Faculty Notes/Achievements

As managing editor of Istmo (on-line journal focusing on Central American culture and literature), Addis assisted in the editing of a special issue (no. 7) commemorating the centenary of the independence of Panama (1903-2003). This special issue has been on line for the last few weeks. (All issues are archived on the same site). URL: www.denison.edu/istmo

Addis read a paper at the Midwest Modern Language Association, November 7, 2003, in Chicago. In a session on Central American women writers, she presented a paper entitled "The Female Subject in the Revolutionary Text."

Karen Beckwith, the College of Wooster, and Lisa Baldez, Dartmouth College, have been selected by the APSA’s Women and Politics Research Section Selection Committee to launch and edit the Section’s new journal, Politics & Gender, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Denise M. Bostdorff, "George W. Bush's Post-September 11 Rhetoric of Covenant Renewal: Upholding the Faith of the Greatest Generation." Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 293-319.

Denise M. Bostdorff, "Learning How to Make a Difference:  Politics-in-Action Projects in the College-Level Political Communication Course." Communication Teacher 17 (2003): 11-13. (Special Issue on Service Learning)

Denise M. Bostdorff, Review of Constructing Clinton:  Hyperreality & Presidential Image-Making in Postmodern Politics by Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles. Argumentation and Advocacy 39 (2003): 221-224.

Attended the annual meeting of the National Communication Association in Miami Beach, Florida, in November 2003.  Chaired a panel on "Public Social Controversy:  Matters of Religion and Science" and participated in a workshop on the public speaking course and civic engagement.

Appointed to chair the National Task Force on the Presidency in Times of Crisis, which will present a white paper recommending a research agenda at the National Conference on Presidential Rhetoric in March 2004.

Denise M. Bostdorff and Julie L. Woods, "Lessons from a Failed PDR (Purchase of Development Rights) Campaign in Wayne County, Ohio," Applied Environmental Education and Communication, 2 (2003): 169-175.

Co-edited a book:  "Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature." (MIT Press, 2003). Clayton also co-authored the introductory chapter and is the sole author of another chapter.  

Here’s the blurb from the back of the book:

"Identity and the Natural Environment" examines the ways in which our sense of who we are affects our relationship with nature, and vice versa.  This book brings together cutting-edge work on the topic of identity and the environment, sampling the variety and energy of this emerging field but also placing it within a descriptive framework.  These theory-based empirical studies examine the degree of social influence on environmental identity and focus on the interplay between social and environmental forces.  As one local activist says, ‘We don’t know if we’re organizing communities to plant trees, or planting trees to organize communities.’ The book explores human identity in relation to a wide variety of topics, including wild black bears, rangeland and water conflicts, and involvement and expertise in the inner city."

"Developing and Implementing a Shared Approval Plan for a Consortium of Libraries: a Model for the Cooperative Collection Development of Monographs." Presentation with Michael Zeoli of YBP Library Services at the 23d annual Charleston Conference, Charleston, SC, November 6, 2003.

"The CONSORT Cooperative Collection Development Project." Presentation at the Academic Library Association of Ohio's annual conference, Dublin, OH, November 14, 2003.

Recent Publications:

" A Menu for All Seasons: John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure and the New European Novel," English Language Notes 41 (December 2003): 71-82.

" Modernism and Mystery: The Curious Case of the Lost Generation," Twentieth-Century Literature 49 (Spring 2003): 82-102.

" The Franco-American Novel of Literary Globalism: The Case of Diane Johnson," French Politics, Culture and Society 21 (Summer 2003): 64-80.

" More Than Meets the Eye: Meandering Metaphor in Claire Denis's Chocolat," in Moving Pictures, Migrating identities, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2003. Pp. 121-36.

Compact disc recording. Brian Dykstra: Concert Rags (Centaur CRC2662). Noel Lester, piano; assisted by David Duree, alto saxophone; RoseAnn Markow, violin, and Nancy Roldán, piano. Official release date is January 2004, but advance copies are available now at Florence O. Wilson Bookstore.

Recital with Katherine DeJongh, flute, Gault Recital Hall, September 6, 2003. Dykstra was the pianist. Program included world premiere of his new composition "Old Powell Rag" for flute and piano.

Attended the annual meetings of the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) in Seattlle, Washington, November 22-25, 2003.

Shila Garg, Kirstin Purdy*, Erica Bramley*, I. I. Smalyukh and O. D. Lavrentovich, "Electric-field induced Nucleation and Growth of Focal Conic and Stripe Domains in a Smectic A Liquid Crystal" Liquid Crystals, 30, 1377 (2003).

