A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Yuan-Jen Chiang, Professor of Math, had a research article “Exponentially Harmonic Maps between Surfaces” published in Analysis and Mathematical Physics. She presented this publication at the Joint International Meeting of American Math Society and Vietnam Math Society.
Professor of Mathematics Yuan Jen Chiang
Professor Antonio Barrenechea
Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently delivered a Skype lecture at Eastern New Mexico University. Titled “Leslie Marmon Silko’s Council Book: Hemispheric Forces in Almanac of the Dead,” it discussed the inter-artistic and inter-American dimensions of an encyclopedic novel by a Laguna Pueblo author.
Elizabeth Freund Larus, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Elizabeth Freund Larus, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, participated in the Roundtable “Current Events in Cross-Strait Relations” at the 2019 Meeting of the American Association of Chinese Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, October 4-5. Professor Larus commented on cross-Strait relations as a factor in Taiwan’s 2020 elections.
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies, and Jeremy Engel ’20, a senior political science major and a research associate at the Center, recently published an opinion column in The Richmond Times-Dispatch entitled “Northam’s Political Troubles Take a Backseat.”
Farnsworth has also been quoted in several regional and national news stories:
Suburban Richmond race becomes first to top $1 million in TV ads (Virginia Mercury; WHSV)
Loudest voices were wrong about Northam’s effectiveness post-yearbook controversy (Virginia Mercury)
Va. Republicans target freshman Democrats in hopes of keeping House majority (The Washington Post)
Impeachment Probe Fight Heats Up (CTV News Channel)
Herring supports legalizing recreational marijuana (Loudoun Times; WTVR; WSET)
Krystyn Moon, third from the left, with the Fort Ward Interpretive Committee, which received the Brenman Archaeology in Alexandria Award.
Professor of History and Director of American Studies Krystyn Moon was announced as one of the recipients of the annual Bernard “Ben” Brenman Archaeology in Alexandria Award. The awards, named in honor of the late Ben Brenman, a longtime Commission chair, were presented by Mayor Wilson on Wednesday, October 2 at the Alexandria City Council meeting.
For the past few years, Moon has volunteered as a historical researcher as part of the Fort Ward Interpretive Committee to provide an integrated narrative of a city park, which was the site of a Union fort and an African American neighborhood from the late 1860s through the 1960s. The city government had appointed Moon and others on the committee to work on this project. Most of the committee members were representatives from the local community, but Moon was brought on as both a city resident and a professional historian.
UMW Museums Executive Director Scott Harris spoke about James Monroe at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage on October 1. In addition to surveying Monroe’s public service career, Harris paid particular attention to the president’s visit to Nashville during his 1819 tour of the southern states, which included a stay at The Hermitage. The Museum’s traveling exhibit on the tour, “Your Obedient Servant,” spent most of the last month there and was much enjoyed by visitors.
Antonio Causarano, associate professor of education.
Antonio Causarano, associate professor of education, will give a presentation titled “Race and Education in Fascist Italy” about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s education program. According to The Free Lance-Star, “It will focus on ‘the historical aspects of race in fascist Italy and how the ideology of race was an integral part of the education of fascist youth during the 20 years of fascist regime,’ he said.” Sponsored by the Fredericksburg-Este Association, the free lecture is open to the public and will be held on Friday, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. at St. George’s Episcopal Church at 905 Princess Anne St. Read more.
College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson
College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson’s weekly column in The Free Lance-Star discusses making changes to job descriptions. Read RETHINKING JOBS AS TIMES CHANGE.
HAVE YOU looked around your organization to see who’s doing what?
As technological changes have impacted so much in the last couple of decades, are the people in your organization “fully employed?” Here are a few things to think about. Read more.
Dan Hirshberg, assistant professor of religious studies and director of the contemplative studies program
Dan Hirshberg, assistant professor of religious studies and director of the contemplative studies program, offered a lecture and a workshop for Brown University’s Contemplative Studies Initiative.
His lecture focused on “Secular Rhetoric in Contemplative Pedagogy,” which concurred with recent critiques and advocated for pluralist discourse as representative of the field’s objectives and practices. The interactive workshop introduced some of the adverse effects of technology usage and featured the practice of an original contemplative exercise, “Smartphone Dis/Connect: FOMO,” which invites participants to explore the subtle physiological and psychological impacts of smartphone alerts and notifications.
Brown University launched the first Contemplative Studies concentration (major) for undergraduates in the world and is a leader in the interdisciplinary research of contemplation across the humanities, arts, and sciences.
Associate Professor Zach Whalen
Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English, has just published an article in a special issue of The Journal of Creative Writing Studies on “Creative Making as Creative Writing.” His article, “The Many Authors of The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation,” is an artist’s statement reflecting on how creating a computer-generated book like Whalen’s 2017 work The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex invites readers to reconsider the idea of what it means to be an author. Whalen’s book draws on several different databases to create an essentially infinite variation on the nursery rhyme “This is the House that Jack Built”; these databases contain the work of hundreds of contributors, so Whalen argues in this article that the novel is best considered a collaboration among many instead of the work of a single individual or computer. https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/
