Current News

Kevin Boyle, History, will present "Josie's Story: Looking for History in Some Very Small Places" in the College's final Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, May 30, OSU Faculty Club. For a quarter century historians have used finely-wrought stories of obscure people a heretical miller, a long-lost soldier, a frontier midwife to explore the cultures of particular times and places. While this approach has flourished in some fields, it has made almost no headway in twentieth-century American history. This presentation discusses the challenges of doing microhistories of the modern era and the joy of uncovering the past in some very small places. Contact: 292-1882.

Faculty and staff are invited to the College's 12th annual Baccalaureate at 3:30 pm, Saturday, June 10, in 131 Hitchcock Hall. Alumnus Brian Besanceney (B.A. History/Political Science) will give the Baccalaureate address. Mr. Besanceney is the assistant secretary for public affairs in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. RSVP: College of Humanities, 292-1882. Please encourage graduating students to participate. Visit the Student Information page.

John Burnham, History: "A Clinical Alternative to the Public Health Approach to Mental Illness," in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Vol. 49.2 (Spring 2006): 220-237.

John Conteh-Morgan, French and Italian: a translation with an introduction of Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment by Louis Sala-Molins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Kathy Fagan, English: "No cakes for us...." FIELD 74 (Spring 2006): 55-58.

Graduate student Amédékanya E.B. Kofi, French and Italian: a play, Morts-vivants de Quifare, Pièce de théâtre at Editions Glèbe, Québec, Canada.

Graduate student Harry Laufman, French and Italian: a review of "The Secret of Laughter: Magical Tales from Classical Persia (Susha Guppy), The Middle East and South Asia Folklore Bulletin 21(2): Autumn 2005.

Graduate student Laura Pondea, French and Italian: "La Dimension psychanalytique de la culture dans L'Aventure ambiguë de Cheikh Hmidou Kane et Orphée D'Afric de Werewere Liking" in Ethiopiques 73.2 (2004): 155-167; and "Phèdre de Racine: du labyrinthe mythique au chemin de Jérusalem" in Romance Notes 45.3 (2005): 311-319.

Albert N. Mancini, French and Italian: "Ricordo di Vittore Branca (1913-2004)," Italica, 81.3 (2004): 445-447; review of The Journal of Aurelio Scetti. A Florentine Galley Slave at Lepanto (1565-1577), translated and edited by Luigi Monga; "Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies," vol. 266 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), Italica, 81.4 (2004): 579-81; and "Politica e letteratura nelle 'Filippiche" sul pericolo turco di Francesco Bolognetti," Esperienze letterarie (Pisa-Roma), 30.3-4 (2005): pp. 107-137.

Danielle Marx-Scouras, French and Italian: La France de Zebda 1981-2004. Faire de la musique un acte politique (Paris: Editions Autrement, 2005).

Karlis Racevskis, French and Italian: "Julien Benda" in The Columbia History of 20^th Century French Thought, edited by Lawrence Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006): 420-22; and "On the 'lamentable behavior and pessimism of university humanists': The Humanities and the Culture Wars in the USA," The International Journal of Humanities, 2 (2006): 1585-90.

Director David Staley, History: "Futuring Methods, Practitioners, and Organizations" and "Future Issues" in The History Highway: A 21st Century Guide to Internet Resources.

Heather Webb, French and Italian: "Catherine of Siena's Heart," Speculum 80:3 (July 2005): 802-817.

Susan Williams, English: Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

Wynne Wong, French and Italian: (with Alessandro Benati and Bill VanPatten) "L'Approccio processing instruction: tra teoria e sperimentazione nell'acquisionze dell'italiano come lingua straniera," Rome: Armando Press (2005).

The University of Texas Press has named Frederick Luis Aldama, English, co-editor of "Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture."

Brenda Jo Brueggemann, English, has received a Summer 2006 "Research on Research" fellowship award with Karla Kmetz, an undergraduate student who is minoring in disability studies.

Graduate student Denice Fett, History, received a Mershon Center Research Grant to support her summer dissertation research in England, Scotland and France.

