Current News

Mark Grimsley, History: “The Future of Military History: Beyond the Culture of Complaint” in Headquarters Gazette of the Society for Military History, 19.4 (Fall 2006): 2-3.

Christopher Phelps, History: "Dream Archive" in The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 3, 2007).

Graduate student Serdar Poyraz, History: "Thinking about Turkish Modernization: Cemil Meriç on Turkish Language, Culture, and Intellectuals" in the Journal of Comparative Studies of ,South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 26.3 (2006): 434-445.

Edward A. Riedinger, University Libraries, Spanish and Portuguese, History: "Comparative Development of Brazilian Studies in the United States and France" (enlarged and updated), Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005): 375-395.

Frederick Aldama, English, has been elected to the Modern Language Association’s Executive Committee for Ethnic Studies in Language and Literature.

Brenda Brueggemann and Stephen Kuusisto, English; Nina Berman, Comparative Studies and German; and Philip Armstrong, Comparative Studies, have been awarded an Arts and Humanities Seed Grant for $10,000.

Saul Cornell, History, was listed one of the Top Young Historians by George Mason University’s History News Network.

The Departments of English at OSU-Marion and OSU-Columbus and the Writing Workshop at OSU-Columbus have been awarded a $20,000 grant from the Ohio Board of Regents for their collaborative project, "Assessing Assessment: A Case Study of the Impact of Proposed Placement Guidelines on Student Autonomy and Institutional Culture, Policy, and Procedure." Kay Halasek serves as Principal Investigator. Research contributors include Michael Lohre (OSU-Marion), Martha Sims (Writing Workshop), and Lis Lindeman (OSU-Columbus).

The College of Humanities Staff Advisory Committee congratulates Christopher Griffin, English, recipient of the autumn quarter ABC Staff Award.

Graduate student Edward Gutiérrez, History, was awarded a George C. Marshall/Baruch Fellowship for 2007.

Undergraduate Laura Herbert, History and Spanish, was awarded a Research Scholarship by the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences Honors Committee. Her advisor is Professor Donna Guy.

John N. King, English, has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Seed Grant for $10,000.

Valerie Lee, English, and E. Patrick Johnson (Northwestern University) will be co-editors of a new OSU Press book series on "Black Performance and Cultural Criticism."

Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration, written by James Phelan, English, has been chosen as the winner of the 2007 Perkins Prize by the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature. The 2007 prize is awarded to the best book in narrative studies published in 2005.

Charles Quinn, East Asian Languages and Literatures, has received a grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities to work on his book project, "Early Japanese: a Reader's Rhetoric of Grammar," in 2007-08. This project reinterprets and interrelates selected grammatical and lexical resources of early Japanese (8th~12th c.) for their roles as readers’ cues in verse and prose genres. It develops, incrementally, a familiarity with the preferred configurations, or rhetoric, of constructing a text, e.g. how a story's (an episode's, a poem's) frame of reference is set, how elements from outside that frame are introduced, how identifications are made against a presupposed ground ('It was in X that Y.'), how points of view are established and shifted, how an ironic or surprised stance is indexed, and more. By presenting a synthesis that attunes a reader to a language's ways of configuring such moments, it hopes to help anyone studying early Japan through its texts become a more perspicacious reader.

Edward R. Riedinger, University Libraries, Spanish and Portuguese, and History, was elected Senior Associate Member, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, Trinity (spring) term, 2007 and reappointed, Visiting Research Associate, Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford, Trinity term, 2007. He was co-winner of the 2006 Roberto Reis Book Award of the Brazilian Studies Association.

Cynthia L. Selfe, English, has been awarded a TELR Professional Development Grant to travel to Sydney, Australia and the University of Beijing to attend the 2007 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Susan Williams, English, is a recipient of the 2006-2007 Distinguished University Service Award. Recipients receive a $3,000 cash award and an increase of $1,200 to their base salary.

Graduate student Meredith Clark Wiltz, History, received Bowling Green State University's Distinguished Thesis Award for 2006 from the Graduate College.

Stephen Kuusisto, English, wrote an essay discussing how blind people such as himself experience beauty, as compared to sighted people (Washington Post, November 12).

Graduate student John Maass, History, was on the History Channel discussing Horatio Gates for an episode on “Washington’s Generals” on December 30.

James Bartholomew, History, delivered invited lectures on "Japan and the Politics of the Nobel Prize" at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, November 29; Nissan Centre for Japanese Studies, Oxford University, Oxford, England, December 1; Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, London, England, December 8; and Institutionen for Moderna Sprak, Umea University, Umea, Sweden, December 12.

