Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently gave a lecture at Carter Hall in Boyce, Virginia, entitled, “The Ever-changing State of Virginia Politics,” as part of the Virginia Candidate Training Program. The nonpartisan program, sponsored by the Sorensen Institute of the University of Virginia, gives future political candidates information about campaigning for office and about key Virginia policy challenges.
Al-Tikriti Publishes Article on 16th Century Captives
The Turkish History Foundation [TTK: Türk Tarih Kurumu], recently published the conference proceedings from the “International Piri Reis and Turkish Maritime History Symposium” [“Uluslararası Piri Reis ve Türk Denizcilik Tarihi Sempozyumu”], which Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti participated in at Istanbul in September, 2013. The title of this peer-reviewed volume is Findings in Turkish Maritime History [Türk Deniz Tarihi Bildiriler]. Al-Tikriti‘s contribution is entitled “Advocating for Release: the al-Dārānī Appeals,” and can be downloaded from this link: https://www.academia.edu/10447817/Advocating_for_Release_the_al-D%C4%81r%C4%81n%C4%AB_Appeals.In this submission, Al-Tikriti briefly summarizes and describes two letters written in the early 16th century by individuals identified separately as Abū Bakr al-Dārānī and Taḳīyüddīn Dārānī, who may have been the same person, and were at one time prisoner(s) of the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. The first letter, in Arabic, was translated into modern Turkish by İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı in 1954, and translated into French by Nicolas Vatin in 1994. The second letter was translated from Ottoman Turkish into French in 1994 by Nicolas Vatin, who described the letter, stating that the reverse side of the paper probably contained the original Arabic letter, and that it was probably written at some point after 1516. Al-Tikriti thinks it might have been written during Bayezid II’s (d. 1512) reign, but otherwise concurs with both Uzunçarşılı’s and Vatin’s earlier analyses.
McClurken Presents on Digital Initiatives
AAC&U
At the 100th Annual Conference of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Jeffrey McClurken, Professor of History and American Studies and Special Assistant to the Provost for Teaching, Technology, and Innovation, co-presented as part of a panel entitled, Century America: A Multi-Campus Digital History Collaboration. McClurken presented with Leah Tams ‘14, Professor Ellen Pearson of UNC-Asheville, and Jennifer Marks, a senior at Truman State University on Century America, an online course sponsored by COPLAC and the Teagle Foundation for 13 students from nine schools that resulted in a public digital history project about local communities during the Great War and Influenza Epidemic. See more about Fredericksburg and the other communities at Http://centuryamerica.org/
EduCon
Two days later, McClurken co-led a discussion about students and digital identity at EduCon 2.7, a conference about technology, education, and project-based learning. McClurken talked about the opportunities that UMWBlogs and Domain of One’s Own creates for students at UMW to create, refine, reflect, and expand on their presence in the digital world as students, as learners, as scholars, and as graduates. He partnered with teachers and edtech leaders from K to 12 in this conversation.
Harris Publishes Essay on the Communist Way of Life
Steven E. Harris, associate professor of history, published his essay, “Soviet Mass Housing and the Communist Way of Life,” in the volume Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, eds., Choi Chatterjee, David L. Ransel, Mary Cavender, and Karen Petrone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). This edited collection of peer reviewed essays is published in the Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies, eds., Alexander Rabinowitch and William G. Rosenberg. The essays were originally presented at the conference, “Everyday Life in Russia: Strategies, Subjectivities and Perspectives,” held in 2010 at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Harris’s essay examines Soviet citizens’ move from communal housing to the single-family separate apartment under Khrushchev and how their everyday experiences intersected with the regime’s discourse on the “communist way of life.” It is based on the research of his book, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Washington, D.C., and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
The following is a description of Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present from the Indiana University Press website:
“In these original essays on long-term patterns of everyday life in prerevolutionary, Soviet, and contemporary Russia, distinguished scholars survey the cultural practices, power relations, and behaviors that characterized daily existence for Russians through the post-Soviet present. Microanalyses and transnational perspectives shed new light on the formation and elaboration of gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and subjectivity. Changes in consumption and communication patterns, the restructuring of familial and social relations, systems of cultural meanings, and evolving practices in the home, at the workplace, and at sites of leisure are among the topics explored.”
