in her role, and she hopes to inspire young women in college to follow their passions, just as she has. “Sometimes we shy away from what we truly love because of fear of rejection or how we view ourselves, but we have these gifts,” Eiland said. “I want every young girl to find her own self-love and step out on faith and walk into what they truly want to do.” A jill of all trades Eiland’s job includes a little bit of everything. “I do the sideline reporting for the Wisconsin Herd and I’m the correspondent for Bucks Gaming,” she said. “We do a lot of Chalk Talks with BMO Harris Bank as a sponsor. I’m able to interact with the front office on the basketball side by interviewing John Horst (Bucks general
manager) or Milt Newton (assistant general manager). I do some of the promotional photoshoots for all assets: the Milwaukee Bucks, the Wisconsin Herd, and Bucks Gaming merchandise. Wherever there is a need, whether it’s for video or live talent, I fill in the gaps.” Sideline reporting is its own beast. “Out of the three roles – you have the color, the analyst, and the sideline reporter – the sideline is work, not just a pretty face,” Eiland explained. “The sideline reporter is using their information about what makes the players human. You can’t always plan for that because you don’t know who’s going to have a successful game that night, and that’s when you want to bring out those cool stories.” She does that by getting to know the players – both on the Herd and on the Bucks – and treating them with respect. The players are shining this season, and on both teams. As of March 1, the Bucks have a 52-8 record and the Herd sits at 31-9. Eiland is thrilled to be part of the franchise as Milwaukee leads the Eastern Conference. “I hope they make it all the way to the finals,” she said. “We have talent that has been grown and developed for this moment – to win a championship.” By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 5
Fighting fake news: History professor expl Of these, online fake news originally rose to prominence as a weapon of war. In 2014, Russian troops marched into Crimea and occupied the Ukrainian territory – all while denying any sort of involvement. “One of things that was apparent in Ukraine was that what were clearly Russian troops had left their bases in Crimea, surrounded the Parliament, seized the airports, taken control of the key positions. But they were denying that they were Russian,” Haigh said. “It was clearly not plausible, but they were relying on the norms of journalism being that the story gets reported as ‘unidentified troops. Some people claim they’re Russian, but Russia says they’re not.’” Fake news evolved from there. “When reporters looked into Russian influence campaign in the 2016 election, they discovered the Internet Research Institute in the St. Petersburg area. It was clear that what appeared to be a statesponsored fake news campaign when it appeared in Ukraine was a concerted effort to push the fake story of the day into the broader media ecosystem,” Haigh said. “Suddenly ‘fake news’ wasn’t this weird thing that happens in Ukraine; it was the biggest thing that everybody was talking about for quite a while after the 2016 election.”
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The 2014 pro-Russian protests and unrest in Ukraine. Map courtesy of https://bit.ly/2TuewSr.
But Russia wasn’t the only bad actor. Fake news, as Haigh noted in one of the frames, is a profitable business. Some foreign entrepreneurs began to craft websites mimicking actual journalistic news sites pushing false pro-Donald Trump stories in order to generate website clicks and advertising revenue. Fighting fake news This kind of disinformation is difficult to fight because it spreads so quickly. In the early days of fake news in Ukraine, the StopFake organization, a composed mostly of newly-graduated journalism students, made it their mission to combat the lies. “The methodology that they adopted was to have a group of volunteers
identify these fake stories that were circulating and attempt to debunk it,” Haigh said. He and Maria Haigh, who is Ukrainian and followed the events of the 2014 invasion closely, invited members of the group to UWM to share their methods. The group ran obviously false and doctored photos through Google image searches to find their true origins. They tracked down original quotes that had been misattributed or taken out of context. When they definitively proved a story false, they posted it to their website and hoped the post would achieve the same viral reach that the fake news story did. “We realized that this was different
lains how to curb disinformation from traditional fact-checking, which assumes that what the politician said has been accurately reported,” Haigh said. “(StopFake) was taking something that appeared to be journalism and saying, ‘Is this real reporting or does it contain things that are factually incorrect?’”
