Current News

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.

Franco Barchiesi, African American and African Studies:  “Wage Labor and Social Citizenship in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 42.1 (2007): 39-72.

Morris Beja, English:  "James Joyce for Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us?," review of James Joyce in 90 Minutes, by Paul Strathern, James Joyce Literary Supplement 20 (Fall 2006): 20.

Nick Breyfogle, History:  "Caught in the Crossfire? Russian Sectarians in the Caucasian Theater of War, 1853-56 and 1877-78," republished in Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, 2006).  The article originally appeared in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 713-50.

Frank Donoghue, English:  "Prestige," Profession 2006: 155-162.

Richard Dutton, English:  "The St. Werburgh Street Theater, Dublin," Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642, eds. Alan Farmer and Adam Zucker (New York: Palgrave, 2006): 129-155.

Graduate student Ann Ferrell, English:  review of Born and Raised in Tobacco Fields: Portrait of a Changing American Landscape by Carrie Nobel Kline and Adam Nordell, Talking Across the Lines, LLC. Oral History Review 33.2 (2006): 103-106.

Stephen G. Hall, History:  "Visions of Racial Destiny: Reexamining African American Life in the South," The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 5 (October 2006): 403-410.

Hannibal Hamlin, English-Mansfield:  review of Selected Sermons and Lectures by Lancelot Andrewes, edited by Peter McCullough. Renaissance Quarterly 59:4 (Winter 2006): 1320-21.

Michelle Herman, English:  "Finders, Keepers, Hoarders, Weepers," O, the Oprah Magazine (January 2007): 111-116.

Andrew Hudgins, English:  “Last Days,” The Oxford American 55 (2006): 102-106.

Robin Judd, History:  "Samuel Holdheim and the German Circumcision Debates, 1843-1876", Redefining Judaism in an Age of Emancipation: Comparative Perspectives on Samuel Holdheim, ed. Christian Weise (Leiden: Brill, 2007): 127-142 and "Defining Moments in Leadership," Wexner Foundation Newsletter (December 2006).

Lisa Kiser, English:  review of Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds., Reading Medieval Culture, in Studies In The Age Of Chaucer 28 (2006): 334-37.

Sebastian Knowles, English:  “More Things in Heaven and Earth,” review of John Gordon, Joyce and Reality: The Empirical Strikes Back, James Joyce Literary Supplement 20.2 (Autumn 2006): 6-7.

Stuart Lishan, English-Marion:  “Eurydice & Loverboy,” Field Notes in Contemporary Literature, ed. C.J. Sage (Aptos, CA:  Dream Horse Press, 2006): 31; and “Three Sisters," The Bellingham Review, XXIX.2 (Fall 2006): 76.

James Loucks, English-Newark, and Andrew M. Stauffer, eds. Robert Browning's Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition 2nd ed. (New York and London: Norton, 2007).

Lee Martin, English:  “Bone of the Bone,” story, Iron Horse Literary Review 7.1-2 (2005-2006): 81-98; and “Such a Life,” essay, River Teeth 8.1 (2006): 82-96.

Patrick Mullen, English:  "I-Houses," The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, eds. Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

Dorothy Noyes, English:  "The Judgment of Solomon: Global Protections for Tradition and the Problem of Community Ownership," Cultural Analysis 5 (2006). http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/

Geoffrey Parker, History:  Unmaking the West. "What-If" Scenarios That Rewrite World History, co-edited with Philip E. Tetlock and Richard Ned Lebow (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006) and "Affaires militaires et navales," La Belgique espagnole, 1585-1715, 2 volumes, ed. Paul Janssens (Gent: Dexia, 2006), 1: 54-82 (simultaneous Dutch edition).

Graduate student Joe Oestreich, English:  “The Death of the Dead Schembechlers,” Esquire 147.2 (2007): 6.

James Phelan, English:  "Rhetorical Faith," a review of Walter Jost, ed., The Essential Wayne Booth, American Book Review 28.2 (2007): 17-18.

Sean O'Sullivan, English:  "No Such Thing as Society: Television and the Apocalypse," Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester D. Friedman, 2nd ed. (London: Wallflower Press, 2006): 223-242.

Doug Ramspeck [Sutton-Ramspeck], English:  "Delicate as Bird Bones," poem, Saranac Review 2 (2006):  58; "Epoch," poem, Redivider 4.1 (Fall 2006): 64; "Foreshortened," poem, Seneca Review 36.2 (Fall 2006): 71; "Original Woods" and "The Veil," poems, Connecticut Review 28.2 (Fall 2006): 58; and "White Mulberries," poem, Potomac Review 41 (Fall 2006): 36.

