Two professors in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas A&M University will present their research spanning social sciences and the humanities next month as part of the Fallon-Marshall Lecture Series.
The lecture, hosted annually by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, provides an opportunity for the college to share significant scholarship happening within its many disciplines, including English and history in a first-ever double feature on tap for 2023.
On Wednesday, April 5, at 3 p.m., Joshua DiCaglio, an assistant professor in the Department of English, will examine scientific rhetoric in his presentation, titled “Science has Transformed you: Scale Between Science and the Humanities.”
One week later on Wednesday, April 12, at 3 p.m., Brian Rouleau, an associate professor in the Department of History, will connect his extensive knowledge about the 19th century United States with comic book panels and popular culture in presenting “Comic Book Panels and the 38th Parallel: The Korean War in American Popular Culture.”
Registration is required for both events, which will be held in Room 2406-B of the Memorial Student Center on the Texas A&M campus.
DiCaglio joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2016 after earning his Ph.D. in English from Pennsylvania State University that same year. His research focuses on rhetoric, science and mysticism as intersecting modes of discourse and “the challenge of orienting ourselves to scales that exceed typical human experience.” DiCaglio writes and teaches about multiple subjects, including ecocriticism and environmental rhetoric, science and technology studies, science fiction, and rhetorical history and theory. He has published a number of works, most notably his 2021 monograph Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry, and is currently in the process of publishing a book about the challenge of speaking about ecological relations, lithium and scale. A 2019-2020 Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar, DiCaglio also has been recognized with the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts’ 2020 Schachterle Essay Prize celebrating the best new essay on literature and science written by a nontenured scholar.
Rouleau has been a member of the Texas A&M faculty since 2010, the same year he received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research focuses on the history of childhood and American foreign relations. To date, he has published two books. The first, Empire’s Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century, dissects the role that sailors had in the early years of the United States, while the second, Empire’s Nursery: Children’s Literature and the Origins of the American Century, focuses on the impact that comic and pulp fiction books have on children. A member of the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians along with a number of other professional organizations, Rouleau has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Western History Association’s 2021 Oscar O. Winther Award, a 2018 Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement College-Level Award in Teaching, the Society for the History of Children and Youth’s 2017 Fass-Sandin Article Prize, the North American Society for Oceanic History’s John Lyman Book Award and the Society for the Historians of the Early American Republic’s James Broussard Best First Book Prize.
Register for DiCaglio’s lecture and Rouleau’s lecture or learn more about the Fallon-Marshall Lecture Series.