“Unless and until that changes, it’s hard to see fake news becoming less pervasive.” In that vein, Haigh expects to see more fake news in 2020 as the presidential election draws closer. But, he warns, don’t give into despair, even though fake news has attacked Americans’ ability to be an informed electorate.
But, Haigh noted, as fake news grew more complex, more solutions were needed.
“We tend to assume that whatever is happening now, the future is going to consist of more and more of that forever. History doesn’t tend to move in a straight line,” Haigh said.
“If we have these many different conceptions of what fake news is, obviously there’s not a one-sizefits-all solution,” he said, noting the many frames he and Maria Haigh identified in their chapter. For instance, combatting fake news as a weapon of war might require anti-propaganda efforts from major world powers. Viewing it as online dishonesty might require legislation that requires social media sites to curb the spread of misinformation on their platforms. “But one of the things we found studying fake news was that there’s a fundamental asymmetry there. It’s very easy to make a fake story and it takes a lot more in the way of resources to debunk it,” Haigh noted. The best solution, he said, seems to be teaching media literacy at a broad, societal level. Teach people to determine whether their source of information is reliable, to differentiate between fact and opinion, and to be wary of trusting articles that seem to confirm their personal bias. But even that solution has its
Thomas Haigh
problems. The future of fake news One of the main problems to combatting fake news, Haigh noted, is that certain factions of American society do not want to curb its influence. “We’re seeing a lot of indications that impartiality, due process, and the separation of government and media from personal interests are not something that there is a broad, bipartisan consensus anymore,” he said. “It seems that a large portion of the population is just not interested in whether news is fake or not.
“It’s at least possible that in the future, things will swing back in the direction of thinking that there’s a shared interest in treating trustworthy, professional reporting as something deserving a special place in society.”
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College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee •
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Meet L&S undergraduate researchers expl Robert Aloisi left his career of 29 years as a product development engineer to pursue his passion for the stars. He came to UWM two years ago to work on a bachelor’s degree in physics, with the goal of eventually earning his doctorate in astronomy. He chose the physics department at UWM because it was within commuting distance of his home in Sheboygan Falls and offered the opportunity to do undergraduate research. His first-year research experience was studying the properties of pulsars, which are compact, very dense stars that emit radio energy as they spin. That resulted in a paper, written with five students and other co-authors, that was published in The Astrophysical Journal. Last summer, he spent 11 weeks in Australia at the University of Sydney as an intern working with a new telescope array called ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder), an opportunity available to UWM students as part of GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen). One goal of the work is to find supernovae and better understand their properties, research that he is continuing this academic year with the data collected in Australia. “A neat example I found this summer was a supernova that was discovered the month I was born. The afterglow of that supernova is still visible today. That was pretty cool.” Aloisi’s research mentor is David Kaplan, associate professor of physics, and he’s also worked closely with postdoctoral mentors Angie Van Sistine and Joe Swiggum. “I really enjoyed doing research with the teams that I’ve worked with. I find that I learn a lot along the way to accomplishing projects,” Aloisi said. “I find it really rewarding to have been able to publish a paper already. The trip to Sydney was just awesome both on a professional level and a personal level.” 8 • IN FOCUS • March, 2020
Bailey Flannery loved English and thought she’d like to be a high school teacher. But then she took a course from Jacqueline Stuhmiller, lecturer in the Honors College, and discovered the opportunities that existed for doing research in the humanities. “I took her course ‘Telling Tales: Medieval Story Telling,’ and that class just changed my life,” Flannery said. “It captured my interest, my imagination. Her particular focus has been on the treatment of women and their bodies in literature as the monstrous female body or woman-animal interface. “Highlighting these different representations was a way to start conversations with people in a way that might feel more approachable to them,” said Flannery. As part of the work, she has helped organize two Monster Conferences and a Beastly Conference that have explored the topics of monsters and beasts in literature. The monster conference brought in student researchers from other areas and outside the university. Currently, Flannery is working with Stuhmiller as a research assistant on a volume called “Animal Husbandry: Bestiality in Medieval Culture.” In addition to the Honors College Beastly and Monster conferences, she’s presented at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Animals in the Humanities conference. Working with other researchers in the humanities and social sciences, she has also created an organization called HARPY, or Honors Association for Research and Publication, that will publish its first undergraduate academic journal in the spring of 2020. Undergraduate research has changed her life, Flannery said. “I think research in the humanities pushes you to be a more critical and compassionate thinker. It pushes you to have uncomfortable conversations… you may not agree with the ideas, but you understand them. I think these are things our deeply divided society needs more of right now.”
loring the frontiers of human knowledge Tessa Miskimen works in Associate Professor Debbie Hannula’s psychology and neurosciences laboratory doing research on learning and memory.
