A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
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.
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.
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/.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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/.
Associate Professor of English Shumona Dasgupta
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, recently presented a paper titled “Everyday Trauma: Memorializing the Indian Partition” at the third annual Memory Studies Conference (MSA) at the Complutense University Madrid, Madrid, Spain (June 25-28, 2019).
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