Current News

Michelle Herman, English: "Finding My Voice," Redbook (March 2007): 216.

Andrew Hudgins, English: "Courtesy," The New Criterion, February 2007, 31-33; "Lightning Strike in Paradise," Slatea>, February 13; "Appreciation of the Bible," The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, ed. J. Peder Zane (Norton, New York. 2007): 78-79; and "Genesis of the Bible," review of In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000, ed. Michelle Brown, The Columbus Dispatch, February 18: D7.

Lee Martin, English: review of Helen Freemont's After Long Silence (an essay-review), Brevity. (Winter 2007); and "Fielder's Choice," in Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball, ed. Philip Deaver (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 160-166.

Graduate student Catherine Sacchi, English: "Are You Talking to Me?: Personal Pronoun Usage in Tutoring Across the Disciplines," Young Scholars in Writing 4 (2006): 51-63.

Instructional Technology Consultant, Dickie Selfe, English: "Teacher Quality: The Perspectives of NCTE Members," Curt Dudley-Marling, Dawn Abt-Perkins, and Kyoko Sato, English Education 38.3 (April 2006): 167-188.

James Upton, African American and African Studies, received the Education Award for his outstanding commitment to Columbus's historic African American near eastside community at the 11^th annual Celebration of the Neighborhood program hosted by the King Arts Complex in collaboration with Shiloh Baptist Church on February 16.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, received a College of Humanities Research Enhancement Grant for her book project, "Radicals on the Road: Third World Internationalism and Radical Orientalism during the Viet Nam Era.

Kevin Boyle, History, was quoted in an article about Ford Motor's selection of an outsider, Alan Mulally, as the company's new chief executive (New York Times, January 9; International Herald Tribune, January 10). Boyle said the company chose Mulally because it needed to make major changes. He wrote a review of the book, Going Down Jericho Road : The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, by Michael K. Honey (Washington Post, January 14). He was quoted in an article about changes in race relations in Detroit over the past century (Detroit Free Press, January 12); the article noted that Boyle's book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, was selected by Detroit area librarians for the 2007 "Everyone's Reading" program.

Dick Davis, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, wrote a review of a new translation of the Roman epic "The Aeneid," done by Robert Fagles Viking (Washington Post, January 28).

Kenneth J. Andrien, History, presented "Competing Views of Reform and State-Building in Late Bourbon Quito," at the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 24-27. He was also named to the Board of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies.

Kevin Boyle, History, as part of the Detroit metropolitan area's "Everybody Reads" program, recently delivered lectures on the Sweet case at the Michigan branch of the Federal Bar Association, the University of Detroit Mercy -- both undergraduate and law school -- the Detroit Public Library, and the Farmington Hill, Michigan Public Library.

Donna Guy, History, presented "Myths and Realities of Latin American Sexualities" as part of the Laura C. Harris Gendered Borders Series, Denison University, February 1, and a two-day workshop on teaching frontier and borderland history focused on the Rio de la Plata at Butler University, February 5-6.

David Herman, English, presented "Nonfactivity, Tellability, and Narrativity," a workshop on "Events, Eventfulness, and Tellability" sponsored by the University of Hamburg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Narratology and the University of Ghent; Ghent, Belgium, February 16.

Pranav Jani, English, presented "Darfur and the Myth of "Humanitarian Intervention,'" an invited talk, Central Ohioans for Peace, Menonite Church, Columbus, February 2007.

Glenn Kranking, History, presented "Minority Politics and Estonia's Swedish Population from Estonianization to Second World War Occupation" at the Södertörn University College Baltic and East European Graduate School Internal Conference, Bommersvik, Sweden, February 6.

Graduate student Christine Moreno, English, presented "I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours: Secrecy, Conversion, and Subjectivity in Cynewulf's 'Elene,'" Eighth Annual North Carolina Colloquium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Duke University, February 16-17.

Christopher Reed, History, served as visiting professor in the Asian Studies Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He taught a course on the history of the Chinese book as part of the Australasian Rare Book Summer School and also delivered the D.F. McKenzie Lecture on the History of the Book at the National Library of New Zealand.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, discussed opportunities for undergraduate research for a Brain Food Series panel sponsored by the OSU Undergraduate Research Office on February 6. She also presented "Eldridge Cleaver Goes to Pyanyang, Hanoi and Peking: Third World Internationalism and American Orientalism during the Viet Nam Era" to the OSU U.S. Modern History Seminar on January 26.

Gregson Davis (Duke University) will present "'Afro-Greeks' in Search of Home: The Motif of the Underworld Journey in the Poetry of Aimé Césaire and Derek Walcott," 11:00 am, February 23, 347 University Hall. Contact: Department of African American and African Studies, 292-3700.

"A Literacy Studies Miscellany: Recent Work and Work in Progress" will be presented at 11:30 am, February 23, 104 East 15^th Avenue, in the Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Seminar on Literacy Studies. Contact: Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, 688-0265.