Nik Prusinski’s many childhood visits to UWM’s Manfred Olson Planetarium inspired him to become an astronomer.
Miskimen has been taking part in an ongoing project looking at how fear conditioning can influence people’s eye movements. For example, viewers look at colored circles on a computer screen with certain colors accompanied by a shock. Miskimen then tracks their responses to seeing the same circles again. “Because of what they’ve learned, they remember something about what the circle meant to them beforehand in terms of shock.”
“That’s when I met Dr. Jean Creighton (planetarium director). Her shows are excellent. They really do a good job of introducing astronomy to the general public. I strive to achieve her level of ease with science communication.”
The goal of the research is to study the parts of the brain that are activated by the eye movements reflecting remembered stimuli. She works with graduate students in Hannula’s lab who are doing functional MRI (fMRI) studies with video recordings. That’s work she won’t be able to see out fully before her May graduation, Miskimen said. “An MRI shows a picture of the brain, but an fMRI shows changes in blood flow that show us what part of the brain is activating when certain stimuli are presented, for example,” Miskimen said. She received an award for her research presentation at the UWM Undergraduate Research Symposium two years in a row and has taken part in a national conference. Miskimen has been doing undergraduate research since the second semester of her first year. “I was in Dr. Hannula’s freshman seminar and after that class, she invited me to be in her lab. I didn’t really know if I wanted to be involved in research, but I decided to take advantage of the opportunity.” She became interested in psychology after an AP psychology course in high school. Her work at UWM introduced her to the science side of the field, which is where she has focused her research. “I didn’t realize there was so much to psychology until I started taking classes here. I learned a lot about neuroscience in my freshman seminar with Dr. Hannula.” She said she’s benefitted from her research experiences and her psychology classes at UWM. “I feel very connected and able to ask questions of many professors, even if I haven’t had a class with them for a year or two.”
Prusinski finished up most of his general high school curriculum by the time he was 15, so his school board sponsored him through the now-discontinued Youth Options program to take classes at UWM. As a result, he’ll be graduating from UWM at age 19. Now a physics and mathematics major, his research has focused on studying star formation and galactic outflows in the early universe under the guidance of Dawn Erb, associate professor of physics. Using data from the Hubble and Keck telescopes, Prusinski observes outflowing gas to better understand feedback processes influencing star formation. Prusinski worked as a volunteer at the planetarium, which transitioned into a paid internship. He is now lead stargazer, presenting live shows to the general public. Among other projects, he helped install a new computerized tracking mount for the telescope on the roof of the Physics building. He’s also done an NSF-funded summer research experience at Northwestern University. The work he is doing with his mentor can help contribute to a better understanding of the universe and how galaxies have evolved over time, he said. She has helped him not only with the research, he added, but with advice on graduate school. “She is a great career mentor as well as a research mentor.” Having received several graduate school offers, Prusinski’s goal is to earn his PhD in astrophysics and become a research professor. He’s enjoyed presenting his research and seeing the ‘aha’ moment in his teaching. “I enjoy sharing the beauty and mystery of the cosmos. Having people come up to the roof and look through the telescopes and see the planets and moon…that’s fun.” College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 9
Safe from the farm to your tab
Alum ensures the health of W Last winter, Wisconsin was shivering in the grasp of a polar vortex that brought biting winds and sub-zero temperatures. Most people bundled up and stayed indoors.
At every step in that process, there are regulations and paperwork – lots and lots of paperwork.
