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The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center recently announced the 2016 Levitt Summer Research Fellows. To enhance student research around issues of public affairs, the Levitt Center funds student-faculty research through its Levitt Research Fellows Program. The program is open to rising juniors and seniors who wish to spend the summer working in collaboration with a faculty member on an issue related to public affairs.

Justin Long ’16 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Thailand. Long, a linguistics interdisciplinary studies major, studied in Ecuador during his junior year.

In God's House: The Religious Landscape of Utica, NY, a documentary film by Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight, was screened on Feb. 22 at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa. While visiting the college, Knight also led classroom discussions about his larger project examining the sustainability of religious communities in Central New York.

Photographs from Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight’s “In God’s House” project are on display in exhibitions at the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh, N.C., and the Union Street Gallery in Chicago.

“Robert Knight: In God’s House,” a collection of photographs and video by Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight, is on display Feb. 24 through Sept. 13 at Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute (MWPAI) in Utica, N.Y. The exhibition focuses on the adaptation of religious spaces in the Utica area.

A documentary film titled “In God’s House: The Religious Landscape of Utica, NY,” had its first public screening in November at the American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego. Plate was on hand to present the film and answer questions.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Chaise LaDousa published an article, “Subject to Address in a Digital Literacy Initiative: Neoliberal Agency and the Promises and Predicaments of Participation,” in the current issue of the journal Signs and Society.

A recent video from Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight’s project In God's House is featured in GLOBALissues. CLIMATEmatters. SocialCHANGE at ArtRage in Syracuse, N.Y. The exhibition opens Saturday, Sept. 6, with a reception from 7-9 p.m., and continues through Oct. 18.

Out of Utica’s some 60,000 residents, as many as a quarter of them could be refugees, Shelly Callahan, the executive director for the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR), revealed in a recent New York Times article. The Center is a not-for-profit organization that has helped resettle thousands of immigrants from over 30 countries since its founding in 1979. Today, Utica is truly a mix of cultures, reflected in the more than 40 languages spoken by the 2,700 students at Utica’s Proctor High School.

Approaching 501 Park Street in Syracuse, a visitor would see what looks like a Catholic church. Though this site was once home to the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, the building is now being converted into a mosque. As neighborhood demographics change, the need for specific religious spaces tends to shift as well. This summer, three students are working on a Levitt Group Research Project, “Sacred Spaces in Transition.”