Showing posts with label faculty news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faculty news. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Professor Obermeier Publishes Book Review

Dr. Obermeier has published a book review of Joerg O. Fichte's From Camelot to Obamalot: Essays on Medieval and Modern Arthurian Literature (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2010) in the Journal for English and Germanic Philology 114.3 (2015): 453-56.

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Monday, November 9, 2015

Faculty & Graduate Conference Appearances and Presentations October 2015



Assistant Professor of English Sarah L. Townsend organized the 2015 American Conference for Irish Studies Western Regional meeting (ACIS-West) October 16-17 in Rapid City, South Dakota. The conference theme, "Ireland: Memory and Monument," explored acts of memory and commemoration in Irish literature, history, politics, and culture. Keynote speakers included David C. Lloyd (Distinguished Professor of English at UC Riverside), Eamonn Wall (poet and essayist, Smurfit Professor of English at the University of Missouri, St. Louis), and Myles Dungan (RTE presenter and instructor at City Colleges Dublin). The conference concluded with a performance of the play Fionnuala by award-winning actor and playwright Donal O'Kelly (Director, Benbo Productions), as well as a discussion between Irish and Lakota artists, activists, and scholars about multinational oil production and the preservation of indigenous environments and communities. At the conclusion of the conference, Townsend was named Treasurer of the organization.

Sarah L. Townsend. "Waiting in Anatolia: Beckett, Ceylan, and the Procedural Body." American Conference for Irish Studies, Western Region. . Rapid City, SD: October 17.

Julie Williams. "Waist High in the West: A Study of a Wheelchair Perspective." Western Literature Association. University of Nevada, Reno. Reno, NV: October 14-18, 2015.

Megan Malcom-Morgan. "Modernism's 'Other:' D.H. Lawrence in Mexico.." Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association . . Santa Fe, NM: October 10, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Gender Expression in the American West: Femininity is in the Eye of the Beholder." Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. . Santa Fe, NM: October 8-10, 2015.


Thursday, October 15, 2015

Helen Damico's Book Discussion and Signing at the UNM Bookstore

Professor Emerita of English Medieval Language and Literature, Damico hosted a discussion and signing of her new book, Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England (West Virginia University Press, 2015)  on Tuesday, October 13th, at the UNM Bookstore:





Daniel Worden published by Cambridge University Press

Worden's essay on "The Popular Western" will be published this month in Cambridge University Press's History of Western American Literature, edited by Susan Kollin.

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Daniel Mueller published by The Writing Disorder, Summer 2015

"The Embers" is a short story set in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Themes of religion, marital fidelity, teenage pregnancy, incest, and abortion rights.

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Julianne Newmark published by Modern Language Studies, Summer 2015

"Claims to Political Place through the National Council of American Indians: Locating Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin in the Nation’s Capital."

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, many Native leaders emerged on the national political stage, figuring prominently as lobbyists, contributors of Congressional testimony, leaders of national pan-Indian organizations, and vitally important members of specific tribal communities.  Among the most prominent of these indigenous activists were Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin. The Bonnins dedicated themselves to, as they called it, the Indian cause in a variety of ways in this period. Some of their efforts have been well studied by current scholars, particularly Gertrude's autobiographical writings under her self-given name Zitkala-Sa and her early activist scholarship as a prominent member of the Society of American Indians, as Secretary and as Editor of the publication The American Indian Magazine. This essay considers a sampling of the less frequently studied, later efforts of Gertrude Bonnin's, particularly epistolary and pamphlet-writing activities of 1926, 1927, and 1928. 

Julianne Newmark published by IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication First Quarter 2015

Learning Beyond the Classroom and Textbook: Workplace Enculturation via Technical Communication Client Projects and Internships with Elisabeth Kramer-Simpson and Julie Dyke Ford.

From the online description on the journal's website: the article "explores how approaches such as client projects in technical communication courses for majors prepare students for internships and their transition to the work world."

