Faculty Spotlight

Patti Bradshaw (DANCE) performed an evening of original puppet- and object theatre at the Theater for the New City in December. Her works included “La Mome Bijoux,” based on photographs by Brassai, and “Next to the Last Poem,” inspired by the poet Fernando Pessoa.

Scott Calvin (PHYSICS) contributed “Crazy Ideas 101: How to Teach Skeptical Thinking” to Skeptic, a quarterly science education magazine. In November, “Gold-Coated Cementite Nanoparticles: An Oxidation-Resistant Alternative to α-Iron” was published in Chemistry of Materials. Blaine Alleluia ’09 co-authored the article.

Kevin Confoy (THEATRE) played roles in three productions at the Forestburgh Playhouse in New York.  In August, he was credited as the director of the first production in two plays published by Dramatists Play Service: The Framer and Emilie's Voltaire, which both premiered off-Broadway last year.

Tina Chang (Poetry) received a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She co-edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond in 2008 (W.W. Norton).

Cynthia Cruz MFA ’99 (WRITING) recently contributed poetry to Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Paris Review, and American Poetry Review. She was interviewed for the Norton Web site's series “Poems Out Loud” and was awarded a fellowship to Yaddo for the month of January.

Michael Davis (PHILOSOPHY) discussed “The Soul of Achilles” and “The Soul as Self and Self-Aware”—chapters from his forthcoming book, The Soul of the Greeks—at a lecture at Baylor University in Texas. He contributed “The Fake that Launched a Thousand Ships: The Question of Identity in Euripides' Helen” in Logos and Mythos: Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature (October; SUNY Press). A Chinese translation of his book, Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science, was recently published by Hermes.

In December, Robert Desjarlais (ANTHROPOLOGY) spoke on the panel "Meanings in Motion: Performance, Embodiment, and Identity," at the annual American Anthropological Association meeting in Philadelphia.

Over the summer, the short play "For the Love of God, Saint Teresa" by Christine Farrell (THEATRE) was produced in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon 2009; she performed in it as well. Farrell received a residency fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and is spending the semester on sabbatical there.

“Turgenev and a Proliferating French Press: the Feuilleton and Feuilletonistic in A Nest of the Gentry” by Melissa Frazier (RUSSIAN) was recently published in Slavic Review. She presented a paper on the same topic at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies conference in November.

In November, Suzanne Gardinier (WRITING) presented her work as part of the Women Poets at Barnard series. Her short story, “Sacramento,” was released in the fall issue of Fiction International.

In late August, Peggy Gould (DANCE) performed Phantom Assortment, her new multidisciplinary work featuring dance, text, and whip-cracking, at the Phantom Theater in Vermont. In October, Gould performed an excerpt of Para-dice, a work-in-progress by choreographer Patricia Hoffbauer, at the 92nd Street Y’s 75th anniversary celebration in New York.

Rachel Grob MA '92 (ASSOCIATE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES) published “Not Every Playing Field Should be Level” in the December issue of Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice.

Matthea Harvey (WRITING) published The Little General and the Giant Snowflake, an illustrated allegory and fable for all ages, in November (Tin House).

Ann Lauinger (LITERATURE) published four poems this past spring and summer in Global City Review, The Same, and the online magazine BigCityLit.

The Pie Dialogues, a full-length play by Joseph Lauinger (LITERATURE), will appear in the anthology Best Regional Plays of 2009 this spring (Level 4).

This summer, Douglas MacHugh (THEATRE) directed Conor McPherson’s play The Weir at the Barnstormers Theatre in Tamworth, NH.

Greg MacPherson (THEATRE) designed the lighting for a benefit performance at The Acting Company in New York City. The piece was directed by Kevin Kline, and the cast included Kline and Meryl Streep. MacPherson also recently designed lighting for the magicians Penn & Teller during their California tour. He is the designer of the ongoing production of the Penn & Teller show at the Rio resort in Las Vegas.

Jim Marshall (COMPUTER SCIENCE) co-authored “Category-based Intrinsic Motivation,” a research paper on robotics, and presented it at the ninth International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics in Venice in November.

Nicolaus Mills (LITERATURE) presented “George Marshall and American Modesty” at a symposium at the Virginia Military Institute. His essay on leaving Iraq, “A Just Withdrawal,” co-authored with Michael Walzer, appeared in The New Republic in September. In August, his op-ed on President Obama and Henry Lewis Gates, “Race and Class Over a Cold Beer,” was published in Newsday. 

“Africa After Neoliberalism: Prospects for a New Developmental State,” an article co-authored by Jamee Moudud (ECONOMICS), was published in the 2010 issue of Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (Duke University). At the Eastern Economic Association conference in Philadelphia in February, he spoke about the “pricing theory” of the Oxford Economists' Research Group and presented on the development policies of the economists Ragnar Nurkse and P.C. Mahanalobis. His book Strategic Competition, Dynamics, and the Role of the State will be published this spring (Edward Elgar Press).

