Current News

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.

Please announce to your students: The College of Humanities will host Study-Abroad Night for Humanities majors at 7:00 pm, November 7, 180 Hagerty Hall. Students will receive information on various study-abroad programs and scholarships and have an opportunity to talk one-on-one with Humanities faculty and staff who coordinate programs and students with study-abroad experience. Organized by the Dean’s Student Advisory Group. RSVP: 292-1882. All students are welcome. Contact: Shari Lorbach, lorbach.1@osu.edu

James Battersby, English: "A Proverbial Candle and Johnson's Candlestick," Johnsonian News Letter 57:2 (2006): 29-39.

David Cressy, History: "Bowker, Agnes (b. 1541/2), Servant and Alleged Mother of a Cat" in the October 2006 update to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and "Early Modern Space Travel and the English Man in the Moon" in the American Historical Review, October 2006.

Richard Dutton, English: "'If I'm Right': Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare," Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006): 13-30.

Alan Farmer, English: Introduction, Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642. eds. Farmer and Zucker (New York: Palgrave, 2006): 1-15; and with Zachary Lesser, "Canons and Classics: Publishing Drama in Caroline England," Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642 (New York: Palgrave, 2006): 17-41.

Stuart Lishan, English: Body Tapestries (Aptos, California: Dream Horse Press, 2006); (lyrics, music and perf.) Andrea Perry, "This Little Time; Reservoir; Let’s Not Go Out Tonight; Day Moon," Rivers of Stars, Andrea Perry Productions, 2006; "Three Stories Misheard From One; Late In The Year: The Woodcutter Tree; The Tapestry of Shame: The Woodcutter Tree Tells How Moonlight Left Princess Waterfall; Heard in the Creek Stones: The Princess Waterfall's Song; The Tapestry of Consequences; Written in Her Old Age: The Princess Waterfall's Other Song, ForPoetry September/December 2006: http://www.forpoetry.com "Mr. Collins, Having Escaped Through the Leaves of the Book, Asleep in the Woods," ginosko. 3 (Summer 2006): 22-23; http://www.ginoskoliteraryjournal.com/images/ginosko3.pdf [PDF} "Tapestry of Blossoming Senses: A Notation Of Spring While Watching Two Bicyclists Stop By A Pond; Where Lullabies Go: The Pond On An Early Winter Evening," Verse Daily September 9, 2006: http://www.versedaily.com "Eurydice & Loverboy," Field Notes in Contemporary Literature,ed. C.J. Sage (Aptos, California: Dream Horse Press, 2006): 88.

H. Lewis Ulman, Humanities and English: review of Upstart Talents: Rhetoric and the Career of Reason in English Romantic Discourse, 1790-1820, by James Mulvihill, Studies in Romanticism 45 (Summer 2006): 303-306.

Christian Zacher, English, Richard Sisson, and Andrew R.L. Cayton, eds.: The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) [pub. 2006].

Robert Davis, History, has been awarded Le Grande Prix Madeleine Laurain-Portemer de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, for Esclaves chrétiens maîtres musulmans: L’esclavage blanc in Méditerranée, 1500-1800, the French translation of his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. The prize (15,000 euros) will be presented in Paris at the Coupole du Palais de l'Institut de France, on November 20.

Jacqueline Royster, English and Arts and Sciences, has been selected by the Association of Departments of English within the Modern Language Association to receive the Frances Andrew March Award for distinguished service to the profession. The ADE will present the award at the MLA Annual Convention, to be held in Philadelphia in December.

