For the Record, Feb. 15, 2013
University faculty report recent books, presentations, publications
9:53 a.m., Feb. 15, 2013--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Recent books, media, presentations, publications and recognition include the following:
Campus Stories
From graduates, faculty
Doctoral hooding
Books
Hershel Parker, professor emeritus of English and Herman Melville scholar, has published a new book, Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern University Press). The book tells the story of Parker’s work on the two-volume Herman Melville: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press) published in 1996 and 2002, which won both awards – Parker was a Pulitzer Prize finalist -- and criticism. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses Parker’s work.
Gary May, professor of history, has a new book, Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy, which will be published by Basic Books on April 9. Publisher’s Weekly said that “May’s lively and cogent history of the Voting Rights Act is indispensable reading for anyone concerned about the erosion of voting rights that has accompanied the election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, especially as the issue is still up for debate in 2013, in a case to be heard by the Supreme Court.” Kirkus Reviews has called it “a meticulous, impassioned narrative.”
The book Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) by David Suisman, associate professor of history, and Susan Strasser, Richards Professor of American History, has recently been issued in paperback.
Media
Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor History, was interviewed by the Voice of America, television, Persian section, on his latest book, Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan (2012). The interview, in Persian, is scheduled to be broadcast on Feb. 15 and will be widely viewed in Iran, Matthee said, where the Voice of America is very popular.
Presentations
Farley Grubb, professor of economics, presented a seminar on "The Fiscal Foundations of Money in the Constitutional Era" as a guest speaker in the Harvard Law School course "The Constitutional Law of Money," Feb. 6, Cambridge, Mass.
Theodore E.D. Braun, professor emeritus of French and comparative literature, organized and chaired three panels on “Religion in the Age of Enlightenment,” East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Baltimore, Nov. 1-3, 2012.
Publications
Theodore E.D. Braun, professor emeritus of French and comparative literature, edited and introduced a special feature on the Catholic Enlightenment in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 19 (2012), pp. 249-326.
Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has published a review of Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing by Richard Dellamora. Her review of this recent bio-critical study of the author of The Well of Loneliness (1928) appears in the current issue of Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (Vol. 30, No. 2).
Recognition
Michele McCann, a UD alumna and host of the Wednesday morning Java Time program on campus radio station WVUD 91.3FM, has been named an emerging artist for folk art/music by the Delaware Division of the Arts.
The University of Delaware Library is featured in a full-page article in the international publication OCLC Annual Report 2011/2012. The article is on page 19 of the report, and the article has the headline “Create Systemwide Efficiencies in Library Management: OCLC WorldShare Management Services at the University of Delaware Library.” Quoted extensively in the story is Gregg A. Silvis, associate University librarian for information technology and digital initiatives.
To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to ud-ocm@udel.edu.