Current News

The Dean's Student Advisory Group invites everyone to Halloween with Humanities: The Folklore of Dracula and the Ghosts of OSU, 7:00 pm, October 24, R191 Mendenhall Lab. Daniel Collins, Chair, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, will present "Things That Go Bump in the Slavic Night: East European Tales of Encounters with Supernatural Evil," which will be followed by a ghost tour of OSU. An RSVP to 292-1882 would be gravely appreciated. Contact: Shari Lorbach, lorbach.1@osu.edu.

The College of Humanities is hosting the Faculty Recognition Reception at 5:00 pm, October 25, The Blackwell Inn. Contact: Kelli Fickle, 292-1882; fickle.7@osu.edu.

The College of Humanities is pleased to announce its annual competition for the Rodica C. Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring. Through the generosity of Mr. Ben M. Jones III, a former Columbus businessman and long-time friend of The Ohio State University, the College will award at its annual spring Baccalaureate a prize of $5,000 to that member of the Humanities faculty who best exemplifies excellence as a teacher of undergraduates. Nominations are welcome from students, colleagues, alumni, and parents. Nominees must be members of the regular Humanities faculty (assistant, associate, and full professor). Visit https://humanities.osu.edu/cohi/FacultyDocuments/awards/botoman.cfm for more information and the nomination form. Nominations must reach Dean John W. Roberts, OSU College of Humanities, 186 University Hall, 230 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, by November 13, 2006.

Susan Williams, English: ed., The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007 [pub. 2006]).

David Herman, English: review of I Know that You Know that I Know : Narrating Subjects from Moll Flanders to Marnie, by George Butte, Modern Fiction Studies 52.3 (2006): 753-56.

John N. King, English: Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Lindsay Jones, Comparative Studies, was awarded the Mircea Eliade Centennial Jubilee Medal by the President of Romania, Traian Basecu on September 21. The award recognizes Jones's "praiseworthy activity and remarkable contribution to the history of religions." Jones received the award while attending the 6th conference of the European Association for the Study of Religion, which was held in Bucharest and timed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Eliade (1907-1986).

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, written by Joan Cashin, History received favorable reviews (Washington Post, September 3; Chicago Sun-Times, September 17).

An editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune discusses the major themes of a new book, A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America, written by Saul Cornell, History (September 23).

An article in the Toronto Star mentions an essay, written by Walter Davis, English, that discusses how many views of Christian fundamentalists have influenced the Bush administration (September 12).

The Los Angeles Times gave a favorable review to a new memoir, Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, written by Stephen Kuusisto, English (September 3).

Hannibal Hamlin, English, has been appointed the Book Review Editor and Associate Editor of Reformation.

John N. King, English, has been appointed Editor of Reformation.

Deborah Madsen (University of Geneva) will present "From Trauma to Narrative: Temporalizing Experience in Ethnic Literatures," 3:30 pm, October 23, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Narrative and Cognition Working Group. Contact: aldama.1@osu.edu

Theresa Delgadillo (University of Notre Dame) will present "'Seeing' Transfrontera Feminist Spiritual Identities in Chicana Prose, Photographic, and Cinematic Narratives," 3:30 pm, October 26, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Narrative and Cognition Working Group. Contact: aldama.1@osu.edu.

Nancy Tomes (Stony Brook University) will present "Medicine and Madison Avenue," 4:00 pm, October 26, Prior Health Sciences Library, in The Fourth John C. Burnham Lecture in the History of Medicine/Science. The Department of History and the Medical Heritage Center are co-sponsors. The event is open to the public. Contact: Judith Wiener, 293-9273, or Gail Summerhill, 292-3001.

The Center for Folklore Studies (CFS) will hold its monthly Final Fridays event at noon, October 27, 308 Dulles Hall. This is an informal event where students, faculty, staff, and alumni can get together, eat good food, and talk to a bunch of fun-loving folklorists. Also, Dorry Noyes, English, will present "Finding Funding for Dissertation Projects" at CFS's first professionalization workshop of the year, 10:00-11:30 am, November 3, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Center for Folklore Studies, 688-3629.

Singer, songwriter, and activist Holly Near will present "Protest Music as Responsible Citizenship," noon, October 27, 120 Mershon Center, for the Cultures in Disputed Territories Working Group. Contact: horowitz.36@osu.edu.

Michelle Herman, English, will present "Still Here: Repetition & Reinvention: A Writer's Life Cycle" in the College's first Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, October 30, OSU Faculty Club. The novelist Philip Roth once famously remarked on the great good luck of writers, claiming that "nothing truly bad can happen to us; it's all material." As usual, he was exaggerating. Of course plenty that's bad can and does happen, all the time--but it is still material, the stuff of life, which (while not making the bad less bad, or even more bearable) does gives us writers an endless supply of what it takes to make literature. A writer lives two lives at once: the life of experience itself, and the life spent turning experience into stories. Professor Herman has been mining "the stuff of life" to make stories for as long as she can remember, and more recently she has begun to write "true stories" (or as nearly true as her memory will allow) as well. She will talk about the process of life-into-art, both fictional and non-, and read from new work in progress. Free and open to the public. Contact: College of Humanities, 292-1882.

Frederick Aldama, English, will present "Your Brain on Latino Comics," 11:30 am, November 2, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Horizons Lecture Series. Lunch by reservation only. Contact: zacher.1@osu.edu, Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities.

Peter Platt (Barnard College) will present "Wondering About the ‘Wondrer': Paradox, the Marvelous, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale," 3:30 pm, November 3, 090 Science and Engineering Library, in The Marvelous Lecture Series. Contact: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 292-7495.

Neil G. Jacobs, Germanic Languages and Literatures, will present "Jews, Ethnicity, and Languages, in the College's second Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, November 6, OSU Faculty Club. The past two-plus centuries have witnessed numerous and ongoing attempts at the transformation of traditional Ashkenazic society into constituencies of emancipated (full) citizens of Jewish religion within the paradigm of the modern nation state. However, the continued presence of a distinct Jewish ethnicity remained a thorny issue to be dealt with - conceptually, and as played out in everyday life. While precise definitions of ethnicity can evolve or shift - often reflecting the needs or agendas of time, place, and ideology - attempts to define modern Ashkenazic Jews in western society solely in terms of religion (whether by non-Jews or Jews) have always come up short. The present talk examines some of the ways in which insights from linguistics can shed new and different light on Jewish ethnicity. Data will be drawn from post-Yiddish Jewish ethnolects (e.g., Jewish English, Jewish Dutch, Jewish German), and from examination of Jewish speech in American popular culture (film, television). We will look at a number of seeming paradoxes. For example, in post-World War II American popular culture, Jews were typically described in de-ethnicized terms, while at the same time, a watered-down version of stereotypical Jewishness served as a place-holder for generic American immigrant ethnicity. Free and open to the public. Contact: College of Humanities, 292-1882.

William Labov (University of Pennsylvania) will present "Sociolinguistics and Education," 4:40 pm, November 8, 1180 Postle Hall. The Literacy Studies Working Group of the Humanities Institute and the Gladys Foster Anderson Fund in Teaching & Learning are co-sponsors. Contact: Marcia Farr, farr.18@osu.edu, or Lisya Seloni, seloni.1@osu.edu.

Jean Thompson will give a Reading at 7:00 pm, November 9, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242