January 10, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

English Faculty Present at MLA Conference

by

Gary Richards

Gary Richards

Two professors and one recent alumnus of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication presented at the Modern Language Association Conference that met Jan. 3 through 6 in Boston, Mass. Assistant Professor Zach Whalen presented the paper “OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and the Vestigial Aesthetics of Machine Vision” on the panel Reading the Invisible and Unwanted in Old and New Media. Associate Professor Gary Richards presented the paper “Tennessee Williams and the Burden of Southern Sexuality Studies” on the panel The South and Sexuality. Alumnus Tyler Babbie, ’08, presented the paper “Another Term: Richard Aldington and Imagism(e)” on the panel From Imagism to “Amygism” to Vorticism.

Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen

English Faculty Publish Work, Receive Accolades

by

Assistant Professor of English Colin Rafferty’s essay “Reflections from Virginia: Signifying a Hospital” appeared in the Used Furniture Review as part of the literary magazine’s post-election coverage. Rafferty’s essay “Albums of Our Lives: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’” appeared in The Rumpus. His short story, “Wake Up, Doctor West: An Essayistic Exploration of a Possible Alternate History of Kanye West and African-American Musicology (in Three Acts),” is forthcoming in the anthology “#GOODLitSwerveAutumn: An Anthology of Independent Literature about Kanye West,” published by NAP Literary Magazine.

Professor of English and Creative Writing Coordinator Warren Rochelle’s story “The Boy on McGee Street” was recently published in Queer Fish, Volume 2 (Pink Narcissus Press).

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Elizabeth Wade’s poem, “Selling the Saddle,” which was originally published in Cave Wall, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Arrington Distinguished Chair Claudia Emerson’s book, “The Opposite House,” has been accepted for publication by LSU Press.

Writing Center Assistant Amanda Rutstein’s poem “Chasing the Hawk,” will be published in fall 2012 issue of The Greensboro Review.

Chris Foss Presents at Conference

by

Chris Foss, professor of English, organized a roundtable discussion on autism studies at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Raleigh/Durham, N.C., on Nov. 10. For this special extended session panel, Foss joined four prominent national voices in offering short presentations to introduce threads of discussion that initiated a two-hour conversation on topics such as the nexus of autism and aesthetics, the nexus of autism and neurocosmopolitanism, and the nexus of autism and rhetoric.

Gary Richards Led Talk at Louisiana Book Festival

by

Gary Richards, associate professor of English, led the book talk “One Book One Festival: ‘A Confederacy of Dunces'” at the Ninth Annual Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, La., on  Saturday, Oct. 27. At the same event, he was part of a panel discussion by contributors to “Comics and the U.S. South” (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), edited by Brannon Costello and Qiana J. Whitted. Richards contributed the essay “Everybody’s Graphic Protest Novel: ‘Stuck Rubber Baby’ and the Anxieties of Racial Difference” to that collection.

Zach Whalen Presents Paper at Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

by

Zach Whalen, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Communication, presented a paper at the recent Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference, held this year in Milwaukee, Wis. The presentation, “A Counterfactual Historiography of Three Game Platforms,” challenged the received metanarrative of game console generations. By way of a close reading of three less well-known consoles — Channel F, Vectrex and Virtual Boy — the paper explores the implications of an alternate history for video game devices.

Claudia Emerson Honored as Woman of Distinction

by

Arrington Distinguished Chair of Poetry and Professor of English Claudia Emerson was named one of seven “Women of Distinction” of 2012 by the Girl Scouts of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Emerson received the award during a ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 26. The girl scouting review committee chose the “Women of Distinction” based on their ability to serve as examples of courage, confidence and character. Emerson’s award focused on her accomplishments in culture and communication.

Gary Richards Presents at Conference in D.C.

by

On Sunday, August 5, Gary Richards, assistant professor of English, presented a paper, “Statues, Stories, and Hominy Grits: The Light in the Piazza, Grey Gardens, and the Complicating of the United States South in the Contemporary American Musical,” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference in Washington, D.C. The paper was part of a panel entitled “Broadway Musicals as Sites of American Identities and American Histories.”

Richards also was the University of Mary Washington’s chapter delegate to the Forty-Third Triennial Council of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which met in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, August 2 through Saturday, August 4.

Richard Finkelstein’s Article on Shakespeare Appears in Journal

by

Richard Finkelstein, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of English, published “The Comedy of Errors and the Theology of Things” in the spring issue of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900.

The article looks at both theological and mercantile traditions to argue that Shakespeare sees participation in the marketplace as redemptive.