Stacy Chic, on the other hand, was marching through a farm field to test a herd of dairy cows for tuberculosis. “That was pretty miserable,” she recalled with a laugh. “And then we had to trace every animal that moved off of that premises in the last five years. That’s a matter of knowing what animals they sent out and what markets they sent them to, and then where they may have been sold from there. We track all of that so we can make sure that those types of diseases stay contained.”
UWM biology alum Stacy Chic is an animal health inspector for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. Photo courtesy of Stacy Chic.
It’s all part of a (chilly) day’s work for an animal health inspector. Chic, a UWM alum, holds that role in Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, where she is responsible for overseeing the health of livestock in southeastern Wisconsin. That includes traditional farm animals like cows and sheep, but also extends to fish hatcheries and deer farms. Her job is a busy one because there are so many moving parts in the animal agriculture industry. “The people at home who don’t work in agriculture probably don’t even realize how a cow moves from the farm to your table,” she said. “Folks raise the animal on the farm, and then they generally hire an animal trucker to transport those animals and take them to an animal market. There they’re purchased to then be shipped off to a processing plant where they become dinner.”
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“We regulate the animal truckers. They need to keep records for all of those animals who come off the farm and come to the market,” Chic said. “Then we regulate the animal dealers who are at the market doing the buying and the selling of the animals. … We inspect both at dealer locations and the market locations to make sure that the facilities meet the requirements for animal handling and animal health.”
If there is an outbreak of disease – like the tuberculosis in the cattle herd last winter – Chic is also responsible for helping to contain it. She regularly assists the Department of Agriculture’s veterinarians in the field, helping test animals for disease, tracking its spread, and, if necessary, euthanizing infected animals. In 2015, for instance, Chic was racing to contain the spread of avian flu in Wisconsin. “We were suiting up in our full Tyvek suits to go out and work with the producers to make sure that it was all contained, that we stayed healthy, and that consumers stayed healthy,” she recalled. “(At the time), we weren’t sure if it could cross over into humans – we call those zoonotic diseases.” Not only did Chic work with the infected flocks, but she and her colleagues also tested poultry in a wide radius around outbreak areas to ensure the disease hadn’t spread.
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Wisconsin’s livestock “Then we provided education so people knew what sort of symptoms to look for in their birds to prevent the spread of avian flu – and we did,” she said. Chic loves her job and takes pride in it, but she laughs when she’s asked about her background in farming: She has none. “I never even knew this job existed when I was a kid. I think growing up, I always knew that I liked animals and I liked the outdoors,” she said. Chic grew up in the outer suburbs of Milwaukee, and she attended UWM because the school was close and affordable. There, she majored in biological sciences and conservation science, earning a BS in 1997. While still at UWM, she began working with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture’s gypsy moth program, monitoring the spread of the invasive species. She joined the Department full-time shortly after graduating as a nursery inspector, regulating Wisconsin’s trees to control disease and pests. After taking some time off to raise her family, Chic rejoined the department in 2014, this time as an animal health inspector. The job isn’t just tracking animal movements and testing for disease. Chic enjoys working with kids in 4H programs to teach them about animal health and safety, and she’s also responsible for tracking exotic and regulated animals in Wisconsin’s pet trade – in one case she had to investigate the import of some capuchin monkeys. “I get to do so many different things, and I really appreciate having a job that’s not mundane,” she said. “I really love working with animals. Some of the really fun parts of the job are where I get to go out and assist the vets with the actual animal work.” Chic says that her job has given her a sense of security in her food. She’s literally seen how the sausage gets made. “I think it’s made me more confident about our food supply. I never would have known before taking this position how much time and work and traceability goes into making sure that we have a handle on where our food is coming from,” she said. By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 11
March 2020
Upcoming Events Sun March 4
Women’s & Gender Studies’ Brown Bag Lunch: Memory Keepers – Teaching and Learning with Objects in the WGS Classroom. 12:30-1:30 p.m. Curtin 535B. Krista Grensavitch, UWM. A Feminist Matricentric Approach to the Study of Mothers and Mothering in the Pali Canon. 5-7 p.m. Curtin 175. Pascal Engelmajer, Carroll University.
