Current News

aculty and staff are invited to participate in the Humanities Alumni Society's 2^nd Annual Golf Outing on May 19 at Westchester Golf Course in Canal Winchester. Proceeds from the event benefit the Humanities Alumni Scholarship Fund which provides support to Humanities undergraduate students. For details, read our golf outing information. Contact: Shari Lorbach, 688-4532 or lorbach.1@osu.edu.

Alice Conklin, History: "Histories of Colonialism: Recent Studies of the Modern French Empire" in French Historical Studies, 30.2 (Spring 2007).

Heather Kirn, English: "Twelve Pieces for the Hungry Ghosts," Colorado Review 34.1 (Spring 2007): 151-165.

Geoffrey Parker, History: "The limits to Revolutions in Military Affairs: Maurice of Nassau, the battle of Nieuwpoort (1600), and the legacy," Journal of Military History 71 (2007): 331-72.

Randy Roth, History: "Twin Evils? Slavery and Homicide in Early America," in Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, eds., The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).

Chadwick Allen, English, has been named the 2007-2008 Moore Distinguished Visiting Professor in ethnic literatures in the English Department at the University of Oregon.

Michael Les Benedict, History, received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation short-term residence fellowships from the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for 2007-08.

Graduate student Jim Bennett, History, was awarded the Schallek Fellowship from the Medieval Academy of America to conduct archival research in Great Britain.

Alan Beyerchen, History, has accepted an invitation to serve as Senior Visiting Fellow at the Summer Institute of the Holocaust Educational Foundation this summer at Northwestern University.

Graduate student David Dennis, History, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the year 2007-08 to Germany. He is declining and will accept the longer Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship to Berlin University for the year.

Graduate student Alison Efford, History, received an Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Sr. Graduate Tuition Fellowship.

Graduate student Brian Feltman, History, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the year 2007-08 to Germany. He is declining, and will accept the longer Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship to Berlin University for the year.

Graduate Student Edward A. Gutiérrez, History, was awarded a U.S. Army Center of Military History Dissertation Fellowship for 2007-2008.

Undergraduate Dustin Havenar, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, has been selected for the Wolfe Study Abroad Scholarship to travel to Russia.

"Thug-Life Sonnets," an essay written by graduate student Heather Kirn, English, was an honorable mention winner in the Atlantic Monthly's 2007 Student Writing Contest.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, History, received a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year to complete his book project "Freedom Rights: Civil Rights and Black Power in Lowndes County, Alabama."

Graduate student Dustin Kemper, History, was awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Intensive Language Course Grant for language study in Germany this summer.

Christopher Phelps, History, has been appointed to the Merle Curti Award Committee of the Organization of American Historians for the coming year.

Joe Ponce, English, has received a Bordin-Gillette Researcher Travel Fellowship from the Bentley Historical Library to support his research on anglophone Filipino literature.

Graduate student Robyn Rodriguez, History, was awarded the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) University Summer Course Grant for study in Germany this summer.

Michael Les Benedict, History, presented "The Powers of the Commander-in-Chief in the Civil War Era" at a conference, "The Domestic Commander in Chief" at the Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, New York City, April 16.

Kevin Boyle, History, spent the early part of the week of April 15 in Michigan delivering a series of lectures at Detroit-area libraries as part of the metropolitan Detroit "Everybody Reads" program for 2007 -- which featured Arc of Justice. He lectured at the Southfield Public Library; the Rochester Hills Public Library; the Canton Public Library; the Clinton-Macomb Public Library; and the Birmingham Public Library. He chaired a session on "New Directions in Civil Rights Scholarship" at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting in Minneapolis, where he also delivered a luncheon lecture for the Labor and Working Class History Association.

Richard Dutton, English, presented "The Famous Victories of Henry V, Shakespeare's two versions of Henry V, and his writing for the court," Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, San Diego, April 6.

Alan Farmer, English, presented "'On the other side': Playbooks and Newsbooks in Caroline England," University of Pennsylvania Material Texts Seminar, Philadelphia, April 2; and was co-organizer and co-chair of the seminar, "Readings in the Early Modern Book Trade," Shakespeare Association of America, San Diego, April 5.

