Faculty Accomplishments

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

Associate Professor of Mathematics Scott Taylor has been awarded a three-year collaborative NSF research grant to connect the theory of spatial graphs to knot theory and the theory of 3-D spaces, which will contribute to understanding DNA and protein structures. The grant will also support student research at Colby and Taylor's Sum Camp, a summer camp that uses arts and math games to build basic numeracy skills of students in Waterville Public Schools.

Professor of Psychology Melissa Glenn has coauthored a paper, “Overtraining Strengthens the Visual Discrimination Memory Trace Outside the Hippocampus in Male Rats,” recently accepted in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. This paper was the culmination of a multi-year collaboration with colleagues from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, and describes a series of experiments that show how memories for visual discriminations are organized in neural systems. The findings of these experiments challenge long-held theoretical views on the role of the hippocampus in memory.

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Virginia Olmsted McGraw has been awarded the Robert C. Tucker/Stephen F. Cohen Dissertation Prize for her dissertation, “Soviet by Design: Fashion, Consumption, and International Competition during Late Socialism, 1948-1982." This prize is given to an "outstanding English-language doctoral dissertation in Soviet or Post-Soviet politics and history in the tradition practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen," according to its website.