CAS Department Updates February 2015

CAS Dean’s Office

The following CAS professors’ nominations to bring a notable lecturer to campus as part of the Burack Distinguished Lecture Series for spring and fall 2015 were all selected. 

Art and Art History

The photographer Bill Jacobson will present a talk “Into the Loving Nowhere: Photographs, 1989 Till Now” on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 5:30 p.m. in Williams Hall, room 301, at the University of Vermont. The talk is sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and supported by the Mollie Ruprecht Fund for Visual Arts.

Bill Jacobson has been making photographs for nearly forty years.  Prior to moving to New York in 1982, he received a BA from Brown University (1977) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1981). Jacobson has exhibited widely in the US and abroad, and is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and many others.  Radius Books in Santa Fe is about to go to press with a new book of his work titled Place (Series), which is due out this summer. An overview of Jacobson’s photographs since 1975 can be found at billjacobsonstudio.com.

English

Senior Lecturer Angela Patten has been invited to give a reading and craft talk on creative nonfiction at the Stonecoast MFA program in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland in July.

Associate Professor Deb Ellis was recently invited to present her nearly completed film PEACE HAS NO BORDERS, to the American Documentary Film Fund Pitch Session  http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/#!amdocs-film-fund/c2360  in Palm Springs, CA. The Pitch Session is part of the American Documentary Film Festival (AmDocs). Selection for a pitch session provides an opportunity for a small number of selected filmmakers to present their work to a panel of film industry professionals for funding consideration up to $50,000. In 2013 AmDocs was named one  of the world’s Five Coolest Documentary Film Festivals and one of the world’s Top 25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee by MovieMaker magazine.

Professor Greg Bottoms’ most recent book Pitiful Criminals was longlisted for the Story Prize: http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-long-list-other-outstanding-2014.html. Greg is also in a new anthology published this month by Trinity University Press, entitled Words Without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence, and Incarceration. The anthology benefits a program of the same name that promotes the teaching of creative writing in prisons and juvenile detention centers as a way toward self-awareness, empathy, and understanding. Other contributors include Dorothy Allison, Raymond Carver, Mark Doty, Terrence Hayes, Toi Derricotte, Tim O'Brien, John Edgar Wideman, Eve Ensler, and Derek Walcott.

Professor Major Jackson is the winner of a $25,000 NEA grant, one of only five recipients in Vermont. His grant is a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.  Read more about the grants here.

Lecturer Stephen Cramer was recently appointed as Assistant Poetry Editor at Green Mountains Review.

Associate Professor Helen Scott has been commissioned to write a biography of Rosa Luxemburg for Pluto Press and she has been added to the editorial team of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg project, published by Verso Books.

The department has updated its Events page. To find out more about future events, please bookmark this link.

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

The Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program will hold a multidisciplinary conference titled “Gender and Precarity: The Consequences of Economic and Climate Instability” at UVM on April 16, 2015. The purpose of the conference is to honor the legacy and memory of Dr. Joan Smith, former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and first director of the Women’s Studies Program at UVM.  Joan was a transformative academic leader who died in office ten years ago this academic year. 

The organizing committee consists of UVM faculty of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, Economics department, and Sociology department, as well as a Middlebury College colleague who worked closely with Joan on several research projects. The papers will explore gender and precarity from multiple disciplinary perspectives, advancing an understanding of the social nexus of gender, class, and economic inequality that was so central to Joan’s work.

Geography

Faculty publications:

Professor Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux was an invited speaker and participant at the invitation-only, National Science Foundation-sponsored Developing Sustainable Networks of Women Scientists for Addressing Issues of Disasters Related to Weather and Changing Climate, held in Montego Bay, Jamaica this past October. Additional speaking engagements include:

German and Russian

Wolfgang Mieder"class="imageleftProfessor Wolfgang Mieder received an honorary doctorate degree from the famous University of Athens on Dec. 16 in recognition of his lifelong work in international folkloristics and paremiology (proverb studies). There was a special ceremony with the president of the university, the dean, and various professors, students, and guests. After three speeches about his life's work, Professor Mieder gave a twenty-minute address. He was then "dressed" in the regalia of the University of Athens and received the special document of my doctor honoris causa. The day ended with a celebratory dinner.

The other news is Professor Mieder’s new book entitled “Behold the Proverbs of a People”: Proverbial Wisdom in Culture, Literature, and Politics (University Press of Mississippi, 2014, 489 pp.).  The first section of the book focuses on the field of paremiology (proverb studies) in general, the spread of Anglo-American proverbs in Europe, and the phenomenon of modern proverbs. The second section analyzes the use of proverbs in the world of politics, including chapters on Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, proverbial wisdom of war and peace, and the proverbial politics and the ethics of place. The third section concentrates on the use of proverbs in literature, notably by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche. The final section presents cultural studies of the origin, history, dissemination, use, function, and meaning of specific proverbs and proverbial expressions.

