Faculty Accomplishments
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An article by Associate Professor of French Mouhamedoul Amine Niang was quoted in the recently released Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019). The article, titled "Croisées narratives ou nouvelle translation du vécu spatial de l’immigré. Le post-épistolaire et le mémoriel dans Le Ventre de l’Atlantique de Fatou Diome," appeared as a book chapter in the collected volume Frictions et devenirs dans les écritures migrantes au féminin.
Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, has published a new book titled Militarized Global Apartheid (Duke University Press, 2020). The book "offers a sweeping theorization of the ways in which countries from the global north are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system on a worldwide scale to control the mobility and labor of people from the global south," according to the publisher.
Raffael Scheck, the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz and Sheldon Toby Katz Professor of History, has published a new book titled Love between Enemies: Western Prisoners of War and German Women in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His latest work "explores the forbidden relationships which formed between foreign prisoners of war and German women during the Second World War," according to the publisher.
The latest book by James R. Fleming, Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, First Woman: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere (Oxford University Press, 2020), details the life of pioneering meteorologist Joanne Simpson (1923-2010). Fleming, the first to write a comprehensive biography of Simpson, spent five years mining her archive at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute to bring her story to life. He was the first to read her personal diaries, containing details of a love affair and her passion for life. “This settles it,” Fleming said upon finding the diaries. “I’ve got to write this up.”
Read more about Fleming's book at Colby Magazine.
Assistant Professor of History Sarah Duff published a new article, "‘Dear Mrs Brown’: social purity, sex education and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in early twentieth-century South Africa" in a special edition of Social History, focusing on South Africa. "The South African Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was a significant source of sex education for white youth in particular, and encouraged adults to equip their children with the information that would prepare them for marriage and parenthood," writes Duff in the abstract. "This article argues that while much of the WCTU’s interest in sex education was informed by eugenic anxieties about the health of the new Union of South Africa, the organization’s archive can also be read for evidence of mothers’ reasons for seeking sex education."
Rabbi Rachel Isaacs wrote an essay for the My Jewish Learning newsletter titled "Parashat Noach: How Societies Collapse" in which she uses the story of Noah and the flood as an "object lesson in the kinds of crimes that pose existential social threats." The essay explains two types of crimes and their effects on individuals and the larger society. "The story of Parashat Noach should give us pause when we are inclined to game the system for ephemeral personal gain or attack the dignity of others for temporary personal pleasure," Isaacs wrote. "A world worthy of an eternal covenant with God is one led by leaders who model the best of who we can be, and composed of societies that are steadfast in safeguarding the dignity of its members and the moral claims of its legal system."
An essay by Professor of Creative Writing Adrian Blevins appeared on the website Vox Populi on Oct. 12, 2020. Blevins writes about her poetry book Appalachians Run AmokI. The essay begins:
Another thing the Appalachians don’t like to talk about
is the creepy extent to which they adore the way they talk
alone in the shower & just walking around in their bandanas
versus how much they obviously meanwhile sort of also
secretly hate the high notes of their own hill-kitschy prattle,
especially if we’re talking halfway psychedelic Appalachians
from mid-century America born in 1937 in Southwest Virginia,
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Arisa White was the guest poet on the blog Diary of an Eccentric. White writes about her upcoming poetic memoir Who's Your Daddy and at the end of the post, she offers a poetry reading.
The video of a conversation between Professor of Art Véronique Plesch and painter and multimedia artist Abby Shahn has just been released online. The original conversation took place April 19, 2020, as part of the SPEEDWELL LIVE! event. Plesch's conversation was held in conjunction with Shahn’s exhibition at SPEEDWELL projects, a gallery in Portland, Maine, commemorating Shahn's 50 years living and working in Maine.
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch has recorded a conversation as part of the podcast series “Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in our time,” produced by members of the Dante Society of America in collaboration with the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò and the Department of Italian Studies at New York University. Plesch's conversation with Binghamton University's Olivia Holmes is now available online.
“Canto per Canto” was conceived during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in anticipation of the seventh centennial commemoration of Dante’s death in the year 2021. Members of the Dante Society have been recording conversations with friends and colleagues about their favorite cantos of the Divine Comedy, reflecting on what Dante has to say to us now, in our time. All 100 will be published at a rate of two cantos per week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, over the course of a year.