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Rhetorical Leadership conference keynote: Pauli Murray’s Rhetorical Leadership Through Intersectional Analogies. 4-6:30 p.m. Curtin 175. Isaac West, Vanderbilt University, discusses ‘Pauli’ Murray, cofounder of the National Organization for Women.
March 6
Geosciences Colloquium: Deformation of the Diana Complex in the northwest Adirondacks (New York State): Connecting structures to core complex models in the southwest Grenville Province. 4-5 p.m. Lapham N103. Graham Baird, University of Northern Colorado.
March 6-27
March 6-8
Irish Language Gathering. Celtic Milwaukee, 1532 N. Wauwatosa Ave. Includes Irish lessons, movie shorts, a Siopa Gaeilge-Irish language books and media shop. The Douglas Hyde Memorial Lecture will be presented by Brian O Conchubhair, University of Notre Dame at 1 p.m. on March 7. The event is free to registered UWM students. The fee for non-UWM students is $50 for Saturday only or $75 for the whole weekend. https://bit.ly/32JrWOO
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Paradise at the Planetarium. 7-8 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Enjoy a simulated trip to the tropics to view vibrant island landscapes and the night sky as seen from countries close to the equator. https://bit.ly/2vl4PxP Science Bag - What’s it Tuya?: Fire & Ice Interactions on Earth & Mars. 7-8 p.m. Physics 137. Shows run Fridays March 6-27 with a matinee show at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 15. Free and family-friendly. Barry Cameron discusses volcanos around the solar system. uwm.edu/science-bag
Neuroscience Seminar: System Engineering Analysis of Neurovascular Coupling. 2-3 p.m. Lapham N101. Ramin Pashaie, UWM.
https://bit.ly/3amrcRZ
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Planetarium Show: Cosmic Creatures. 2-3 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. This show is appropriate for children ages 4 and older. Tickets are $6.
March 8
Planetarium Show: Paradise at the Planetarium. 2-3 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Enjoy a simulated trip to the tropics to view vibrant island landscapes and the night sky as seen from countries close to the equator. https://bit.ly/2vl4PxP
March 12
Jessica Kirzane Book Launch” “Diary of a Lonely Girl: or The Battle against Free Love”. 7-9 p.m. UWM Greene Museum. Writer Jessica Kirzane presents her new novel. https://bit.ly/3amJgf3
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March 7
Graphic Migrations: Hannah Arendt, Statelessness, and South Asia Across Media. 3:30-5 p.m. Curtin 175. Kavita Daiya, George Washington University.
Fri
5
Sociology Colloquium: Upsold-Interaction and Inequality in the Housing Market. Noon-1 p.m. Bolton 575. Max Besbris, Rice University.
Geography Colloquium: CyberGIS – Retrospect and Prospect. 3-4 p.m. AGS Library. Th Spring 2020 Harold & Florence Mayer Lecture is presented by Shaowen Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Thu
March 13
Geography Colloquium: How Geography Helps Us Discover the Health Impacts of Air Pollutants. 2:30-4 p.m. AGS Library. Amy Kalkbrenner, UWM.
March 15
Science Bag - What’s it Tuya?: Fire & Ice Interactions on Earth & Mars. 2 p.m. Physics 137. Free and family-friendly. Barry Cameron discusses volcanos around the solar system. uwm.edu/science-bag
March 26
Living ‘A Part Apart’: Brazilian Migrants in Toronto, Canada. 2-3:30 p.m. AGS Library. Falina Enriquez, UW-Madison. https://bit.ly/2VzlSGV Fiction Reading and Author Q&A: Chris Fink. 5-6:30 p.m. Mitchell 361. Free and open to the public. A reading begins at 6:30 p.m. in the UWM Hefter Center.
March 27May 8
Planetarium Show: Under African Skies. 7-8 p.m. Manfred Olson Planetarium. Experience stars and stories under the night skies of the African Sahara, savanna, and tropics. Shows run Fridays through May 8. Open to the public. Tickets are $6 general admission and $5 for UWM students. https://bit.ly/37OOj6W
March 27
Insurgent Aesthetics as a Queer Practice of Freedom. 2-3:30 p.m. Holton 341. Ronak K. Kapadia discusses art responses to the U.S. militarism in the Greater Middle East. Geography Colloquium: Hydrological Droughts in Wisconsin since 1980. 3-4 p.m. AGS Library. Woonsup Choi, UWM. Psychology Colloquium: The Senescent Synapse-From the Membrane to the Nucleus. 3-4 p.m. Enderis 103. Tom Foster, University of Florida. Subject/Abject Relations: Trans Sex Workers and their Johns. 3:30-5 p.m. Curtin 368. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, San Francisco State University.
