Dan Coleman, director, the Master’s Program at Skidmore, gave a paper titled “Knowing the Box You Think In: Interdisciplinary Study and the Liberal Arts” at a conference hosted by the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs in November in Napa Valley.

President Philip Glotzbach is one of eight leaders of major employers in Saratoga County to have recently completed the county Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Institute. The program is held every three years as a community orientation for recently relocated executives and their spouses. Issues discussed include challenges facing county and municipal government, educational, and health-care institutions.

Francisco Gonzales, associate professor of philosophy, read an invited paper titled “Beyond or Beneath Good and Evil? Heidegger’s Purification of Aristotle’s Ethics” at a colloquium titled “Heidegger and the Greeks” held in July in Athens. Last April, he presented a two-part invited lecture titled “Saving Dunamis and Dialectic in Plato’s Sophist: Towards a “Destruction’ of Heidegger’s History of Being” at the Societat Catalana de Filosofia in Barcelona, Catalunya.

Carey Kasten, lecturer in Spanish, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation proposal in October. She is completing her degree at Columbia University and will write her dissertation on “The Auto Sacramental in the 20th Century.”

James McLelland, visiting professor of geosciences, presented a paper titled “Direct dating of Adirondack anorthosite by U-Pb SHRIMP techniques: Implications for AMCG genesis” at the National Geological Society of America meeting Nov. 2-5 in Seattle.

W. Michael Mudrovic, associate professor of Spanish, presented a paper titled “The Work of Fire: Destruction and Passion in José Hierro’s Cuaderno de Nueva York” at the annual convention of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association held in November in Atlanta.

Stephen Butler Murray, chaplain and associate director, Intercultural Center, presented the following papers: “Tolkien and Tillich: A Theological Reading of the Mythology of Evil in The Lord of the Rings,’ to the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group at the November annual meeting in Atlanta of the American Academy of Religion; “The Politicization of Theology by Bernard of Clairvaux” at the 10th International Medieval Congress held in July at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom; and “The Wrath of God and the Theological Legacy of John 3:36 in the Reformed Tradition” at the St. Andrews Conference on the Gospel of John and Christian Theology, also held in July at the University of St. Andrews, Fife, United Kingdom.

Kyle Nichols, assistant professor of geosciences, gave an invited talk titled “Sediment generation and water supply: A case study of the Panama Canal” Nov. 19 to the Hudson-Mohawk Professional Geologists’ Association. From Nov. 2 to 5, he attended the meeting of the National Geological Society of America, which convened in Seattle, and gave a paper titled “The life of piedmont sediment: Sediment tracing using cosmogenic nuclides.” Also while at the Seattle meeting, Nichols and collaborative research partner Robin Wiles-Skeels - presented “Quantifying the effects of land-use change on the hydrology of a water-supply watershed, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.”

On Oct. 16 at Colorado State University, Nichols gave another invited talk: “Rock to ‘dirt’: Millennial-scale rates of sediment delivery to the Panama Canal reservoir (based on cosmogenic 10Be).”

He also is involved in the coordination of two upcoming conferences in the area. Nichols is a member of the organizing committee for the 11th International Symposium on Water-Rock Interaction, scheduled this summer at the Prime Hotel and Conference Center in Saratoga Springs. These symposia are held every three years, and this is only the second time that the meeting will be in North America. A subset of the International Union of Geological Sciences, the group carries out theoretical, laboratory, and field investigations in almost all of the earth science disciplines.

In March 2005, Skidmore and Union College will co-host the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Northeast Section, which also will take place at the Prime Hotel and Conference Center. Nichols is co-chair of the overall technical section and the rest of the Geosciences faculty is serving on a variety of organizational committees. The meeting is expected to draw up to 1,000 geoscientists from the U.S. and Canada.

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, gave a reading of his poetry at the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls Nov. 13. Earlier that day, he spoke about writing poetry to the senior creative writing class at the Saratoga Springs High School. On Nov. 20, he presented “To Be or Not to Be: So What’s the Question?” a lecture on Hamlet, at the William K. Sanford Town Library in Colonie, as part of the Speakers in the Humanities series of the New York State Council on the Humanities.

Paty Rubio, professor of Spanish and chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, presented a paper titled “Diamela Eltit y Lotty Rosenfeld: análisis de una colaboración artística” at the conference on Democracy in Latin America: Thirty Years after Chile’s 9/11’ Oct. 10-12 at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Jeff Segrave, professor of exercise science and athletic director, presented a paper titled “His Hairless Airness’ hairlessness: Some thoughts on Michael Jordan’s bald head” at the annual convention of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Oct. 30-Nov. 2 in Montreal. John Bruggemann, associate dean of the faculty, co-wrote the paper.

Publications & Exhibitions

Katharine Cartwright, lecturer in the Department of Geosciences, has been selected for inclusion in the eighth edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, 2004. Just five percent of the nation’s high school and college teachers are featured in the book.

