Colin Rafferty, Associate Professor of English, had his essay on Chester A. Arthur, “Smear Campaign (#21),” to appear last week in the new issue of storySouth. This is the latest in his series of essays devoted to the U.S. presidency and the men who have held that office.
Robert Rycroft Featured in FLS
UMW professor wins Independent Publisher Book Award (The Free Lance-Star)
UMW Economics Professor Robert S. Rycroft recently won a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award for “The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty.”
Steve Greenlaw Featured in Inside Higher Ed
Online Students Don’t Have to Work Solo (Inside Higher Ed)
Steve Greenlaw, a professor of economics at the University of Mary Washington, likes to avoid grouping freshmen together because he wants new students to benefit from the wisdom of their older peers.
David Rettinger Quoted in The Washington Post
Student’s death leads to investigation of possible cheating at George Mason (The Washington Post)
“It is very typical, at least in the lore, for social organizations to maintain these test banks,” said David Rettinger, president of the International Center for Academic Integrity and associate professor of psychological science at the University of Mary Washington. “Obviously it’s against the rules and undermines the learning that faculty hope will occur.”
Lynne Richardson’s Weekly Column Appears in FLS
In her weekly column in The Free Lance-Star, Lynne Richardson writes about what to do when an employee tells you something isn’t his or her job.
Read the whole column here:
Dasgupta Delivers Two Conference Papers
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, recently presented two conference papers, “A Counter Discourse to Bollywood: Gender, Nation and Violence in Bengali Partition Cinema” at the Association of Asian Studies Conference in Washington, DC March 22-25 and “An(other) Story: Memory, Trauma and Identity in Muslim Narratives of the Partition” at the American Comparative Literature Association’s annual conference hosted by UCLA in Los Angeles March 29-April 1.
Barry Co-Organizes First Millennium Network Event
Assistant Professor of Religion Jennifer Barry helped co-organize a series of events in the Washington D.C. area throughout the academic year for the First Millennium Network (firstmillenniumnetwork.org). The FMN is a cross-institutional collaborative network that hosts academic events around Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. Barry’s involvement in the Network has been a direct response to UMW’s President Troy Paino’s call to put Mary Washington on the map. The Network places special emphasis on the diversity of, and interconnections among, the religious communities within first millennium societies—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Manicheanism, Zoroastrianism, etc.—in their multitude of forms.
On Friday, April 13, 2018, Barry, along with her fellow steering committee members, organized a day-long colloquium on “The Materiality of Relics in the First Millennium” at the University of Maryland, College Park. Four experts on relics and materiality broadly conceived were invited to share their research. Their disciplines ranged from archaeology, Carolingian textiles, Byzantine liturgical studies, and early Islamic textual practices. Each speaker was charged with the task to talk across their disciplinary boundaries, which helped to generate new and creative conversations. The day concluded with a session of reflection lead by Jennifer Barry and Samuel Collins to promote interdisciplinary connections and address thematic threads throughout the day.
Hirshberg Publishes Book Chapter, Presents Paper
Dan Hirshberg, assistant professor of religion, published “The Guru Beyond Time: Padmasambhava in Eight Aspects and Three Exalted Bodies” in The Second Buddha: Master of Time (Kestrel/Penguin), a volume for the current exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. Written for both popular and academic audiences, the chapter focuses on the art and iconography of Tibet’s original cultural hero. Two of Hirshberg’s photographs from Nepal appear in it as well.
Also, on March 24th in Washington D.C., Hirshberg presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Focusing on the emergence of an early, ferocious emanation of Padmasambhava, the paper was titled “The Nominal and Iconographical Elaboration of Padmasambhava as the Fierce Guru (Gu ru drag po).” This developed from some of the research undertaken during his Jepson Fellowship year.
Last, at the conference, the Association for Asian Studies awarded Hirshberg its Honorable Mention citation for the E. Gene Smith Book Prize for his recent monograph, Remembering the Lotus-Born (Wisdom 2016).
Gupta Interviewed By Asia Experts Forum
A student journalist for the Asia Experts Forum, an online journal run by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at the Claremont McKenna College, interviewed Surupa Gupta, associate professor of Political Science and International Affairs on the prospects for economic growth and the state of economic policymaking in India under the Modi administration.
Here is a link to the interview: https://asiaexpertsforum.org/dr-surupa-gupta-indias-economic-growth/
Noble Invited to Design Lights
Douglas Noble, director of Dodd Auditorium, was invited back to State University of New York at Geneseo to light two dance pieces in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Geneseo Dance Ensemble from April 19 to April 22, 2018. Noble graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 1986 with a bachelor’s in dramatic arts and received his master’s from the University of Oklahoma in lighting design with a concentration in dance lighting. While at Geneseo, he lighted a number of dance pieces for the Dance Ensemble, where he fell in love with dance and dance lighting. Noble was asked last April if he would be able to participate in the celebration and has looked forward to going back for the past year.
“It was great to go back where my career really started and work with one of my mentors, Jonette Lancos, again,” he said. Noble spent six days working with alumni, faculty and current students to help produce this celebration. He also participated in a panel discuss with other alumni about how dance has influenced their lives and held a discussion with current theatre and dance students on his career path from “Geneseo to the University of Mary Washington.”
“I was honored and thrilled to be able to participate in this amazing achievement for the Theatre and Dance Department at Geneseo,” he said.
One of the pieces Noble got to light was a piece by Nona Schurman (1909 – 2016) called “Songs from the Hebrides” that was choreographed in 1951 and was the first dance piece to receive a copyright.
“This made the second historic piece that I have been involved with in connection with Geneseo.” While a student, he designed for the Humphrey-Weidman piece “Brahams Waltzes” that was set by Deborah Carr.