Faculty News Briefs

Mary Anne O’Neil, professor of foreign languages and literatures – French, is releasing a new book titled, “From Babel to Pentecost: The Poetry of Pierre Emmanuel.” Scheduled for publication in October, this will be the only book-length study in English of France’s most prolific poet of the mid-twentieth century. “I wanted to write a book that was comprehensible to a wide audience and that would get people excited to read Emmanuel’s poetry,” O’Neil says. She began working seriously on this project in the spring of 1995, and used every sabbatical to work on the book, which includes original translations of all of Emmanuel’s poetry and prose that is quoted.She decided to translate Emmanuel’s poetry to make the book and the poetry itself accessible to an English-speaking audience. “Since I know my poet well, the real challenge in translating his work was to convey what he really meant to my readers,” she says. Celia Weller, emerita professor of Spanish, assisted in the process by reading over the translations: “Although Celia doesn’t read French, she could tell me when my translation didn’t make much sense in English.” Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in Montreal, the book will be available for purchase Oct. 1.

Machelle Hartman, visiting instructor of chemistry, and her husband, Jerry, who is an assistant professor of media at Walla Walla University, are screening their most recent documentary about human rights and environmental justice in Suriname, South America. Inside Suriname is the couple’s third film, and was produced with a community directed approach that put community members in control of cameras and content. The Hartmans traveled to Suriname in 2007 to work with indigenous and Maroon communities, who wanted to share their story with the outside world after enduring mercury poisoning, land loss and heavily polluted water as a result of foreign-owned mining companies. This film is a production of Eclectic Reel in partnership with Suriname Indigenous Health Fund. The screening takes place Thursday, May 3, at 7 p.m. at WWU’s Donnie Rigby Stage.

Aaron Bobrow-Strain, associate professor of politics, continues to make news with his latest book, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books invited him to be a member of a food writers’ panel that explored issues of authenticity in food. Read more HERE.

Helen Knowles, visiting assistant professor of politics, was recently quoted in a front page article inThe New York Times about health care reform. Headlined “In Health Case, Appeals to a Justice’s Idea of Liberty,” the article analyzes the likelihood that Justice Anthony Kennedy will vote to uphold the constitutionality of the health care reform law currently before the Supreme Court. Knowles told the Times she doesn’t think Kennedy yet knows how he is going to vote, adding, “When you think about liberty relative to Kennedy, the element most important to him will be the idea of individual responsibility. He thinks the government has the power to ensure that the responsible exercise of liberty be done in an educated manner.” Knowles also wrote an op-ed piece that recently appeared in The Seattle Times, in which she relates the health care debate to her research into the 1937 Supreme Court ruling in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. And last week, she delivered a presentation at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center entitled “Elsie Parrish Goes to Court: How a Wenatchee Chambermaid Became the ‘Minimum Pay Law Joan D’Arc.’”

Elyse Semerdjian, associate professor of history, announces the publication of her new article, titled ‘“Because He is So Tender and Pretty’: Sexual Deviance and Heresy in Eighteenth-Century Aleppo,” which appeared in the March 2012 volume of Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture (Routledge). The article offers a close analysis of a shari‘a court case that constitutes the only successful conviction for same-sex intimacy identified in her survey of Aleppo’s shari‘a court archives. The publication examines the arrest of a young pre-pubescent boy named Muhammad who was convicted and subsequently expelled from his neighborhood for his continual association with male lovers.  The article was generated from a key note address that Semerdjian delivered at “Islam and Sexualities,” a symposium held at the University of Chicago in May 2009. The articles in the volume examine diverse subjects ranging from sexual discourse in pre-modern Islamic texts to contemporary sex practices in the countries of Turkey, Iran and Malaysia. Semerdjian’s contribution was one of many cases uncovered while researching sex crime in the shari‘acourts of Ottoman Aleppo. Her findings were published in a book titled “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Community and Law in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse University Press, 2008).

Matthew Fox, adjunct assistant professor of general studies, reports the publication of his new book, a verse translation of Lucan’s Civil War, a Latin epic poem dating to the 1st century CE. It portrays the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great which ended the Roman Republic. Fox’s book was released in February as part of the Penguin Classics series, and replaces the prose rendition by Robert Graves that Penguin published in the 1950s. In a review of the publication, The New Republicwrote that “Fox’s approach renders Lucan’s pithy aphorisms and paradoxes especially well” and that his translation style gives modern readers “a sense of the forward momentum that is such a powerful feature of the original.” Civil War is available for purchase online now and will be available soon in the Whitman Bookstore.

Helen Knowles, visiting assistant professor of politics, recently participated in two panels at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Portland. In addition to presenting her paper entitled “‘Omak’s Minimum Pay Law Joan D’Arc’: Local Newspaper Coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court Decision in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937),” she also was invited to participate in the roundtable discussion “New Directions in Teaching Constitutional Law.” The discussion centered on a new textbook, American Constitutionalism, which takes a revolutionary approach to teaching American constitutional law. Knowles has been “test-driving” versions of the text in the classroom for the authors since 2007. ALSO – Knowles was recently interviewed for and quoted in an article in The Tampa Bay Timesabout the challenge to the Affordable Care Act currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, associate professor of Spanish, recently returned from the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) in Chicago, where she presented her research on Chicana lesbian documentary filmmaker Lourdes Portillo on a special panel about spirituality and cultural production. She also chaired two panels in which three of her current students and three of her former students presented original research on Chicana/o film, literature and media arts; these students included Ana Aguilar’12, Aaron Aguilar ’12, Tia Butler ’13, Griselda Guevara-Cruz ’11, Jazmín López ’10 and Diana Madriz ’11. Both student panels were well received and audience members praised the students’ research and preparation. Guevara-Cruz was further recognized at the conference as the undergraduate student winner of the 2012 Frederick A. Cervantes Student Premio, an award for the best student paper on Chicana/o Studies. Guevara-Cruz submitted her Spanish honors thesis on the portrayal of Mexican immigrant men in the songs of Los Tigres del Norte. The association will publish her research in its selected and edited proceedings for 2012.

Michelle Janning, assistant dean of faculty and associate professor of sociology, was among several experts quoted in the April edition of the lifestyle magazine Real Simple, in the article titled “What women can’t let go.” The article looks at media representations of women in the home and the trend of women maintaining control over household chores even when their spouses have similarly high standards. In a study of TV commercials aired during primetime, 50 percent of male characters were found to be “comically inept” at household chores, whereas 90 percent of women were portrayed as competent. Janning characterized the representation of women as inherently better housekeepers than their male counterparts on networks like DIY and HGTV as a “double-edged sword,” cautioning: “women may feel excited by decorating and cleaning, but it still siphons their time and energy away from other activities.” Her comments stemmed from her research on gender and home decorating television. Read the full article here.

Chetna Chopra, adjunct instructor of general studies (left), and Kari Tupper, adjunct assistant professor, are among Whitman faculty and staff helping to organize the second annual Walla Walla Valley Violence Prevention Conference, which takes place March 26 and 27. The conference kicks off with a keynote speech in Maxey Auditorium by Dr. Vincent Felitti, a physician noted for his research into the links between childhood trauma and problems in adult life. The Monday evening talk will be followed by a day of workshops and panels on violence prevention in the community on Tuesday. All campus and community members are invited to attend all or parts of the conference, which is entitled “Stop Violence Now – For Yourself, Your Family, Our Community.” Workshops and interactive lectures will address such topics as teen drug use, gang violence, school and internet bullying and holistic approaches to children’s health. For more information or to register, visit the event’s website.