Month: April 2026

John E. Davidson: Film, History, and Memory in Post-War Germany

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John E. Davidson, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature and Founding Director of OSU’s Film Studies program, discusses film as a field of study and its power to shape social memory. Davidson outlines recent research on the postwar “disappearance of race” in Germany and the work of Dadaist Hans Arp and his contemporaries. He also talks about his role as Faculty Athletics Representative, which he’s held since 2015, advising on academic issues, compliance, and student-athlete wellbeing, offering views on NIL and skepticism about a proposed “sports” major.

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Felecia Ross on the History and Importance of the Black Press

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Felecia Ross, Associate Professor in the School of Communication, discusses her research and writing on the history and influence of the Black press. She describes her field research contributions to the PBS documentary Bombshell, particularly journalist Charles Loeb and his reporting on the truth about radiation casualties in Hiroshima. Ross also describes other projects, including one on Booker T. Washington’s influence on the Black press and the remembrance of the Reconstruction Era and the Civil War.

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Nima Dahir: How Race and Immigration Shape Neighborhoods and Lives

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Nima Dahir, Assistant Professor and Provost’s Fellow in the Department of Sociology, discusses her research in urban sociology and the intersections of race, ethnicity, and immigration. She talks about a current project on the historic presence of Black immigrants in cities, including New York’s Harlem neighborhood and Columbus, and their portrayal in both media and government documents. She also discusses other projects she has worked on, namely “Re-learning to be a woman: virtual space and post-migration womanhood in the Somali diaspora”, where she used a public phone line to further understand how Somali Women “learn and practice the new identity of ‘immigrant woman’”.

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Agus Munoz-Garcia: From Cockroaches to Cancer Research

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Agus Munoz-Garcia, Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State Mansfield Campus, explains his research in physiological ecology, including studies on resource allocation (how animals distribute limited nutrients among different biological functions) using a unique cockroach species that he raises in the lab. He also discusses his current research project with fellow Ohio State Professor Karl Obrietan in the Neuroscience Department, where they are investigating the possible applications of controlling regulatory proteins in the treatment of cancer.

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John Hunter: Paleontology, Evolution, and Prehistoric Teeth

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John Hunter, Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State Newark campus, discusses his research in the evolution, paleoecology, and biogeography of mammals and dinosaurs. He talks about his recently published research on duck-billed dinosaurs, where he studied roughly 75 to 80 million year old fossils found in Montana. Hunter also explains his focus on teeth within his research, elaborating on the unique and beneficial properties of teeth to paleontologists and what they can show us about how different animals lived and evolved.

John Hunter holding tooth rows of duckbill dinosaurs: (1) Adult, (2) nestling, and (3) hatchling. Photo Credit: Karen Goodell

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