Heather Keaney (photo) presented a paper on "Rebels and Revolutionaries in medieval and modern Egypt" at the bi-annual Conference on Faith and History Conference at Gordon College in early October. Randy VanderMey, Jim Taylor, Savannah Kelly and Tatiana Nazarenko particiapated in the two-day Performance Task Academy Workshop in San Francisco. Visiting professor Michael Graves contributed “The British Quaker Sermon, 1689-1901” to the Oxford Handbook of the Modern British Sermon, 1688-1901, published by Oxford University Press in 2012.Sparkman, Iba and Farhadian
Amanda Sparkman has co-written a paper, “Pack Social Dynamics and Inbreeding Avoidance in the Cooperatively Breeding Red Wolf,” for the journal Behavioral Ecology. Wayne Iba spoke at the meeting of the Southern California chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation in October. His talk was entitled “All Technology is Value-Neutral but Not Always Beneficial.” Charles Farhadian (photo) led a Calvin College Summer Seminar on Globalization and Worship, with participants from Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
Michelle Hughes (photo) and the Westmont Education Department hosted the 3rd Annual Educator Connections gathering for K-12 teachers in September. The event served as an opportunity for Santa Barbara educators to collectively gather, be encouraged and pray for the school year. Mary Collier was the honoree and speaker at the October 4 meeting of the Los Angeles–Pasadena–Santa Barbara society of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in California. The topic of her talk was "Chivalric Orders of France: Pre- and Post-Revolution."
On the heels of directing Henry VI, Part 3 at Shakspeare's Globe, John Blondell (photo) as been invited to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream for the National Theatre of Albania in Tirana, the first time the play will be staged in the Albanian language. In addition, John has just been named co-artistic director of the Bitola International Shakespeare Festival in Bitola, Macedonia. Scott Anderson has been illustrating while on sabbatical, completing a cover for Seattle Weekly's "Fall Arts" issue and a spot illustration for a financial column for the Wall Street Journal (on the topic of "Financial Housekeeping").
Jeff Schloss has written two book chapters: “Hovering Over Waters: God’s Spirit and the Ordering of Creation,” for In the Spirit of Creation and New Creation (Eerdmans); and “Theism and Evolution” for Routledge Companion to Theism (Taylor & Francis). His recent talks include: “Moral Beliefs: What Biology Does, Doesn’t Yet, and Can’t Ever Answer” at Purdue University; “Neither Angel Nor Brute: Biology and the Human Spirit” at the University of Heidelberg; “Divine Handiwork: Faith as Conclusion from or Lens to See God’s Design in Nature” at Wheaton College; and “Evolutionary Accounts of Morality: Explaining the Normal but Not the Normative” at the International School of Ethology and the Ettore Majorana Center for Science and Culture in Eric, Sicily.