SUCO professor honored with prize

Staff Report

November 07, 2008 04:00 am

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Brian Lowe, assistant professor of sociology at the State University College at Oneonta, has been awarded the 2008 Richard Siegfried Junior Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence.

The Siegfried Prize, which is awarded annually, recognizes a nontenured SUCO faculty member for outstanding academic achievement outside the classroom.

Lowe will deliver the 14th annual Richard Siegfried Lecture, an address titled "Animal Advocacy Within the Spectacular: Promoting Compassion and Capturing the Moral Imagination in Spectacular Times." His lecture will be in the Craven Lounge of the Morris Conference Center at 7 p.m. Nov. 20. Admission is free, and members of the community are invited.

Lowe will explore how advocacy groups use visual media to transform the public's moral imagination, according to a media release. He argues that the animal-rights movement gained public attention through compelling use of visual materials in an attempt to alter public perception. He will explore how a movement rooted in academic philosophy can successfully make claims and attempt to influence public opinion in an age of "images and spectacles," the college release said.

Lowe is the author of the 2006 book "Emerging Moral Vocabularies: The Creation and Establishment of New Forms of Moral and Ethical Meanings." He is also the elected chairman of the Animals and Society Section of the American Sociological Association.

Lowe joined the SUCO faculty in 2003. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Virginia.

The Siegfried Prize is funded by gifts from alumni to the Alumni Annual Fund and by a gift from Alice Siegfried in memory of her husband, theater professor Richard K. Siegfried, who taught at the college from 1958 to 1995.