Humanities & Arts Divisional Notes

Vol. 8, No. 2 / April 2010

Araceli Tinajero (FLL)published El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader (U of TX P 2010).  

Zachary Bush (ENGL)published his second collection of poetry,At Swan Decapitation(Vox 2010). 

In September 2009 Elizabeth Starčević (FLL) gave a talk at the San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, PEN chapter.  She also had the opening of a show of her weavings in the Bellas Artes school in San Miguel de Allende.

Ruth Spencer (MUS)was awarded a Professional Studies Grant this past July to go to Germany and do research on Felix Mendelssohn. This resulted in a concert/lecture at CCNY in late October, with Ruth performing and lecturing, along with performances by Alison Deane, Janet Steele, Ira Spaulding and the City College Chorus. Professors Deane, Steele and Spencer gave subsequent performances at the Great Neck Public Library and the 92nd St Y.

CarlosRiobó(FLL)signed a book contract in November 2009 with Bucknell University Press for his manuscript, Sub-versions of the Archive: Manuel Puig’s and Severo Sarduy’s Alternative Identities. In June 2009he presented a talk at the Latin American Studies Association’s (LASA) conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He collaborated with Professor Julie Skurski of the Graduate Center to host the president of the Cuban National Library, Doctor Eduardo Torres Cuevas, during his visit to New York and his talks at CUNY in November 2009.

Jonathan Pieslak (MUS)published an article “Music as an Inspiration for Combat among American Soldiers in Iraq” in the newly published Ashgate Companion to Modern Warfare(Ashgate 2010).

Shaugn O'Donnell (MUS)'sessay “American Chaos: Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead” was published in The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation, edited by Jim Tuedio and Stan Spector (McFarland, 2010).

Elizabeth Mazzola(ENGL) led a workshop at the “Attending to Early Modern Women” Conference at the University of Maryland last November, and presented a paper at the December meeting of the MLA in Philadelphia. Her essay “’My Euell Hande’: The Shapes of Women’s Letters in Early Modern England” was published in Literature Compass  7, 3 (2010): 177-84.

An excerpt of Lyn Di Iorio (ENGL)'s novel manuscript Outside the Bones won an honorable mention in The 2009 New Milennium Writings contest. Her article “On Being Latino in America and in American Literature,” was translated into Swedish and published in Ord & Bild: Latinamerika (Word & Image Journal, Sweden: Latin America issue, Nov. 23, 2009).

Andrzej Krakowski (MCA)’sTV series We Are New York, which was produced for The Mayor's Office and CUNY, received 4 Emmy nominations. His latest feature film, Looking for Palladin, has been an official selection at 26 major festivals around the world and won 4 of them. It has been theatrically released in the US and is currently playing around the country and abroad. He was the writer/director, Jerry Carlson acted and co-produced, Babak Rassi was the editor. As in the series, several of CCNY students interned and worked on the project.

Judith Stein (HIST)’s“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” has been reprinted in Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought, Kenneth W. Warren and Adolph Reed Jr. eds. (Paradigm, 2009); “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long Seventies,” was published in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long Seventies. Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds. (Verso, 2010); “Civil Rights and Political Space, review of Sweet Land of Liberty:  The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North,” was published in Dissent (Spring, 2009), 124-28 and “’Green’ Jobs Go To China, too,” an op-ed, was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb 4, 2010.

Emily Greble Balic(HIST)has won fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Center for spring 2010 (declined) and a year-long residential fellowship at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, which she has elected to take only for the summer of 2010 to pursue research on the Nazi occupation of Sarajevo.

Barbara Naddeo (HIST)was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for research in Italian Renaissance History. She will spend the 2010-2011 academic year in Rome, pursuing her research on the relationship between urbanization and the social sciences.

Adrienne Petty (HIST)has won a six-month fellowship from the Schomburg Center for Research in New York to complete her book project on tobacco farmers in North Carolina.

In November 2009, Lynn Troyka (ENGL), two  current Language & Literacy students, and seven alumni all presented at the 2009 TYCA (Two-Year College English Association) Northeast Conference, “Working Together: Collaborations within and Beyond the Classroom.” The two current students who participated are James Johns and Wynne Ferdinand.  Alumni participants include Michele DeCaro, Toni D'Onofrio, David Goldberg, Reabeka King, Lester Lambert, Kathryn McGrath, and Justin March.

