Senior Associate Registrar Kevin Caffrey will be featured as part of the Fredericksburg Songwriters’ Showcase at LibertyTown Arts on Friday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. The Fredericksburg Songwriters’ Showcase is a monthly concert series featuring original acoustic music. Caffrey first performed at the Showcase in January 2014. He returns this month to premiere new songs form his forthcoming CD, downshifter. Admission is $10; $5 for children and students. LibertyTown Arts is located on 916 Liberty St. in downtown Fredericksburg.
Al-Tikriti Joins MSF Association Event in Portland
As part of his duties as vice president of MSF / Doctors Without Borders USA, Middle East History Professor Nabil Al-Tikriti joined an MSF Association open board meeting, hub gathering and Association retreat in Portland, Oregon. The event took place Feb. 3-4 and consisted of two days of reflective sessions on operations, human resources, labor policy, institutional racism and other issues of associative interest.
Bartram Finishes Term as CODA President
Kevin Bartram, director of the UMW Philharmonic Orchestra, recently completed a two-year term as president of the College Orchestra Directors Association, or CODA. CODA is the world’s largest association of college orchestra directors, with members from 40 states and 12 countries in Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.
During Bartram’s tenure, CODA’s membership increased by 20%, and the organization expanded internationally with cultural and podium exchanges (Bartram traveled last year to Argentina). Its annual national conference increased in attendance, as well. Bartram formed a major research alliance with the Library of Congress called “Unearthing America’s Musical Treasures.” He presented his initial findings on the project, with some 12 major discoveries, to the conference last weekend.
Bartram’s successor, Kory Katseanes from Brigham Young University, recognized him and led a standing ovation during the national conference in Washington, D.C., last weekend. The conference, organized by Bartram, featured performances by the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony (and a private session with Maestro Eschenbach), a private tour of musical treasures at the Library of Congress and a performance by the United States Air Force Orchestra.
Bartram ascended into the national spotlight four years ago with his election as national vice president. He led an effort to write a strategic plan and create a new website, which he has managed. In addition, he created a new financial system, a world-class online library of resources and a new business plan.
Bartram is now immediate past-president of the organization, and will help guide the new leadership into the future.
Gentry Presents Research to Chamber of Commerce
Lance Gentry, associate professor in the College of Business, presented research on telework trends and public policy implications to the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and helped lead a workshop on potential public policy improvements on Feb. 9, 2017.
Wilson and Students Publish Paper on Sexual Violence
Laura Wilson, assistant professor of psychology, has published a paper with recent graduates of the University of Mary Washington. During their senior year, Hannah Walker, Jennifer Freud, Robyn Ellis and Shawn Fraine completed a large-scale project on sexual violence under Wilson’s guidance. The paper, “The Prevalence of Sexual Revictimization: A Meta-Analytic Review,” was recently published in a top tier peer-reviewed trauma journal called Trauma, Violence, & Abuse.
Robyn Ellis and Shawn Fraine also co-presented the study with Wilson at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference in Dallas in November. The primary research question for the project was: What percentage of child sexual abuse survivors experience sexual violence again later in life? This phenomenon is called sexual revictimization. During the study, the students read almost 1,500 research articles about child sexual abuse. They then used a review process that narrowed it down to 80 relevant studies and used a statistical approach called meta-analysis. The results showed that almost half of child sexual abuse survivors are sexually victimized again in the future. These results confirm the high risk of sexual revictimization among child sexual abuse survivors and highlight the importance of increased awareness about this issue in society.
Barry Publishes Article on Exile in Early Christianity
Jennifer Barry, Assistant Professor of Religion, has published an article titled “Receptions of Exile: Athanasius of Alexandria’s legacy,” in the collected volume Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity edited by Julia Hillner, Joerg Ulrich and Jakob Engberg. This article is the result of a pre-arranged collaborative project held at the International Patristic Society Conference held at Oxford University, U.K. (July 2015). Barry’s contribution stems from her larger work on clerical exile in late antiquity.
Chapter abstract:
This chapter examines how the stories of Athanasius of Alexandria’s many exiles became a popular literary schema that circulated within pro-Nicene Christian literature during the late fourth and early fifth centuries. I argue that Athanasius’s identity as a triumphant exile quickly became the standard by which subsequent episcopal exiles were measured. Indeed, by the time the Johanite controversy of the fifth century takes shape in and around Constantinople, Athanasius the exile is invoked to bolster support for John Chrysostom’s tarnished reputation as a failed exile. John’s earliest biographers, Ps.-Martyrius and Palladius of Helenopolis, insist that those who question their hero’s orthodoxy are no better than those heretical enemies of the great Athanasius.
Larus Presents Paper in Taiwan on President Obama’s China Policy
Elizabeth Freund Larus, Waple Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, presented her paper “Assessment of President Obama’s China Policy, with a focus on U.S. Rebalance to the Asia Pacific,” at the conference U.S., China, Taiwan Relations in the Second Obama Administration and Beyond, Dec. 12, 2016, at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Rochelle Reviews Latest Novel by Fred Chappell
Warren Rochelle, Professor of English, recently reviewed Fred Chappell’s latest novel, A Shadow All of Light, for the North Carolina Literary Review. That review, titled “Light and Dark, Dark, and Light,” appears in NCLR Online 26 (2017): 62-63.
Kraus to Collaborate on Music Program at Kentlands March 5
On Sunday, March 5, at 3:30 p.m., Adjunct Professor of Piano Andrew Kraus will collaborate with soprano Monica Harwood and saxophonist Noah Getz in An Afternoon of Drama in Song, a program of viscerally moving and socially relevant works at the Kentlands Mansion in Gaithersburg, Maryland. On the program are:
- Black Water, by Jeremy Beck: A slightly veiled fictional account adapted by Beck from the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates of the events around the death of Mary Jo Kopechne told in flashbacks as she is dying.
- I Never Saw Another Butterfly, by Elwood Derr: A song cycle for soprano voice, alto sax and piano based on poems by Jewish children incarcerated, gassed and incinerated in the Nazi ghetto for Jews in Terezin, Czechoslovakia.
More details and tickets can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-afternoon-of-drama-in-song-tickets-30706214113.
A preview of Dark Water can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvXkzCrRf0
Farnsworth Lectures on Presidential Elections at Osgood Center
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently delivered a lecture titled “Politics, Media and the American Political System” as the keynote address of the Presidential Inauguration Seminar at the Osgood Center for International Studies in Washington.