Nabil Al-Tikriti Presents Paper to Istanbul History Congress
On Thursday, Nov. 8, Nabil Al-Tikriti delivered a paper entitled “The Ties that Bind: Ottoman Sea Ghazis from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean” to the 1st International Congress of Eurasian Maritime History (Turkish Naval History), hosted by Piri Reis University in Istanbul, Turkey. The conference website and conference program is available in the links, and the abstract of the paper delivered is as follows:
“In the first decade of the sixteenth century, several sea ghazis with little known prior experience grew active in the Indian Ocean, and came to be known as the “Rumis” in their new theatre of action. At first the active combatants appear to have acted somewhat independently, arriving in the Red Sea with Ottoman logistical support, Mamluk financial backing, and uncertain knowledge of what lay ahead. In time what began as an uncertain partnership grew into a regular Ottoman intervention designed to explore, exploit, and trade within the Indian Ocean basin.
In this paper, I plan to explore the first “Rumis” to venture into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, particularly examining their connection to their Ottoman backers and their prior Mediterranean careers. In the course of this prosopographical examination, I hope to uncover what trends may have emerged between such individuals as Kurdoğlu, Hussein al-Kurdi, Şehzade Korkud, Kemal Reis, the Barbarossa brothers, and others who made a name for themselves in either theatre of operations. In so doing, one of the primary questions I hope to explore is the degree to which early moves from the Mediterranean to Indian Ocean theatres was a centralized effort.”
Lisa Ames Presents “Moving to the Cloud” at Educause
Lisa Ames, LMS Admin, joined Brown University, and the University of Maryland in a panel presentation at Educause 2012 held in Denver last week. Titled “Moving to the Cloud,” the three universities answered key questions and shared the stories, trials, tribulations, and successes with moving from their respective LMS to an LMS in the Cloud.
Office Sustainability Tip of the Week
With Thanksgiving a week away, remember to shut off lights, computers, monitors, printers, copiers, etc. before you leave your offices for the break. Also unplug items in your office such as coffee makers, microwaves, radios, etc. since these small appliances often waste energy when plugged in and not in use.
As you begin to spend this weekend perhaps making final Thanksgiving day plans, here’s a great article we found online about having a “Green” Thanksgiving. Some good tips are featured in this article including reducing the amount of waste that often accompanies Thanksgiving, ways to keep costs down on the big day, and also general Do’s and Don’ts for an Eco-Thanksgiving:
http://earth911.com/news/2011/11/22/your-guide-to-a-green-thanksgiving/
If you’re also starting to think about getting a start on holiday shopping, November 24th is Small Business Saturday. Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to support their local economy by patronizing brick and mortar businesses in your community. Consider if items you plan on buying this holiday season can be purchased from locally owned “mom & pop” stores.
Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving — enjoy the break!
Last week’s tip of the week: Green Meetings
Eric Lorentzen Presents at Conference
Eric Lorentzen, associate professor of English, presented a scholarly paper at a special session of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Raleigh/Durham, N.C., on Nov. 11. In the paper, entitled “Interdisciplinary Pedagogy in Literature: Dickens and Cultural Studies,” Lorentzen argued for the efficacy and exigency of adopting a cultural studies/critical pedagogy in the university literature classroom, and delineated the benefits of this methodological praxis through his treatment of Charles Dickens. He also served as secretary for a second panel on inter-disciplinarity in the humanities entitled “On the Human.”
Mara Scanlon Presents Paper at Conference
Professor of English Mara Scanlon delivered an invited paper for a panel of the H.D. International Society at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention in Durham, N.C., on Nov. 9. The paper, “‘Dot tick we are here’: H.D. on Art, Vision, and Codebreaking,” focused on modernist writer H.D.’s use of telegraphy and Morse code in several works as a metaphor for the unsayable (those elements of art and vision that transcend or resist translation or language) and to establish a model for the appropriate audience, or “receiving stations,” for modern literature.
Surupa Gupta Publishes Article
The Center for Strategic and International Affairs, a think-tank in Washington D.C., published Assistant Professor of Political Science Surupa Gupta’s article “FDI in Retail: How Can It Benefit India’s Farm Sector?” The article appeared in the Nov. 2012 issue of the Center’s publication. Gupta’s research was funded through a Jepson Fellowship.
UMW Students are Finalists in Regional Competition
Students from the University of Mary Washington were finalists in a preliminary round of the College Fed Challenge competition, held on Friday, Nov. 9 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. In the competition, students delivered 20-minute presentations on monetary policy and were scored on content, teamwork, responses to questions, presentation and style.
Students Patrick Byrne, Robert Herse, Lawton Cooper, Chelsea LeHew, Luke Mendelsohn and Roxy Sklavos presented for UMW. Daniel Abbondanzo, Jose Chavez Guzman, Paul Flather, Colin Jennings and William Zebian were part of UMW’s research support team. Professor of Economics Margaret Ray coached the UMW team.
UMW competed against teams from across the Commonwealth, including the University of Richmond, Virginia Tech and Christopher Newport University. The team from the University of Virginia, winners of the preliminary round, competed against the winners from the Richmond Fed’s Baltimore and Charlotte branches. American University won the overall competition on Nov. 13.
The Richmond Fed sponsors College Fed Challenge, a regional academic competition, to encourage better understanding of the nation’s central bank, the forces influencing economic conditions in the United States and abroad, and the ways the economy affects everyone. More information is available online at www.richmondfed.org/education/.
Chris Foss Presents at Conference
Chris Foss, professor of English, organized a roundtable discussion on autism studies at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Raleigh/Durham, N.C., on Nov. 10. For this special extended session panel, Foss joined four prominent national voices in offering short presentations to introduce threads of discussion that initiated a two-hour conversation on topics such as the nexus of autism and aesthetics, the nexus of autism and neurocosmopolitanism, and the nexus of autism and rhetoric.
Janusz Konieczny and Former Students Publish in Algebra Colloquium
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has co-authored a research article, Sn-normal semigroups of partial transformations, published in the journal Algebra Colloquium. The article has been written jointly with two UMW graduates, Sean Droms and Roberto Palomba, and contains the results of undergraduate research that Sean and Roberto did when they were mathematics students at the University of Mary Washington.