For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and achievements of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications, honors and appointments include the following:

Presentations

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, presented “Shah Sultan Husayn and the Christians: New Julfan Armenians and European Missionaries in Late Safavid Iran,” at “Armeno-Iranica: A Shared History. A Conference in Honor of Nina Garsoïan,” held Jan. 27 at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, gave an invited lecture on Feb. 1 at the George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C. Her illustrated talk, "Picture This: Oscar Wilde's Mobile and Migratory 'The Happy Prince,'" considered the visual politics and the socio-political agendas behind a group of adaptations and representations in various media (including a 2018 British biopic written and directed by Rupert Everett) of one of Wilde's most famous fairy tales. The sponsoring organization for her lecture was an interdisciplinary 19th century research group for D.C.-area faculty members and graduate students, "Mobilities and Migrations," that is based at GWU.

Jennifer Shafer, assistant professor of music theory, presented her paper “Johannes Brahms and Chopin's Op. 55, No. 1: A Long-Term Development” at the international conference “The Intellectual Worlds of Johannes Brahms,” held Feb. 1-3 at the University of California, Irvine.

Publications

Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, recently had two new essays published. The first, "Richard Le Gallienne and a Tale of Two Dantes," is an account of how the British poet and aesthete drew on the influence not only of Dante Alighieri, but of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, especially in his use of the trope of the beloved dead woman as a muse. That essay has just appeared in the journal Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism 3 (Autumn 2018). A second essay, "Oscar Wilde and the Imaginative Woman: Anna, Comtesse de Brémont," has been published in the current issue of The Wildean: A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies 54 (January 2019). It presents new research on the late-19th-century Irish American woman writer who became, through marriage, the Comtesse de Brémont, and who (wrongly) claimed to be a close confidante of Oscar Wilde in her posthumous biographical study of him.

Honors

Zvi Schwartz, chairperson and professor of the Department of Hospitality Business Management, received the 2019 Founder’s Award at the 24th annual Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism. The event was held in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 5. The Founder's Award was created to recognize a world-class scholar in the field of hospitality and tourism for his/her significant contribution in research, scholarship and development of graduate programs/students.

Jaehee Jung, professor of fashion and apparel studies, has been selected to receive the Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal Best Paper Award in Apparel, Textiles and Merchandising for 2018. She and coauthor Ui-Jeen Yu of Illinois State University published “Effects of Self-Discrepancy and Self-Schema on Young Women’s Body Image and Self-Esteem after Media Image Exposure” in the research journal’s December issue. The Best Paper award is based on the importance and originality of the paper’s topic, the strength of its methodology and results, and the potential for a lasting contribution to family and consumer science. The award will be presented at the annual conference of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences in June.

Andreas Meyer, adjunct instructor in recording, has been nominated for a 2019 Grammy Award as mastering engineer in the category Best Historical Album for his recording of Rhapsody in Blue – The Extraordinary Life of Oscar Levant. He has now been nominated 10 times and won four Grammys. The Grammys will air on CBS on Feb. 10.

Mark Chopko, executive chef at the Courtyard Newak at the University of Delaware, was honored as Manager of the Year at the Delaware Hotel and Lodging Association Stars of the Industry Awards dinner on Feb. 1. The award is given an individual serving in a management capacity who is not the general manager of the hotel. The recipient “must show leadership in their department and have a strong commitment to customer service.”

The Delaware Division of the Arts (DDOA) has announced its 2019 Individual Artist Fellows Awards, and included are Kevin J. Cope, UD staff member, alumnus, guitarist and composer, who has won a DDOA Emerging Artist Fellowship for Music Performance, and UD composition alumnus Dalton Ringey (D.H. Regnier), who has won a DDOA Emerging Artist Fellowship for Music Composition.

In performance

Isai Jess Munoz, associate professor of voice, performed the role of The Witch in the December production of Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel for Florida’s Opera Orlando. Munoz also presented Sacred in Opera Initiative’s production of Royce Vavrek’s oratorio, Namah’s Ark, at the January 2019 National Opera Association Conference in Salt Lake City.

New assignments

David C. Martin, the Karl and Renate Böer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is now the associate dean for research and entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering. His appointment became effective Feb. 1. Martin joined UD in 2009 as chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He was instrumental in the development of important central research infrastructure at UD, including the Advanced Materials Characterization Lab and other facilities in the Patrick T. Harker Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory. Before joining UD, Martin was professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and macromolecular science and engineering at the University of Michigan. Martin is a prolific researcher whose work spans interdisciplinary boundaries, incorporating elements of materials science, biomedical engineering, chemistry, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering. “As associate dean for research and entrepreneurship, I plan to promote continued development in areas that span traditional college and department siloes of expertise,” he said. Experts from across the University can work together on problems that are fundamentally interesting and important to society.

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