December 26, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Poetry Reading by Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Linda Gregerson, Nov. 14

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Professor Linda Gregerson

Professor Linda Gregerson

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program presents

A POETRY READING

Professor Linda Gregerson

Linda Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She is co-editor of Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic and author of The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic, as well as six books of poetry and a volume of essays on the contemporary American lyric. Her essays on Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wyatt, and Jonson appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Poetry Society of America, the Modern Poetry Association, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Professor Gregerson will read from a range of her poems and offer commentary, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 5 p.m.
Combs 139

For more information, contact Professor Gary Richards at (540) 654-2365 or grichard@umw.edu.

Co-sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa’s Kappa of Virginia and the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication and generously funded by the Wendy Shadwell ’63 Program Endowment in British Literature

Rafferty Publishes Essay, Presents at Rappahannock Writers Conference

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Associate Professor of English Colin Rafferty

Associate Professor of English Colin Rafferty

Colin Rafferty, Associate Professor of English, recently published an essay on Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary Shoah in the new issue of Wig-Wag, a literary magazine on film edited by UMW graduate Brad Efford.

Rafferty also gave a talk on “Writing the Travel and Food Essay” at this past weekend’s Rappahannock Writers Conference, sponsored by the Central Rappahannock Regional Library and held at UMW’s Stafford Campus.

Richards Leads Capote Discussion at Louisiana Book Festival

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Professor of English and ELC Chair Gary Richards

Professor of English and ELC Chair Gary Richards

Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, led the group discussion of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory at the One Book, One Festival program of the Louisiana Book Festival held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Saturday, November 2, 2019. One of Capote’s most beloved pieces of writing, the autobiographically-inflected story was published in 1956 in Mademoiselle and later reissued as a slender stand-alone volume. This particular program was made possible in part by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Subramanian Publishes Story on Depression in The Atlantic

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Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication

Sushma Subramanian, journalist and assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, has published a story in The Atlantic about an emerging form of depression in Japan, colloquially called “modern-type depression.” In her piece, she explores the work of Japanese scientists studying the social changes that have contributed to this condition: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/modern-type-depression-japan/600160/.

Barrenechea Lectures on Silko at Eastern New Mexico University

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Professor Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently delivered a Skype lecture at Eastern New Mexico University. Titled “Leslie Marmon Silko’s Council Book: Hemispheric Forces in Almanac of the Dead,” it discussed the inter-artistic and inter-American dimensions of an encyclopedic novel by a Laguna Pueblo author.

Whalen Publishes Essay on Computer-Generated Creative Writing

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Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor of English, has just published an article in a special issue of The Journal of Creative Writing Studies on “Creative Making as Creative Writing.” His article, “The Many Authors of The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation,” is an artist’s statement reflecting on how creating a computer-generated book like Whalen’s 2017 work The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex invites readers to reconsider the idea of what it means to be an author. Whalen’s book draws on several different databases to create an essentially infinite variation on the nursery rhyme “This is the House that Jack Built”; these databases contain the work of hundreds of contributors, so Whalen argues in this article that the novel is best considered a collaboration among many instead of the work of a single individual or computer. https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol4/iss1/

Brovero Honored with Debate Award

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Debate Coach Adrienne Brovero

Adrienne Brovero, UMW’s Director of Debate, was recently recognized by the Barkley Forum for Debate Deliberation and Dialogue as this year’s recipient of the Melissa Maxcy Wade Award Honoring Debate as a Public Good at the Atlanta Season Opener Debate Tournament. The award is presented at the Season Opener each year to a person in the debate community who is committed to using debate as a public good or encouraging and empowering others to use debate as a public good. In March, Brovero was similarly recognized by the National Debate Tournament, when she received the Lucy M. Keele Award for Service, based on her service to the community. Brovero is also continuing in that spirit, having been elected as Chair of the National Debate Tournament Committee in March.

Crosby Presents Research on Sports Communication and Social Justice

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Assistant Professor of Communication Emily Deering Crosby

Emily Deering Crosby, Assistant Professor of Communication, recently presented her research at the International Communication Association Preconference “Sports Communication and Social Justice” held at American University. Her research, entitled “Larry Nassar and Rhetorical Monster-Making: Political Subversion in the #MeToo Sports Era,” explores the rhetorical process of “monster-making” (Ingebretsen, 1998) as it unfolded during the 2018 Larry Nassar criminal case, when the former U.S. Gymnastics doctor was tried and convicted of sexual assault. By analyzing the survivors’ televised courtroom testimonials, this research contributes to scholarship on the #MeToo movement that rarely engages sports culture.

On September 20, 2019,  Dr.Crosby, was also inducted into Allegheny College’s Athletics Hall of Fame for her lacrosse career before graduating in ’06: https://alleghenygators.com/news/2019/5/31/allegheny-reveals-2019-athletic-hall-of-fame-class.aspx.

Barrenechea Presents at Literature/Film Association’s Annual Conference

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Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently presented “Fear and Loathing in São Paulo: Trash Metaphysics in the Cinema of Jose Mojica Marins” at the Literature/Film Association’s annual conference, entitled “Reboot Repurpose Recycle” this year and held in Portland, Oregon.

Goldman Co-Edits Special Issue of The Journal of Hip Hop Studies Devoted to Kanye West

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Assistant Professor of Communication Adria Goldman

Assistant Professor of Communication Adria Goldman

Adria Goldman, Assistant Professor of Communication, is one of three guest editors of a special issue of The Journal of Hip Hop Studies devoted to Kanye West. According to the abstract, “The goal of this project, ‘I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church,’ is to add a new perspective to the scholarly discourse on Hip Hop and Christianity within classrooms, religious institutions, and popular culture by focusing on Kanye. We chose to focus on Kanye because he has been one of Hip Hop’s most influential artists in the past decade. Furthermore, Kanye is one of the most polarizing celebrities in America and across the globe. His music, fashion, political views, and family (which includes the Kardashians) dominate discourse on social media, blogs, television, and other forms of mass media. With the exception of Julius Bailey’s 2014 edited book, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, there has been little scholarly work published on Kanye. Bailey’s book contained just one essay, written by Monica R. Miller, dedicated to the theme of Kanye and religion. We intended to produce a nontraditional journal issue, partly because Kanye has never adhered to traditional boundaries. We also chose this method because we wanted to provide a document suitable for both academic and popular audiences. Kanye West identifies as a Christian and primarily uses Christian themes in his music, videos, concerts, and messaging.” For more information, please see: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/1/.