Danian Hu (HIST)presented papers atthe Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Philadelphia, PA, March 25-28, 2010,the conference on “Routes of Science and Culture in China, 1860s-1930s” at Yale University, the History of Science Society annual meeting, Phoenix, AZ, November 2009, and the 2009 Hixon Forum on “Science and Technology in the Making of Modern China” at Harvey Mudd College.

Jerry Carlson (MCA), Senior Producer for CUNY TV, has been nominated for 5 Emmy Awards: four for Nueva York and one for Canape. Episodes of the series may be watched onwww.cuny.tv

Laura Callahan (FLL)published an article entitled “U.S. Latinos’ use of written Spanish: Realities and aspirations” in the Heritage Language Journal, 7-1: 1-27 (2010), http://www.heritagelanguages.org . She delivered a lecture at one of her alma maters, San José State University, in February 2010. Her poem “Aerial View” was accepted for publication in Promethean, 37-1, Spring 2010.

Silvia Burunat (FLL)published Fantasías reales en tiempo presente (y en cinco continentes) (Betania 2010).  She also edited and the wrote the prologue and conclusion to 17 memorias y un prólogo (Betania 2010), a collection of essays by students in her Fall 2009 Literature ofMemoirs course.

Silvia Burunatand Ángel Estévez, and Aleksín Ortega (FLL) just published the second edition of El español y su sintaxis (Peter Lang 2010).

Carlos Aguasaco, Spanish Lecturer at CWE and MA in Spanish alumnus (2004), won the 2010 Cartagena Film Festival Award for Best Video.

Barbara Gleason (ENGL)presented a paper at the College Composition and Communication Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, in March 2010, where she also chaired the Special Interest Group on Teaching Adult Writers in Diverse Contexts.

Congratulations to Division Students Accepted to Doctoral Programs

In English, Laura Clarke has been accepted to the Ph.D. Program in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Connor Pitetti has been accepted to Stony Brook University’s Ph.D. program in English literature with a five-year fellowship. Michael Toogood has been accepted to the Ph.D. program in English at Tufts University with a five-year fellowship. 

In Foreign Languages, M.A. alumna (2009), current adjunct instructor and 2010 Dominican Studies Fellow Kianny Antigua-Padillahas been accepted to the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center, CUNY.Carolina Chaveshas been accepted to the program in Hispanic Linguistics within the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Daniel Riggs has been accepted to the program in Hispanic Linguistics at Georgetown University.

The History Department had a bumper year:  Jesse Meredith has been accepted to the doctoral program at the University of California, Davis, with full funding; Jared Rodriguez has been accepted by Northwestern University with a fellowship to pursue doctoral studies in Latin American History; Yarisbel Rodriguez has been accepted to the CUNY Graduate Center with a Chancellor's Fellowship, where she intends to pursue a doctorate in U.S. History; Guillaume Wadia (B.A. 2007) has been accepted with five-year fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and will attend Harvard in the fall; Easter Wood  has accepted a five-year fellowship at Harvard University, where she will pursue a doctorate in African and African American Studies. 

More Student and Alumni News

Zohar Avgar (MCA BFA 2009)had a show in a Chelsea gallery which featured the work he did in one of photography courses and his BFA thesis project:http://www.zoharavgar.com/xray/

Slate, a short film by Carmen Vidal (MCA MFA 2006) was selected to be part of the New Directors/New Films 2010 series, screened at the

MoMA and Walter Reade Theater (Lincoln Center):http://www.newdirectors.org/2010/tickets/

Eric Raschke (ENGL MFA. 2002)published the novel The Book of Samuel: A Novel (St. Martin's Griffin 2009)

Just March (ENGL L&L, 2009)has recently been hired as full-time Lecturer in the Developmental Skills Department of Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Wynn Ferdinand (ENGL L&L) has recently been hired as a Higher Education Assistant (Instructor) in the La Guardia Community College Adult & Continuing Education Division.