Doug Gately performed with the National Symphony Orchestra on July 20, 2017. Award-winning actors and Broadway veterans Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakowski and Judah Friedlander were the featured artists.
Magrakvelidze Presents at International Conference
Maia Magrakvelidze, assistant professor of physics, presented the results of her research at the 48th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics held in Sacramento, California, on June 5-9, 2017. Her presentations, in the Time-Resolved Electron Dynamics and Attosecond Spectroscopy, were titled “Attosecond relative delay among xenon 5p, 5s, and 4d photoionization,” and “Time-dependent local density approximation study of iodine photoionization delay.” These results are very important for current experiments for investigating the time delay in photoionization processes of different systems.
Scanlon Publishes Essay on Modernist Writer Rebecca West
Mara Scanlon’s essay “Gender Identity and Promiscuous Identification: Reading (in) Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier” was recently published in The Journal of Modern Literature. The article focuses on the frequently overlooked narrator of West’s novel, set on the home front in the First World War. Scanlon interprets Jenny as an embedded reader of the novel’s main plot, a love triangle precipitated by a shell-shocked soldier’s amnesia, which Jenny’s own complicated desire further tangles. Positioned as such, Jenny breaches appropriate boundaries between herself and the “characters” of the main events, exhibiting a radical empathy called “promiscuous identification,” which finally troubles both her class and gender identity. Using theories of readership, Scanlon argues that Jenny’s zealous identification as a reader finally challenges the novel’s own stated moral and seemingly inevitable outcome, one dependent on a model of stable identity that Jenny radically undermines.
Al-Tikriti Chairs MSF Panel in NYC General Assembly
On June 24, in his final capacity as MSF/Doctors Without Border USA’s 2016-17 Vice President, Associate Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti chaired a panel which he had co-organized, entitled “Navigating in a New Political Environment.” The panel was aimed at NGO stakeholders and held at the annual MSF USA General Assembly in New York City, an annual gathering where MSF field staff debate pressing issues in contexts where they operate as well as elect new members to the MSF USA Board of Directors.
The panel abstract was as follows: “In this panel, speakers address the current populist political environment for humanitarian actors worldwide. Following an introductory overview speaker, subsequent panelists will address three topics of particular current concern to MSF: global forced migration crisis and global health. Following our four panelists, audience participants debate the effects of the current wave of populism on MSF and colleague humanitarian operations worldwide — as well as potential strategies for addressing this new political reality.”
Panelists included the following:
Ken Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
Laurie Garrett, Senior Global Health Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Aurelie Ponthieu, MSF Migration Advisor
Jason Cone, Executive Director, MSF USA
Each panelist challenged MSF on the limits of its operations and public discourse during this period of heightened nationalism, retrenchment of foreign aid, and assault on refugees. Following the panelists’ comments, attending Association members debated the merits of the points presented.
The event took place on the fourth floor of the Metropolitan Pavilion, located at 125 W. 18th St., New York City, 10011: https://www.metropolitanevents.com/location/metropolitan-pavilion/.
Following MSF USA General Assembly, Prof. Al-Tikriti participated in MSF’s International General Assembly in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 28 June – 1 July. In the course of this global assembly, participants debated motions addressing institutional growth, institutional racism, termination of pregnancy, environmental health, migration, and other issues of common interest.
Following his unsuccessful bid to join the International Board, Prof. Al-Tikriti has now ended his six-year service to the MSF USA Board of Directors.
Reynolds Presents Research on Teacher Preparation
Patricia Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Education, presented a research paper at the Conference on Higher Education Teaching and Learning in Paisley, Scotland, on June 28, 2017. The conference was dedicated to the theme of “Creating Inclusion and Diversity in Higher Education” and Dr. Reynolds’ research area looks at the efficacy issues of the non-native English speaking educator.
Foss Presents Paper at British Women Writers Conference
On June 23, Professor of English Chris Foss presented a paper titled “Ann Yearsley, Earl Goodwin, and the Politics of Romantic Discontent” at the 25th meeting of the British Women Writers Conference, held this year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
There is a dearth of substantial critical studies of Earl Goodwin in general, and while the few out there have helpfully illuminated the play’s representation of the historical plight of women and the poor during Anglo-Saxon times, as well as its application to their predicaments in England and France during the end of the 18th century, this important tack has left unexplored the ways in which Yearsley also is clarifying and extending her anger and frustration about the class- and gender-based discrimination she experienced firsthand in the fallout with her mentor Hannah More over the profits from her first book.
Foss’ paper fills this gap, explicating the many ways in which Earl Goodwin represents, on one level, her ongoing response to the defamation she suffered in the wake of More’s public campaign to ruin her reputation. The paper also encourages a re-visioning of the overtly personal rejoinders to More as already reflective of her discontent with economic, political and social injustice. That is, documenting the inextricability of the play’s explicit social and political critiques with Yearsley’s ongoing response to the More fiasco in fact reinforces the extent to which her more familiar initial reactions are as fundamentally politically as they are personally motivated.
Rabson Publishes Translation of Book about Okinawan Wives
Author Etsuko Takushi Crissey of Okinawa’s G.I. Brides: Their Lives in America (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) traveled throughout the United States conducting interviews and a questionnaire survey of the many Okinawan wives of former American servicemen. With 30,000 U.S. forces still stationed in Okinawa, about 200 marry women there every year. Her interviews of women who have come here from the late 1940s to the present include first-person accounts of their many hardships as soldiers’ wives, immigrants, and members of a racial minority, and how most managed to overcome them and lead fulfilling lives here.
Fallon Presents Research on Cushitic in the Netherlands
Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon
Paul D. Fallon, Associate Professor of Linguistics, presented the paper, “A ‘Vector Analysis’ of Bender’s Proto-Cushitic” at the 45th annual meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL), held at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, on June 11, 2017. He gave an assessment of ten of the late M. Lionel Bender’s reconstructed roots of Proto-Cushitic, an ancient, reconstructed language of the Horn of Africa.
Gately Performs with the National Symphony Orchestra
Doug Gately performed with a parade of superstars on July 4 with the National Symphony Orchestra. The concert, A Capital Fourth, was televised live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
Richardson, Marsh and Graefe-Anderson Publish Paper
Woody Richardson, John Marsh and Rachel Graefe-Anderson have published “AB InBev’s Offer for SABMiller (A): Pricey or Practical?” in Business Case Journal.