Mark Bender, East Asian Languages and Literatures, presented "Anyo's Finger: On the Trail of an Yi Oral Poem," Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, December 11.

John Burnham, History, was formal commentator on a session on "Popularizing the Human Sciences in Twentieth-Century America" at the History of Science Society meetings, Vancouver, British Columbia, November 4.

Alice Conklin, History, presented "L'Ethnologie combattante en France dans l'entre-deux-guerres," and "Histories of Colonialism" at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (Sciences-Po and CNRS) in Paris on December 12. She also visited a high-school class in Rennes, France to discuss the current French debate on how to teach the history of colonialism.

Graduate student Erin Greenwald, History, presented “In Search of ‘Personal and Political Freedom’: W. C. C. Claiborne and New Orleans’ Free Men of Color” at the conference “From Colonies into Republics in an Atlantic World: North America and the Caribbean in a Revolutionary Age” held at the Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot, December 8-9.

Kate Brucher (Bowling Green State University) will present "Viva Rhode Island, Viva Portugal! Performance, Tourism, and Transnationalism in Portuguese-American Bands," 3:30 pm, January 5, George Wells Knight House, 104 East 15th Avenue, for the Lusophone Globalicities Working Group. The talk is co-sponsored by the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, the Departments of African American and African Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, and Theatre, the Center for Folklore Studies, and the School of Music. Contact: Daniel Avorgbedor, avorgbedor.1@osu.edu, or Richard Gordon, gordon.397@osu.edu.

Andrew Hudgins, Ida Stewart, and Laurel Gilbert will participate in the Student/Faculty Creative Reading Series, An Evening Of Poetry And Prose, at 7:00 pm, January 11, 31 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Tad Schmaltz (Duke University) will present “Descartes on the Extensions of Space and Time,” 3:30 pm, January 19, 350 University Hall, in the Philosophy Colloquium. Contact: Department of Philosophy, 292-7914.

Gary Tomlinson (University of Pennsylvania) will present “Hamlet and Poppea,” 2:30 pm, January 19, 90 Science and Engineering Library, in The Marvelous Lecture Series. Contact: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 292-7495.

Tim Schroeder, Philosophy, will present “Addiction, Expectation, and Habit,” 3:30 pm, January 22, 350 University Hall, in the Philosophy Colloquium. Contact: Department of Philosophy, 292-7914.

Javier Gutierrez-Rexach, Spanish and Portuguese, will present "It’s All in the Numbers: Meaning and Languages," in the College’s fourth Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, January 25, OSU Faculty Club. The study of meaning has proven to be central to the concerns of many disciplines and areas of knowledge whose subject matter is the structure and articulation of symbolic systems. Meaning is a core component of natural language as well as of many other semiotic entities, independently of whether they are natural or artificial in nature. Whereas it is difficult to deny the centrality of meaning, it is also apparent that defining and articulating the boundaries and methods for its study has remained an elusive task for centuries. In this talk, Gutierrez-Rexach will address several current issues in the study of natural language semantics, especially in the expression of quantity and quantification. He will map the historical development of the formal approach to meaning and show how it has become a central concern for many disciplines at the beginning of the 21st century. Without entering into technical details, he will present some of his own contributions and situate them in the context of the emerging interdisciplinary territory at the intersection of traditional, descriptive, and philological concerns with new ones coming from the linguistic and cognitive sciences.

Neil Tennant, Philosophy, will present “Existence and Identity in Free Logic: A Problem for Inferentialism?,” 3:30 pm, January 29, 350 University Hall, in the Philosophy Colloquium. Contact: Department of Philosophy, 292-7914.

Faculty members from three departments will engage in a lively roundtable discussion on The Future of Moderate Republicanism, placing today’s political situation and midterm election results in perspective. Held Tuesday, January 30, at 7:00 pm in the Wexner Center Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St., the discussion will revolve in part around the release of the book Modern Republican: Arthur Larson and the Eisenhower Years (Indiana University Press, 2006), by Ohio State Associate Professor of History David Stebenne. (Larson was chief presidential speechwriter during the Eisenhower administration.) The panelists will look at the last time the moderates were in charge of the national GOP, why they lost control, and their prospects now for regaining influence in the party. The event -- free and open to the public -- will include a Q&A session with audience members and will be followed by a reception and book-signing. An RSVP is requested to alcalde.1@osu.edu. For more details, visit: http://humanities.osu.edu/alumni/default.cfm.

Call for Nominations: Departments are encouraged to nominate alumni for the College's Alumni Award of Distinction . The College hopes to get a pool of nominees that is representative of the whole College. The deadline is February 12. The Award(s) will be presented at the Baccalaureate, June 9. Contact: Shari Lorbach, 688-4532, lorbach.1@osu.edu.