Dennis Nurkse (WRITING) was appointed to the international committee of the board of directors of Amnesty International-USA. His poems recently appeared in The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, and The Threepenny Review.

Chikwenye Ogunyemi (LITERATURE emerita) co-edited Twelve Best Books by African Women: Critical Readings (July; Ohio University).

“Melodrama of the Spirited Woman: Aventurera,” an article by Gilberto Perez (FILM HISTORY) was published in Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment (August; University of Illinois). In September, his article “McTeague and Greed,” was published in A New Literary History of America (Harvard University). In November, he conducted a workshop on his book The Material Ghost at McGill University in Montreal.

In the Eyes of a Dog, a poetry collection by Kevin Pilkington (WRITING), was published in September by New York Quarterly Books. He gave poetry readings at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, the Westport Library in Connecticut, and  Georgia Tech University.

In August, Frank Roosevelt (ECONOMICS) gave a public lecture at The Friend Memorial Public Library in Brooklin, Maine: “What Happened to the American Economy? Understanding the Current Economic Crisis.”

Shahnaz Rouse (SOCIOLOGY) contributed “Terrorism, Fear and Surveillance: Did Everything Change after 9/11?” to Terror, Terrorism, States and Societies: A Historical and Philosophical Perspective (December; Women Unlimited). In October, she participated in a panel on The State and Violence in Pakistan and presented her article “Militarization, Masculinity, and Violence in Pakistan” at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Rouse spent the summer on a Fulbright senior scholar research grant in Pakistan, conducting research on the social history of the city of Lahore.

Kristin Zahra Sands (RELIGION) attended the Qur'anic Studies Tafsir Workshop, organized by the Institute of Ismaili Studies, in London in October. While there, she spoke on several panels on mystical and Shi'ite Qur'anic exegesis.

The Milton Society of America awarded Bill Shullenberger (LITERATURE) the James Holly Hanford Award for Best Book on Milton in 2008, for Lady in the Labyrinth: Milton’s “Comus” as Initiation (Fairleigh Dickinson University).  In October, he presented “Milton's Pagan Counter-Poetic: Eros and Inspiration in the Latin Elegy 5” at the biennial Milton conference held at Middle Tennessee State University.

Mark Shulman (HISTORY) signed an amicus brief for the US Court of Appeals arguing that human rights law prohibits prolonged detention of any person and mandates judicial review. He published a review essay on detention and trial of accused terrorists in The American Journal of International Law.

From January to March, Fred Smoler (LITERATURE/HISTORY) participated in a conceptual artwork by Tino Sehgal at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. In mid-December, he delivered a lecture to Brooklyn teachers on cartoonist Bill Mauldin, war correspondent Ernie Pyle, and the representation of World War II.

Andrea Stanton (HISTORY) contributed “Broadcasting a Nationalist Modernity: Ajaj Nuwayhid and the Palestine Broadcasting Service” to Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917-Present (Interlink). The book is a collection of essays on the history of modern Jerusalem.

Frederick Strype (VISUAL ARTS) served as a screenplay competition juror and panel moderator at the Austin Film Festival in Texas in October. In August, he directed and staged a reading of Earworm, a screenplay by Strype and Dorie Deats ’07 at the New Players Theater Company in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

Amy Swerdlow (WOMEN’S HISTORY emerita) spoke on a panel on Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power at Barnard College in December. Swerdlow was discussed in the chapter on the women’s liberation movement in  When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present  by Gail Collins (October; Little, Brown & Co.).

In February, Kathy Westwater MFA ’01 (DANCE) held a work-in-progress presentation of Park at Dance Theater Workshop, which commissioned the piece.

In July, Daniel Wohl (MUSIC) was commissioned by Meet the Composer, a non-profit that supports new musical work, to create a 12-channel sound installation at Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn. In October, he was awarded a Jerome Foundation/American Composers Forum grant for a new multimedia work involving music and video.

Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, coauthored by Komozi Woodard (HISTORY), was published in December (New York University). The book examines the radical leadership of Vicki Garvin, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, and Assata Shakur.

In August, John Yannelli (MUSIC) was a featured composer at the Staunton Music Festival in Virginia, where his Solo Flight 11 for violin was performed. In October, Interensemble, an Italian experimental music association, and the 2009 Computer Art Festival of Padova, Italy, commissioned and performed a new work by Yannelli.

Charles Zerner (ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES) presented “Insect Specters of the Silver Screen: Image, Affect, and Ideology” at the New York University Science, Technology and Society Working Group.

Changing Tartuffe

For SLC’s March production of Tartuffe, Amlin Gray (theatre) not only translated the tale of a hypocritical cleric from 17th-century French verse into rhyming English—he also changed the ending. Moliere’s classic comedy was censored for several years after its controversial premiere in 1664, and the version we know today is two acts longer than the original. Historians have long wondered about Moliere’s original intent. “What we are trying to create is a possible scenario before the church censorship occurred,” says John Dillon (theatre), who directed the play. Gray calls his ending “highly speculative, very presumptuous, and great fun.”

+ Find out why King Louis XIV censored the original play