Alan Gallay, History, organized and participated in a panel on "Indian Slavery in Colonial America," at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians," Minneapolis, March 30-April 1.

Mark Grimsley, History, presented "The Social Dimensions of the Civil War" at Teaching About the Military in American History: A History Institute for Teachers, co-sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and by the Cantigny First Division Foundation, Wheaton, Illinois, March 25; and "Blogging Them Out of the Stone Age: A Military Historian in an Emerging Medium" at the 12th Annual William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium, Norwich University, April 2. He was a discussant in the "Civilians in the Path of War" panel discussion at the 12th Annual William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium, Norwich University, April 3.

Donna Guy, History, chaired the symposium "Gender, Women and Citizenship Rights" on April 23, at the Mershon Center for Security Studies. She has been named to the steering committee of the Ohio Latinamericanist Conference. At its annual meeting held at OSU on April 14, she helped facilitate the rotation of the conference to Ohio University and has offered a $200 prize for the best student paper at the next meeting in May 2008.

Graduate student Michael Johnston, English, presented "Sir Degrevant and Aristocratic Violence," 82nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, Toronto, Ontario, April 12-14.

Robin Judd, History, presented "The 'Circumcision-Question' at the Turn of the Century: Jewish Rites and Assimilation Strategies in Freud's Europe," Kenyon College, March 20. She also recently delivered the first of five lectures in Houston, TX concerning Modern Jewish History and Models of Leadership.

Graduate student Rajiv Khanna, History, presented "The Politics of Nonalignment: Nehru and the 1956 Crises," at George Washington University - University of California at Santa Barbara - London School of Economics Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, April 19-21.

Graduate student Glenn Kranking, History, recently taught "Minority Politics and the Estonian-Swedes until 1944," a seminar, at Tallinn University (Estonia).

Geoffrey Parker, History, presented "Climate and Catastrophe: The World Crisis of the 17th Century," The Solomon Katz Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Martin Ponce, English, presented "GAM Seeking Audience," Association for Asian American Studies, New York, April 6; and "Queers in the Academy," The Ohio State University, Columbus, April 13.

Graduate student Seth Reno, English, presented "(Inter)Disciplining Literary Criticism: Byron Studies in the Twenty-First Century," Disciplining Interdisciplinarity, Columbus, April 13-14.

Randy Roth, History, presented "American Homicide: A Political Hypothesis" and "The Case for Social Science History," two invited lectures at Northern Illinois University, April 4-5,

David Staley Goldberg Center, History, presented "Mapping 'Professional' and 'Vernacular' History" at the American Association for History and Computing Annual Meeting, Brown University, April 21. At that conference, he was re-appointed Executive Director of the association.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, presented "Anti-Imperialist Travelers: Asian-Black Internationalism and Radical Orientalism" at the Diasporic Counterpoint: Africans, Asians and the Americas Conference at Northwestern University, April 21

The Center for Folklore Studies will hold its Spring Colloquium, "Archives and the State: Between Nationalism, Socialism, and the Global Market," May 3-5, Mershon Center, 1501 Neil Avenue. Visit the Center for Folklore Studies Web site. Contact: Sheila Bock, smbock99@yahoo.com.

Deborah Brandt (University of Wisconsin-Madison) will present "Writing Now: New Developments in Mass Literacy," 4:00 pm, May 3, 264 MacQuigg Lab, for the Literacy Studies Working Group. Co-sponsors include College of Humanities, Department of English, and the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities. Contact: Lindsay DiCuirci at dicuirci.2@osu.edu. RSVP: Elizabeth Lantz, 688-0265, lantz.38@osu.edu.

Kelly Magee, Don Pollack, Jennifer Town, and Jason Tucker, English, will participate in An Evening of Poetry and Prose for the Student/Faculty Creative Reading Series, 7:00 pm, May 3, 311 Denney Hall. Contact: Creative Writing Program, 292-2242.

Francis Gingras (Université de Montréal) will present "Romancing the Dwarfs: The Marvelous and the Genre of Romance," 2:30 pm, May 4, 90 Science and Engineering Library, in The Marvelous Lecture Series. Contact: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 292-7495.

