Former University of Mary Washington All-American Caitlin Erickson has been named the new head women’s lacrosse coach at Randolph-Macon. Erickson arrives in Ashland after a two-year stint as an assistant coach with her alma mater. Erickson helped lead the Eagles to 28 wins over her two years on the sidelines in Fredericksburg. The 2009 squad won the Capital Athletic Conference Championship, advanced to the third-round of the NCAA Tournament and finished the season ranked 12th in the Nation.
Two of Theresa’s students have won a $500 undergraduate research competition from the Virginia Academy of Science. Erin Haynes and Browyn Wang were awarded for their proposal to study “Comparative Development and Evolutionary Studies of New Caenorhabitis Species in Virginia.”
Richard Finkelstein, Dean, Arts and Sciences, and Professor of English, published an article on Shakespeare, “Pericles, Paul, and Protestantism,” in this summer’s issue of Comparative Drama. He has another article on Shakespeare, “The Comedy of Errors and the Theology of Things,” forthcoming in the Spring, 2012 issue of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900.
English Professors Mara N. Scanlon and D. Brady Earnhart’s interview about Walt Whitman and the famed poet’s experiences as a Civil War nurse will be rebroadcast on the public radio program “With Good Reason” beginning Saturday, October 16.
In 1862, poet Walt Whitman went to Fredericksburg to search in field hospitals for his brother who had been wounded in a Civil War battle. Shocked by the bloodshed, Whitman worked as a nurse for years through the end of the war. Scanlon and Earnhart say Whitman helped heal wounded soldiers just as he hoped his poetry could mend the war-torn nation.
Their interview, “Whitman at War,” can be heard online at withgoodreasonradio.org/2010/10/whitman-at-war-2, and it will be rebroadcast on WCVE 88.9 FM Oct. 16 at 4:30 p.m. and on WAMU 88.5 FM Monday, October 18 at 12:30 a.m.
Earnhart and Scanlon worked with UMW instructional technology specialist James Groom on the digital humanities project “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman.” Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project involved collaboration with three other universities.
At UMW in fall 2009, Scanlon, Earnhart and Groom taught “Digital Whitman,” a seminar incorporating the Whitman archive at the Library of Congress as well as the nearby site of a Civil War hospital, Chatham. A website designed by Groom, http://lookingforwhitman.org, connected students enrolled in the UMW course with counterparts at universities in New Jersey and New York—each in areas pivotal to Whitman’s life and work. As students investigated those locations, they shared research via digital platforms.
Scanlon, associate professor of English, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Earnhart, visiting assistant professor of English, received a bachelor’s degree from The College of William and Mary, an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
To listen to other UMW faculty interviews broadcast on “With Good Reason,” visit http://www.umw.edu/news/faculty.
“With Good Reason” is the only statewide public radio program in Virginia. It hosts scholars from Virginia’s public colleges and universities who discuss the latest in research, pressing social issues and the curious and whimsical. “With Good Reason” is produced for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and is broadcast in partnership with public radio stations in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Professor of History and American Studies Allyson Poska is participating in a panel discussion of Spanish history at the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference, Montreal, Canada, on October 14. The panel topic is “Honor and Shame in the Early Modern Mediterranean. “
