Social Sciences Research Seminars
Time: 12:15–1:30 PM
Location: Powdermaker Hall, Room 333
The traditional pizza from the one and only Gino’s of Kissena will be served.
🔍 Upcoming Schedule: Fall 2025
Wednesday, December 10th, 2025
Speaker: Dr. Karen Strassler (Anthropology Department)
Topic: To Be Determined
Monday, December 1st, 2025
Speaker: Dr. Anna Marie Bounds (Sociology Department)
Topic: To be Determined
Monday, November 10th, 2025
Speaker: Peter Liberman (QC Political Science)
Topic: “Improving Analytical Reading Skills with Argument Map Puzzles”
Most college students make limited gains in their ability to understand and evaluate arguments, despite the importance of this ability to academic success, careers, democratic citizenship, and personal decisions. A pre-test/posttest quasi-experiment conducted at Queens College in Fall 2024 showed that argument map puzzles (AMPs)—diagramming arguments with automated assessment and feedback—can help solve this problem. Students assigned to do AMPs before every class individually and during class in pairs improved their analytical reading ability substantially more (.64 SD) than did those taking a lecture-based course. Their one-semester improvement was greater and more equitably distributed than the critical thinking gains that students typically achieve over entire college careers. Moreover, the time students spent on the AMPs strongly predicted their gains, suggesting that the gains were due to the AMPs rather than to differences between the courses’ readings, topics, lectures, assessments, and instructors.
Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
Speaker: Professor Natanya Duncan (QC History, Director of Africana Studies Program)
Topic: “I am White in Color Only”/True Ally: Ethel Trew Dunlap and the Poets of the Negro World
In 1919, while visiting a Baptist church in Chicago, Missouri born Ethel Trew Dunlap decided to join the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the largest Black self-help organization of the 20th century. Dunlap, a white woman, believed the UNIA was the right place to use her talents as a poet. Her nearly one hundred poetic contributions to the Negro World newspaper included facilitating international multi-lingual dialogues amongst poets and writers on self-care, Black nation building, and calling for an end to race and gender prejudice.
Dunlap was heralded as “Afric’s fair daughter” and “Star of the first magnitude” who had “driven solitude from the Negro’s night.” This praise led to a historical misconception. Scholars mistakenly believed that Dunlap had at least one Black parent. For her part, Dunlap consistently declared in her work “I Am White in Color Only” and lamented being “The White Outcast.” It appeared that her allyship had multiple costs, including her erasure from scholarship on the UNIA, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Long Freedom Struggle.
This work-in-progress explores Ethel Trew Dunlap’s story as a model of allyship and activism that expands our understanding of the first quarter of the 20th century. Her life’s work also presents insights on practical strategies for our troubling times.
