NEWS
News from History & Society Division
Spring Semester 2009
Jeffrey Melnick
May 6, 7:00 p.m. Time: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 7:00 p.m.
Location: Porter Square Books
Title of Event: Jeffrey Melnick, 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction 9/11
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing is hosting author and Babson professor Jeff Melnick who will talk about his new book 9/11 Culture. Melnick's book addresses the complexities of American culture in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Melnick gives balanced examinations of a broad catalog of artifacts from film, music, photography, literary fiction, and other popular arts, investigates the ways that 9/11 has exerted a shaping force on a wide range of practices, from the politics of femininity to the poetics of redemption, and includes pedagogical material to assist understanding and teaching. 9/11 Culture is designed for general readers or students who are interested in how American cultural audiences have worked through the national trauma of 9/11.
Jeffrey Melnick is Associate Professor of American Studies at Babson College. He is author of two books on Black-Jewish relations: A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song and Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. Melnick is an active public speaker and has appeared many times on local and national radio and television.
WRITING AWARDS
2009 Conlon Awards On behalf of the entire staff of the Writing Center, it is our distinct pleasure to announce the winners of the 2009 Conlon Awards, given to the best analytical writing by a first-year student. These awards commemorate Michael Conlon, a former Writing Center consultant, and the winners are chosen by a committee of students. Take the opportunity to congratulate these winners in person at a reception in their honor, Tuesday, April 28th, 5-6:15 pm at the Glavin Chapel. Surround yourself with peaceful arthitecture, eat and drink on a Spring afternoon, and bask in the reflected glow of these winning writers:
1st Prize: Ray Sarno: "A new Age for Revolution"
2nd Prize: Ann Hao: "The Circle of Language and Culture"
3rd Prize: Izra Izrailov: ""The Psychological and Emotional Effects of modern American Advertising"
The Conlon Awards Committee: Victoria Gibson, Elizabeth Bugayong, Alicia Huang, James McGahey and all the other Writing Center Peer Consultants
and Kerry Rourke, Director of the Writing Center
2009 Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing
The Wooten Prize, founded by Babson alumnus Sim Wooten in memory of his father, rewards fine analytical writing from a Babson student at the sophomore, junior or senior level. It seeks out critical engagement on the part of the author that in turn stimulates intellectual curiosity on the part of the reader.
I’m pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing, but first, I need to say “thanks” a few times over. Thanks so much to this year's judges: Prof. Kandice Hauf (History and Society); Prof. Virginia Rademacher (Arts and Humanities); Prof. Richard Bliss (Finance); and Prof. Neal Harris (Economics). At this most busy point in the semester, they responded to the essays carefully and insightfully. To this year's entrants: Thank you for taking the time and effort to enter the contest. You demonstrated a commitment to critical inquiry, and I enjoyed reading each and every entry. To faculty: Thank you for your promotion of the Wooten Award.
Finally, I’d like to offer congratulations to this year's winners:
First Prize to Curt Ostosh for the essay “Application of Objective Morality.”
Second Prize to Elizabeth Bugayong for the essay “Propaganda’s Persuasions: Using Their Tactics Against Them.”
Third Prize to Pretty Varghese for the essay “Inconceivable God in a Conceivable Mind.”
Please join us at a reception celebrating this year’s winners tomorrow afternoon, on Tuesday, April 28, at 5:00 p.m., in the Glavin Chapel, where we will also honor the winners of the Conlon
Prize for First Year Writing. Steve Bauer
Lecturer in English
Coordinator of Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing Arts and Humanities
Fall Semester 2008
Lillian Wald: A Biography, by Marjorie Feld, History and Society, was published by University of North Carolina Press, Oct. 2008. The Press says of the book: “Marjorie Feld offers a critical biography of Wald in which she examines the crucial and complex significance of Wald's ethnicity to her life's work. In addition, by studying the Jewish community's response to Wald throughout her public career from 1893 to 1933, Feld demonstrates the changing landscape of identity politics in the first half of the twentieth century.” The book was supported by both Board of Research and BFRF grants.
Fall Semester 2008 Schedule of Events
HSF1300 Crisis in Community and Citizenship
History and Society Foundation Course
October 14, 2008
7:00 pm in the Glavin Family Chapel
Shep Gurwitz
Shep Gurwitz, a Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans for Peace, is coming to speak to HSF1300 students. He will be available to answer questions and share some of his experiences. Then event is linked to readings in HSF1300.
October 21, 2008
7:00 pm in Sorenson Center
Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt is a poet, human rights activist, and columnist for The Nation. Ms. Pollitt will speak about her newest book of essays, Learning to Drive: and Other Life Stories (Random House, 2007) to all students in this Fall’s History and Society Foundation Course. Ms. Pollitt’s blog can be found at http://kathapollitt.blogspot.com/. Ms. Pollitt’s visit is jointing sponsored by the History and Society Division, the Center for Women’s Leadership and the Sorenson Center for the Arts.
Spring Semester 2008
2008 Conlon Awards
On behalf of the entire staff of the Writing Center, it is our distinct pleasure to announce the winners of the 2008 Conlon Awards, given to the best analytical writing by a first-year student. These awards commemorate Michael Conlon, a former Writing Center Consultant, and the winners are chosen by a committee of students.
Take the opportunity to congratualte these winner, and the winners of the Wooten Prize, in person at a reception in their honor, Wednesday, April 30th, 5:30-6:15 p.m. at the Glavin Chapel. Surround yourself with peaceful architecture, eat and drink on a Spring afternoon, and bask in the reflected glow of these winning writers:
1st Prize: Marissa Mignone: "The Em Analysis"
2nd Prize: Rigel Barros de la Parra: "Socrates: The Martyrdom..."
