News and Events
Wednesday Memo
September 26, 2012
UMPeople
Stephanie Batkie, English, and John Bawden, History, have been selected to represent UM in the 2013 NEH Summer Stipends competition. Batkie seeks funding for a project titled “History in the Making: Representation and Readership in Gower’s Political Allegory.” Bawden’s project is titled “Behind the Dark Sunglasses: U.S. Perceptions of Pinochet, the Junta, and Chile’s Armed Forces, 1973-1990.” The Faculty Development Advisory Committee (FDAC) considered a number of fine proposals this year. The grant award is $6,000 and is intended to enable faculty to pursue scholarship during the summer months. Congratulations and best wishes for success in the NEH competition are extended to both nominees.
Roderick George, Music, was a guest artist in a concert titled Opera in Film at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa Sept. 10. The concert, where he joined Stillman music faculty soprano Luvada Harrison and pianist Hye-Sook Jung, featured operatic arias and duets heard in the movies Philadelphia, Moonstruck, Fatal Attraction and Diva. Saturday, Sept.15, found George in Florida, where he was a featured artist for Pensacola Opera’s 2012 Jukebox Fund-raising Gala, held at the Crown Plaza Grand Hotel in Pensacola. George performed selections by Verdi, Bizet, Puccini, Gershwin, Lehar and Berstein. George will return to Pensacola Opera in October to make his mainstage debut in the role of Beadle Bamford in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
Karen Graffeo and Nita Terrell, Art, have had work selected for inclusion in the B12 Wiregrass Biennial, a juried exhibition which opened in mid-July and runs through Saturday, Oct. 13. The biennial features the work of 37 emerging and established Southeastern artists working in a variety of media. Additionally, Terrell recently learned that her work has been selected to be added to the museum’s permanent collection. The Wiregrass Museum of Art is located in Dothan.
Kathy King, English and Foreign Languages, edited the recently published special issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Fall 2012). It includes King’s essay, “Hans Turley, Queer Studies, and the Open-Hatched Eighteenth Century.” In addition, King’s A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood, some eight years in the making, was published during the summer by Pickering & Chatto. King continues to serve as 18th-century section editor of the online journal Literature Compass, and is currently completing a chapter of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Women’s Literature in the Eighteenth Century.
Joseph Landers, Music, will have original composition work premiered in the Alabama Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster and Friends performance of Contemporary Visions, scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 7:30 p.m., at the Brock Recital Hall at Samford University. This program includes the premiere of two new works for the Concertmaster and Friends series by composers Landers and Sarana Chou (Samford University), as well as the U.S. premiere of works by Romanian-Canadian composer Dora Cojocaru. Included on the program are Landers’ Serenata Quasi Una Notturna for violin and piano, Some Melodious Sonnet for flute and piano and the world premiere of his Divertimento a Quattro for violin, flute, piano and percussion. Featured performers for the concert include ASO concertmaster Daniel Szasz, violin; Anthony Pattin, piano; Lisa Wienhold, flute; and Jay Burnham, Percussion/Timpani.
Lee Rozelle, English and Foreign Languages, presented “Place as Performance in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” at the international Environmental Utterance Conference, held Sept. 1-2 at University College, Falmouth, United Kingdom.
Susan Thompson, Mass Communication, had the 2nd edition of her text, Fundamentals of Media Effects, by Jennings Bryant, Susan Thompson and Bruce Finklea, published this summer by Waveland Press. Bryant was director of the Institute for Communication Research at the University of Alabama for many years and served on Thompson’s dissertation committee at UA. Finklea, who is a doctoral candidate at UA and an adjunct faculty member in the Mass Communication division at UM, also took classes with Bryant at UA. Finklea agreed to come aboard as a co-author and produced excellent chapters on stereotyping, computers and video games, educational television, the Internet and mobile communication for the 2nd edition.