The Writing Programs of the Department of English will sponsor the Writing Pedagogy Forum with the Digital Media Project Staff speaking on "From One Screen to Another: Teaching Writing through Film," 1:30 pm, February 23, 131 Mendenhall Lab. Faculty, Lecturers, and Graduate Teaching Assistants are welcome and refreshments will be provided. Contact: Department of English, 292-6065.

Stephen Knight (Cardiff University) will present "Marvelous Merlin: Knowledge, Prophecy and Power," 2:30 pm, February 23, 90 Science and Engineering Library, in The Marvelous Lecture Series. Contact: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 292-7495.

Richard Gordon, Spanish and Portuguese, will present "The Performance of Late-Eighteenth-Century Portugal and Brazil in 'Novo entremez Os Malaquecos, ou Os costumes brazileiros' [ca. 1787]," 3:30 pm, February 23, 46 Hagerty Hall, for the Lusophone Globalicities Working Group. Contact: Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, 688-0265.

Harry Reicher (University of Pennsylvania Law School) will present "Whose Jerusalem? The Status of Jerusalem in International Law" 7:30 pm, February 25, Moritz School of Law's William B. Saxbe auditorium, 55 W. 12^th Avenue, for the Annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Law and Judaism. Contact: Melton Center for Jewish Studies, 292-0967.

Georgina Kleege (UC-Berkeley) will read from Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller (Gallaudet University Press, 2006, 4:30 pm, February 26, 311 Denney Hall, for the Disability Studies Program. Contact: smith.2447@osu.edu.

Trudier Harris (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) will present "The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South," 4:30 pm, February 28, 311 Denney Hall, in the first Department of English Distinguished Alumni Lecture, sponsored by the Department of English and the Center for Folklore Studies. Contact: Department of English, 292-6065.

John Burnham, History, will present "Health Care Personnel in Caricature: Continuing the Humanistic Insight of Chauncey Leake," 11:30 am, March 1, 250 Parks Hall, for Leake Award Lecture. Contact: Department of History, 292-2674.

Cynthia Brokaw, History; Alan Farmer, English; Stephen Hall, History; David Staley, Goldberg Center, History; and Richard Torrance, East Asian Languages and Literatures, will participate in "The Book as an Object of Historical Inquiry," a panel discussion for the Literacy Studies Working Group, 4:00 pm, March 1, 104 East 15^th Avenue. Contact: Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, 688-0265.

Richard Mark Turner (Case Western Reserve) will present "The Literary Mind: Conceptual Blending in Language and Literature," 4:30 pm, March 1, 311 Denney Hall, for the annual Kane Lecture. Contact: Department of English, 292-6065.

Alumna Julian Anderson (M.A. English) will present "Goldilocks and 9/11," 7:00 pm, March 1, 347 University Hall. She will discuss how a shaped narrative helps us understand our lives and why it is so necessary today. Contact: College of Humanities, 292-1882.

Magbaily Fyle, African American and African Studies, and Scopas Poggo, African American and African Studies-Mansfield, will present "The Culture of Blacksmiths in Africa," noon, March 2, 347 University Hall. Contact: Department of African American and African Studies, 292-3700.

John Martin Fischer (University of California, Riverside) will present "Source Incompatibilism," 3:30 pm, March 2, 350 University Hall, in the Philosophy Colloquium. Contact: Department of Philosophy, 292-7914.

Nancy Easterlin (University of New Orleans) will present "Wayfinding, Narrative, Evolution, and Ontology," 3:30 pm, March 2, 104 East 15^th Avenue, for the Narrative and Cognition Working Group. Contact: Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, 688-0265.

Elizabeth Hume, Linguistics, will present "Language, Experience, and the Mind," in the College's sixth Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, March 5, OSU Faculty Club. Why are newborns often better at distinguishing sounds of a foreign language than their parents? Why do learners of a second language typically speak with an accent? Why do words that we use a lot tend to be pronounced differently than those that we use less often? In addressing these and other questions, it is evident that language experience plays a critical role: an individual's experience with a language's sound system not only influences how a person speaks and hears, it also shapes the knowledge of sound patterns stored in the brain. The goal of Professor Hume's presentation is three-fold. The first is to illustrate the extent to which experience shapes language sound systems. The second is to consider why experience matters. Professor Hume will suggest that drawing on the cognitive concept expectation, relevant in visual and music perception, may provide us with a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of experience-based phenomena. Finally, she will turn to the theoretical implications of the role of experience in language. In this regard, she argues that the standard theory of language sound systems, an outgrowth of the influential work of Chomsky and Halle, is inadequate. Rather, a successful theory must not only take into account static categorical information, but also the dynamic nature of the knowledge of language.

The 2007 Dean's Outstanding Staff Award Call for Nominations. Nominate a staff member who holds a regular appointment with 3+ years of continuous service within the College and who has demonstrated excellence in overall job performance, initiative and creativity in the performance of duties, and sustained exemplary service to the unit and to the College. Details and nomination forms are available in the College Office and on the Staff Advisory section of the College of Humanities Web site. Please submit the completed nomination form, the letter of nomination, and supporting letters as one packet to: Debbie Knicely, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, 398 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road by April 16.