Graduate students Audra Jennings and John Maass, History, received the Graduate School's Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship, Spring 2006.

Graduate students Michael Johnston, Thomas H. Pruiksma, and Ivonne M. Garcia, English, received the Graduate School's Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship, Spring 2006.

Graduate student Dustin Walcher, History, received a Moody Grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation.

Chadwick Allen, English, presented "Aesthetic Encounters of the Indigenous Kind," an invited lecture, University of Oregon, May 8; and "The View from Postcolonial Studies," Colonization and Narrative Migrations: Legends of Occupation from the Mediterranean to the Americas, Spring Colloquium, OSU Center for Folklore Studies, May 12.

Graduate student Adriana Golumbeanu, French and Italian, presented "Images de femmes dans des miroirs (urbains) parallèles : Texaco de Patrick Chamoiseau et Les honneurs perdus de Calixthe Beyala" at the Eighth International Colloquium of the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d'Amérique (SPFFA), held at Fordham University, New York, March 25; and "La rue et ses pratiques narratives dans Texaco et La Belle Créole" at the 59th Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, April 20-22.

Timothy Gregory, History, presented "Pagans and Christians in the Temples of Greece," at the Society for the Study of Early Christianity, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, April 2006.

Peter Hahn, History, presented "The Cold War and the Six Day War: U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict of June 1967," at an LSE Cold War Studies Centre Symposium at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, near London, May 11.

Sarah-Grace Heller, French and Italian, presented "2000 Years of French Fashion" for the College of Arts and Sciences Office of Development Renaissance Rediscovery 2005 Weekend, November and "Used Clothing in Medieval France: Was 'Fripe' Fashionable?" at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, Boston, April 1.

Eugene Holland, French and Italian, presented "Nomad Management" at a conference jointly sponsored by the Copenhagen Business School, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and the University of Copenhagen, in Copenhagen, November 3-5.

Dennis Minahen, French and Italian, presented "Irony, Violence, and the Lyric Subject in Baudelaire" at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, University of Texas, Austin, October 28.

Graduate student Laura Pondea, French and Italian, presented "Installation and chromatics in Monique Proulx' Aurora Montrealis" at the 3rd Conference of the International Laboratory for the Comparative Multidisciplinary Study of Representations of the North, Stockholm, Sweden, April 20-23.

Graduate student Emre Sencer, History, presented "Military Press in Germany and Turkey at the Turn of the 1930s" at the 12^th Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History, Freiburg, Germany, April 26-29.

Director David Staley, History, presented "Online Education and the Networked 'Solitary Scholar'," a digital montage at the online American Association for History and Computing annual meeting April 24-28. He was invited to Marietta College to present "The Future of History" on April 27, and presented "Concept Mapping as Visual Essay" at the Electronic Written, Aural, Visual Expression (E-WAVE) seminar here at Ohio State on April 26.

Heather Webb, French and Italian, presented "Vital Heat: Medical and Theological Distributions of Potency" at the Knowledge and Belief Fellows Conference and Reunion, Stanford Humanities Center, October 14-15.

Wynne Wong, French and Italian, presented "Grammar with Drills," a workshop at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, New York, March 31.

The Sixth National Meeting, German-American Cross Currents and Exchanges in the 21st Century, takes place June 2-4. Participants include John Maciuika (City University of New York Baruch College), Jutta Limbach, (Goethe Institut), Volker Berghahn (Columbia University), Stephen Dahms (Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering, Brenda P. Winnewisser (OSU Physics Department), and Theodore Ziolkowski (Princeton University). Contact: Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, 292-6985; visit the German-American Cross Currents and Exchanges Web site.

Faculty and staff are invited to participate in the Humanities Alumni Society's inaugural Golf Outing on July 17 at the OSU Gray Course. Proceeds from the event benefit the Humanities Alumni Scholarship Fund which directly supports Humanities undergraduate students. For details, visit the Humanities Alumni page. Contact: Shari Lorbach, 688-4532 or lorbach.1@osu.edu.