Current News

The College of Humanities welcomes the following new faculty: Judson Jeffries (African American and African Studies); Tiyi Morris (African American and African Studies-Newark); Weihong Bao and Ooyoung Pyun (East Asian Languages and Literatures); Adeleke Adeeko, Ray Cashman, Ryan Friedman, Merrill Kaplan, Sean O'Sullivan, and Andrea Williams (English); Sara Crosby (English-Marion); Merrill Kaplan and Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm (Germanic Languages and Literatures); Richard Fletcher and Julia Hawkins (Greek & Latin); Lilia Fernandez, Daniel Hobbins, and Ousman Kobo (History); Derek Soon Heng and Margaret Sumner (History-Marion); Snjevana Buzov and Morgan Liu (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures); Cynthia Clopper and Judith Tonhauser (Linguistics); Ben Caplan, Lisa Downing, Abraham Roth, Timothy Schroeder, Declan Smithies, and Wayne Wu (Philosophy); and Jill Bystydzienski (Women's Studies)

Michael Les Benedict, History: Preserving The Constitution: Essays On Politics and The Constitution in the Era Of Reconstruction (Fordham University Press, in its series "Reconstruction America").

Daniel E. Collins, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures: co-editor, along with Miroljub Jokovic, Predrag Matejic, and M.A. Johnson, of Love of Learning and Devotion to God in Orthodox Monasteries: Selected Proceedings of the 5th International Hilandar Conference, vol. 1 (Belgrade/Columbus, 2006); author of "Speech Reporting and the Suppression of Orality in Seventeenth-Century Russian Trial Dossiers," Journal of Historical Pragmatics 7:1 (2006): 265-292; and "Mixed Blessings: From Benediction to Command" in Medieval Slavia Orthodoxa." He is currently working on an article on the myth of language loss in the medieval Legend of Salonica (for the American Proceedings of the upcoming International Congress of Slavists) and another on delocutivization and pragmatic metonymy in semantic shifts. His long-term project is a monograph on monstrosity and evil in Slavic folk beliefs.

Saul Cornell, History: A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Carter V. Findley, History: Sir James W. Redhouse, The Making of a Perfect Orientalist? American Board Library Occasional Publications 1 (Istanbul: SEV-Yay, 2006).

Jane Hathaway, History: The Ottomans and the Yemeni Coffee Trade," The Ottomans and Trade, eds. Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, Special issue of Oriente Moderno new series 25/1 (2006): 161-71.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, History: "SNCC, Black Power, and Independent Political Party Organizing in Alabama, 1964-1966," Journal of African American History 91.2 (2006): 171-193.

Fritz Graf, Greek and Latin, and Walter Burkert, eds.: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica (Kleine Schriften), volume 3 (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006).

Robert J. McMahon, History: "The Point of No Return: The Eisenhower Administration and Indonesia, 1953-1960," in The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War, eds. Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006): 75-99.

Koritha Mitchell, English: "Anti-lynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and the Evolution of African American Drama," Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877 -1919, eds. Barbara McCaskill and Caroline Gebhard (New York: New York University Press, 2006): 210-30.

Julia Watson, Comparative Studies: Before They Could Vote: American Women's Autobiographical Writing, 1819-1919, co-ed. and Introduction with Sidonie Smith (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); "‘When Women Pursue Justice': Connecting for Change," When Women Pursue Justice (community mural exhibition catalog funded by New York Council for the Humanities) (New York: Artmakers Inc., 2006); 7-15.

Susan Delagrange, Rhetoric and Digital Media, English-Mansfield, received the 2006 Hugh Burns Dissertation Award presented by the journal Computers and Composition for excellence in computers and composition studies scholarship.

Carter Findley, History, has received the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies for his book The Turks in World History (Oxford University Press, 2005). The award, which carries on honorarium of £3000, was announced on July 24 at the annual meeting of the British Society for Middle East Studies (BRISMES). The prize, awarded annually for the best scholarly work on the Middle East, is funded by the Abdullah Mubarak Charitable Foundation. In each of the years since the prize was founded, it has attracted some 30 nominations from 15 publishers and the overall standard of entries has been extremely high

Yana Hashamova, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, has received a Coca-Cola Grant in support of her ongoing research project on trafficking in women.

Kim Kovarik, office associate, English, received the 2006 Colleges of the Arts and Sciences Outstanding Staff Award. Other Humanities nominees included: Brenda Hosey, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Stafford Noble, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures; Sue O'Keeffe, Philosophy; and Gail Summerhill, History.

