Faculty-Staff Achievements, Dec. 9, 2012
Honors
Robert Boyers, professor of English and editor of Salmagundi, has an essay titled "A Beauty" included in the 2012 edition ofBest American Essays. The essay is a memoir built around Boyers's friendship with the late American novelist and man of letters Charles Newman. But it is also a reflection on the idea of beauty, making a case for physical beauty and arguing that often it has no connection whosoever to what we sometimes refer to as "spiritual" or "moral" beauty.
Boyers's essay originally appeared in the Boston University journal AGNI and was selected for Best American Essays by the 2012 editor, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Marie Glotzbach, lecturer in theater and community relations officer in Advancement, has been recognized by Saratoga Arts with its inaugural Community Arts Leadership Award.
Activities
Dan Nathan, associate professor of American Studies, was one of three college faculty members to speak at "Basketball and American Culture: A Special Symposium," presented Nov. 29 by the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas, Austin. Former U.S. and NBA legend Bill Bradley was a featured speaker at the event. Nathan's presentation was titled "From Springfield to San Antonio: A Brief History of Basketball's Rise as a Global Game." Other faculty speakers were Reuben A. Buford May of Texas A&M University and Madeleine Blais, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Beth Post-Lundquist, director of financial aid, was the speaker Dec. 4 at a College Financial Aid Workshop hosted by the Saratoga Springs High School Guidance Department.
Pushkala Prasad, Zankel Professor in Management for the Liberal Arts, gave an invited presentation at the plenary workshop at the annual meetings of the National Communications Association Nov. 14 in Orlando, Fla. The title of her presentation was "An Ethnography of a Discourse: Nomadic Fieldwork and Immigration Exclusions in Scandinavia."
Publications
Alison Barnes, visiting assistant professor in English and Environmental Studies, is co-author of "From the classroom to the museum: understanding faculty-designed assignments in an academic museum." Her co-author is Ryan Lynch, formerly assistant registrar at the Tang. The article, published Nov. 26, 2012, in the journal Museum Management and Curatorship, is based on a study of all of the faculty-designed assignments given and recorded at the Tang since it opened. It features about 20 assignments by Skidmore faculty members from across the disciplines.
Robert Boyers, professor of English and editor of Salmagundi, is the author of "Writing Without A Mattress" in the Dec. 10 issue of The Nation magazine and of an essay on the political novel called "Between The Lines" in the fall 2012 special issue of Lapham's Quarterly devoted to "Politics."
Steven Millhauser, Tisch Professor of Arts and Letters and professor of English, has a story, "A Voice in the Night," in the Dec. 10 issue of The New Yorker.
R. Parthasarathy, professor emeritus of English, had his book, Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets, reprinted in 2012. This is the book's 18th printing since it was first published by Oxford University Press in 1976. It was one of the books reprinted this year to commemorate the centenary of OUP's publishing in India, an event celebrated March 21 in New Delhi with the vice chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in attendance. On a lighter note, one of two mugs commissioned to mark the occasion carries a poem, "The Dhyal's Song," by Parthasarathy, first published in The Record, the annual magazine of University College, Oxford.
In the News
Catherine J. Golden, professor of English, was a source for "Spreading Dickens' timeless words" and "First Christmas cards helped the poor" two stories about Charles Dickens published Dec. 9 in The Saratogian.
William (Michael) Mudrovic, professor of Spanish, was the subject of a feature story in laopiniondezamora.es regarding his scholarship on the Spanish poet Claudio Rodríguez (1934-1999), the subject of Mudrovic's first book.
In the city where Rodríguez was born (Zamora, in the northwestern part of Spain, near the northeast corner of Portugal) the Public Library and the Institute of Zamoran Studies collects any and all publications and other things like photos, letters, awards, and translations about Rodríguez. They acquired Mudrovic's book and felt that it should be translated into Spanish. They offered a "scholarship" to fund the translation and found a man there who had lived in the U.S. His name is Luis Ingelmo. He translated the book and then worked unstintingly to find a publisher. Finally, the University of Valladolid, one of the finest universities in Spain, agreed to publish it, with some financial support from the Institute.
This same Institute organizes a conference every other year around a theme concerning the poetry of Rodríguez. This year the theme was the "staying power" of the poet and his influence on younger poets.
Because the publication of the translation coincided with the publication of the translation of Mudrovic's book, he made a 20-minute presentation discussing the genesis of the book, starting with his first trip to Spain in 1972 and his doctoral dissertation (1976). The book is actually a complete rewriting of his dissertation and includes two additional books.
The press focused on Mudrovic's belief that the poet's fifth and last published work, Casi una leyenda (Almost a Legend), is not a late work but a new direction that the poet takes after 15 years of silence. (In fact, he was working on a sixth book tentatively titled Aventura when he contracted cancer and died.) The article is dedicated to that topic, an opinion that differs significantly from the critical reception of the work when it appeared in 1991. Mudrovic argues that a new aesthetic has emerged as a result of the process of grieving initiated by the previous work, a poignant and moving elegy addressing the death of the poet's sister and mother.
Because the translation of Mudrovic's book has been published by the University of Valladolid, it will appear in all the university libraries in Spain, and Spanish students and critics will now have access to his study.
