For the Record, Jan. 13, 2023

For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications and appointments include the following:

Presentations

On Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023, Scott Abbott, policy scientist at the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA) and the assistant director of the Delaware Center for Civics Education, moderated a panel at the annual conference for the American Historical Association in Philadelphia. The panel focused on “The Ethics of Teaching History in Today’s K–12 Classrooms” and was presented by the National Humanities Center. Abbott led a panel discussion with co-panelists Tyrone Shaw (McKinley Technology High School, Washington, D.C.), Elizabeth Mulcahy (Albemarle County Schools, Virginia), Adam Davis (School District of Philadelphia) and Mike Williams (National Humanities Center, North Carolina). These secondary school teachers and school administrators shared the challenges they experience teaching history in K-12 classrooms today given the current political climate and discussed the question, “In this current polarized and politicized climate, how can history teachers balance their commitment to using history to make sense of our present reality with importance of preserving the ways in which the past was radically and qualitatively different?” IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Video recordings are now available of two public lectures about the British artist and author Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) that were delivered on Oct. 7, 2022, by Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and professor of humanities, and by Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press. They can be viewed online here. Stetz’s talk, “In Bed with Beardsley,” considers the importance of images of beds and bedrooms in Aubrey Beardsley’s art and writing, linking these not only with Beardsley’s forward-looking ideas about sexuality, but with his medical history and early death. Samuels Lasner’s talk, “Beardsleyophily,” surveys the long and continuing story of why Beardsley has been the subject of obsessive interest on the part of book and art collectors while focusing, too, on how Samuels Lasner himself has acquired important examples of Beardsley’s work. Both lectures were held in conjunction with the exhibition Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young at the Grolier Club in New York City (Sept. 8–Nov. 12, 2022), which was curated by Stetz and Samuels Lasner and displayed 69 items, all of them drawn from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, which is part of the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press. (The published catalogue of the exhibition, written by Margaret Stetz, is available from the University of Chicago Press.) On Oct. 7, 2022, Stetz and Samuels Lasner gave an afternoon tour of the exhibition to a group of visitors from the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. In addition, Samuels Lasner conducted tours of the exhibition for the public on Oct. 12 and on Nov. 9, as well as a private tour on Oct. 28 to a group from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. He also delivered a virtual version of his lecture on “Beardsleyophily” to the Philobiblon Club, which is based in Philadelphia. Before the exhibition closed, it received a series of highly positive reviews in numerous print and online publications, including the New Yorker magazine, Artnet News and Artforum.

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, the annual Delaware Winter Freight Meeting took place at Chesapeake Utilities in Dover, Delaware, presented by the Delmarva Freight Working Group, which includes UD’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA), as well as the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), Dover/Kent County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), Salisbury/Wicomico MPO and WILMAPCO. Troy Mix, policy scientist and associate director of IPA, moderated and helped to organize the gathering. Presenters included Jared Shelton of Chesapeake Utilities, Dan Rattay of CBRE, Linda Parkowski of Kent Economic Partnership, Marilyn Smith of Dover/Kent County MPO, Mark Eastburn of DelDOT, Ian Ramsey of Dot Foods and Richard Hernandez of Perdue Farms. This annual meeting brought together regional freight, goods movement and economic development stakeholders to enhance awareness of major freight planning programs and initiatives, while also sharing information on significant freight and goods movement trends and encouraging public-private partnership development. IPA is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Publications