Social Sciences: Department News

Marywood students toured Waymart prison in November of 2021. It was the first tour Waymart granted to the public since the start of the COVID pandemic. Waymart prison is unique in that it also serves as a mental health facility for the criminally insane. Students heard from several Waymart staff members on issues related to rehabilitation, vocational programs, mental health services, inmate violence, security, and inmate release from prison. The tour was an excellent learning experience for the students.     

Adam Shprintzen contributed an essay to the edited collection, Acquired Tastes: Stories on the Origins of Modern Food released by MIT Press in August. The collection was praised by New Yorker food writer Helen Rosner who proclaimed that, "The essays in this excellent, rigorous collection are a pointed reminder that the past is very much the present, and the future, too." Adam also participated in a book launch event via Zoom hosted by Virginia Tech University's Food Studies program.

Dr. Shprintzen also was a virtual keynote speaker at University of California-Santa Barbara's "Vegan Epiphanies" conference held in September.

Marywood's Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center (TRHT) and the Department of Social Sciences hosted a lecture on September 16, 2021 by Dr. Charles Venator-Santiago, Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut. His talk discussed the doctrine of territorial incorporation, the tradition of territorial expansionism that has enabled the U.S. to annex, govern and ascribe an unincorporated status to certain territories. He focused on this doctrine as it relates to Puerto Rico, examining how birth in Puerto Rico is tantamount to birth in the United States even though the Federal government continues to rule the Puerto Rican islands as a foreign locality for constitutional purposes.

Congratulations are in order to May 2021 graduates, Zach Penzone, Deanna Charpentier, and Tyler Webb for admittance into law school at Widener University and UMass School of Law at Dartmouth respectively, and the University at Buffalo Master's program in History. Great work and congratulations on your new adventures!