Shila Garg and Hanneke Hoekman*, "Dielectric Anisotropy of a Nematic Binary Mixture," International Conference on 6th Ibero-American Workshop on Complex Fluids and their Applications, Lisbon, Portugal (September 2003)

Paper presented:  "If I Were a Man I Should Go to Mexico", 6th Congress of the Americas (World Vernacular Conference), Puebla, Mexico, October 2003
Vice President in charge of Travel and Tourism panels, 6th Congress of the Americas (World Vernacular Conference), Puebla, Mexico. October 2003.

Publications:
Book, new edition of Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in Chile, University of Virginia Press, November 2003.

Essay, "‘The uncertainty of the end keeps up the interest’:  Graham’s Journal of a Residence in Chile as life writing," Auto/Biography 17:1 (Summer 2002).  

Encyclopedia articles, "Maria Graham" and "19th C. Woman Travellers", The Literature of Travel and Exploration, Routledge 2003.

Jenna Hayward was elected to the Steering Committee of the International
Society of Travel Writing. She also presented a paper, On the bridge:
Maria Graham between two worlds," at the Northeast Modern Language
Association (March 2004).

Damon Hickey is the co-author with Bob Pymm of Learn Library Management (Scarecrow Press, 2003). The book is the sixth in the Library Basics series published jointly by Scarecrow in the U.S. and Canada and DocMatrix in Australia. Pymm wrote the Australian edition and Hickey collaborated on the North American version. It is intended for use as a textbook in library science courses and by library managers.

Publications:

“ Matadero solemne: síntesis de una dramaturgia vanguardista” Gestos 36
(2003): 121-25.

“ Competing Narrative Discourses: (Fe)Male Fabulation in the Episode of
Grisóstomo and Marcela.” Hispanic Review 71.4 (2003): 507-24.

“ Character as the Site of Postmodern Inquiry in Cartas de amor a
Stalin.” Ojáncano 24 (2003): 3-22.

“ Transgresiones de vida y arte en Cartas de amor a Stalin, de Juan
Mayorga.” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 73-80.
Papers presented:

“ Forma y función de un drama documental español: Ahlán, de Jerónimo
López Mozo.” International Theatre Colloquium: Teatro y sociedad en la
España actual, University of Giessen, Germany, September 2003.

“ La apropiación posmoderna en tres dramas de Itziar Pascual.” 20th
Century Literary Conference, Univ. of Louisville, February 2004.

Attended the Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society in Montreal, Quebec, on March 22-24. Four students who participated in the Department of Physics NSF-REU program last summer presented their research.

Andy P. Brinck*, Nithya L. Venkataraman*, and D.T. Jacobs
" The correlation length amplitude for eight-arm star polystyrene in methylcyclohexane near the critical point"

Elizabeth Baker* and D.T. Jacobs
" Crystal Structure and Self-Organized Criticality in a Bead Pile"

Kathleen McCreary* and Shila Garg
" Dielectric Anisotropy of Nematic Binary Mixtures"

Katherine Olaksen*, Nicholas Johann Harmon*, and John F. Lindner
" Nontrivial dynamics of two interacting point particles confined to a sphere"

*student co-author

Kardulias presented a paper at the Ohio Classical Conference titled "Panayia and Panayiria: Shrines and Feminine Religious Devotion in Ancient Korinth." (November 2003).

Rod Korba presented a lecture entitled "Concept mapping and 'labeling strategies' for nested files: Personal constructs and inner speech," to the Post-Doctoral Seminar, The Department of Psychology and Psychiatry, at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Ohio, 16 September, 2003.

Both presented a selected paper at the Eastern Economics Association Conference in Washington DC entitled "Service learning in development economics: Two Cases." The paper compared the experience of using service learning to teach economic development using my experience at Bates with Jose's experience, here at Wooster. As an aside, Stephanie Foster (a student of theirs) was selected to present part of her IS paper at the meetings. Her paper was on the effect of female education on economic growth. The conference was held last week on Feb 20.

They were also invited to present "On greening your college campus and community" at the regional Student Environmental Action Coalition Regional Conference held this weekend at the College of Wooster (Saturday 28th Feb.). They introduced the workshops participants to two tools that can be used in environmental impact analysis. They applied the tools to the College of Wooster and also had a brainstorming session on what could be done to decrease the impact the college has on the ecosystem.

