Faculty Briefs

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Faculty Accomplishments

Paul Raeburn : T he American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, has selected Paul Raeburn, an instructor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, as the 2012 recipient of its James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry to the Public. One of the oldest and most prestigious accolades in journalism, the award dates to 1955 and consists of $3,000, a gold medallion and a bronze replica of the medallion. The award cites Raeburn's work as science editor and chief science correspondent at the Associated Press from 1981 to 1996, where thousands of his articles were distributed to more than 1,700 newspapers and 6,000 television and radio stations worldwide. Raeburn then spent seven years as science editor and a senior writer at BusinessWeek. His freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Self, Technology Review and many other publications.

Jeffrey Morton Amy Broderick (visual arts and art history). The Master Teachers Awards are given by FAU’s Center for Teaching and Learning to tenured teaching faculty members who demonstrate excellence inside and outside of the classroom through consistent leadership and focused collaboration for student learning. Recipients are charged with promoting scholarship at the university, facilitating the professional and intellectual development of faculty and graduate students, and providing leadership in the discussion of what it means to work in a learning-centered institution.

Samper-Sanchez Assistant Professor Alejandro Sánchez-Samper of the Commercial Music Program will be travelling to Nepal on a travel grant from the Asian Studies Certificate Program. While there he will be producing an album of traditional and contemporary Nepalese music. For pictures, videos, and travel diary visit www.sigalarana.com

Walter Hnatysh, Department of Visual Arts and Arts History, recently received a South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC) Visual and Media Artists Fellowship. Twelve people received fellowships, and Hnatysh is the only one from Palm Beach County. The fellowship comes with a $15,000 award. The 2011 fellowship was awarded for paintings and drawings. Hnatysh also received a SFCC Artist Fellowship in 2007 for digital photography.

Don Adams, Department of English, recently returned from sabbatical in Vietnam where he served as a consultant to the English programs of two universities in Ho Chi Minh City. Both universities are working to alter their academic structures and strategies, which have been based upon the centralized Soviet ministerial model, in an effort to encourage and foster individual effort and achievement on the part of both faculty and students. Adams worked with colleagues in these efforts and is investigating the possibility of developing cooperative educational programs between these universities and FAU. In addition, Adams developed a course titled Asia in Western Literature and Film that focuses on the role of Asia as subject, location, and topic in Western literature and film. He will be teaching this course at FAU in the Fall.

Stacie Rossow, Department of Music, was a guest facilitator at the first Anuna Choral School in Dublin, Ireland, in July 2011. This school is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Concert Hall Dublin, Ireland's premiere classical and acoustic performance venue. During the week-long program, Rossow ran rehearsal sessions, gave lectures on sight-singing and aural training and on Irish choral music. Additionally, she performed with world-renowned choral ensemble Anúna and conducted part of the Summer School concert.

Dr. Frederic Conrod, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature. This fall, the Canadian Journal of Film Studies will publish an article by Dr. Conrod titled: “Castrating the Body of Police: Portraits of an Impotent Institution in the Early Films of Pedro Almodóvar.” Dr. Conrod has also finalized a research project on Jesuit hagiographer Pedro de Ribadeneira which was accepted for publication by the Hispanic Review and will be published in early 2012.

Dr. Nuria Godón-Martínez, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, has been working on the representations of female stereotypes in Spanish Peninsular and Latin-American literature. As a result, her article “Cruce trasatlántico: reelaboración de íconos femeninos decimonónicos y proceso de formación de la identidad nacional mexicana en Clemencia y El Zarco de Altamirano” has been accepted for publication in Letras Femeninas . Also, Dr. Godón-Martínez and Dr. Frédéric Conrod co-edited and published the sixth volume of Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies, an established scholarly journal focus on literary and artistic interactions between Spain and France.

Dr. Prisca Augustyn, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, delivered two papers related to her on-going translation project of selected works by the Baltic-German theoretical biologist and semiotic theorist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) from the original German into English: at the annual convention of the Semiotic Society of America in Louisville Kentucky, and at the 11th International Gatherings in Biosemiotics at Rockefeller University in New York City. Her paper entitled “On Semiotic Modeling or How to make Backyards and Forests with Language” has been submitted for publication at the University of Tartu’s journal Sign Systems Studies, the oldest periodical in semiotics. Her paper “On the concept of Code in Linguistics and Semiotics” is forthcoming in Biosemiotics, the journal of the International Association of Biosemiotic Studies.

Dr. Ilaria Serra, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, has published an article, “From Literature to Film through Figurative Arts: Italian Imagistic Substitutions” in the most recent issue of Adaptation, an international film studies journal. She also published “The Melody of Italy. Using Music to Teach Italian History and Culture” in the spring issue of Italica. She also led a study abroad program to Venice, Italy in Summer 2. She spent the rest of the summer as Visiting Scholar at the Istituto veneziano per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea in Venice, Italy and presented two conference papers, “Immigrant Identity between Portrait and Metaphor: the Orsanti in Nineteenth Century Italy” at the Canadian Society for Italian Studies Conference and “Ritorno alla polis: i film di Dennis Dellai” at the New Italian Political Cinema conference in Cremona, Italy.

Dr. Justin White, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, presented some of his current research on second language acquisition, 'Explanation versus structured input in processing instruction: primary effects and transfer-of-training effects' at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese conference in Washington D.C. in July. He also accompanied a group of twenty incoming freshman to the Everglades as part of Camp Owls, a leadership development program sponsored by FAU.