Danielle Marx-Scouras, French and Italian, will present "Rock the Hexagon: Popular Music and Identity Politics in Contemporary France,"in the College's eighth Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, May 7, OSU Faculty Club. In 1995, Zebda rocked the Hexagon with their second album "Le Bruit et l'odeur" [noise and odor]. The title song is perhaps best remembered for its sample: racist remarks made by President Chirac in June 1991. This was only one of Zebda's many songs targeting French politicians. Zebda's dream of a French society willing to recognize and accept its ethnic and cultural pluralism is not only in their lyrics, which center on discrimination and exclusion, but also in their eclectic music, which "defies all definition" (Nick Sansano). Demagogy and violence are absent from Zebda's lyrics, music, and cultural politics. Although they have often been called rappers by the French media as though the banlieues could only produce one type of music the seven Zebda musicians repeatedly insist that their music is "French" rock, even chanson. This inaugural talk will explore the ways in which popular music sheds light on identity politics, at a time when France is wrestling with the politics of memory and coming to grips with its multi-cultural identity. It will focus, for the most part, on the French, multi-cultural rock group, Zebda, who won the French equivalent of the Grammy for best song and best group in 1999, and who backed the leftist Motivé-e-s political ticket in the Toulouse municipal elections of March 2001. We shall examine how, from the early 1980s to 2004, Zebda's music and cultural politics denounced parochial notions of Frenchness from a local and national, post-colonial and transcultural context Contact: Melissa Soave, 292-1882.

Bruce Lawrence (Duke University) will present "Osama bin Laden: Situating Public Enemy No. 1 between the Media and the Academy," 4:30 pm, May 9, 100 Mendenhall Lab, in the Religion and the Academy: Enduring Issues, New Approaches Series. Contact: Program in the Study of Religions, 688-8010.

Judson Jeffries, African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, will present "Being a Professor and All That Comes with it in the 21^st Century," 11:30 am, May 16, Knight House, 104 East 15^th Avenue, in the Horizons Lecture Series (lunch by reservation only). Contact: zacher.1@osu.edu.

John Edgar Wideman (Brown University) will make a public appearance, 7:30 pm, May 16, Wexner Center Film/Video Theatre, in the African American Literary Cavalcade. Contact: Department of English, 292-6065.

Claudia Swan (Northwestern University) will present "In the Realm of the Senses: Collecting Marvels in Early Modern Europe," 2:30 pm, May 18, 90 Science and Engineering Library, in The Marvelous Lecture Series. Contact: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 292-7495.

Abril Trigo, Spanish and Portuguese, will present "A Critique of the Political and Libidinal Economy of Contemporary Culture," in the ninth Inaugural Lecture of the year at 4:30 pm, May 24, OSU Faculty Club. Contact: Melissa Soave, 292-1882.

David Brakke (Indiana University) will present "Gnostics and Other ‘Heretics': Imagining the Diversity of Early Christianity," 4:30 pm, May 24, 090 Science & Engineering Library, in the Religion and the Academy: Enduring Issues, New Approaches Series. Contact: Program in the Study of Religions, 688-8010.

Wendy Doniger (University of Chicago) will present "Putting Women, Low Castes, & History Back into the History of Hinduism," 4:30 pm, May 31, 010 Page Hall, in the Religion and the Academy: Enduring Issues, New Approaches Series. Contact: Program in the Study of Religions, 688-8010.

Faculty and staff are invited to the College's 13^th annual Baccalaureate at 3:30 pm, Saturday, June 9, in 131 Hitchcock Hall. Alumnus Craig Zimpher (B.A./M.A. History) will give the Baccalaureate address. Mr. Zimpher is vice president of government relations for Nationwide. RSVP College of Humanities, 292-1882. Please encourage graduating students to participate. Visit the COH Student Information pages.

The Department of African American and African Studies Community Extension Center is currently accepting applications for its Summer Residential Program for High School Juniors and Seniors, June 17-23. The theme of this year's program is "Bookmarks: African Americans in a Cultural Revolution." During this week-long program students will engage in a focused study of the remarkable achievements of African American artists from Blacks in Vaudeville to the crossover into mainstream culture. Application deadline is April 18. For more information, visit the Community Center Web site to download an application or contact Chauncey Beaty, 292-3922.