Georgia Southern History Department receives Georgia honors
Georgia Southern University History Department has created two projects related to the local history of Savannah. These projects are being honored by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council and the USG Chancellor’s Office.
History professor Robert Batchelor, Ph.D., alongside local authors Susan Earl and Tom Kohler, have received the 2019 Award for Excellence in Local History Advocacy for the “Waddie Welcome Archive — Savannah Signs Project.”
The archive contains more than 700 pictures of hand-painted African American signs from Savannah dating from the 1970s to the present time. Georgia Southern special collection librarian Autumn Johnson and Sulfur Studios photographer Emily Earl helped to enable these recent public exhibitions.
Retired professor of history John Duncan, Ph.D., will also receive an award for his book, The Showy Town of Savannah: The Story of the Architect William Jay.
Georgia Southern senior art exhibition on Armstrong Campus runs through Oct. 25, reception closing night
“Collective Illusions,” a senior art exhibition in Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong Campus Fine Arts Gallery that features the work of Kelsey Jacobs, Christina Davis and Samuel Colon, is currently on display and will run through Oct. 25. On closing night, there will be a reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. with artist talks at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public and will serve food and refreshments.
Georgia Southern education professor, Dalai Lama join for first international Human Education in the Third Millennium project in India
College of Education Professor John A. Weaver, Ph.D., recently joined the Dalai Lama and 14 other leading scholars from 10 countries for the first Round Table Conference of the Human Education in the Third Millennium project. The conference for the project, which addresses the obstacles of educational equality on a world level and proposes a renewal of educational values utilizing different traditions from across the world, was hosted in the residence of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. The Dalai Lama served as the honorary keynote speaker.
Student-directed black box show, ‘No Exit,’ opens on Georgia Southern Armstrong Campus on Oct. 3
Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus’ student-run theater group, The Masquers, will present “No Exit,” its first black box show of the season. The show will run Oct. 3 through Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 6 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $12 for general admission and discounts are available for military, seniors and children. Georgia Southern students, faculty and staff attend for free.
Georgia Southern History Department displays traditional style birch-bark canoe
Georgia Southern University’s History Department has a traditional style birch-bark canoe on display on the Armstrong Campus through Spring 2020 in Hawes Hall. The canoe, named Muskeego, was built in 1998 and has been used to travel between Minnesota and Canada the same way that Ojibwa Natives have done for hundreds of years. After a long career of being used, it was placed on display in Ely, Minn.
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA) in Savannah acquired Muskeego as part of its small boat collection. MUA Board member and Assistant Professor of History Kurt Knoerl, Ph.D., has gained access to use the canoe at Georgia Southern. This will provide students and the public an opportunity to see an artifact that played an important role in North American history.
“The collection is being used to educate Georgia Southern students about maritime history in the United States and the world,” said Knoerl. “Our position here in Savannah, as a port city, makes Georgia Southern the perfect place to teach maritime history, archeology and material culture.”
Muskeego is being used this semester in Knoerl’s class, Introduction to United States History, to teach about Native American history as well as the fur trade. Students in the graduate program in public history will also have the opportunity to benefit from studying small boat documentation and preservation.
Georgia Southern faculty edits essays challenging eighteenth century culture
Jeffrey D. Burson, Ph.D., associate professor of French history, co-edited The Skeptical Enlightenment: Doubt and Certainty in the Age of Reason, a recently published collection of essays that examines the process by which skepticism was challenged and gradually tamed to bring about an anxious confidence in the powers of human understanding. This work shows how doubt and anxiety about the limits of human understanding were at the very heart of the early Enlightenment.
Burson is the author of The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth-Century France and the Culture of Enlightening and the Entangled Life of Abbé Claude Yvon in addition to numerous articles and chapters in edited collections of essays. He is also the co-editor of Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History and of The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences.
Georgia Southern biology graduate students awarded sea grants for research
Two graduate students from Georgia Southern University’s Department of Biology have been awarded major grants for their research in marine biology.
Georgia Southern professor teams up to lead workshop on plastic pollution in Vietnam
Georgia Southern University Professor of Biology Lissa Leege, Ph.D., was part of a team that recently led a workshop in Vietnam on the negative effects plastic pollution has on the ocean. Leege said she expects the workshop will indirectly reach the 2,300 high school teachers and 40,000 high school students of the Binh Dinh Province through the 100 educators who attended.
“It was a privilege to be a part of this effort, and I am hopeful that this will be the start of a broader, country-wide initiative,” she said. “The conference highlighted the global nature of the plastic problem. Because Western nations often export plastic recycling to Southeastern Asian nations, the plastic that we use here often ends up becoming their problem. But that comes back to us in contaminated seafood and unhealthy marine ecosystems.”
Numerous high level government officials from Vietnam attended the workshop in a show of support for the conference. Vietnam is the fourth-largest source of plastic waste discharge into the oceans, which affects the province of Binh Dinh’s primarily fishing-based economy.
The workshop was a part of a National Geographic Society Education Grant focused on educating high school teachers about reducing plastic pollution in the ocean. Leege partnered with faculty from Loyola University Chicago, Baylor University and University of California, Riverside during the workshop.
Georgia Southern professors mentor students at Boys and Girls Club of Statesboro, enhance STEM literacy with weeklong study
College of Education faculty members Shelli Casler-Failing, Ph.D., and Alma Stevenson, Ph.D., worked with students at the Boys and Girls Club of Statesboro this summer to enhance their STEM literacy skills.
Georgia Southern’s annual economic impact continues to grow, topping more than $1 billion
A new report shows Georgia Southern University has increased its annual economic impact of more than $1 billion on the region it serves. The report, released by the University System of Georgia, says Georgia Southern is a significant part of the system’s $17.7 billion economic impact on the state of Georgia in FY 2018.