A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Professor of Political Science Stephen Farnsworth
Stephen Farnsworth, Professor of Political Science and Director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently discussed research findings from his new book, “Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump” at the Conference on Character Assassination in Theory and Practice at George Mason University.
Talley Center Director Tev Zukor
A column by Tev Zukor, director of the Talley Center for Counseling Services, appears in a recent edition of the American Psychological Association publication “Group Psychologist.” His perspective about group psychotherapy can be viewed at https://www.apadivisions.org/division-49/publications/newsletter/group-psychologist/2019/03/group-therapy?_ga=2.94700693.888501561.1556736391-1805288234.1556736391.
Rosalyn Cooperman, Associate Professor of Political Science
Rosalyn Cooperman, Associate Professor of Political Science, presented a paper, “If He Can Run and Win, Surely She Can Too: (Re)Considering Gender and Political Candidacy in the Age of Trump” at the Oppenheimer Reconsidered conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University.
Professor of Psychological Science Mindy Erchull
Professor of Psychological Science Mindy Erchull was quoted in the article “Selling confidence or starvation: How gendered marketing will call you a ‘babe’ and sell you diet suppressants” for the publication MEAWW. Erchull, who focuses on feminist issues said: “These campaigns send the message that one way to be empowered – often a key way – is to focus on one’s appearance,” she laments, adding, “[The claim that] one way to ‘improve’ one’s appearance to better conform to the narrow, largely unachievable, societal beauty standards for women would then be to use the products being advertised. Essentially, the positive message about empowerment is being tied to problematic cultural practices thereby undermining the likelihood that girls and women really benefit from this seemingly positive message.” To view the article, visit
https://meaww.com/jameela-jamil-appetite-suppressants-kardashian-family-flat-tummy-co.
College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson
Read College of Business Dean Lynne Richardson’s latest column in The Free Lance-Star: Having an Opinion with no Experience.
I seem to hear more and more stories about people expressing an “expert” opinion when they’ve not had personal experience with the subject for which they have an opinion.
It reminds me a bit of when people who don’t have children have all of the answers about raising children.
The workplace is complicated, comprising many individuals, each with their own issues. Sometimes I wonder how we get anything done. Businesses are made up of people who generally work together to achieve a common goal. Considering the problems that could arise, it’s amazing the goal is ever reached. Read more.
Professor of Art History Joseph Dreiss
Professor of Art History Joseph Dreiss presented a paper entitled “The Aesthetics of Flow: Achieving Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Optimal Experience through Contemplative Practice with Visual Art” at the Virginia Humanities Conference at Virginia Wesleyan University on April 12-13, 2019.
The Middle East Report Online (MERO) published an article by Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti, entitled “Turkish Voters Upset Erdogan’s Competitive Authoritarianism.” In the course of this article, Professor Al-Tikriti analyzed the political and economic dynamics driving the results of the March 31, 2019 Turkish municipal elections, which proved a major defeat for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
“Turkish voters sent a strong message to its long-standing ruling party and its leader on March 31, 2019 that the government’s authoritarian turn has not fully succeeded,” Al-Tikriti said. “In nationwide municipal elections, for the first time in a quarter century, the political movement largely associated with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost control over both the country’s economic and political capitals, as well as numerous other districts throughout the country…” Read more.
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Jennifer Barry
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Jennifer Barry published her first monograph, Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity, with the University of California Press.
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.
Book Abstract:
Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time.
Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Professor of English Chris Foss
Professor of English Chris Foss presented a paper entitled “My Favorite Comic Is Monster Girl: Helene Fischer’s Crip Re-appropriation of Monstrosity” as part of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference at the Wardham Park Marriott in Washington, DC. In his paper, Foss argued that for all the well-deserved accolades that have greeted Marjorie Liu’s Monstress and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Helene Fischer’s humble and unheralded Monster Girl most fully realizes the transformative potential of a crip re-appropriation of monstrosity. Monster Girl features an autistic artist’s rendering of an autistic protagonist. It not only is explicitly engaged in illuminating the lived experience of disability, but it further constitutes a generative starting point for the further exploration of the metaphorical assumptions about disability and monstrosity while reaffirming the crucial role of the genre’s own hybridity in foregrounding such considerations. Even though it is only a short four-page comic, Monster Girl offers a complex tapestry of the nexus of disability and monstrosity, suggesting various enabling possibilities for a crip re-visioning of disabled monstrosity. Embodying the particularly promising potential such a hybrid genre holds for the deconstruction of traditional templates and the (re)construction of empowering alternatives to said monstrosity, it speaks to the wonderful extent to which such a comics text may productively produce excitement and empathy instead of hatred and horror.
Professor of Religious Studies Mary Beth Mathews
Professor of Religious Studies Mary Beth Mathews presented an invited paper, “Doctrine, Race, and Education: The American Baptist Theological Seminary and Jim Crow,” at Harvard University’s Symposium on Religion and Public Life in Africa and the Americas, sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She argued that African American theological seminaries in the American South are a neglected but necessary avenue for understanding how African American evangelicals negotiated racial barriers to education and constructed autonomous spaces for theological development.