Category: Professional Notes

On Thursday, Nov. 8, Nabil Al-Tikriti delivered a paper entitled “The Ties that Bind: Ottoman Sea Ghazis from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean” to the 1st International Congress of Eurasian Maritime History (Turkish Naval History), hosted by Piri Reis University in Istanbul, Turkey.  The conference website and conference program is available in the links, and the abstract of the paper delivered is as follows:

“In the first decade of the sixteenth century, several sea ghazis with little known prior experience grew active in the Indian Ocean, and came to be known as the “Rumis” in their new theatre of action. At first the active combatants appear to have acted somewhat independently, arriving in the Red Sea with Ottoman logistical support, Mamluk financial backing, and uncertain knowledge of what lay ahead. In time what began as an uncertain partnership grew into a regular Ottoman intervention designed to explore, exploit, and trade within the Indian Ocean basin.

In this paper, I plan to explore the first “Rumis” to venture into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, particularly examining their connection to their Ottoman backers and their prior Mediterranean careers. In the course of this prosopographical examination, I hope to uncover what trends may have emerged between such individuals as Kurdoğlu, Hussein al-Kurdi, Şehzade Korkud, Kemal Reis, the Barbarossa brothers, and others who made a name for themselves in either theatre of operations.  In so doing, one of the primary questions I hope to explore is the degree to which early moves from the Mediterranean to Indian Ocean theatres was a centralized effort.”

Lisa Ames, LMS Admin, joined Brown University, and the University of Maryland  in a panel presentation at Educause 2012 held in Denver last week.  Titled “Moving to the Cloud,” the three universities answered key questions and shared the stories, trials, tribulations, and successes with moving from their respective LMS to an LMS in the Cloud.

Eric Lorentzen, associate professor of English, presented a scholarly paper at a special session of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Raleigh/Durham, N.C., on Nov. 11.  In the paper, entitled “Interdisciplinary Pedagogy in Literature: Dickens and Cultural Studies,” Lorentzen argued for the efficacy and exigency of adopting a cultural studies/critical pedagogy in the university literature classroom, and delineated the benefits of this methodological praxis through his treatment of Charles Dickens.  He also served as secretary for a second panel on inter-disciplinarity in the humanities entitled “On the Human.”

Professor of English Mara Scanlon delivered an invited paper for a panel of the H.D. International Society at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention in Durham, N.C., on Nov. 9.  The paper, “‘Dot tick we are here’: H.D. on Art, Vision, and Codebreaking,” focused on modernist writer H.D.’s use of telegraphy and Morse code in several works as a metaphor for the unsayable (those elements of art and vision that transcend or resist translation or language) and to establish a model for the appropriate audience, or “receiving stations,” for modern literature.

The Center for Strategic and International Affairs, a think-tank in Washington D.C., published Assistant Professor of Political Science Surupa Gupta’s article “FDI in Retail: How Can It Benefit India’s Farm Sector?” The article appeared in the Nov. 2012 issue of the Center’s publication. Gupta’s research was funded through a Jepson Fellowship.