OSU faculty and students gave a total of twenty papers, forum presentations, and panel commentaries at the 2006 American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in Milwaukee (October 18-22). They organized sessions on Irish ethnography, communities of color, folklore in the composition classroom, fieldwork, Latin American dance, and digital performance, and they served on the Executive Board, ran the International Committee, and convened the Eastern Asia Folklife and the combined Latin American, Latino/a and Caribeño/a, Chicano/Chicana Sections. Amy Shuman's Other People's Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy was chosen for this year's AFS Fellows Book Discussion Forum. Katey Borland received Honorable Mention for the Elli Kongas-Miranda Prize for her book, Unmasking Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Nicaraguan Festival. Ashley Overstreet, who received her English M.A. June 2006, also received Honorable Mention for the Elli Kongas-Maranda Student Prize for her paper "More than 'Just a Job': Acknowledging the Cognitive Practices and Values of Blue Top Waitresses." Participating were Mark Bender, Sheila Bock, Katey Borland, Tracy Carpenter, Ray Cashman, Norita Dobyns, Ann Ferrell, Sande Garner, Kirsi Haenninen, Merrill Kaplan, Margaret Mills, John Moe, Dorothy Noyes, Nicholas Poss, Terence Schoone-Jongen, Martha Sims, and Nancy Yan, joined by OSU folklore alumni Nikki Bado-Fralick, Charley Camp, Larry Doyle, Bill Ellis, Rosemary Hathaway, and Ashley Overstreet.

Chadwick Allen, English, presented "Tonto on Vacation; or, How to Be an Indian Lawyer," Western Literature Association Conference, Boise, Idaho, October 27.

James Bartholomew, History, presented "Japan and the Politics of the Nobel Prize," an invited lecture, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under the auspices of the Center for Japanese Studies, October 12.

Ray Cashman, English, participated in the forums "Text and Community: Henry Glassie’s The Stars of Ballymenone" and "Models of and for Fieldwork Relationships," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Richard Dutton, English, presented "The Famous Victories of Henry V and Shakespeare's Q1 of Henry V (1600)," Shakespeare and the Queen's Men Conference, Victoria College, University of Toronto, Ontario, October 26-29.

Graduate student Cicero Fain, History, presented "The Construction of ‘colored’ Huntington, 1900-1920" at the Rocky Mountain History Interdisciplinary Conference held in Boulder, Colorado, September 16.

Alan Gallay, History, presented "Indians and Colonists: Diplomacy, Cooperation, and Conflict," to Northern Ohio school teachers, as part of the "Expanding America" program held at the Hayes Presidential Center, October 21.

Harvey Graff, English and History, is serving as an external reviewer for McGill University's Arts Faculty Program Review, focusing on interdisciplinary program development and strategic planning.

Donna Guy, History, presented the keynote dinner speech on October 14^th at the recent conference on 1956 sponsored by the Mershon Center. The title of her speech was "1956 in Latin America: From Fidel Castro to the Pill." She is currently teaching a 7 week course on the history of Jews in Latin America on Sunday mornings at Tifereth Israel in Bexley.

Catherine Haulman, History, organized and moderated the roundtable "The Republican Mother Turns 30: Reflections on an Article and a Concept" at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in Oakland, California, October 12.

Merrill Kaplan, English, presented "Capping Verses in Cyberspace: Textuality and Performance on an Icelandic Chatboard," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Pranav Jani, English, presented "Nayantara Sahgal and Nationalist Cosmopolitanism," at the 35th Annual Conference on South Asia, Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, October 22.

Graduate student Lauren Kulesza, English, presented "'The Darkening Chaos of Backyards’: (Sub)Urban Legends and the Rhetoric of Social Guidance Films," Film, Television, and the 1950s Conference, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, New Hampshire, October 6-7.

Karen Leick, English-Lima, presented "Little Magazines and the American Daily Press," Modernist Studies Association Eighth Annual Conference, Tuls, Oklahoma, October 20.

Stuart Lishan, English, gave a Poetry Reading at Otterbein College, Westerville, October 26.

Lee Martin, English, gave readings from his fiction at the Newark Public Library in Newark, Ohio, October 4; the Upper Arlington Public Library in Columbus, October 11; the Knox County Public Library in Vincennes, Indiana, October 18; and the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana, October 19.

Lecturer John Moe, English, presented "The Ohio Connection: African American Folklore and Literary Narrative Structure in the Prose of Paul Laurence Dunbar," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Dorothy Noyes, English, was a discussant on the panel "Spheres of Value: When Market and Moral Economies Intersect" and presented "Toward a Network Model of Creativity: Epic, Festival, Software," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Daniel Prior, History, presented "Tribal Chiefs, Epic Poetry, and the Roots of Kirghiz Nationalism" and organized a panel called "Precursors of National Identity in Central Asia, 19th to Early 20th Century" at the annual conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, University of Michigan, September 28-October 1.

