Archives of Older Entries in the EagleEye Newsletter
Danielle Hartman, Adjunct Instructor of Communication
Danielle Hartman, Adjunct Instructor of Communication, recently co-authored a piece on the arts as a great hub for interdisciplinary work and studies, entitled “Promoting Interdisciplinarity: Its Purpose and Practice in Arts Programming,” that was published in Journal of Performing Arts Leadership in Higher Education. Read more.
Eric Lorentzen, Associate Professor of English
Eric Lorentzen, Associate Professor of English, gave the talk “‘Spots of Time’: Wordsworthian Spirits and Dickensian Hauntings” for the special Dickens Society panel at the 50th Annual Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference in Washington, D.C. Lorentzen examined this Romantic influence in Dickens’ work as a part of the panel “Dickens and the Influences of the Past.” In his paper, Lorentzen traced the ways in which Dickens’ incorporation of the Wordsworthian philosophies of time, memory, and continuity transformed over the length of the Victorian novelist’s career. He detailed the many echoes of “We Are Seven” (Dickens’ favorite Wordsworth poem) in the early novels, and the darker cooptation of the poet’s ideas in moments of traumatic memory in the latter novels, as Dickens transformed Wordsworth from the poet of Nature, to a much more haunting figure that informs some of the more deeply psychological “spots of time” in Victorian fiction.
Assistant Professor Sushma Subramanian, Department of English
Sushma Subramanian, Assistant Professor of English teaching journalism, has published a story in Hakai Magazine about the Bajau, a people of Indonesia known for their special swimming and diving abilities, and how they might reveal something about our evolutionary past. The story is available at https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/born-to-swim/.
Professor of English Gary Richards
Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, presented the paper “Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams” at the latest conference of the Eudora Welty Society, “The Continuous Thread of Revelation: Eudora Welty Reconsidered,” held at the College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C. February 21-24, 2019. The conference also featured a staged reading of “Moon Lake,” adapted from the Welty short story of the same title and directed by Brenda Currin. Fourteen Welty scholars made up the cast, including Richards as the narrator.
Earlier in the month, he was a member of a panel discussion of contributors to the collection of essays Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty Twenty-First-Century Approaches, edited by Mae Miller Claxton and Julia Eichelberger, held at the Eudora Welty House and Gardens in Jackson, Mississipi, on February 7. His essay in the collection is “Queering Welty’s Male Bodies in the Undergraduate Classroom.”
Associate Professor of English Ben LaBreche
Ben LaBreche, Associate Professor of English, along with Jason Kerr of Brigham Young University, recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on “The Varieties of Political Theology,” and that issue has now been released.
Associate Professor of English Shumona Dasgupta
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, presented the paper “Memory, Trauma, and Violence: The Partition in Indian Cinema” at the 28th annual British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies conference in Savannah, Georgia, on February 16, 2019.
Emily Deering Crosby, Assistant Professor of Communication, presented “Country Music as Safe Space: Xenophobia in Patriotic Music Fandom” on an international panel on xenophobia at the National Communication Association Conference on November 10, 2018. Her research analyzes white women’s online reactions to the collaborative performance of the Dixie Chicks and Beyoncé at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards just days before the 2016 Presidential election. Her analysis reveals key intersectional themes of territoriality, sexism, and racism enacted by xenophobic white women in their often specious pursuit of protecting white men’s patriotic Americana, signaling alliances that are largely reflected in recent voting trends.
Professor of English Warren Rochelle’s story “Mirrors,” a gay-themed retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” was accepted by Cuilpress and will be published in their forthcoming queering romance anthology So You Think You Know Love?.
Shumona Dasgupta, Associate Professor of English, presented a paper on Bollywood and the Partition, entitled “Mothers of the Nation: Gender and Identity in Indian Partition Cinema,” at the 29th annual Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association conference in Baltimore (November 8-9, 2018). The paper has since been nominated for the MAPACA Donald Award, which recognizes an outstanding paper and presentation delivered at MAPACA’s annual conference.
Anand Rao, professor of communication, was awarded the 2018 Hobgood Service Award at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was recognized for “dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, appreciation of diversity, and vision of what could be.” As past chair of the Communication Centers Division for NCA, he helped run the annual business meeting. In addition, he also served on a discussion panel titled “Communication at Play: Creating Strategic Partnerships between the Basic Course and First Year Experiences.” There he talked about UMW’s QEP/FSEM, how it serves as a basic communication course for new students, and how the Speaking Center helps to support the FSEM.