Aminrazavi Co-Edits Book
Mehdi Aminrazavi, professor of Philosophy and Religion, recently co-edited From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century, the fifth volume of An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia.
The fifth and final volume of An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia deals with some seven centuries of Islamic thought stretching from the era following the Mongol invasion to the end of the Qajar period early in the 20th century.
http://www.ibtauris.com/Search%20Results.aspx?query=an+anthology+of+philosophy+in+persia
Klein to Present Paper
Steve Klein, adjunct instructor of English, Linguistics and Communication, will be presenting a paper, “Hugh S. Fullerton, the Black Sox Scandal, and the Ethical Impulse in Sports Writing,” at the annual NINE Spring Training Baseball Conference in Tempe, Arizona, on March 13.
He also had a book review published in the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) December newsletter of Tim Hornbaker’s “Turning the Black Sox White: The Misunderstood Legacy of Charles A. Comiskey.”
Farnsworth Gives Lecture for Institute for International Education
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently gave a U.S. Department of State program lecture entitled, “U.S. Journalism, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Development,” in Washington, DC., for visiting Palestinian professors. The lecture was part of the Institute for International Education’s International Visitor Leadership Program and included findings from Farnsworth’s recent co-authored book, “The Global President: International Media and the U.S. Government.”
Ambuel Publishes Book
David Ambuel, professor of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion, recently published Turtles All the Way Down: On Plato’s Theaetetus, a Translation and Commentary. Academia Verlag published the book in January, 2015.
UMW Professor Documents Local Hospital History
The storied past of Mary Washington Healthcare has been preserved online, thanks to efforts of University of Mary Washington Professor Jess Rigelhaupt.
The associate professor of history and American studies received a $25,000 grant from Mary Washington Healthcare to record oral history interviews and develop a website that covers the history of the 115-year old organization.
The website mwhchistory.com, which launched this month, currently includes more than 35 hours of interviews with longtime administrators, board members, physicians, and nurses with a wealth of knowledge about the local hospital system for the past 30 years. The project is ongoing and will record over 80 hours of interviews with over 40 people when it is completed.
Click here to view the embedded video.
“We began as an eight-room hospital, and have evolved into a not-for-profit regional system of two hospitals and 28 healthcare facilities and wellness services,” said recently retired President and CEO of Mary Washington Healthcare Fred M. Rankin III, who was interviewed for the project. “Hearing personal accounts from many who have been part of Mary Washington Healthcare’s journey through the last 20-plus years is an important part of telling the story.”
For the past two years, Rigelhaupt worked with UMW students to record interviews and edit video footage all with the goal of providing a more traditional history of the organization through the art of storytelling.
“An important goal is to have a highly accessible repository that documents the growth and expansion of Mary Washington Healthcare through the voices of the people who contributed to it,” said Rigelhaupt. “To record how they experienced what they saw, what they did and how they reflect back on it and how they’ve made meaning out of and understand the growth of the organization and the challenges that were faced.”
The largest private employer in Fredericksburg, Mary Washington Healthcare has certainly seen its fair share of growth, especially since the new hospital opened in 1993. The website includes firsthand accounts of change from a variety of employees, including Diane Brothers, who began working as a nurse at the hospital in 1986 and is now a nursing supervisor and clinical ethics specialist, and Xavier R. Richardson, who joined MWHC in 1997 and currently serves as the executive vice president of Corporate Development and Community Affairs.
“The Mary Washington Healthcare oral history website, hosted and presented by the University of Mary Washington, is a natural partnership which provides historical information, and new insights for public policy, healthcare, and regional development,” said Michael McDermott, M.D., president and CEO, Mary Washington Healthcare.
Rigelhaupt agrees.
“The project represents collaboration between the campus and the community,” he said. “As an institution for research and knowledge production, the University and this research project worked with and produced new knowledge about a pillar of the community.”
Mackintosh, Liss, and Schiffrin Publish Book Chapter on Intensive Parenting
Drs. Virginia Mackintosh, Miriam Liss, and Holly Schiffrin published a book chapter in the recently released Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood from Demeter Press. The chapter, “Using a Quantitative Measure to Explore Intensive Mothering Ideology,” outlines the development and use of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire designed by the authors.