arco News
See Also: Fall 2007
Faculty News
Jane Bellamy, Professor of English, has published an article titled “Spenser's 'Open'” in Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual, XXII with guest editors David Galbraith and Theresa M. Krier (New York: AMS Press, 2007): 227-41.
Thomas Burman, Associate Professor of History and Head of the Department of History, published his second book, Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, with the University of Pennsylvania Press in August of 2007. He was the keynote address ("Medieval Manuscripts and Medieval Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations") at the Sacred Leaves Graduate Student Symposium on Religions of the Book: Manuscript Traditions in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 1000-1500 CE at the University of South Florida, February 21, 2008. His commissioned article entitled "How an Italian Friar Read his Arabic Qur'an" will appear in Dante Studies later this year.
Mary Dzon, Assistant Professor of English, participated in a six-week National Endowment for the Humanities seminar in Assisi, Italy in the summer of 2008 on St. Francis of Assisi.
Tom Heffernan, Professor of English, Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies and Kenneth Curry Professor in the Humanities, has recently learned that he has been chosen to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from Manhattan College at the 2008 commencement ceremony. Manhattan College is an excellent liberal arts college in New York City and it is Dr. Heffernan's Alma Mater. Dr. Heffernan has been asked to speak at the Honors Commencement ceremony. In informing him of the award, Manhattan’s Provost, Dr. Weldon Jackson, praised Dr. Heffernan for his “record of high achievement coupled with the highest standards of integrity.” The honorary doctorate will be bestowed next fall at the college’s Honors Ceremony, where Dr. Heffernan will deliver the Convocation Address.
Gregory Kaplan, Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, has recently published a book, El culto a San Millán en Valderredible, Cantabria: Las iglesias rupestres y la formación del Camino de Santiago (Santander: Gobierno de Cantabria, Consejería de Cultura, Turismo y Deporte, 2007), a translation of thirteen short stories by the contemporary Spanish writer Juan José Millás, Personality Disorders and Other Stories (New York: Modern Language Association, 2007),a book chapter, “Landscapes of Discrimination in Converso Literature,” and a book review in Bulletin of Spanish Studies. He also presented a paper, “Sculpting the Visigothic ‘Micro-Christendom’: The Cult of San Millán in the Cave Churches of Valderredible (Cantabria, Spain),” at the annual Marco symposium on November 15 and 16, 2007, as well as a paper, "Mocking the 'Jewish Christian': The Psychology of 'Converso' Humor," at the 2008 International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England. Professor Kaplan also published an article ("Notas sobre la Peña Horacada") in "Valderredible 2008." The content of this article will form part of Professor Kaplan's monograph, "Valderredible, Cantabria (Spanish): La cuna del castellano," which he plans to complete in 2009.
Katherine Kong, Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature, gave a paper titled, “Marguerite’s Mirouer and the Translations of Authority,” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2008.
Michael Kulikowski, Alvin and Sally Beaman Associate Professor of History and Riggsby Director of the Marco Institute, has recent articles appearing in Classical Quarterly and Medieval Prosopography. His book Rome's Gothic Wars has appeared in paperback and is forthcoming in French and German translations in late 2008. Dr. Kulikowski has also just appeared in four episodes of the new History Channel Rome series.
Miriam Levering, Professor of Religious Studies, will be Vice President and then President over the next five years of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, a scholarly society for comparative work on Buddhism and Christianity with its own journal and members all over the world. Also, her major article on the celestial Bodhisattva as understood in Chinese Zen Buddhism between 500 and 1200 C.E., “Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter Dialogues: Creating a Place for Guanyin in Chinese Chan Buddhism,” was published in 2007 in the Journal of Chinese Religions.
Jeri McIntosh, Assistant Professor of History, has presented papers at a September 2007 conference on Mary and Elizabeth Tudor in the UK and at the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference in November 2007. The UK paper will be published by Palsgrave in an essay collection in 2010. Dr. McIntosh’s book, From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, 1516-1558, has been published and is available on open access at http://www.gutenberg-e.org/ . The book will be published also as a hardback by Columbia UP in February 2010 and is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.
Amy Neff, Associate Professor in the School of Art, has been invited to speak at several conferences: "Francis, Dominic, their orders and their tradition," at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, in April; session on the Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, at the International Congress for Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, in May; and a conference on Franciscan Art in Denver, sponsored by the Franciscan Institute. Her article, "An Aristocratic Copy of a Mendicant Text: James of Milan’s Stimulus amoris in 1293," for Franciscan Studies, 2007, is now in press. This academic year, 2007-2008, Dr. Neff is the recipient of the Lindsay Young and Dale Cleaver Professorship in Art History.