Stephanie Smith, History:  ‘“If Love Enslaves...Love Be Damned!,’ Divorce and Revolutionary State Formation in Yucatán,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, eds. Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006):  99-111.

David Staley, manager, Goldberg Project, History:  History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future (Lanham, MD:  Lexington Books, 2007).

Karen Winstead, English:  John Capgrave's Fifteenth Century (The Middle Ages Series) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Arc of Justice, written by Kevin Boyle, History, is this year's selection for the Detroit city-wide reading program sponsored by a consortium of Detroit-area public libraries.

Deborah Burks, English-Lima, and Marcia Dickson, English-Marion, have received Ohio Magazine 2006 Excellence in Ohio Education Awards.

Civil Warriors, a blog created in January 2005 by Mark Grimsley, History, has received the 2006 Cliopatria Award for Best Group Blog. The other bloggers include Brooks D. Simpson (Arizona State University), Steven E. Woodworth (Texas Christian University), Ethan Rafuse (Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth), and Sean Dail, a lay student of the Civil War.

David Cressy, History, has been appointed a Visiting Fellow for Trinity term for 2007-2008 at All Souls College, Oxford.

Alan Farmer, English, has received a Course Enhancement Grant from the University Libraries to be used in conjunction with his winter English 980 course.

Wendy Hesford, English, has received a COH Research Enhancement Grant for her next single-authored manuscript Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights and the Formation of Transnational Publics.

Stephen Kern, History, is the recipient of the Distinguished Historian Award for 2007 from the Ohio Academy of History.

Graduate student John Maass, History, has been awarded the Tyree-Lamb Fellowship for 2007 from the Society of the Cincinnati library to conduct doctoral research.

Graduate student Erin McCarthy, English, was admitted to the Folger Institute seminar “A Sense of the Archives,” which will be directed by Professor Kristen Poole of the University of Delaware.

Geoffrey Parker, History, was awarded the 2006 Hatcher Memorial Award for Excellence from the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences.

Graduate student and poet Natalie Shapero, English, has won an OSU Presidential Fellowship award, which recognizes the outstanding scholarly accomplishments and potential of graduate students entering the final phase of their dissertation research or terminal degree project.  The fellowships provide financial support so that the student may devote one year of full-time study to the completion of the dissertation or degree project unimpeded by other duties.  Recipients of this award embody the highest standards of scholarship in our graduate programs.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu has been appointed as a lecturer for the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program for 2007-2010.  She is a member of the OSU Alumni Speakers' Bureau.

The Boston Globe reviewed First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis' Civil Wars, a biography about Jefferson Davis's wife, Varina, written by Joan Cashin, History (December 24).

Richard Dutton, English, was a contributor to "King Lear on Boxing Day," BBC Radio 4; producer Beaty Rubens; transmitted 12/26/2006, 2.15-3.43pm British Time.

Mark Grimsley, History, was interviewed for a report about the controversy surrounding evangelical, conservative Christian pastors who support political causes and candidates (CNN, December 14).

Judson Jeffries, African American and African Studies, was interviewed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) about P.B.S. Pinchback, the first African American to serve as governor of an American state.  Pinchback served as governor of Louisiana for approximately 40 days from 1872-1873.

Chadwick Allen, English, presented “Discours d’ouverture/ Opening statement,” December 7, and “Indigeneity Inside and Outside the Metropolitan Conversation,” December 8, International Colloquium on Conciliation/Reconciliation, Universite du Havre, Le Havre, France.  He gave a series of invited lectures at the Universite du Havre, Le Havre, France between December 4 and 14: “Legal Rights, Treaty Discourse: Founding Contemporary American Indian and New Zealand Maori Signifying Practices”; "Intellectual Sovereignty and Indigenous Aesthetics”; “Performing Indigenous Identity in Bilingual Maori Fiction”; and “Indigenous Aesthetics and the Maori.”  He organized and chaired the session “American Indian Texts in International Contexts” at the Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 28.

Alan Beyerchen, History, was a panelist for "Teaching with Holocaust Memoirs" at the Lessons & Legacies International Conference on the Holocaust, Claremont McKenna College, November 2-5.

JF Buckley, English-Mansfield, presented "The Cultural Geography of Margaret Fuller’s Fourth Level of Marriage" at the 2006 Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia, December 30.

Carole Fink, History, presented "Seeking Refuge in Britain's Empire and Dominions: the Case of Australia, 1937-1939" on a panel entitled "The Dilemmas of Asylum" at the American Historical Association, Atlanta, January 5.