Graduate student Anne-Marie Schuler, English, presented "'Share the Kingdom with Thy Dearest Friend': Edward II, The Elizabethan History Plays, and the Problems of a Monarchial Commonwealth," Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, October 27.

Amy Shuman, English, presented the AFS Fellows Book Discussion Forum: Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy, American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Graduate student Mark Soderstrom, History, presented "Identity Crises: The Presence of the Past in Russia" at the Defense Institute for Strategic Assistance Management, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, October 19.

Graduate students Sheila Bock, Ann Ferrell, and Martha Sims, English, participated in the forum "Folklore in the College Composition Classroom: Rhetoric, Technology, and Methodology as Points of Entry," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

H. Lewis Ulman, Humanities and English, presented "(Un)Reliable Witnesses: Editors as Narrators in Electronic Textual Editions," Watson Conference, University of Louisville, October 6; and "People to Read, Places to Write: Two Views of Civic Literacy," Institute for Public Humanities and Collaborative Research, The Ohio State University, October 17.

Graduate student Nancy Yan, English, participated in the forum "A Conversation on Folklore, Equity, and Social Justice" and "Developing New Directions in Asian American Folklore," American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 18-22.

Dorothy Noyes, English, and Lesley Ferris, Theatre, will present "Cultural Warming? Brazilian Carnival Goes North," 4:30 pm, November 7, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Lusophone Globalicities Working Group. Sponsored by The OSU Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities in conjunction with the Department of African American and African Studies, the School of Music, the Department of Theatre, the Center for Folklore Studies, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Visit (http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/lusoglobe.htm); contact: Daniel Avorgbedor, avorgbedor.1@osu.edu or Richard Gordon, gordon.397@osu.edu.

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.

Greg Esser (Public Art Network of Americans for the Arts) will present "On Public Art," Columbus Public Art Summit, 9:00 am, November 9, King Arts Complex, 827 Mt. Vernon Avenue, in the Building Public Space Initiative. Contact: livingston.28@osau.edu.

Author Jean Thompson will give a public reading at 3:30 pm, November 9, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Poet Martha Collins will give a poetry reading at 4:00 pm, November 13, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Rafael Saumell (Sam Houston State University) will present "José Maria Heredia: A Poet without a Homeland," 3:30 pm, November 10, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Narrative and Cognition Working Group. Contact:aldama.1@osu.edu.

The Department of African American and African Studies Community Extension Center will host a presentation to commemorate the 65^th anniversary of the founding of the Tuskegee Airmen, noon, November 11, Community Extension Center. Contact: Community Extension Center, 292-3922; visit http://aaascec.osu.edu.

Jesse Matz (Kenyon College) will present "Temporal Cognition and Narrative Engagement," 3:30 pm, November 13, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Narrative and Cognition Working Group. Contact: aldama.1@osu.edu.

Robert Levine, Linguistics, will present "Form and Function in Syntactic Theory: Rethinking the Division of Labor," in the College’s third Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, November 16, OSU Faculty Club. The modern era in linguistics began half a century ago with an attempt to formulate an explicit theory of grammatical representation which would account both for the form of English sentences and for their syntactic behavior. As the content of this theory became increasingly abstract and empirically narrow over the next several decades, an ongoing debate developed over just how much expressive power an adequate theory of syntactic form requires---a debate which shows no signs of abatement, much less resolution. But in recent years another, largely independent set of issues has emerged as crucially important to syntactic theory, centering around the status of much of the data that drove the steep increase in theoretical abstractness that began in the 1979s and still continues. It now appears that much of this data is better explained entirely outside the confines of the formal combinatoric system sought by research in syntax, and is far better explained by independently motivated conditions on prosody, pragmatics, real-time processing constraints, and the interaction among these. In his talk, he will review the relevant data and the extra levels of complexity they led theoretical syntax to, give examples of how these data fall out from properties of other domains of linguistic phenomena, and explore the ways in which the appropriate redivision of labor between formal and functional components of human linguistic capability leads to a much simpler and realistic view of the work that the formal component itself needs to carry out.