UD faculty, staff report recent awards, presentations, publications

12:13 p.m., Sept. 28, 2012--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations and press include the following:

Campus Stories

From graduates, faculty

As it neared time for the processional to open the University of Delaware Commencement ceremonies, graduating students and faculty members shared their feelings about what the event means to them.

Doctoral hooding

It was a day of triumph, cheers and collective relief as more than 160 students from 21 nations participated in the University of Delaware's Doctoral Hooding Convocation held Friday morning on The Green.

• Doctoral hooding
• Old Swedes
• Summer SAT, ACT prep
• 'Opus 13' pre-sale

Awards

The Center for Disabilities Studies reports that second-year career and life studies certificate student Geoffrey Steggell is one of 11 students in the U.S. who was awarded a scholarship from the O'Neill Tabani Enrichment Fund of the National Down Syndrome Society. The award is given to students with Down syndrome to help cover the cost of postsecondary or enrichment courses, and Steggell received $1,000. In his application, Steggell wrote that during his first year in certificate program he learned that he really likes to do PowerPoint presentations. He said he plans to work hard in school so he can achieve his dream of living independently and getting a job. The mission of the National Down Syndrome Society is to be the national advocate for the value, acceptance and inclusion of people with Down syndrome.

Media

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, who earned master's and doctoral degrees in history from UD in 1990 and 1995, has written a new book, The Color Revolution, which is part of the Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series, published by the MIT Press. The book, which covers the relationship between color and commerce, in such industries as fashion and interior design, was reviewed in the "Art and Design" section of The New York Times on Sept. 23 and also in the Atlantic Monthly.

Devin Harner, who received a doctorate in English in 2006 and is now an assistant professor at John Jay College in New York, was featured Sept. 23 on National Public Radio’s On the Media program where he discussed coverage of the Innocence of Muslims film controversy. Earlier, Harner wrote about the controversy for PBS MediaShift.

Presentations

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Professor of History, presented “The Ottoman-Safavid War of 986-993/1578-1585,” at the ninth Biennial Conference of Iranian Studies, Istanbul, Turkey, Aug. 2-5; and “Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan,” at the Iranian-American Academics and Professionals meeting, Washington, D.C., Sept. 13.

Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, University of Delaware Library, participated in the "Robert Browning Bicentenary Celebration" held Sept. 20 at SUNY-Stony Brook. The other speakers were Edward Giuliano, president of New York Institute of Technology, and poet Rosanna Warren. Samuels Lasner brought along several Browning items from his collection, which were put on display for the event.

Samuels Lasner also will give a talk on "Collecting Robert Browning" Oct. 18 at the opening of the exhibition "Robert Browning, 1812-1889: A Bicentenary Exhibition from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection." The exhibition will be on view from Oct. 17 through Dec. 7 in the James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University. The show is being mounted for the annual conference of the Victorians Institute, a scholarly organization. Items to be shown include presentation copies, autograph letters, portraits and a book with local interest -- a copy of the first edition of Browning's "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country" (1884), inscribed to W. Gordon McCabe, a Richmond native and Confederate veteran who founded a famous boys' school and became a poet and man of letters. 

Publications

Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has published a review of Christine Pullen's The Woman Who Dared: A Biography of Amy Levy, a study of the Victorian poet and novelist who was also the first Jewish woman graduate of Cambridge University, in the journal Philological Quarterly (Vol. 90: No.4).

Service

John B. Bishop, professor of human development and family studies, recently chaired a site visitation team at Johns Hopkins University for the accreditation of the Counseling Center by the International Association of Counseling Services (IACS).

To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to ud-ocm@udel.edu.