Faculty Accomplishments
Three poems by Professor of English and Creative Writing Adrian Blevins are included in the latest edition of Rustica, a journal of arts and literature rooted in western Maine. Her poem titles are "Almost Sixty," "Song," and "Post-It."
Assistant Professor of English Onnesha Roychoudhuri wrote an essay for the inaugural issue of Pencil Magazine. Her essay, "Time's Pencil," is her contribution to this new printed publication, which features images and text created entirely with graphite pencils on paper.
The lastest book of photographs by Professor of Art Gary Green, Three or Four Hills, has just been published by Dust Collective . The limited-edition book is "a meditative journey through the landscape of Assisi, Italy—renowned as a site of religious pilgrimage—captured through the eyes of photographer Gary Green," according to the publisher. "Rather than focusing on its spiritual significance, Green wandered the landscape guided by light, shadow, and weather." The book debuted at the Elm City Book Fest in Waterville Nov. 16, 2024.
Michael Burke, professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, has a new anthology out. The Art of the Myth: Maine Essays (Alameda Press, 2024) gathers 25 of his previously published nonfiction, all with Maine settings and subjects, from 35 years living in and writing about the state.
On Oct. 22, 2024, Tanya Sheehan, the Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, delivered the Normal L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Vanderbilt’s Department of History of Art and Architecture has hosted prominent art historians to speak in the Goldberg Lecture series since its inception in 2001. Professor Sheehan’s lecture was titled “Public Art, Public Health: Jacob Lawrence and the Murals of Harlem Hospital.” Her research explores the significant connections between the federally funded murals painted in Harlem Hospital in the late 1930s and the images of health and medicine in Harlem created by artist Jacob Lawrence. It considers how and why a commitment to the publicness of Black care took shape more fully in Lawrence’s private images than on the walls of the municipal hospital.
Assistant Professor of Economics Sanval Nasim '08 coauthored a paper titled "Information and training helps individuals forecast and adapt to air pollution" that appeared on VoxDev, an online platform for discussion about policy issues related to development. "Air pollution causes seven million deaths each year. New evidence from Pakistan shows that improving individuals’ ability to forecast air pollution allows them to adapt better," according to the article.
Professor of Mathematics Scott Taylor coauthored an article published in the Mathematical Association of America's news magazine Focus. His paper, "Math + The Arts is More than the Sum of its Parts," details Sum Camp, which Taylor organizes each summer in Waterville. "Sum Camp is our collaborative attempt to impact our local community by infusing music, art, theatre, and playground games with mathematics in a way that reinforces K–5 state mathematics standards. We take a nontraditional approach to traditional mathematics," he writes in the article.
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch published her paper "On the Patrimonialization of Graffiti.” In Medieval Cultural Heritage, Then and Now (Mediaevalia 45 [2024]: 205–29). In her abstract, Plesch writes that, "'Graffiti' is not a word one immediately associates with the concept of 'heritage.' In fact, the two are more often than not thought as antinomic and yet, as this paper argues, we are at a crucial moment of what can be termed the 'patrimonialization' of graffiti. Retracing the steps involved in this process of patrimonialization, starting with Raffaelle Garrucci’s study of Pompeian graffiti in the first half of the nineteenth century, this paper surveys the steps that have paved the way for a recognition of graffiti’s significance and the need for preservation. Recent initiatives demonstrate a new awareness, expressed in many ways through the work of individual scholars and heritage agencies. This paper interrogates the mutations that have led to such a renewed conception of graffiti as worthy of scholarly study, preservation, and display, while considering the implications and gains that such a patrimonialization holds." One of the issue's editors called Plesch's article "a mainstay of the issue."
Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, has won a $187,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her project "The Praxis of Care: Carceral Disruptions and Community Resistance." The grant will cover her research and writing leading to a coauthored book that examines the experience of incarceration and caring for inmates in Maine and Massachusetts. This peer-reviewed grant, through relatively small, enables Besteman to continue her work in an important ongoing area of research. It was among $37.5 million in grants for 240 humanities projects across the country.
Michael Burke, professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, published an essay titled "You Move to Maine" in an anthology called Alive to This from Littoral Press. The anthology includes essays by 20 writers from all parts of Maine who share their experiences of living fully. Burke is one of two memoirists who contributed to the publication.