Dionisio Viscarri, Spanish and Portuguese-Newark, was the recipient of the 2006 OSU-Newark Teaching Excellence Award

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, received a research grant from Emory University's Robert W. Woodruff Library for her book project entitled "Radicals on the Road: Third World Internationalism and American Orientalism during the Vietnam Era."

Kevin Boyle, History, was quoted in an article about how the United Auto Workers union has adopted a conciliatory tone with the major U.S. auto manufacturers, as these companies struggle to survive amidst growing competition (Washington Post, June 13).

Steven Conn, History, wrote a letter to the editor in which he argued that the Democrats must take advantage of voter unhappiness with the Republican Party during the coming election, or risk being out of power for several more election cycles (New York Times, June 11).

Saul Cornell, History, was quoted in an article about how polls consistently show broad support for gun control in the United States. However, opponents of gun control contribute much more money to their cause (U.S. News & World Report, July 17). He was recently interviewed on Fox and Friends, Fox's Networks morning news show, about the book A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (Oxford University Press, 2006). He was also interviewed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR. The latter show was filmed by C-SPAN and will be broadcast on Book TV within the next month.

"Partners in Prayer," an article on the ex-gay movement written by Tanya Erzen, Comparative Studies, appeared on page one of the Boston Globe "Ideas" section, June 11. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/06/11/partners_in_prayer/. The article is an excerpt from her book, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement (University of California, 2006). She was interviewed and quoted by The Columbus Dispatch in an article on June 11. She was interviewed about her book on MSNBC cable news on June 18 and by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" on NPR about her book on July 27. She was interviewed on KPFK Pacifica radio on August 30

Andrew Hudgins, English, wrote an essay for the Sunday Magazine about his childhood fascination with his grandmother's false teeth (Washington Post, June 4).

Stephen Kuusisto, English, and his new book, Eavesdropping: A Life By Ear, were featured in "Author's Book Eavesdrops on World of Blind Travel" (The Times, September 20).

Ohio State had the largest delegation of any university at the inaugural meeting of the Slavic Linguistics Society in Bloomington, Indiana, September 8-10. Six papers were presented by faculty and graduate students in the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures: Daniel E. Collins (Slavic): "'Irregular' Absolute Constructions in Early Slavic Syntax: A Functional/Pragmatic Approach"; Tania Ivanova-Sullivan (Slavic): "The Semantics of Surprise: Bulgarian Admirative Constructions"; Andrew Kier (Slavic), "Four Non-Canonical Prayers in South Slavic Trebnik (Hilandar HM.SMS 378)"; Oxana Skorniakova (Slavic), "The Existence of Expletive Subjects in Russian"; Maria Alley and Bryan Brookes (Slavic), and Andrea Sims (Linguistics), "On Russian Verbal Gaps and Non-optimality in Language"; and Anastasia Smirnova (Linguistics): "Syntactic and Semantic Characteristics of Control in Bulgarian."

Michael Les Benedict, History, presented "Brown v. Board of Education: Majorities, Minorities, and Public Policy" at the Kansai American Public Law Conference in June and "The People Themselves: The Constitutional Responsibility of the American People" at the Doshisha University American Studies Seminar in July

Brenda Brueggemann and Stephen Kuusisto, English, and Scot Danforth, School of Teaching and Learning, have been named co-editors of Disability Studies Quarterly. Disability Studies Quarterly is the flagship journal of the Society for Disability Studies, an international, interdisciplinary research group that fosters the investigation of disabilities as experiential, social, and political phenomena. The quarterly journal publishes scholarship from a wide variety of disciplines, including literary theory, sociology, history, philosophy, and education.

John Brooke, History, has been elected president of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, to serve 2007-2008. He is serving a three-year term on the SHEAR Executive Council, which started in July 2006.

Nina Berman, Comparative Studies and Germanic Languages and Literatures, presented "German-language Sources about the Ottoman Empire: Questions of Genre, Power, and Ideology" at the Second World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Amman, Jordan, June 11-16

Daniel E. Collins, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, presented a paper entitled "'Irregular' Absolute Constructions in Early Slavic Syntax: A Functional/Pragmatic Approach" at the East Coast Indo-European Studies Conference, June 2006; he presented a revised version of the same paper at the Slavic Linguistics Society Conference in September 2006.

