For the first time, the Anthropology Department hosted the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory (NCAAE) on October 18th and 19th, 2014. The organizers were Assistant Professor Parker VanValkenburgh and Department Chair Deborah Blom. There were more than 80 scholars from across the country (and even from Peru) in attendance. For additional information, here is a link to the two-day program: http://www.uvm.edu/~anthro/NCAAE/program.php
Professor Dwight Matthews was appointed as the John N. Pomeroy Professor of Chemistry, a named chair that has been in existence at UVM since 1878. Prof. William Geiger had held the Pomeroy Professorship from 1997 through 2011 until he became an emeritus professor. In 2014 Dean Antonio Cepeda-Benito solicited nominations for the Pomeroy Professorship and formed a selection committee of distinguished professors to recommend the next Pomeroy Professor. Prof. Matthews was selected and the appointment was approved in September 2014 by the Provost.
Professor Chris Landry was inducted into the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering (VASE) on October 15. VASE was established with three purposes: (1) to recognize outstanding achievement and contributions in the broadly defined areas of science and/or engineering; (2) to foster a deeper understanding and promote discourse on scientific and technical matters among the citizens of the State of Vermont; and (3) to provide expert and impartial technical advice to the people and the government of the State of Vermont.
Alumnus Christopher Waldo, a native of Moretown, Vermont, graduated magna cum laude from UVM in 2011 with a double major in Greek and Latin. He was very active in student and community life during his time at UVM, playing saxophone in the university jazz ensemble, volunteering at Hope Works, and serving as three-term president of the Goodrich Classical Club. Since 2012, he has been enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.A. from UC Berkeley in the spring of 2014, and intends to write a dissertation on generic interplay in the victory odes of the poet Pindar.
UVM Marsh Professor Alison Bechdel, whose nomination was led by Professors Dan Fogel and Val Rohy, won a MacArthur “genius” grant in September, bringing great publicity for the university.
Forthcoming books:
The English Department hosted internationally acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on October 27th and 28th. Adichie read from her best-selling novel Americanah and answered questions from a packed and enthusiastic audience in the Davis Center's Grand Maple Ballroom Monday afternoon. She also met with students at the ALANA student center that morning, and with English students from the combined classes of Emily Bernard, Loka Losambe, Helen Scott, and Sarah E. Turner on Tuesday. The event was sponsored by the English Department and the James and Mary Brigham Buckham Scholarship Fund. It was endorsed by the African Studies Program; Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program; Center for Cultural Pluralism; Economics Department; Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program; Global and Regional Studies Program; History Department; Honors College; and the Office of the Vice President for Human Resources, Diversity, and Multicultural Affairs.
Lecturer Stephen Cramer has a poem in the current issue of American Poetry Review. He was also the subject of a UVM feature story:
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&&storyID=19350
Professor Nancy Welch’s short story "Pretty," published in Ploughshares, received citations in The Best American Short Stories 2014 and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014.
Professor Emily Bernard’s essay “Mother on Earth” was First Runner-Up for Green Mountains Review's 2014 Neil Shepard Prize in Creative Nonfiction.
Lecturer Elaine Harrington’s latest commentary for Vermont Public Radio examines the unusual business signs (big chunks of granite) produced and set up in Barre: http://digital.vpr.net/post/harrington-granite-strong
Professor Frank Nicosia (pictured center) received the "Distinguished Achievement Award in Holocaust Studies" from the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. The award was presented at the foundation's biennial Lessons and Legacies Conference in Florida on 31 October 2014. Nicosia's new book, Nazi Germany and the Arab World (Cambridge University Press) is scheduled for release in November 2014.
Professor Denise Youngblood has a new book out: Bondarchuk's War and Peace: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic (University Press of Kansas, 2014).
On November 6, African Studies experts came to UVM to discuss Rwanda’s recent development successes and the challenges and limitations of the country’s political and developmental model to an overflow audience in the Davis Center. Participants included Timothy Longman (Director of African Studies, Boston University), Adja Mansora Dahourou-Simpore (Private Sector Development Specialist, The World Bank,) and Scott Taylor (Director of African Studies, Georgetown University). Professor Edward McMahon, UVM Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, served as moderator, and the African Studies Program, the Political Science Department, the CAS Dean, the Community Development and Applied Economics Department, and the Global and Regional Studies Program sponsored the event.
The department hosted Colonel Matthew D. Redding, United States Army, who presented the Florence Davis Dean Lecture "World War III Chapter 1: An American Soldier's Perspective" on Tuesday, November 11, 2014.
Joseph Acquisto, Professor of French, published an article “Saving Creation: Agamben and Baudelaire, the Poet and the Critic” in L’Esprit Créateur 54:3 (Fall 2014), 53-65. The special issue of this French-English bilingual journal, entitled The Idea of Literature, examines the tension and dynamic relationship between literature and thought. The essay includes material that is developed further in Acquisto's book forthcoming in 2015, The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy.
Associate Professor John Waldron organized the Global Studies Roundtable Discussion “Living in the End Times,” which took place on Thursday, October 23. Panel participants included Hyon Joo Yoo, Associate Professor of English; Ben Eastman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology; and Joseph Acquisto, Professor of French. The panel presented ways to deal with the cynicism, apathy, and depression that comes from living during the age of globalization when we are supposedly at the "end of history" or a time when any hope for transformation has been lost.
Associate Professor Ignacio Lopez-Vicuna organized this year’s Hispanic Forum—he collaborated with Geography Professor Meghan Cope—and it was a very successful event bringing together scholars from various universities, which helped to make the conference very interdisciplinary.
Assistant Professor Katie Gough’s book Kinship and Performance in the Black and Green Atlantic (Routledge, 2013) won the 2014 Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. The Errol Hill Award is given in recognition of outstanding scholarship in African-American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, as demonstrated in the form of a published book-length project (monograph or essay collection). The book must have been published during the previous calendar year (2013 for the 2014 award), and deal with African-American theater history, dramatic literature, or performance studies (research on dance, acting and directing, public performances, i.e., parades, pageants, etc.).