German Professor Dennis Mahoney was recently honored on his sixty-fifth birthday with the publication of the Festschrift From Goethe to Novalis:  Studies in Classicism and Romanticism.  The Festschrift is somewhat different because instead of presenting essays from various authors, it collects twenty-one of Mahoney’s most important English-language publications on German Classicism and Romanticism published over the past thirty years.  The Festschrift, edited by Professor Wolfgang Mieder and published by Peter Lang Publishing, captures Mahoney’s lifelong occupation with this rich period of German cultural, intellectual, and literary life.

History 

Professor Steve Zdatny has been awarded a Fulbright Research fellowship to pursue research for his new book project on “A History of Hygiene in France, 1850-1975.” During the tenure of this award he will be in residence at the Center for Historical Research in Paris, France.

Department chair Paul Deslandes is in his second year serving as chief reader for the Advanced Placement European History Program.  In this capacity, he helps to oversee exam development and is responsible for supervising and managing the annual reading in Kansas City, MO, where nearly 500 high school teachers and college professors gather to score 120,000 European history examinations (360,000 essays) over the span of one week in June. He also serves as the executive secretary for the North American Conference on British Studies.

Music

Wolfgang Mieder"class="imageleft Concert pianist Paul Orgel will perform a Faculty Piano Recital on SUNDAY, MARCH 1, at 3:00 PM at the UVM RECITAL HALL, University of Vermont, Redstone Campus, Burlington, VT.  802-656-7776. Admission is free and open to the public. Orgel’s recital celebrates his sixtieth birthday, fifteen years of teaching on UVM’s Music Faculty, and the release of his new solo CD “Piano Works of Josef Suk, Ernest Chausson, and Max Reger” on the MSR label, which will be on sale at the concert for $15.00.

Born in New York City, Orgel has concertized throughout the United States, China, and Eastern Europe as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. Critics have praised his playing for its “subtlety and attention to nuance” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “rare pathos” (New York Times), “brilliant technique, sense of humor and fantasy” (Bridgeport Post), “warmth and beauty of sound” (Barre-Montpelier Times Argus), and “power and grace” (Vermont Times).    Orgel is the director of the Humanities Program Concert Series at Saint Michael’s College, a member of the music faculty at the University of Vermont, and a reviewer for Fanfare Magazine.  http://www.paulorgel.com

The department has updated its Events page. To find out more about future events, please bookmark this link.

Political Science 

Faculty Publications in 2014:

Alumnus Elliott A. Brown ‘59 continues to be excited about the possibilities afforded by a UVM education. The CAS alum is especially proud of his degree in political science, so much so that he has created the first Green and Gold professorship in that department—the Elliott A. Brown Green and Gold Professor of Law, Politics, and Political Behavior. Read the profile: 
http://alumni.uvm.edu/foundation/celebrate/stories/brown.php

Romance Languages and Linguistics

On Thursday, February 12, 2015, faculty from the College addressed students and members of the outside community on the subject of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris with a specific focus on free speech rights.  The event was entitled "Free Speech Rights: France as a Case in Point." It was sponsored by the Global Village, and there was a large turnout—roughly 70 people. Associate Professor Meaghan Emery and Assistant Professor Charles-Louis Morand-Metivier from Romance Languages and Linguistics, and Assistant Professor Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst from the Religion department spoke on the topic of free speech from various perspectives, with a focus on the events in France.  Emery gave historical background on the cultural traditions and laws of France; Morand-Metivier offered analysis on the emotional reaction of the French and spoke personally about their attachment to satire; and Morgenstein-Fuerst addressed the various strands of Islam and various viewpoints and personal reflections on depictions of the Prophet Muhammed as well as offered insight into the reaction of France's young Muslim population, who do not identify with more mainstream satirical treatments of religion.  The goal of the evening was community outreach and education, and questions following the presentations reflected a deep desire to understand more about French law and about the Koran.

Spanish Professor Tina Escaja’s poetry was translated into three languages in her new book Respiración mecánica & VeloCity:  Respiració mecànica; Respiración mecánica; Hats hartze mekanikoa (Poetry).  With translations of her poems by Maria Cinta Montagut (Catalan), Mariña Pérez (Galician) and Itxaro Borda (Basque) and a prologue by Marta Segarra, the book was published in 2014 (Barcelona: Icaria, 2014).  During the fall, she presented the book in the following venues: Gabriela Mistral Museum, Vicuña, Chile, on October 18th; Flynndog Gallery, Burlington, VT, on November 1st; and Coloquio Internacional de Latino Artists Round Table (LART), New York, NY, on October 25th.

Another book of poetry by Professor Escaja, Caída Libre/Free Fall, was recently published in January with an English translation by Mark Eisner. This book is the bilingual version of the award-winning book Caída Libre which was published in the year 2004. Caída Libre won the International Poetry Prize "Dulce María Loynaz" in 2003. The current edition has a prologue by renowned Spanish poet María Victoria Atencia and three-time Nobel Prize-nominated Lee Kuei-shien.