Current News

The Department of History has launched a new monthly online news magazine, "Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective," published jointly by the department's Public History Initiative and its online historical resource site, eHistory. In light of many Americans' dissatisfaction with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current issue features the essay "Conflict Termination: How to End—and Not to End—Insurgencies" by OSU history professor Joe Guilmartin, who flew helicopters in two tours during Vietnam, including during the evacuation of Saigon. View the current issue. Subscribe to the rss feed or podcast.

Franco Barchiesi, African American and African Studies, "Asiatic Mode of Production," "Capitalist Mode of Production," "Class Consciousness," and "Feudal Mode of Production," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition, ed. William A. Darity (Woodbridge, CT: MacMillan Reference USA, 2007).

Jon Erickson, English, "The Use and Abuse of the Term 'Experimental' in Art and Performance," The Art Section 1:6 (November/December 2007). Visit The Art Section.

Professor of History Alan Gallay's book, The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier, has been reissued in paperback with a new preface (The University of Georgia Press, 2007).

John Hellmann, English-Lima, "Apocalypse Now Redux and the Curse of Vietnam," The United States and the Legacy of the Vietnam War, ed. Jon Roper (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): 51-71.

Stuart Lishan, English-Marion, "Candlepins" (creative nonfiction), Arts & Letters, Journal of Contemporary Culture 18 (Fall 2007): 76-83.

Kristina Sessa, History, "Domestic Conversions: Households and Bishops in the Late Antique 'papal legends'," in Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300-900, eds. Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner (Cambridge, 2007).

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, History, "Journeys for Peace and Liberation: Third World Internationalism and Radical Orientalism During the U.S. War in Viet Nam," in a special issue on "Asian American History in Transnational Perspective" for the Pacific Historical Review 76:4 (November 2007): 575-584.

Graduate Student Tracy Carpenter, English, received the Zora Neale Hurston Prize for the best student work in any medium on African American folklore at the American Folklore Society/Folklore Studies Association of Canada Joint Annual Meeting in Québec City, Canada, October 17-21.

Henri Cole, English, has been named as one of fifty recipients of a United States Artists Fellowship for 2007. The USA Fellows program honors artists working in eight disciplines. Cole received the $50,000 award for his excellence in poetry.

Graduate Student Murat Metinsoy, History, was awarded the 2006-2007 Young Social Scientist Prize (Genc Sosyal Bilimci Odulu) awarded by the Turkish Social Science Association (Turkiye Sosyal Bilimler Dernegi).

Several OSU professors, lecturers, undergraduate and graduate students, and alumni attended the American Folklore Society/Folklore Studies Association of Canada Joint Annual Meeting in Québec City, Canada, October 17-21. OSU presentations: Mark Bender, East Asian Languages and Literatures, "The Water Deer's Fangs: Cervids in Nuosu Folklore"; Doctoral Student Sheila Bock, English, "Family Stories and Lay Perceptions of Risk for Diabetes"; Undergraduate Student Clay Caroon, English-Newark, "Vietnamese Foodways: Creating a Sense of Place in Urban Central Ohio"; Doctoral Student Tracy Carpenter, Comparative Studies, "Reconfiguring Identity: Resistance Narratives of African American Former Substance Abusers"; Doctoral Student Ann K. Ferrell, English, "'Everybody's Got Their Green Pepper Story': Discourses of Tradition and Innovation in the Decline of Tobacco Farming"; Doctoral Student Kirsi Haenninen, Comparative Studies, "'People Would Say I Am Mad': Institutional Knowledge and Supernatural Experiences"; Graduate Student Kevin M. Herzner, Germanic Languages and Literatures, "'A Mitzvah to "Remind You!': Memorates, Chronicates, and Historiolas in the Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust"; Research Associate Amy Horowitz, Melton Center for Jewish Studies, "The Jerusalem Project: The Intangible Territory of Technology"; Merrill Kaplan, English and Germanic Languages and Literatures, "Before Cultural Heritage: Claiming the Intangible in 14th-Century Iceland"; John F. Moe, English, "The Interpreter's Gaze on the American Social Landscape: African American Literary and Folk Art Narratives About Trauma, Identity, and Salvation"; Patrick B. Mullen, Comparative Studies and English, "Theories for the Examination of Race in American Folklore Studies"; Dorothy Noyes, English, "Brazil in Berlin: Cultural Warming and the Future of the Global South and Introducing New Resources for Folklore and Ethnography: The H-Folk Listserv for Folklore Scholarship," and discussant on panel: Performing Identity in the British Isles and Ireland"; Amy Shuman, English, "Phenomenology and Fieldwork: Reconstituting the Taken-for-Granted," and discussant on panel: Health and the Stigmatized Vernacular II; Martha C. Sims, English, "Stitching Stories: Mary Borkowski's Spectrum of Expression"; and Doctoral Student Nancy Yan, English, Model Minorities: Narratives of Chinese Restaurants, Citizenship, and Diversity."

Chadwick Allen, English, presented "Visual and Aural Empathy: Indigenous Literatures and 'Trans-customary' Art" (invited lecture), University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, November 7; and "The Future of Native Studies," Ethnic Studies Colloquium, University of California at Berkeley, November 8.