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Julianne Newmark published The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature in January 2015

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the largest period of immigration in U.S. history. This immigration, however, was accompanied by legal segregation, racial exclusionism, and questions of residents national loyalty and commitment to a shared set of American beliefs and identity. The faulty premise that homogeneity as the symbol of the melting pot was the mark of a strong nation underlined nativist beliefs while undercutting the rich diversity of cultures and lifeways of the population. Though many authors of the time have been viewed through this nativist lens, several texts do indeed contain an array of pluralist themes of society and culture that contradict nativist orientations. In The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature, Julianne Newmark brings urban northeastern, western, southwestern, and Native American literature into debates about pluralism and national belonging and thereby uncovers new concepts of American identity based on sociohistorical environments. Newmark explores themes of plurality and place as a reaction to nativism in the writings of Louis Adamic, Konrad Bercovici, Abraham Cahan, Willa Cather, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles Alexander Eastman, James Weldon Johnson, D. H. Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Zitkala-Sa, among others. This exploration of the connection between concepts of place and pluralist communities reveals how mutual experiences of place can offer more constructive forms of community than just discussions of nationalism, belonging, and borders.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2015


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Faculty & Graduate Conference Appearances and Presentations since Spring 2014

Anita Obermeier. "Birth and Birth Control in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales." Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic, and Technology. University of London. London, UK: July 10-11, 2015.

Anita Obermeier. "Merlin, the Clown, and the Queer in Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin." 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies,. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 14-17, 2015.

Anita Obermeier. "Teaching Provenรงal Lyrics and the Cathars." 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 14-17, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Patronage, Poetic Identity, and Domestic Tensions: Jane Wiseman and Mary Leapor, 1717-1746." Feminist Research Institute (FRI) Lecture Series . Univ. of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: April 2015.

Anita Obermeier. “Medieval Empress Cunegund’s Sterility as Disability and Magic in 21st-Century German Historical Fiction." Annual Meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific. University of Nevada-Reno. Reno, NV: April 10-11, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Mary Robinson, Collaborative Writing, and Genres of Women's Autobiography." America Society of Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS). . Los Angeles, CA: March 2015.
Presented with Leslie Morrison, PhD

Julie Williams. "One Voice is Not Enough to Tell a Story: Writing as Community Creation in Native American Women's Fiction." Native American Literature Symposium. . Isleta, NM: March 12-14, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Access to Nature for Students with Disabilities." Center for Teaching Excellence Success in the Classroom Conference. University of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: February 19, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Trans-Atlantic Artistry in Blue Ravens, Hungry Generations, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk." American Indian Studies Association. . Albuquerque, NM: February 5-6, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Preparing for Take-Off: Learning to Fly in Graduate School." Modern Language Association. Canada. Vancouver, BC: January 8-11, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Solitude and Isolation: John Clare's Struggle for Childhood Familiarity." Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA). . San Diego, CA: May 2014.

Anita Obermeier. “’Torn between Two Lovers’: Formalism, Feminism, and Other Isms in Teaching the Pan-European Medieval Lyrics." 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 8-11, 2014.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Alemรกn publishes chapter on teaching nineteenth-century US Latino/a literatures


Jesse Alemรกn’s chapter, “Recovered and Recovery Texts of the Nineteenth Century,” leads off Latino/a Literature in the Classroom: Twenty-First-Century Approaches to Teaching, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and recently published by Routledge. The essay is a scholarly piece on teaching nineteenth-century US Latino/a literatures, surveying major texts to be included in the classroom, presenting approaches to themes, genres, and authors that structure the Latino nineteenth century, and most importantly, arguing for a different model of teaching American literary history to be inclusive of early US Latino/a print cultures.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Anita Obermeier publishes article on Merlin's Devil Conception in Arthuriana's special volume dedicated to "Arthur on the Stage."


In her most recent article, “Merlin’s Conception by Devil in William Rowley’s Play The Birth of Merlin” (Arthuriana 24.4 (2014): 48-79), Anita Obermeier argues that Rowley’s early modern play amalgamates both the medieval Galfridian-based and Francophone narratives of Merlin’s conception by daemon, incubus, and devil in order to engage contemporary early seventeenth-century debates on the devil’s influence in the world, to ventriloquize social commentary via the figure of the Clown, and to have Merlin hail Prince Charles as the future Arthur.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Daniel Worden’s edited volume The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World published by the University Press of Mississippi

Daniel Worden’s latest book, an edited collection of essays titled The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World, has just been published by the University Press of Mississippi. The book also features an essay by UNM English PhD Candidate Ann D’Orazio.

The Comics of Joe Sacco addresses the range of his award-winning work, from his early comics stories as well as his ground-breaking journalism Palestine (1993) and Safe Area to Gorade (2000), to Footnotes in Gaza (2009) and his most recent book The Great War (2013), a graphic history of World War I.