3rd Prize: John Chartier: "Flickering in the Window"
The Conlon Awards Committee: Charis Teddy, Sarah English, Victoria Gibson, Lyndon Mouton, and All the other Writing Center Peer Consultants
and Kerry Rourke, Director of the Writing Center
2008 Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing
It is my pleasure to announce the winners of this year's Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing.
This year's judges: Prof. Kevin Bruyneel (History and Society); Prof. Elizabeth Goldberg (Arts and Humanities); Prof. Michael Goldstein (Finance); and Prof. Joanne Williams (Accounting and Law). They were rigorous in their reading and insightful in their responses. I am most grateful for their engagement and expertise.
To this year's entrants: you are thanked and commended for filling that entry box in Hollister with your work. Each year the volume of entries increases. Your enthusiasm indicates an abiding interest in the importance of close reading, creative thought, committed writing, and the pursuit of intellectual curiosity at Babson College. Well done.
And so to this year's winners…
First Prize to Rigel Barros for the essay “Dirty Advertising.”
Second Prize to Kathleen Murphy for the essay “Gender Relations in Harry Potter.”
Third Prize to Iryna Neskoromna for the essay “The Garb of Modernity in the Context of Tradition.”
Congratulations to all! Please join us at a reception in their honor on Wednesday, April 30th, 5:30-6:15 p.m., Glavin Chapel, where we will also celebrate winners of the Conlon Prize for First Year Writing.
Mary O’Donoghue
Assistant Professor of English, Co-ordinator of Wooten Prize for Excellence in Writing
Arts and Humanities
Case-Writing Competition Winner
Mary Godwyn, Assistant Professor of Sociology, won the 2008 Dark Side Case-Writing Competition with her case "Hugh Connerty and Hooters." This competition is sponsored by the Critical Management Studies Interest Group and the Management Education Division of the Academy of Management. In their decision to present the best case award to Professor Godwyn the reviewers wrote: "The case presents a compelling issue, is richly detailed, and will engage students with its lively writing. The instructor's manual was theoretically grounded and well written." Professor Godwyn will present her case at a special session at the Academy of Management 2008 annual meeting in Anaheim, California on August 10th. Mary received a Harold Geneen Foundation Grant from Babson College to write this case. For more information about this award please see Babson's recent press release: 2008 winner of case competion.
Professor Jim Hoopes' new book on moral leadership, Hail to the CEO - The Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership, was published recently. Please see more detailed information at http://www3.babson.edu/Newsroom/Releases/Hail-to-the-CEO.cfm .
"Notes from the Field" Professor Lisa DiCarlo, Fulbright Fellow in Turkey "It would have been difficult to foresee the political events that have colored my experience here in Turkey as I examine the decision-making process and social consequences for people who convert from Islam to Christianity. Shortly after the Pope's culturally insensitive remarks during his Regensburg address caused people here to question the appropriateness of his upcoming visit to Turkey, a Turkish convert to Christianity hijacked a Turkish Airlines flight in an attempt to gain sympathy from the Vatican regarding his religious persecution. Finally, we learned yesterday that France had passed a law making it a crime to deny the Armenian Genocide, and issues relating to France always seem to provoke descriptions of the EU as a Christian club. (This news was somewhat muted by Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize, of course!) Events such as these continue to make it an interesting time to be examining this particular issue of Christians in Turkey." Last spring, DiCarlo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the History and Society Division, was selected to be a Fulbright scholar grantee to Turkey. As a Fulbrighter, she joins the ranks of some 273,000 alumni of the world-wide program. While in Turkey, DiCarlo's research topic is "Losing Our Religion: Turkey's New Christians." Through archival research and interviews, she focuses on the decision-making process and the transformations of social networks on Muslims who convert to Christianity in contemporary Turkey.
Professor Kevin Bruyneel received a Gill Faculty Fellowship for 2005 to complete his manuscript, Indigenous People’s Politics in the Third Space: Resisting the Boundaries of American Rule, an analysis of the postcolonial political condition and political claims of indigenous people in the United States from the Civil War era to the contemporary age. An essay from the book, “Challenging American Boundaries: Indigenous People and the ‘Gift of U.S. Citizenship,” was recently published in the journal Studies in American Political Development Volume 18, #1, Spring 2004.
Professor Mary Godwyn received a grant from the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) sub-ward funding by the Coleman Foundation for research focused on centers of excellence in minority and women's entrepreneurship.
Professor Jeffrey Melnick has published a co-written book, Immigrants and American Popular Culture, as part of a new series for NYU Press. His work in this book includes an investigation of Jamaican immigrants and the founding of hip hop music, as well as a study of West Side Story and the mid-20th century emergence of Puerto Ricans as major players in the American urban scene. He has also prepared a paper "Project Culture: The Popular Arts of Public Housing" that has been published in an online book from Harvard called "Reconceptualizing the History of the Built Environment." Building on this work, Prof. Melnick presented at the Urban History Association conference this fall, in Tempe, Arizona. Prof. Melnick participated as a presenter at the first ever academic conference on the life and work of Bruce Springsteen held in September, 2005.
Publications: Books Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty - The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations, University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Marjorie Feld, Lillian Wald: A Biography, The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
James Hoopes, Hail to the CEO - The Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership, Praeger, 2008.
James Hoopes, False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management and Why Their Ideas are Bad for Business Today, Perseus Publishing, 2003
Jeffrey Melnick, 9/11 Culture, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
Jeffrey Melnick (and Rachel Rubin), Immigration and American Popular Culture - An Introduction, New York University Press, 2007.
Blake D. Pattridge, Institution Building and State Formation in Nineteenth Century Latin America, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004.
