For the Record, Nov. 7, 2025

For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications and memorials include the following:

Presentations

On Nov. 5, 2025, Sheng Lu, professor and graduate director of Fashion and Apparel Studies, presented at the 2025 Apparel Importers Trade and Transportation Conference co-hosted by the United States Fashion Industry Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. In his presentation titled "Tariffs and U.S. Apparel Sourcing Trends: Company & Product-level Insights," Lu shared his latest research analyzing the retail pricing and product assortment changes in the U.S. retail market resulting from tariff hikes and policy uncertainty in 2025.

Publications

Alexander Selimov, Elias Ahuja Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has published "Cultural Mediation and Poetry Translation: A Comparative Study of Human and AI Translations" in MIFLC Review, a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal, vol. 24, 2025, pp. 146-163. Drawing on André Lefevere's influential concept of translation as "rewriting," Selimov's four case studies feature translations between Spanish, Portuguese, English and Russian. The comparison of human and AI translations makes this research particularly timely. Selimov demonstrates how linguistic and cultural negotiations at the heart of poetry translation can benefit from AI's semantic fidelity while remaining a distinctly human artistic endeavor.

Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, is the author of a new article that has just been published in The Henry James Review, a Johns Hopkins University Press journal (Volume 46, No. 3, Fall 2025). Titled "Henry James in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection," it offers an overview and a checklist of some of the important James-related holdings acquired by Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, and now accessible through the University of Delaware Library. The article also reproduces the text of a four-page-long unpublished letter from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection at UD about The Spoils of Poynton, one that Henry James sent in 1897 to the British "New Woman" poet, Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860-1911), in gratitude for her praise of the novel.

Alisa V. Moldavanova, associate professor and director of the Master of Public Administration program in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, and a senior faculty fellow at the Institute for Public Administration, recently coauthored the journal article "What Do We Know About Asian Nonprofit Research?" A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis of 60 Years of Progress and Regional Variations. Coauthors included Tamaki Onishi, Helen K. Liu and Naoto Yamauchi. Published in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ), this article aimed to facilitate the future development of theory and empirical research on Asian nonprofits by examining the accumulated knowledge from 60 years of scholarly research on nonprofits across Central, East, South, Southeast and West Asia. The findings of this research suggest both the advances and challenges associated with future Asia-focused nonprofit research, with a particular emphasis on the importance of conducting comparative studies. It also discusses directions to advance Asian nonprofit research and implications for general nonprofit research.

Annie Johnson, associate university librarian for research, teaching and technology, is the coauthor with Allegra Swift of the article, "Scholarly Communication Work: On the Ground Perspectives," published in the November issue of College and Research Libraries.

Martha Narvaez, associate director of the Water Resources Center (UDWRC), recently published a report titled "City of Wilmington Green Jobs Program Impact Study," a study examining the city's Green Jobs Program - a six-week employment program for local youth. This impact study presents key findings from an evaluation of the program from 2011 to 2023, providing program hosts, alumni and interested stakeholders with the program's history, statistics and a summary of survey results. For over 12 years, the program has provided students residing in Wilmington with hands-on outdoor environmental work, career exploration and exposure to environmental issues, serving as an instrumental stepping stone in their professional, social and educational development. UDWRC led this project in coordination with the city of Wilmington Department of Parks and Recreation. The research team gathered and compiled program data, identified similar national and local programs, established survey instruments, organized survey administration, analyzed survey feedback and summarized findings. The University's Community Engagement Initiative's Wilmington Partnership Mini-Grants funded this report. Read the report here to learn more about the Green Jobs Program. UDWRC is housed within the Institute for Public Administration (IPA), a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

In Memoriam

Ann E. Gibson, professor emerita and former chairperson of the Department of Art History, died Oct, 9, 2025. She was a recognized scholar in the field of contemporary art.

Robert Johnston Jr., assistant manager of the Graphic Communications Center, now University Printing, died Aug. 7, 2025. He retired in 2013 after 26 years at UD.

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