Kenneth Goings, African American and African Studies, co-authored and presented with Eugene O'Connor "They 'Dare[d] to Call their Souls their Own': African American Resistance to the Suppression of the Classics at Historically Black Colleges and Schools," at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, San Diego, California, January 4-7.

Donna Guy, History, presented "Theorizing Child Welfare in Argentina," at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Atlanta, Georgia, January 8.

Susan Hartmann, History, gave a presentation on the panel, "New Narratives of Twentieth-Century American Liberalism," and she commented at a session, "Perceptions of Religion and the Feminist Movement" at the American Historical Association meetings, Atlanta, January 4-7.

Pranav Jani, English, presented "True to Her Salt: Nayantara Sahgal and Namak-Halaal Cosmopolitanism," South Asian Literary Association Conference, Philadelphia, December 2006.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, History, was a participant on the roundtable “Revisiting Black Power: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” at the American Historical Association 2007 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, January 5.

Sebastian Knowles, English, read “Winter Journeys: A Recital of Poetry and Song” at St. Stephen’s Church, Columbus, December 2006.

Graduate student Joe Oestreich, English, presented “This Essay Doesn’t Rock,” KGB Bar, New York City, January 5.

Geoffrey Parker, History, presented "States Make War and Wars Also Break States," the eighth George C. Marshall Lecture, at the American Historical Association Annual Convention, Atlanta.

James Phelan, English, presented "Bonding and Estranging Unreliability," Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, December 28.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, presented "Journeys towards Peace: Thich Nhat Hanh, the American Peace Movement and the Construction of Political Authenticity," on a panel entitled "The Politics of Pilgrimage: Religious Encounters across Occidental/Oriental Divides," at the American Historical Association meeting in Atlanta, January 4-7.

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.

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.

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.

The Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing and the OSU Speech and Debate Team will host a Spoken Word Event at 3:30 pm, January 25, first floor, Science and Engineering Library.  All are invited to bring something to read, or just come to support other writers at OSU.  Contact:  688-5865.

Beverly Moss and Mindy Wright, English, will moderate “Literacy and Writing across Space and Place,” 4:00 pm, January 25, George Wells Knight House, for the Humanities Institute’s Literacy Studies Working Group.  Presentations include “Writing Ourselves into a Culture,” “The Metro School, a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics High School,” and “Eco-Writing.”  Contact:  dicuirci.2@osu.edu.  RSVP:  lantz.38@osu.edu.

Libby Lantz, Sara McKinnon, Joe Oestreich, Rachel Reischling, Natalie Shapero, and Phil Wyatt will participate in the Mother Tongue MFA student reading starts at 8:00 pm, January 25, at Barley's Brewing Company, 467 North High Street.  The event is free and open to the public.  Contact:  Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Margaret Mills, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Dan Prior, History, will discuss their experiences developing a research agenda beyond graduate school and into their academic careers, 10:30 am, January 26, 250 Dulles Hall for the monthly professionalization workshop hosted by the Center for Folklore Studies.  The workshop will be followed by the monthly Final Fridays lunch at noon, 308 Dulles Hall; all faculty, students, and staff are welcome.  Contact:  Center for Folklore Studies, 688-3639.

Graduate students Alana Kumbier, Comparative Studies, and Wendy Wolters Hinshaw, English, will present “Literacy and Representations of Trauma,” 11:30 am, January 26, George Wells Knight House, for the Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies.  Contact:  dicuirci.2@osu.edu.

The opening reception for Imaging Antiquity:  Selections from the Jack Balcer Image Archive starts at 5:00 pm, January 26, Faculty Club.  The Visual Resources Library in the History of Art Department houses the personal slides of the late Jack Balcer, professor of ancient history from 1971-2003, during which time he earned the Outstanding Teaching Award and the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.  A prolific photographer, Professor Balcer employed visual aids as a means to engage and instruct students on how to regard the past.  The Jack Balcer Image Archive consists of nearly 30,000 slides documenting his scholarly research on the Athenian Empire, Greek and Roman Numismatics, and the Persian Empire.  The exhibit will be on display at the Faculty Club from January 26 to March 16.  Contact:  Visual Resources Library, 292-0520.

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.

Erin McGraw, Jason Tucker, and Michael Martinez will participate in the Student/Faculty Reading, 7:00 pm, February 1, 2007, 311 Denney Hall.  Contact:  Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Ignacio Corona, Spanish and Portuguese, will present "Material Negotiations of Identity in Guadalajara," 5:30 pm, February 8, Mershon Center, 1501 Neil Avenue, for the Dinner Lecture Series sponsored by the Center for Folklore Studies.  The OSU community is welcome, but space for dinner is limited; RSVPs are requested.

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.