Elizabeth Freund Larus, professor of political science and international affairs, presented her research paper “Xiconomics: Mixing Politics with Economics after the 19th Party Congress,” at the 60th meeting of the American Association for Chinese Studies, October 5-7 in Baltimore. She also organized and hosted the Roundtable on Cross-Strait Relations, bringing together scholars from the US, the UK and Taiwan to discuss recent developments in China-Taiwan relations.
Rao Represents University at Faculty Senate of Virginia, Presents at Conference
On Saturday, October 20, P. Anand Rao, Professor of Communication and Director of the Speaking Intensive Program and the Speaking Center, and Marcel Rotter, Associate Professor of German, represented the University of Mary Washington at the Faculty Senate of Virginia meeting held at Virginia Commonwealth University. Rao is currently serving as president of FSVA, and Rotter is serving as treasurer. They were joined by representatives from twelve other schools and discussed plans for Virginia Higher Education Advocacy Day, which will be held on January 10, 2019.
On Tuesday, October 23, Rao gave a presentation at the Assessment Institute Conference held in Indianapolis titled “Using Assessment Results to Re-Tool the First-Year Seminar.” Despite a 7 a.m. slot, there was a good turnout of 20+ persons and a very active discussion.
David Rettinger Quoted in Washington Post
Rep. Dave Brat, an economist, borrowed heavily from Bernanke in academic paper (The Washington Post)
“This is so lazy as to be dishonest,” said David Rettinger, chairman of the International Center for Academic Integrity and a psychology professor at the University of Mary Washington. “It’s not just a sentence here and there.”
Barrenechea Publishes on Brazilian Film
Antonio Barrenechea, Associate Professor of English, recently published an entry on the Brazilian film “Black God, White Devil (1964)” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/black-god-white-devil-1964.
Scott Powers Publishes Article in Studies in Canadian Literature
The journal Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne published Powers’ essay entitled “Tu n’as pas à te sentir coupable: A Multiversal Approach to Gaétan Soucy’s L’Acquittement” in its Fall 2018 volume.
Miriam Liss and Holly Schiffrin Book Featured on Player FM
Balancing work and a personal life can be a challenge for many of us, and we often make things worse by buying into myths that interfere with our effectiveness and happiness but are unsupported by social science.
Farnsworth Authors Chapter on Political Humor
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, is co-author of a book chapter, “Partisan Trends in Late Night Humor,” published this month in Political Humor in a Changing Media Landscape, an edited volume from Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield.
Sushma Subramanian Featured in Storytelling Podcast
Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of English specializing in journalism, recently appeared on a Story Collider podcast episode titled “Sense of Touch” telling a story about her experiments using haptic technology to communicate with her long-distance fiance. She performed the piece, which is adapted from a forthcoming book she is writing, at Busboys & Poets last spring. Story Collider is a nonprofit organization that promotes storytelling as a way of humanizing science.
You can listen to her story here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2018/8/24/sense-of-touch-stories-about-the-power-of-touch.
Craig Vasey to Present on Jean-Paul Sartre Friday
Craig Vasey, chair of the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion and professor of philosophy, will give a talk about Jean-Paul Sartre’s life, work and interests prior to a performance of “No Exit” by the Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble.
The talk will be held Friday, Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m. on the fourth floor of 810 Caroline Street in downtown Fredericksburg.
For information about Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble, visit https://www.fredericksburgtheatre.org/
Dan Dervin Publishes Article in Journal of Psychohistory
Daniel Dervin, professor emeritus of English, recently published an article in The Journal of Psychohistory called The Auction Block, the Battlefield Angels, and the Politics of Purity.
According to an abstract of the article:
“The evolution of psychoanalytic theory entered new territory with the work of Melanie Klein (1882-1960). Previously, apart from Freud’s formations on narcissism, the prevailing framework was the Oedipal triad of desire, conflict, defense, adaption, and self-identity issuing from the child’s struggles to master issues involving both parents. Klein took a step back in child development phases and forward in clinical theory when she honed in on the dyad of infant and primary caregiver. Hers was the realm of preoedipal issues involving primal urges and frustrations. These she epitomized as good breast/bad breast. However resolved, transformed, or displaced, they set the stage for subsequent development. We don’t want to yield to reductionism, yet in psychohistory we continually observe regression to primitive levels of splitting one’s object-world into either/or absolutes of all-good vs all-bad. These dyad derivatives have increasingly dominated our polarized cultural and political discourses. Noting Trump’s “all-or-nothing” governing style, Lindsey Ford cites his off-and-on-again tactics with North Korea (NY Times, 25 May 18, p. A21); in this light Trump epitomizes these primitive processes. The present study examines this polar mode manifest in wide-ranging ideals of purity. Group-fantasies of white supremacy from our Civil War period are being revived. We see this in the controversies over Confederacy names and monuments: grappling with them anew injects our troubled past into our present. What we had assumed to be dead and buried evidently thrived in the margins, biding their time. More disturbing, their reentry is being aided and abetted at the highest levels of government. As these disparate phenomena echo and reverberate, psychohistorical perspectives fit them into larger patterns cued by the politics of purity.”