John Neuhoff is the Founding Chair for the Annual Auditory Perception, Cognition and Action Meeting (APCAM), which took place in Vancouver. APCAM is an international meeting for researchers in auditory perception and there were over 100 participants from 10 countries this year.

Pamela Pierce co-authored a paper With Daniel Waterman of Florida Atlantic University titled "On the Invariance of Classes ΦBV, ΛBV Under Composition" which recently appeared in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. She had previously presented these results in an invited talk at the summer meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society in Edmonton, Alberta in June of 2003.

Contributed a chapter to an exhibition catalogue just published by Yale University Press. The book, titled After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Art, accompanies the exhibition of the same name currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and continuing through February.

Garrett Thomson has published three books in the Wadworth Philosophical Topics series: On Philosophy (2003), translated into Spanish as Introduccion a La practica de la filosofia (2003); On the Meaning of Life (2003); and On Modern Philosophy (2004).

Diane Ringer Uber (Spanish) presented a paper, "Is the Caribbean Really So Informal?  Forms of Address in the Workplace in the Dominican Republic", at the XXXII Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO) held at the University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX, from October 17-19, 2003. Uber also chaired a session on "Classroom Discourse" at the same conference.

Recent Grants

RUI: Paleomagnetic, geochemical and age discrimination of ~18-19 Ma tuffs of the Colorado River extensional corridor (NSF-EAR-0337282) (PI-R. Varga, Co-PI L. Bettison-Varga)

National Science Foundation Grant ($76,877): Start Date 1 Jan. 2004, 3-Year Duration (NSF-EAR-0337282)

This recently funded project aims to unravel the complexities of volcanic stratigraphy within highly extended crust of the Basin & Range province in the Colorado River region. This project involves integration of geochemistry, paleomagnetism and high-precision ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar radiometric age dating to discriminate volcanic units in widely separated mountain ranges. Our data will provide better control on timing of extension across the province as well as on measures of tectonic tilting and vertical-axis rotation due to faulting. Funding provides financial support for Wooster I.S. students.

Collaborative Research: Structure and composition of fast-spread EPR crust exposed at Pito Deep, (NSF-OCE-02-22154) (PI-R. Varga)

National Science Foundation Grant ($59,570): Start Date 15 Feb. 2004, 3-Year Duration

We received notification of approval of this proposal in the Fall '02, although the start date of the proposal is early in '04 due to a delay in our cruise schedule from Feb. '04 to Feb. '05. This proposal is for a DSL-120/Jason/Alvin program to study crustal exposures up to 4 km in relief at Pito Deep located near Easter Island. The walls of Pito Deep, located near the NE area of the Easter microplate, expose sections of superfast-spread (>140 mm/y) ocean crust generated at the East Pacific Rise spreading center. My part of this proposal will be to work on the structural geology and paleomagnetism of deformation. This is part of a larger ($834, 221) grant to Duke University & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to fund the cruise. Funding provides financial support for Wooster I.S. students.

Mark Wilson and his colleague Paul Taylor (The Natural History Museum, London) recently published a paper entitled "Palaeoecology and evolution of marine hard substrate communities" (2003; Earth-Science Reviews 62: 1-103). Mark and his student Katherine Nicholson ('03) gave a talk at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America on their paleontological work in the Jurassic of southern England. At the same meeting Mark also presented his recent paleontological work in the Negev Desert of Israel. Mark was the keynote speaker at the Reunión Annual de Communicationes de la Associacion Paleontólogica Argentina in Santa Rosa, Argentina, in November. His talk was on the taphonomy of hard substrate communities.

A poem by Wright "Ghazal: Saint Petersburg Upon the Neva," was published in "The Southern Review," Vol 39, No. 3, Summer 2003.

She particpated in a discussion program on "Chile's 9/11" in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Chile (Sept. 11, 1973), at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.

On September 13th, as a poet featured in their poetry chapbook series, "Greatest Hits," she gave a reading and conducted a workshop on revision and publishing of poetry for Pudding House Publishers in Columbus, OH.

From October 16-18, she was featured as an Oklahoma Book Award winning poet at the Red Dirt Book Festival in Shawnee, Oklahoma, giving readings, signing books, and particpating on panels during this festival, organized by librarians of the Pioneer Library System of Oklahoma.

An interview with Wright, by the poet Stephanie Painter, has just been published in the Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 2003) issue of "The Bloomsbury Review," along with one of her poems, "After We Received the News of the 100-Mile Wind."

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars has selected Prof. Wright to serve on a six-member Music 1 Peer Review Committee for the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program