University of Tennessee Professor Jay Rubenstein has been selected as a 2007 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. The $500,000 fellowship comes to Rubenstein, an associate professor of history and a member of UT’s Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, with no requirement for how it is to be spent. Sometimes known as the “genius grants,” the MacArthur Fellowships are among the highest honors awarded to researchers. Rubenstein is spending the academic year in Paris doing research as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and he spent last year abroad in Rome as part of a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He has returned to Knoxville and begins teaching at UT this fall.
Gilya Schmidt, Professor of Religious Studies, Head of the Religious Studies Department and Chair of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies, participated in the 2007 "Sacred Beauty" exhibition at McClung Museum with a contribution to the Judaism section of the exhibition and catalog. She is also the recipient of a SARIF travel grant to China and was a visiting professor at Henan University in Kaifeng, China over the summer. During that time she also gave lectures and workshop on Judaism for the Pluralism Conference at Shanghai University in China and the Holocaust Conference at Yunnan University in Kunming, China. Dr. Schmidt was also a finalist for the YWCA Tribute to Women Award in the Phyllis Wheatley Memorial Humanitarian category, and was appointed to her fifth term as a Commissioner on Tennessee Holocaust Commission by Governor Bredesen.
Robert Stillman, Professor of English, had a book published by Ashgate Press in summer 2008 entitled Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism.
Joe Trahern, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English, recently completed a three-year term as a judge for the national Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for the best book in literary criticism and scholarship. As chair, he presented the award in December of 2007 in Washington to George Hutchinson of Indiana University for his biography of Nella Larson. George is a former member of the UT Department of English. Dr. Trahern continues as a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of English of Princeton University.
Anthony Welch, Assistant Professor of English, published two essays in the spring of 2008: “Epic Romance, Royalist Retreat, and the English Civil War,” Modern Philology 105.3 (2008), 570-602, and “Losing Paradise in Dryden’s State of Innocence,” in the book collection Uncircumscribed Mind: Reading Milton Deeply, edited by Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham (Susquehanna University Press, 2008), 222-42
Graduate Student News
Ted Booth, doctoral candidate in History and a student of Dr. Jeri McIntosh, is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and History at Milligan College. He has forthcoming book reviews in the Sixteenth Century Journal and the Stone Campbell Journal. He also received the Galen Broecker Fellowship and spent some time this summer in England and Scotland doing archival research for his dissertation, “The Political Humanism of Elizabeth I.”
Tricia George, doctoral candidate in English, presented a paper titled "Searching for the Voices of Anglo-Saxon Women" at the Medieval Congress in May. She also helped Dr. Thomas Heffernan (English) lead his undergraduate mini-term course "From the Cloisters to the College" in Cambridge, England, focusing on the origins of the university system in the monastic system.
Dina Hess successfully defended her dissertation, titled "'Of beggeris and of bidderis what best be to doone?': The Problem of Poverty in Piers Plowman," before the English Department on April 23rd and officially graduated August 15th.
Misty Krueger, doctoral candidate in English, recently passed her specialized comprehensive doctoral exam in Restoration and 18th-century tragedy, and was awarded an Emperor fellowship. In February 2008 she chaired a panel at the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Auburn, Alabama, entitled, "Anti-Theatricality's Legacy in the Long Eighteenth Century." In May 2008 she defended her dissertation prospectus on revenge in Restoration drama. She was also awarded the English department's graduate assistantship of Assistant Director of Composition for the 2008-2009 school year and served during the summer of 2008 as Acting Director of Composition.
Geoff Martin, master’s candidate in History, spent seven weeks this summer in Morocco studying Arabic.
Brad Pardue, doctoral candidate in History, presented a paper entitled "'Them that Furiously Burn all Truth': The Impact of Bible Burning on Tyndale's Identity" at a recent conference at Liverpool Hope University, July 3-6, 2008. The conference focused on the theme "Tyndale, More and their Circles: Persecution and Martyrdom under the Tudors." Brad was also selected to participate in a Mellon/Newberry funded roundtable at the University of Warwick on the theme of "Belief and Unbelief" in Early Modern Europe from July 6 through July 19, 2008.
Sean Williams, master’s candidate in History, will be presenting a paper this October at the Midwest Medieval History Conference entitled "Portrayals of Persecution in Nithard's Histories."