Dr. Mary Ann Gosser-Esquilin, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature , has recently published two articles,“Del rojo de su sombra de Mayra Montero: cruzando fronteras” in Letras Hispanas: Revista de Literatura y Cultura and “El consumo del cuerpo travesti en Sirena Selena vestida de pena de Mayra Santos-Febres.” PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin / American Research Association. Dr. Gosser also published an interview with famed Caribbean literary critic and translator, Betty Wilson: “A True, True Teacher and Translator: An Interview with Elizabeth (Betty) Wilson.” Sargasso 2010-2011 Special Issue: Celebrating Caribbean Voices: 25 Interviews. She also presented two conference papers: “Ex-centric Journeys: Simulacra and Consumption in Mayra Montero and Mayra Santos-Febres.” Florida Consortium for Women’s Studies Conference, FAU, Boca Raton, 1-2 April 2011 and “Mayra Montero y Del rojo de su sombra: un performance ‘diaspórico’ de vida o muerte.” X Congreso Internacional de Literatura Hispánica. San Juan, PR, March, 2011.

Dr. Emannuele Pettener‘s, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, recent short story, “L’opera Omnia di Ellery Queen,” was accepted for publication in the literary journal Nuova Prosa. He also delivered an invited lecture and book presentation “Nel nome del padre, del figlio e dell’umorismo. I romanzi di John Fante” in Pescara, Italy, at the Museum of Modern Art “Vittoria Colonna”. Dr. Pettener was recently appointed director of the fiction book series for Corbo Editore publishing house in Italy.

Dr. Myriam Ruthenberg’s, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, book chapter, “Lectura Boccaccii III,6: la novella di Catella” was accepted for a multi-volume collection on Boccaccio’s Decameron, forthcoming with the University of Toronto Press. She also delivered a paper entitled “L’uomo e il camoscio: Sulle alture della scrittura” during the June conference of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies in Venice, Italy which will be a chapter in her book manuscript on Italian writer and cultural critic Erri De Luca. Upon her return she participated in the Faculty Owl leaders program, sponsored by FAU. Most recently, she has been invited, by the author himself, to translate the subtitles of a video produced by Italian author Erri De Luca entitled “Napòlide”. He also requested that she translate one of his short stories, “Pasta,” from a collection also entitled “Napòlide”. De Lucca was the subject of Dr. Ruthenberg’s first book and is one of the foremost Italian intellectuals of our time.

Dr. Carla Calargé, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, organized the Tournées French Film Festival that was supported by a generous grant from the French Embassy and held at FAU last spring. This past summer, she gave an invited lecture at the University of Cincinnati, a paper at the African Literature Association Conference (Athens, OH), and a second paper at the Congrès du Conseil International des Études francophones (Aix en Provence, France). Calargé has also just published an article titled « Un centre dans les marges: L’Amérique à la rescousse de la francophonie? » in Nouvelles Etudes Francophones. In addition, two other articles that she had submitted respectively to Contemporary French and Francophone Studies and Nineteenth Century French Studies have been accepted for publication. Finally, Calargé is co-editing a special issue of The Cincinnati Romance Review devoted to Franco-Algerian writer Assia Djebar. The issue is scheduled for publication in October and regroups a series of articles written by some of the best scholars in the field.

Dr. Geraldine Blattner, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, has just published two articles. “Virtual Social Network Communities: An Investigation of Language Learners' Development of Sociopragmatic Awareness and Multiliteracy Skills” (with co-author,Melissa Fiori) appears in the September volume of the journal CALICO ( https://www.calico.org/journalTOC.php?current=3D1 ). Her article “Web 2.0 Technologies and foreign language teaching” was included in V. Wang (Ed.). Encyclopedia of E-Leadership, Counseling and Training.

Dr. Bob Trammell, D epartment of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature, continued his research on improving ESL pronunciation by attention to syllabification and presented the paper, “Methods of Teaching American English Ambisyllabification” at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics’ Seventy Eighth Meeting. The University Georgia, Athens, meeting held at Callaway Gardens, GA. April 13-15, 2011.

Blane de St. Croix, Department of Visual Arts and Art History held the first ever FAU summer art course in New York City. As part of the class, 10 guest speakers were invited to do lectures with the students. The guests are artists, art critics and gallery directors. In addition, the students are visited museums and galleries including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art and several smaller galleries in the Chelsea District. The 11 students shared several two-bedroom apartments in New York City that are owned by Bethel University and each student had studio space in which to work and develop projects. Check out the blog to learn more http://www.fauartnyc.blogspot.com

Walter Hnatysh, Department of Visual Arts and Art History, recently received a South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC) Visual and Media Artists Fellowship. Hnatysh was one of 12 people to receive fellowships. His fellowship was awarded for paintings and drawings. Hnatysh also received a SFCC Artist Fellowship in 2007 for digital photography. The South Florida Cultural Consortium is an alliance of the arts councils of Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Martin counties. The fellowships are conferred at either the $15,000 or $7,500 level. Hnatysh won the $15,000 award. The recipients were selected during a two-tier panel process, which included the participation of regional and national arts experts. An exhibition featuring the works of the 12 recipients is scheduled to be presented at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison Street, Hollywood, FL from September 9 - October 16, 2011.

Dr. Josephine Beoku-Betts, Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, received a Fulbright Scholars Award for teaching and research at the University of Sierra Leone for the 2011-12 academic year. Dr. Beoku-Betts will work with the Gender Research and Documentation Center and the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. Her research will focus on women’s peace movements and post-war reconstruction in Sierra Leone. She will teach two graduate courses on Women, War, and Peace building and Global Perspectives on Gender. Each year, approximately 1,100 American scholars and professionals lecture and research through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.