Listen to “A Night of Jazz,” in The Underground. The program features a discussion led by Doug Gately, director of the UMW Jazz Ensemble, on jazz music in the African-American community and a performance by the UMW Faculty Jazz Sextet. 8 p.m. Free. 540/654-1044.
Nabil Al-Tikriti
The Free Lance-Star interviewed Associate Professor of History Nabil Al-Tikriti about the ongoing protests in Egypt. In the February 3, 2011 article by reporter Heather Brady, Dr. Al-Tikriti briefly explained the calculations of the Mubarak regime, and the situation on the ground faced by certain friends and colleagues.
Shukri Abed
Professor Shukri B. Abed, associate professor of Arabic, will present the lecture “Middle East Report: Analysis of Current Events” at the University of Denver, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, at 12:15 p.m. March 24. The location is the Room 150, SIE Center, 2201 South Gaylord Street, Denver, CO 80208. Dr. Abed holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, and a B.A from Tel Aviv University.
Courtney Clayton
Courtney Clayton, assistant professor in the College of Education’s Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, has written a chapter in the book entitled “Teacher Preparation for Bilingual Student Populations”. “This volume focuses on understanding the structural, substantive, and contextual elements of preparation programs, and provides transformative guidelines for creating Educar signature programs. Designed to improve the practice of teacher preparation by promoting dialogic conversations and applications of praxis in the preparation of bilingual/ESL teacher candidates, it emphasizes that exemplary teacher preparation requires transformative teacher educators.”
Clayton, C. & Brisk, M.E. (2011). It’s my responsibility! Teacher of bilingual learners in an English-immersion context. In B. Bustos Flores, R. Hernandez Sheets & E. Riojas Clark (Eds.). Teacher preparation for bilingual student populations: Educar para transformar. (pp. 182-187). New York, NY: Routledge.
Jess Rigelhaupt
Jess Rigelhaupt, assistant professor of history and American studies, and four UMW students served on a panel on “Oral History and Documenting James Farmer’s Legacy at the University of Mary Washington” at the 2010 meeting of the Oral History Association. Christiane Lauer ’11, Sadie Smith ’11, Justin Mattos ’10 and MacKenzie Murphy ’10, with Rigelhaupt, presented papers based on interviews the students conducted in Rigelhaupt’s course “Oral History and James Farmer,” which was taught in fall 2009. The interviews are available at farmeroralhistory.umwblogs.org, a website that documents Farmer’s contributions to UMW and was built as part of the course. Lauer’s and Smith’s participation in the Oral History Association annual meeting was supported by an undergraduate research grant from the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office.
Robert Liebau
Robert E. Liebau, associate director of campus recreation, gave the presentation “To the Core—Embracing Personal Leadership Values” to the student session of the annual Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association meeting in Richmond in January. Ian Rogol, UMW head athletic trainer, said Liebau’s talk was “extremely well received. Bob’s interaction with these students was amazing and all were extremely challenged to think about a topic many athletic training programs do not cover.”
Laurie Abeel
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is opening Friday at the Fauquier Community Theatre. It is produced by Laurie Abeel, associate professor in the College of Education, and directed by Sarah LaFantasie, who studied theatre at UMW. Opening January 14, it runs three weekends: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. The last show is Sunday, January 30. Tickets are $13 for students and seniors, and $15 for adults, and can be purchased online at www.fctstage.org. Fauquier Community Theatre is located in the Vint Hill area at 4225 Aiken Drive, Warrenton.
Laurie and Sarah would love to see UMW colleagues at the show.
Jim Gaines
James F. Gaines, professor of French, translated Alphonse Daudet’s short story “The Three Low Masses” from the original French, and the translation will be published by the Eerie Digest in February. The story, which first appeared in print in 1866 in “Letters From My Mill,” deals with the ghosts of a priest and his parishioners who, during the 17th century, yielded to the sin of gluttony on Christmas Eve and cheated the Lord of a Mass they were supposed to celebrate. In consequence, they were condemned to reappear each year to repeat the Mass until their penance was completed.
Professor Burton Passes Away
Stephen J. Burton, a UMW music professor since 1981, died of pancreatic cancer at his home December 31, 2010. He was 62. Additional information is at http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/012011/01042011/598319
Mehdi Aminrazavi
The first joint program between the Asia Society and the Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies was held at the Whittemore House in Washington, D.C on January 15. Despite the frigid weather more than 40 people attended. Guests were welcomed into the historic mansion adorned in holiday decorations by the Asia Society Cultural programmer, Szuhan Chen, and the founder of the Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), Mona Khademi.
Asia Society is the leading global and Pan-Asian organization working to strengthen relationships, promote understanding and address cultural issues across the fields of policy, business, education, arts and culture among the people, leaders, and institutions of the United States and Asia. They co-hosted the event for this evening with Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies which was founded in 2006 to support and promote the field of Iranian Studies at the international level. ISIS, an affiliated member of the international Middle East Studies Association (MESA), is a private, not-for-profit, non-political organization of persons interested in Iranian Studies in the broadest sense.
The traditional Persian pastries and tea set an appropriate stage to introduce Dr. Mehdi Aminrazavi’s book, The Wine of Wisdom; The Life, Poetry and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam. Dr. Aminrazavi is a professor of philosophy and religion and the director of the Center for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UMW. His areas of specialization are medieval Islamic philosophy and theology, philosophy of religion, and non-Western philosophical and religious thought. Dr. Aminrazavi has published 10 books and numerous articles including the five volumes of An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia and Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination. He began by providing a synopsis of Omar Khayyam’s life, his mentors and students, and moved on to offer his interpretation of The Rubaiyat. By attempting to place Omar Khayyam in his own historical context, Aminrazavi elaborated on how the Rubaiyat can be viewed as the literature of resistance against the rise of religious orthodoxy during the Seljuk period. Omar Khayyam lived at a time when the golden era of Islamic civilization was coming to an end and the age of philosophy, theology and rational thought and the influence of philosophers were being increasingly curtailed. Dr. Aminrazavi made a correlation between the times in which Omar Khayyam lived and the rise of religious orthodoxy in the present day Islamic world. He brought his remarks to an end by tracing the odyssey of Omar Khayyam and his Rubaiyat to the West through the translations of Edward Fitzgerald and the Omar Khayyam Club of America in the 1920’s. Aminrazavi helped to stress his remarks with poetic excerpts from the Rubaiyat in both Persian and English.
The lecture was well received by a diverse audience who clearly had an appreciation and familiarity with literature and poetry. In an interactive question and answer session, such themes as the poetic quality of Fitzgerald’s translation, the relevance of the Rubaiyat to the contemporary world and the relationship between Khayyam’s philosophical writings and his poetry among others were investigated. The lecture was followed by a reception and book signing ceremony.