Alumni Accomplishments Sasha (Mazur) Stone (’15, BA Sociology) is the founder of Green Life Trading Company, a business that sells reusable household goods like beeswax wrap and shampoo bars in an online store. Stone is set to open a brick-andmortar location in Madison, Wisconsin, and her business was featured in Isthmus. https://bit.ly/3bklgu6 Joe’Mar Hooper (’05, Masters of Public Administration) was named the executive director of Safe and Sound, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that seeks to build bridges between law enforcement and local communities to promote safer neighborhoods. Hooper was previously the Wisconsin Market Leader for CommonBond Joe’Mar Hooper Communities. https://bit.ly/38d0nyn
Heidi Yantz (’01, MS Geosciences) delivered the first lecture at the Jefferson County Historical Society’s First Friday Lecture Series in Port Townsend, Washington. The lecture series this year focuses on women’s voices, experiences, and innovations. Yantz discussed notable women in STEM fields. https://bit.ly/2wcpTGI Christopher Drew (’14, PhD English) was named the Professor of the Week and featured in a column in the Statesman Online, the student newspaper of Indiana State University. Drew is an assistant professor in the English department teaching grammar, creative writing, and composition. https://bit.ly/31S0e1U Lisa Kotter (’92, BA Political Science; ’94, Masters of Public Administration) became the city administrator of Elridge, Iowa in February. Kotter was previously the former city administrator in Moline, Illinois. https://bit.ly/2Hk9XnY
Veronica Rudychev (’10, Masters of Public Administration) joined the Victory Center of Vernon Hills, Illinois, as the senior living facility’s executive director. She was previously the executive director of Heartis Village North Shore assisted living in Glendale, Wisconsin. https://bit.ly/3am6cer
Joel Potter (’09, BA Communication) was promoted to assistant vice president – bank manager of Waukesha State Bank in February. He joined the organization in 2017 as a bank manager in Sussex, Wisconsin. https://bit.ly/39fXVIy College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 13
In the Media and Around the Community Margo Anderson (emerita History) described how delivering the U.S. Census has changed over the years in Kenosha News (https://bit.ly/399rL1a) and described some of its legalities for WiscNews.com (https://bit.ly/2He1SRM). On Milwaukee hailed Guardian Fine Art Services as a hidden gem in Milwaukee and gave a nod to the art storage facility’s registrar, Katie Steffan (’15, MA Public History). https://bit.ly/2GTmYoz There is no evidence that Women tend to vote for LCD-manufacturer Foxconn their preferred political party will deliver on the 13,000 rather than based on a jobs it promised to bring to candidate’s gender, Kathy Wisconsin in exchange for Dolan (Political Science) $4 billion in tax credits, Marc said in an Associated Press Levine (emeritus History) article printed in media told NBC News. https:// outlets around the nation. nbcnews.to/38c4QSA (https://bit.ly/2SmaD2M) She alsoplayed discussed theparty Women a huge history of how in shaping the women modernin beer politics have presented industry, and Jennifer Jordan themselves in some a (Sociology)publicly revealed of Politico article (https://politi.co/2v0kF0j ). 4, 2020 their stories on “The Feast” podcast for the Feb. show. https://apple.co/37rx3nz Gladys Mitchell-Walthour (African and African Diaspora Studies) moderated a panel and made a presentation at the 2020 California Brazilianist Conference at San Diego State University (Feb. 7-8). Mitchell-Walthour is the national co-coordinator of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil, which comprises 1,500 members. She discussed activities of the group and met with activists from the West Coast USNDB and black activists from Brazil. Urban Milwaukee cited Amanda Seligman’s (History) concerns about the availability of the archives of old Milwaukee newspapers, which intermittently is denied to consumers. https://bit.ly/37npjCI Badgers and coyotes may help each other hunt prey from time to time, but they’re not sharing their food, Emily Latch (Biological Sciences) noted in an Atlas Obscura article. https://bit.ly/2SHLC1Y William Holahan (emeritus Economics) suggested ways Alabama might improve its lagging mathematics education scores among elementary school students in an opinion piece published in the Montgomery Advertiser. https://bit.ly/39LgAMk