David Cressy, History, presented "Accidental Radicals? Dangerous Talk in Caroline England," at a Conference on "Rediscovering Radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland c.1550-c.1700" at the University of London, Goldsmiths College, June 22.

Donna Guy, History, presented "The Shifting Meanings of Family and NN (Ningun Nombre)" at the 52^nd International Congress of Americanists in Seville, Spain, July 21. She also co-coordinated a ten-hour symposium entitled "Transgressing Genders and Sexualities: (Re) Writing and Teaching the History of the Americas" and served as chair and commentator on a panel entitled "Discourse, Political Negotiation, and Lived Realities: Sexualities and Genders in Cuba."

Robert J. McMahon, History, was a panelist on a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, in Lawrence, Kansas, June 24; and, during a recent trip to Japan, he presented two papers at a symposium at Nanzan University, in Nagoya, July 14, and another paper at a research seminar at Kansei University, in Osaka, July 15.

David Staley, director, Harvey Goldberg Program for Excellence in Teaching, History, presented "Maps as Spatial Narratives," the opening address at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Learning (NITLE) workshop "People, Places and Culture: Mapping the Middle East/North Africa Region," Williams College, August 14.

Julia Watson, Comparative Studies, was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at the Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt, Austria, for the summer 2006 term (March 7-July 4). While in Europe she gave the following invited presentation: "Autobiographical Beginnings in Theory and Practice" to the Swiss Association for North American Studies at the University of Basel, April 27; the University of Genève, April 28; and the University of Bern, Switzerland, April 29. "The Collision of Personal History and World History in Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theatre?" for the Lecture Series on Feminist Theory and Gender Research, Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt, Austria, May 23; "Truth Matters: Autobiographical Hoaxes in the Age of Memoir," Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Theory of Biography, Vienna, and Gender Research Institute of the University of Vienna, June 21; "Whose Truth? The Uses of Autobiographical Hoaxes in Contemporary Life Writing," Department of Comparative Literature and Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, June 6; "The Uses of Narrative in Everyday Life," Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, June 6; "Space and Autobiographical Narrative," DFG-Research Group on Self-Narratives in Transcultural Perspectives, Historical and Cultural Studies Department of the Free University, Berlin, July 10; forum for advanced students on autobiography studies, with Sidonie Smith, April 19; "Say It Isn't So: Autobiographical Hoaxes and the Ethics of Life Narrative," April 20; and a roundtable on "American Perspectives on Life Writing Issues and Prospects," April 20, at an international symposium on "The Theory and Practice of Life Writing: Autobiography, Memoir and Travel Writing in Post/modern Literature," Halic University, Istanbul, Turkey; "Autoethnography and Puerto Rican Women's Life Narratives: Santiágo's When I Was Puerto Rican and López Torregrosa's The Noise of Infinite Longing," at the Multi-Ethnic Society of Europe & America Conference, Pamplona, Spain, May 19; forum on "Autobiography and Mediation "Auto/Biography and Media/tion," July 27, and "Mediating American Life Narratives of War: Jenny Holzer's ‘Twice Told,'" July 30, at the Fifth Biennial International Auto/biography Association Conference, Mainz, Germany.

Michael White and graduate student Crystal Nakatsu, Linguistics, presented "Learning to Say It Well: Reranking Realizations by Predicted Synthesis Quality" at the joint conference of the International Committee on Computational Linguistics and the Association for Computational Linguistics (Coling/ACL2006) in Sydney, Australia, July 21.

John E. Murray (University of Toledo) will present "The Role of Parents in Literacy Acquisition: Historical Evidence," 4:00 pm, September 28, George Wells Knight, 104 East 15^th Avenue, in An Ohio-Based Literacy Researchers Lecture Series Event, organized by the Literacy Studies Working Group. Contact: The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, lantz.38@osu.edu or 688-0265.

Michelle Herman, Sean Flanigan, and Kim Brauer, English, will participate in the Student/Faculty Reading Series, 7:00 pm, October 5, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

The Humanities Alumni Society is hosting a Game Watch Party (OSU vs. Michigan State) on October 14. The party begins one hour before kick-off at the Ravari Room, 2657 North High Street. All are welcome. RSVP: Todd Hills, tfh715@ameritech.net or (614) 261-7110.

The College of Humanities is hosting the Faculty Recognition Reception at 5:00 pm, October 25, The Blackwell Inn. Contact: Kelli Fickle, 292-1772; fickle.7@osu.edu.