First in the new series Critical Approaches to Comics Artists, this edited volume explores Sacco's comics journalism, and features established and emerging scholars from comics studies, cultural studies, geography, literary studies, political science, and communication studies. Sacco's work has already found a place in some of the foundational scholarship in comics studies, and this book solidifies his role as one of the most important comics artists today.

Sections focus on how Sacco's comics journalism critiques and employs the "standard of objectivity" in mainstream reporting, what aesthetic principles and approaches to lived experience can be found in his comics, how Sacco employs the space of the comics page to map history and war, and the ways that his comics function in the classroom and as human rights activism. The Comics of Joe Sacco offers definitive, exciting approaches to some of the most important--and necessary--comics today, by one of the most acclaimed journalist-artists of our time.  

The book is available through booksellers everywhere, and here:  http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1764

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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Alemรกn Delivers Burke Lecture in Taos

As the 2015 Jim and Linda Burke Visiting Scholar in Literature at the Doel Reed Center for the Arts in Taos, Dr. Jesse Alemรกn delivered a lecture on Southwestern horror in film at the Taos Art Museum and Fechin House. Read more about it below in Laura Bulkin's article from the Taos Tempo:

Taos lecture: 'From Atomic Ants to Texas Cannibals'

What do giant radioactive ants have in common with inbred feral cannibals? How has our post-atomic Southwestern culture shaped the horror movie genre? And is it really aliens taking away our cattle, or could there be more sinister economic agents at work?

These questions and more will be addressed in a lively presentation by University of New Mexico-Albuquerque professor Dr. Jesse Alemรกn on Sunday (May 31), 2 p.m. at the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, 227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte.

The event is titled “From Atomic Ants to Texas Cannibals: The Social Significance of Southwestern Horror in Film,” and is being offered free of charge by Oklahoma State University’s Doel Reed Center for the Arts in Taos.

The Doel Reed Center came about through the generosity of late Taos icon Martha Reed, whose famed broomstick skirts have adorned fashionable dancers from Taos to the White House.

“Martha was an alumna of Oklahoma State, and her father Doel taught art there,” said center director Dr. Edward Walkiewicz. “When she passed in 2010, she left us her property, including her father’s old art studio, with the stipulation that it be used for arts and humanities.”

Alemรกn will discuss “the way specific events that take place in the Southwest show up in horror films — environmental and economic disasters generating forms of horror.” He gives the example of “Them,” a 1954 release considered one of the pioneers of the “nuclear monster” genre. “Them” is set in Alamagordo, New Mexico, site of the first atomic bomb test — an environmental nightmare that, in the film, spawns an army of giant mutant ants.

As well as atomic events, Alemรกn will cover the economic horror story of the demise of cattle culture. He posits a direct line of cinematic influence, from the 1963 cattle-industry drama “Hud,” to 1970s horror classics such as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Hills Have Eyes,” where the cannibal antagonists have been left in social and economic isolation by the decline of the cattle economy.

This rich vein of material ties in with another field of expertise for Alemรกn: Chicano folklore, especially as it is translated into the medium of film. “We could look at low-brow horror movies as just campy or simplistic, but this genre of subaltern forms has a long history of articulating complex social messages.”

He gives the example of the many “chupacabra films” that have been made in Mexico and the U.S. over the years, and points to a metaphorical subtext of “blood-sucking labor practices and exploitation of workers” underlying the chupacabra’s vampirism.

La Llorona, “The Weeping Woman,” has also been a favorite horror-genre theme, with Mexican Llorona films dating back to the 1930s. Alemรกn spoke of the differences between the character of La Llorona as she has traditionally been passed down in stories from elders to children, and the way that the character has been portrayed cinematically.

“I love the fact that she’s in film and doesn’t have to be the same as she is in folklore. Many of the Mexican movies add the element of La Llorona possessing the body of someone, often a white woman. This never happens in the folklore stories, it was completely made up for cinema. With this added element of ‘possession,’ you wonder, what’s up with that, what does that mean? Who is possessing and owning whom, and why? There are profound metaphors here for the possession of land, the possession of culture and power and property.”

“There is also a tradition of zombies in horror films representing ‘racial others’ who will suck life from the dominant culture,” Alemรกn continued, citing the 1996 cult film “From Dusk Till Dawn.”

