A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Assistant Professor Sushma Subramanian, Department of English
Sushma Subramanian, Assistant Professor of English teaching journalism, has published a story in Hakai Magazine about the Bajau, a people of Indonesia known for their special swimming and diving abilities, and how they might reveal something about our evolutionary past. The story is available at https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/born-to-swim/.
Professor of English Gary Richards
Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, presented the paper “Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams” at the latest conference of the Eudora Welty Society, “The Continuous Thread of Revelation: Eudora Welty Reconsidered,” held at the College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C. February 21-24, 2019. The conference also featured a staged reading of “Moon Lake,” adapted from the Welty short story of the same title and directed by Brenda Currin. Fourteen Welty scholars made up the cast, including Richards as the narrator.
Earlier in the month, he was a member of a panel discussion of contributors to the collection of essays Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty Twenty-First-Century Approaches, edited by Mae Miller Claxton and Julia Eichelberger, held at the Eudora Welty House and Gardens in Jackson, Mississipi, on February 7. His essay in the collection is “Queering Welty’s Male Bodies in the Undergraduate Classroom.”
Associate Professor of English Ben LaBreche
Ben LaBreche, Associate Professor of English, along with Jason Kerr of Brigham Young University, recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on “The Varieties of Political Theology,” and that issue has now been released.
Associate Professor of English Shumona Dasgupta
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, presented the paper “Memory, Trauma, and Violence: The Partition in Indian Cinema” at the 28th annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies conference in Savannah, Georgia, on February 16, 2019.
Emily Deering Crosby, Assistant Professor of Communication, presented “Country Music as Safe Space: Xenophobia in Patriotic Music Fandom” on an international panel on xenophobia at the National Communication Association Conference on November 10, 2018. Her research analyzes white women’s online reactions to the collaborative performance of the Dixie Chicks and Beyoncé at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards just days before the 2016 Presidential election. Her analysis reveals key intersectional themes of territoriality, sexism, and racism enacted by xenophobic white women in their often specious pursuit of protecting white men’s patriotic Americana, signaling alliances that are largely reflected in recent voting trends.
Professor of English Warren Rochelle’s story “Mirrors,” a gay-themed retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” was accepted by Cuilpress and will be published in their forthcoming queering romance anthology So You Think You Know Love?.
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, presented a paper on Bollywood and the Partition, entitled “Mothers of the Nation: Gender and Identity in Indian Partition Cinema,” at the 29th annual Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association conference in Baltimore (November 8-9, 2018). The paper has since been nominated for the MAPACA Donald Award, which recognizes an outstanding paper and presentation delivered at MAPACA’s annual conference.
Anand Rao, professor of communication, was awarded the 2018 Hobgood Service Award at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was recognized for “dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, appreciation of diversity, and vision of what could be.” As past chair of the Communication Centers Division for NCA, he helped run the annual business meeting. In addition, he also served on a discussion panel titled “Communication at Play: Creating Strategic Partnerships between the Basic Course and First Year Experiences.” There he talked about UMW’s QEP/FSEM, how it serves as a basic communication course for new students, and how the Speaking Center helps to support the FSEM.
On Saturday, October 20, P. Anand Rao, Professor of Communication and Director of the Speaking Intensive Program and the Speaking Center, and Marcel Rotter, Associate Professor of German, represented the University of Mary Washington at the Faculty Senate of Virginia meeting held at Virginia Commonwealth University. Rao is currently serving as president of FSVA, and Rotter is serving as treasurer. They were joined by representatives from twelve other schools and discussed plans for Virginia Higher Education Advocacy Day, which will be held on January 10, 2019.
On Tuesday, October 23, Rao gave a presentation at the Assessment Institute Conference held in Indianapolis titled “Using Assessment Results to Re-Tool the First-Year Seminar.” Despite a 7 a.m. slot, there was a good turnout of 20+ persons and a very active discussion.
Antonio Barrenechea, Associate Professor of English, recently published an entry on the Brazilian film “Black God, White Devil (1964)” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/black-god-white-devil-1964.