CAS Department Updates September 2015

Center for the Research on Vermont

Over the course of the summer, the Center produced seven new short video interviews with Vermont researchers Gregory Sanford, Paul Searls, Art Cohn, Jill Mudgett, Richard Kujawa, Shoshana Inwood, and Ingrid Nelson. 

All of the videos, including the other twelve in the series, are available here: Vermont researcher videos

In upcoming events, Vermont scholar Vince Feeney released a new book on Burlington this month: Burlington: A History of Vermont's Queen City. Vince conducted a book signing at the Fletcher-Free Library in Burlington on Saturday, September 12th.

And please join the Center for a talk and book signing with Jane Beck, the Founder of the Vermont Folklife Center, about her new book, Daisy Turner’s Kin: An African American Family Saga. The talk, "Daisy Turner's Kin," and book signing will take place on September 29, Waterman Memorial Lounge, 3:00 pm, University of Vermont, with refreshments to follow.

English

Recent publications by English department professors:

• Major Jackson, Roll Deep: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2015)
• Todd McGowan, Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Rules of the Game (Bloomsbury, 2015)
• Hillary Neroni, The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film (Columbia University Press, 2015)
• Sarah Alexander, Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable (Pickering and Chatto, June 2015) 
• Jinny Huh, The Arresting Eye: Race and the Anxiety of Detection  (University of Virginia Press, May 2015)
• Jamie Williamson, The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (Palgrave/MacMillan, July 2015)

Professor Tony Magistrale’s essay "Sutured Time: History and Kubrick's The Shining" just came out in the volume Stanley Kubrick's The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film, edited by Daniel Olsen, Centipede Press.  

Senior Lecturer Angela Patten was awarded a $2,000 grant for a new poetry project from the Arts Endowment Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation.

Geography

The Geography department will be offering two courses on Ecuador in the winter term. Lecturer Pete Shear's "Politics of Land Use in Ecuador" is the longest, continuously running study-abroad course at UVM and focuses on issues of land use, distribution, and reform in Ecuador. Today, social movements in Ecuador are at the global forefront of grassroots political organization and egalitarian land reform. This two-week-long course provides students with an experiential introduction to the Andean region through the historical, cultural, political, ecological, and physical geography of Ecuador. The course includes stays with families, participatory agricultural work, lectures from Ecuadorian scholars and officials, visits to institutions, and guided hikes.

Also in 2016, Dr. Stuart White will be offering "Reading Grass Paramo: The High Andes Underfoot" as a spring course that starts with a winter session field trip.

Geology

New research by University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman, and led by his former doctoral student Ben DeJong, confirms that the nation’s capital region could sink six or more inches by 2100—adding to the problems of rising seas. Using several advanced techniques for calculating the age of rocks, including work at the UVM Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory, their study also shows that this sinking land will continue, unabated, for tens of thousands of years. Read the entire article here.

A listing of the fall 2015 Geology Seminar Series can be found here (link to PDF).

Global and Regional Studies

The GRS program welcomes a number of new directors this year:

• Pablo Bose (Global and Regional Studies Interim Program Director as well as Interim Director of Middle East Studies)
• Jonah Steinberg (Interim Director of Global Studies)
• Vicki Brennan (Director of African Studies)
• Alex Stewart (Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies)

On September 21, 2015 alumnus Brian Olsen ('07) gave two talks on his experiences leading a construction platoon along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and on his time as an athlete and athlete representative at the 2006 and 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Turin and Sochi.

German and Russian

Joseph von Eichendorff's Romantic novel Ahnung und Gegenwart ["Presentiment and Present,"1815) had never been translated into any language, including English, even though it contains some of Eichendorff's most renowned poems, as set to music by composers like Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Now poems such as “Zwielicht” (Twilight) and “Waldgespräch“ (Conversation in the Forest) can be read in the context for which their author first intended them, thanks to the translation by Dennis F. Mahoney and Maria A. Mahoney, which also includes an introduction that situates Eichendorff and his novel in a literary, philosophical, artistic, and historical context, as do the 239 scholarly footnotes (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2015). Photo of Professor Dennis Mahoney by Andy Duback.

Political Science

Faculty publications:

Jan Feldman (2015) "Models of Feminism: Tunisia's Opportunity to Overcome the Secular/Islamist Binary," Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 13 (1): 51-76.

Robert V. Bartlett and Walter F. Baber (2015) “Deliberative Rulemaking for Human Health and the Environment: Making Administrative Discretion Safe for Democracy.” In Ecosystems, Society, and Health: Pathways through Diversity, Convergence, and Integration, ed. Hallstrom, Lars K., Nicholas P. Guehlstorf, and Margot W. Parkes.  Montreal, Quebec, and Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queens University Press, pp. 135-158.

Student honors:

Andrew Goss's May 2015 Political Science honors thesis, “Explaining Support for Authoritarianism in New Democracies,” received a major national honor as runner-up of Pi Sigma Alpha’s 2015 Best Undergraduate Honors Thesis competition.  (Professor Peter VonDoepp was the thesis supervisor.)

Psychological Science

Professor Kelly Rohan’s first installment of two articles from her R01 SAD treatment study in the American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP) was just published in the September issue.  It is featured on the journal podcast by Editor Susan K. Schultz, M.D. at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/audio and will also be offered in AJP's continuing medical education (CME) program. In addition, the paper includes three students in the Psychological Science department’s clinical Ph.D. program: J. N. Mahon, M. Evans, and J. Meyerhoff.

Final citation is: Rohan, K. J., Mahon, J. N., Evans, M., Ho, S., Meyerhoff, J., Postolache, T. T., & Vacek, P. M. (2015). Randomized trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy vs. light therapy for seasonal affective disorder: Acute outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172, 862-869.

A PDF of the article can be found here.

Romance Languages and Linguistics

Recent accomplishments for Professor Tina Escaja:

• University Scholar (2015-2016)
• Interim Director of the Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies Program
• President of ALDEEU (Spanish Professionals in America) as of July
• Participated in the collective exhibition "Work Both Ways" at the Flynndog Gallery in Burlington with installations and LED poetry (Pictured at left, the exhibition ran from July 9 to September 5, 2015.)
• Maker-in-Residence at Generator, Burlington, September to October to develop her robot-poems
• Publication of a book chapter: "Negotiating Resistance: Writing Strategies by Indo/Afro-Nicaraguan Women Poets." Diasporic Identities within Afro-Hispanic and African Contexts. Ed. Yaw B. Agawu-Kakraba and Komla Aggor. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 37-49.

Sociology

Associate Professor Thomas Macias’s work was featured a few months ago in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/06/08/how-your-neighbors-may-be-turning-you-into-an-environmentalist/