Faculty Accomplishments

Associate Professor of Mathematics Scott Taylor has coauthored a paper published in the Pacific Journal of Mathematics. In their paper, "Tunnel number and bridge number of composite genus 2 spatial graphs," the authors' "main tool is a family of recently defined invariants for knots, links, and spatial graphs that detect the unknot and are additive under connected sum and vertex sum. In this paper, we also show that they detect trivial $\theta$-curves," according to the paper's abstract.  

Adam Howard, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education, coauthored a paper recently published in the journal Curriculum Inquiry. Titled "Elite Universities: Their monstrous promises and promising monsters," it deploys "zombie, werewolf, and vampire metaphors [to] identify various ways that elite universities are monstrous and the kinds of student monsters that they produce, honour, harbour, and reject."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates is an organizing committee member of the international webinar series "Winds of Change: Offshore Energy Production and the Social Sciences.” This webinar highlights major findings from Europe and research needs for the emerging offshore wind industry in the United States. Each webinar is free and open to students, faculty, and practitioners, including this one on Nov. 11. Bates is presenting her research during the series and is an organizing committee member along with colleagues at the University of Maine and Bates College.

Associate Professor of French Mouhamédoul A. Niang has written a new novel, Rêves d’adolescents en terre noire, published by L'Harmattan. The book tells the story of four young characters, living in a poorly planned neighborhood on the outskirts of an African city. "Rêves d’adolescents en terre noire denounces urban discrimination, institutional corruption, and traditional violence while offering an alternative through an escape to nature, the love of which proves more fulfilling," he explained.

 

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch organized and chaired a session for the 2021 conference from the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Binghamton University), “Medieval Cultural Heritage Around the Globe: Monuments, Literature, and the Arts, Then and Now.” Her session, “Graffiti and Cultural Heritage,” considered graffiti (both medieval graffiti and later graffiti on medieval sites) as a cultural heritage. Plesch’s paper, “On the Patrimonialization of Graffiti,” discussed the issues at stake, retraced the history of scholarship on graffiti, and the subsequent recognition of their significance and need for preservation. Scholars from the UK and Italy presented projects that demonstrate the new awareness of graffiti as cultural heritage.

A solo exhibition by sculptor and Associate Professor of Art Bradley Borthwick opened Oct. 22 at Burlington City Arts in Vermont. The exhibition, Objects of Empire, "investigates the significance of two seemingly incongruent manufactured objects – an 18th-century Vermont headstone, known as the Pratt tablet, and an ancient Roman amphora." The exhibition is on view through Feb. 5, 2022.

Gianluca Rizzo, the Paul D. and Marilyn Paganucci Associate Professor of Italian Language and Literature, has recently translated Mark Tardi's poem "Seven Half Sonnets" from English to Italian, subsequently published in Rossocorpolingua.

 

Rizzo's other recent translations and publications:

• “Apelle figlio di Apollo dipinge una sfingefenice: Figurazione e significazione nella poesia di Luigi Ballerini,” Il remo di Ulisse. Saggi sulla poesia e la poetica di Luigi Ballerini, Venezia, Marsilio, 2021, pp. 113-146.

 

“Hiccer, o il gioco delle tre carte,” Mariano Bàino, Ritratto immaginario di Hiccer, (Nola: Il Laboratorio, 2021) (forthcoming).

 

 Carmelo Bene, "I Appeared to the Madonna," trans. Carole Viers-Andronico, Forum Italicum, 55, No. 1, Spring 2021, pp. 233-236.

 

 Translation of "Stefano Benni. Introduction to Bar Sport," Hyperion, Volume XIV, No. 1, November 2021, (forthcoming).

 

Translation of "Testi di Robert Gibbons," Journal of Italian Translation, Volume 15, No. 2, Fall 2020, pp. 124-143.

 

"Il futuro del Fax (giallo): Storia, persistenze e inattualità di una macchina di poesia," Rivista di Studi Italiani, XXXIX, No. 1, 2021, pp. 99-131.

Associate Professor of Music Natalie Zelensky wrote a review of the book Music in the American Diasporic Wedding (ed. Inna Naroditskaya. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019) that appeared in the Spring 2021 Journal of American Folklore. "Music in the American Diasporic Wedding presents fruitful terrain for exploring the concepts of migration, community, ritual, and music’s pivotal role in navigating these social arenas," Zelensky wrote. 

Assistant Professor of Italian Danila Cannamela recently published a new paper, "Italian Trans Geographies: Retracing Trans/Cultural Narratives of People and Places," in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. "This article maps an overlooked cultural history of Italy by exploring the literary notion of ‘trans geographies’–a subgenre at the crossroads of autobiography, memoir, and travel narrative–through the memorialist work of sociologist and trans activist Porpora Marcasciano," according to its abstract. 

• “Through the Eyes of the Beast: Feminist ‘Dark Ecologies’ in Alda Teodorani’s Belve,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
• “Gruppo 93 and the Young Cannibals: Technology, Irony, and a Sudden Wave of Unacceptable Violence,” Rivista di Studi Italiani
• “‘I am an Atypical Mother’: Motherhood and Maternal Language in Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto’s Poetry,” Forum Italicum
• “Neither Utopia nor Juvenile Transgression: Retracing the Link between the ’77 Movement, Autonomy, and Literature,” Italian Studies
• “Italian Ecopoetry, or the Art of Reading through Negativity,” Modern Language Notes