14 • IN FOCUS • March, 2020
Rising water levels in Lake Michigan are a sign of climate change that could impact weather patterns in Milwaukee, Paul Roebber (Atmospheric Science) told WUWM. https://bit.ly/2VAYZD9
Jane Gallop (Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) presented, “Sexuality, Disability, and Aging: Queer Temporalities of the Phallus” exploring how disability and aging undermine one’s sense of self at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. https://bit.ly/38FADvG
Fortune Magazine quoted Rebecca Neumann (Economics) in an article exploring the high cost of college health care. https://bit.ly/3cowbDz In a time of contentious political rhetoric, Katherine Wilson (’13, PhD English), the executive director of The Zeidler Group in Milwaukee, is helping people have respectful discussions, WUWM said. https://bit.ly/2VAqEDX
The Gazette XTra featured Kristin Peterson Kaszubowski (’12, BA Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies) with a Q&A article about her crossdisciplinary approach to filmmaking and other artistic endeavors. https://bit.ly/2Tck44V UW-Milwaukee could be a great driver for industry and innovation in Wisconsin if it were given adequate funding, Jeffrey Sommers (African and African Diaspora Studies) argued in The Cap Times. (https://bit.ly/38cyUxy) Sommers also gave an invited response to Yanis Varoufakis in Rigas Laiks, “A Fair Share for All,” in the February 2020 issue and appeared on a segment titled, “Putin’s Political Shakeup” for Milwaukee Public Television and UWM’s “International Focus” show. (https://youtu.be/5gKrAbaCCLI) Great Lakes Echo profiled graduate student Sue Borchardt’s (Geography) research into how irrigating farm fields masks the effects of climate change on groundwater. https://bit.ly/38jqpQI Thomas Holbrook (Political Science) discussed electoral math and strategy for Republicans and Democrats in Wisconsin in an article for Sinclair Broadcast Group that was published around the nation. https://bit.ly/2Trf2AM
Spotlight on: African and African Diaspora Studies On February 5, the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies hosted the first annual UW Black Studies Summit. This was the first workshop of UW Black Studies leaders who focus on Africa and the African Diaspora Studies. The workshop focused on the importance of Black Studies and collaborations between the campuses. Graduate students also participated. AADS also sponsored a panel, Blackness and Place, which included scholars from the UW System. Panelists included Dr. Alphonso Simpson, Associate Professor and Director of African American Studies at the University of WisconsinOshkosh; Mosi Ifatunji, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of WisconsinMadison; Dr. Frank King, assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Plateville; and Nikotris Perkins, doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Laurels and Accolades Kimberly Blaeser (English) and senior lecturer Peter Blewett (English) each had poems published in “Contours, A Literary Landscape,” an anthology of contemporary literary work published in 2020 by the Driftless Writing Center in Virocqua, Wisconsin. Blaeser’s work is titled, “Bird Effigy. Along the Mississippi backwaters,” and Blewett’s poem is called “The Albino.” César Ferreira (Spanish and Portuguese) received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Ricardo Palma.
Amanda Seligman (History) was selected as a finalist for the Arts and Humanities Faculty Mentor Award from the national Council on Undergraduate Research, in recognition of her leadership in developing exceptional humanities research opportunities for undergraduates via the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee project.
Amanda Seligman
Nigel Rothfels (History) is the co-principal investigator, with Matthew Chrulew (Curtin University) and Nelly Mäekivi (University of Tartu), on an AU$200,000, threeyear grant from the Australian Research Council for “Rethinking Zoo Biology: The Histories, Effects, and Futures of Captivity.”
College of Letters & Science • UW–Milwaukee • 15
Photo by Katie Turyna.