James R. Bartholomew, History, delivered a lecture and conducted a seminar at Indiana University, Bloomington, on the topic, "East Asian Scientists and the Challenge of Professional Marginality," sponsored by the East Asian Studies Center as part of Indiana University's Project on Science & Technology in the Pacific Century, on October 12. He presented "Teaching the History of Science in Japanese Culture" at the national meeting of the History of Science Society, Washington, DC, November 2.

JF Buckley, English-Mansfield, presented "Staging the Postbellum Citzen: Civil War Performances of Passing in Iola Leroy," 49th Annual Midwestern Modern Language Association Conference, Cleveland, Ohio, November 10.

Cynthia Callahan, English, presented "Slavery's Tangled Genealogies: Adoption and Racial Purity in Charles W. Chesnutt's Fiction," Second International Conference on Adoption and Culture, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 13.

Carole Fink, History, presented "Jews in Contemporary Europe" at a conference on "Ethnicity in Today's Europe," jointly sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and Stanford Forum on Contemporary Europe, November 9.

Harvey J. Graff, English and History, organized, chaired, and participated in a session on Robert Beauregard, "When America Became Suburban," at the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 15-18.

David Herman, English, presented "Narrative Theory and the Intentional Stance: A Position Paper," session on Narrative Theory Today: Prospects and Problems organized by Project Narrative, 49th Annual Midwestern Modern Language Association Conference, Cleveland, Ohio, November 9; and with Joshua Steskal, "Emotion Discourse as Design Heuristic: Creating Emotional Intelligence for Virtual Narrative Agents," (Paper delivered by J. Steskal), Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: Fall Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies, Arlington, Virginia, November 9.

Stuart Hobbs, History, co-presented "Developing and Validating a Measure of Student Performance in American History," at the Teaching American History Program National Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, October 17-19.

Lee Martin, English, participated in a panel discussion, MFA Programs: Weighing the Pros and Cons, and "Coffeehouse Readings by Ohio Articles," at The Kenyon Review Literary Festival, Gambier, Ohio, November 10.

Brian McHale, English, presented "WWJD," (What Would Jakobson Do?), Presidents Forum: Strangers in a Strange Land: Revisiting Literary Realism after the Posts, 49th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, Ohio, November 8; and "Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry," Panel: Narrative Theory Today: Prospects and Problems and at the Annual MMLA Conference, November 9.

Koritha Mitchell, English, served as co-convener of "Performing Race, Performing America" Seminar, American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, November 16.

Chris Otter, History, presented "Meat and the Victorians: Ecology, Vitality, Morality," at the North American Conference on British Studies in San Francisco, November 11.

Martin Joseph Ponce, English, presented "The Cross-cultural Musics of Jessica Hagedorn's Postmodernism," Junior Faculty Publication Workshop, Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, November 1-3.

Margaret Sumner, History, presented ""Objects of Interest: College Communities and their Construction Principles, 1820-1850," at the National Conference for the Society for American City and Regional Planning History, Portland, Maine, October 25-28.

Doctoral Student Shannon Thomas, English, presented "Personal Pronouns and Nineteenth-Century Women's Love Poetry in American Periodicals," South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, November 11.

The Worthington Arts Council will present "WINTER DREAMS," an exhibit of 12 paintings by Professor Emeritus Ernest Lockridge, November 13 through January 14, Worthington Community Center, 345 E. Wilson Bridge Road, Worthington. Contact: lockridge.1@osu.edu.

OSU Creative Writing Program Reading Series will present Randall R. Freisinger, November 26, 311 Denney Hall, 164 West 17th Avenue beginning at 4:00 pm. Freisinger's poems have appeared in Tendril, New Letters, The Laurel Review, The Chariton Review, Passages North, Interim, The Milkweed Chronicle, The Nebraska Review, Poet & Critic, Zone 3, The Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, The Atlanta Review, Green Mountains Review, The Marlboro Review, The South Carolina Review, Black Warrior Review, and in many other literary magazines. Admission is free. Contact: 292-2242.

The OSU Center for Folklore Studies invites you to the dedication of the new space for the CFS Folklore Archives as well as the inaugural Francis Lee Utley Lecture, "Cursed to be Black? Lust and Sin in the Myth of Ham," presented by Dr. David Whitford, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity at the United Theological Seminary. Both events will take place Friday, November 30, 3:30-5:30 pm, Suite 218, Ohio Stadium. This lecture is given in honor of the accomplishments of Professor Fran Utley, who established the OSU Folklore Archives. Please join us for this celebration of OSU folklores place in the heart of the Ohio State University! RSVP to Sheila Bock, smbock99@yahoo.com.

College of Humanities Undergraduate Study Abroad Scholarships applications are now available online. The deadline for student applications is January 15, 2008. All eligible Humanities majors have been invited to apply.

The Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW) is currently looking for graduate and undergraduate students to tutor third, fourth, and fifth graders from the Columbus Africentric Early College Elementary School. Tutoring occurs Wednesdays from 3:45-5:15 pm. The school is located at 300 Livingston Ave. Interested parties should visit CSTW or call 688-5865 and ask to speak to an Outreach Consultant or email dadras.1@osu.edu.