“That film captured those tensions in its very structure. It’s a Quentin Tarantino film until the Tarantino character dies, and then we get Robert Rodriguez’ perspective and it’s a different point of view on the genre. This was set in a trucker bar, and made at the very beginning of NAFTA. Who are the real vampires— the Mexicans in the film, or the corporate entities about to come swarming in?”

Alemรกn grew up in a small town in rural California, and says his upbringing there, in a region he describes as “98 percent raza,” helps him feel at home teaching in Albuquerque. “The work I’m doing now is a synthesis of all the cultural impressions I took in as a kid, filtered through rigorous academic mentoring and training in thinking analytically.”

While in Taos, Alemรกn will also be interacting with OSU professor Martin Wallen’s intensive two-week course on the subject of “The Nuclear Bomb and the Land of Enchantment.” Wallen says the class will be visiting Los Alamos, “along with the sites of peaceful artistic engagement, such as the Fechin House and the Greater World Earthships.”

“This is the third summer that we’re hosting a visiting scholar,” said Walkiewicz. “We do a nationwide search for the person with the best credentials who can also contribute to a class. Jesse Alemรกn already has a great body of work in Southwestern culture and contemporary film, and in how that ties in to social and economic issues.”

Later this year, the Center will be taking part in the Pressing Through Time exhibition. This celebration of printmaking in Taos will encompass 150 years of work, including that of Doel Reed himself. “We are always trying to participate in the artistic and intellectual life of the community, and to bring in more than we take out,” Walkiewicz said.

For Sunday’s event, Alemรกn assures attendees that they won’t be subjected to a typical dry lecture. He’ll be showing clips from the films as he speaks about them, and then will invite the audience to join in what he hopes will be a spirited discussion. “It’s about the power of folklore. Some may view it as mythology. For us, it is articulating how we live all the time.”

For more, call the museum at (575) 758-2690.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Tiffany Bourelle Named 2015-16 Teaching Fellow


The Center for Teaching Excellence selected Assistant Professor Tiffany Bourelle to be a 2015-16 Teaching Fellow.

Teaching Fellows will investigate carefully-defined teaching challenges by examining the latest research on teaching and learning in their disciplines, designing a teaching innovation, and by collecting and evaluating evidence of student learning in their own courses. At the end of the program, Fellows will present their results in a campus presentation and at national conferences in their disciplines.

Jonathan Davis-Secord Awarded Medieval Academy Book Subvention

Assistant Professor Davis-Secord's book, Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature, forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press, has been awarded the Medieval Academy Book Subvention, which provides support for the publication of first books at university and scholarly presses.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Bourelle, Griego-Schmitt and Spong Receive Center for Teaching Excellence Awards


Sponsored by the Faculty Senate Teaching Enhancement Committee and the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), Teaching Awards recognize UNM’s Outstanding Educators.

Each year the Faculty Senate Teaching Enhancement Committee selects recipients for a variety of campus-wide teaching awards.  Awardees are selected following a nomination and dossier-review process.

2014-2015 Online Teacher of the Year:

Andrew Bourelle, English

2014-2015 Susan Deese-Roberts Outstanding Teaching Assistants:

Breanna Griego-Schmitt, English

Stephanie Spong, English

Professor Warner Receives the Wertheim Faculty Award

The Wertheim Award is awarded annually to a member of the senior faculty whose scholarship, creative work, teaching, and service make a noteworthy contribution to the department, the College, the university, and the community beyond UNM.

This year a panel of recent Wertheim recipients chose Professor Sharon Warner as the awardee for 2015.

Assistant Professors Tiffany and Andy Bourelle Receive the Julia M. Keleher/Telfair Hendon, Jr. Faculty Award

The Julia M. Keleher/Telfair Hendon, Jr. Faculty Award is given annually to an Assistant Professor who demonstrates a strong commitment to teaching.  In 1995 the Keleher Award account was augmented by its combination with the Telfair Hendon, Jr. Memorial and the first award was given in the 95/96 academic year.

Recent recipients of the Keleher/Hendon Faculty Award named Drs. Tiffany and Andy Bourelle as the recipients of this year’s award.

Assistant Professor Elder Receives Louie Award for Dedicated Service to UNM


Cristyn Elder received the Outstanding Student Service Provider award.  Dr. Elder has been deeply engaged in changing the way we deliver core writing to our students, and her efforts on that and the UNM Lobo Reading Experience, as well as restructuring the 537 Practicum, have made a world of difference to the university.

Please see related articles from Inside UNM and the Division of Student Affairs.