Francisco Gonzalez, associate professor of philosophy, is the author of “How to Read a Platonic Prologue: Lysis 203a-207d’ in Plato as Author, edited by Ann N. Micheline and published this year (Leiden: Brill). In addition, he wrote “Plato’s Dialectic of Forms” appearing in Plato’s Forms: Varieties of Interpretation, edited by William Welton and published this year by Lexington Books; “Confronting Heidegger on Logos and Being in Plato’s Sophist” in Platon und Aristoteles – sub ratione veritatis, a festschrift for Wolfgang Wieland edited by Gregor Damschen, Rainer Enskat, and Alejandro G. Vigo, and published this year by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. Gonzalez also wrote “Caminant pel Feldweg de Heidegger,” published in Comprendre: Revista Catalana de filosofia, 5, 2003.

Deb Hall, assistant professor of art, had work included in a juried exhibition titled “Regional, 2003” at the Perrella Gallery at Fulton Montgomery Community College from Nov. 7 to Dec. 14, and won the Juror’s Award. Richard Saba, a nationally exhibited artist, was juror for the exhibition.

Juan Carlos Lértora, professor of Spanish, published the article “Diamela Eltit: convergencias,” Taller de Letras (Santiago de Chile) 32 (2003), and a review of Gisela Norat’s book Marginalities. Diamela Eltit and the Subversion of Mainsteream Literature in Chile in Letras Femeninas, 27, 2002.

Murray Levith, professor of English, has had an essay, “Richard III: The Dragon and St. George,” published in The Shakespeare Newsletter, Summer 2003. In the same issue, a review of his piece on The Merchant of Venice in a new collection of essays on that play (Routledge 2002) was described by the reviewer as among “the best.”

Stephen Butler Murray, chaplain, and associate director, Intercultural Center, is co-editor (with David L. Bartlett and Claudia A. Highbaugh) of a book titled Crossing by Faith: Sermons on the Transition from Youth to Adulthood, in honor of Harry Baker Adams, published this year by Chalice Press, St. Louis. Murray’s article, “Identity: Discovering Our Priorities and Our Connections” appears in the book, as does his sermon titled “The Dynamics of Honesty.”

In addition, Murray is the author of “Reimagining Humanity: The Transforming Influence of Augmenting Technologies upon Doctrines of Humanity” published in Technology and Trascendence, edited by Michael J. Breen, Eamonn Conway, and Barry McMillan and produced by the Centre for Culture, Technology, and Values at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Columbia Press, 2003.

Another sermon by Murray also has been published. “Deliverance Where the Streets Have No Name” is included in Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue, edited by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard with preface by Eugene H. Peterson. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2003

Kyle Nichols, assistant professor of geosciences, is the author of “Quantifying urban land use and runoff changes through service-learning hydrology projects” published in the September issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education, vol. 51, no. 4.

Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, associate professor of German and director, International Affairs Program, is the author of Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich, Rochester: Camden House, 2003. The book in an interdisciplinary exploration of how the Nazi cinema’s popularity rested on its ability to express positive social fantasies and promote the enchantment of reality. O’Brien has selected five film genres – the historical musical, the foreign adventure film, the home-front film, the melodrama, and the problem film – to show how audiences were enchanted and to explain how family, community, history, the nation, and the war were imagined in Nazi Germany.

To complete the book, O’Brien received a Skidmore Faculty Initiative Research Grant and a Faculty Development Grant, as well as grants from the German Academic Exchange Service and the National Endowment of the Humanities. In 1999-2000 she received a senior Fulbright Scholarship to lecture at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and to conduct research at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin and at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehwesen “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam, Germany.

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, has recently had a number of poems accepted for publication. “Foresight” and “End of the Affair” will appear in Chautauqua Literary Journal; “Just Say the Word,” “Looking Out,” and “Shadow” in Notre Dame Review; “Sweet Decorum” in Paper Street; and “Absorption,” “Carmelite Convent, Mexico DF,” and “Nether Stowey” in The Southern Review.

Skidmore Scope has received a Gold Award for magazine quality in the annual Accolades program sponsored by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, District II. Scope was one of 74 magazines reviewed by judges in this year’s competition within the district, which encompasses the Mid-Atlantic states. The award will be presented at the annual district conference, scheduled Feb. 7-10 in Philadelphia. Editor of Scope is Sue Rosenberg; Maryann Snell is associate editor.

Paty Rubio, professor of Spanish and chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, published “Constructions of the Self: The Personal Letters of Gabriela Mistral” in Gabriela Mistral, the Audacious Traveler, edited by Marjorie Agosin (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003).

Linda Simon, professor of English, is the author of an article titled “The Pragmatists of Omelas: William James’s Lost Souls in Ursula Le Guin’s Utopia” that will appear in the April issue of the journal Philosophy and Literature.

Benjamin Van Wye, lecturer in music, is the author of an essay titled “La Musique d’orgue dans la Messe de Rite Parisien” published in the current issue of the Belgian journal L’Organiste.

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