Faculty Activities

2004/2005

Professor Aneja Conference: Seminar organizer for two panels on the theme of "Imperialism and Creativity" at the American Comparative Literature Conference held in March, 2005, at Penn State University, Pennsylvania. Publications: "Translating HC/ Writing the Self:  L'Indiade and the replication of an elusive dream) in Joyful Babel. Eds. Myriam Diocaretz and Marta Segarra, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. Awards: "Rebecca Brown Professor of Language and Literature Award," granted for distinguished service in teaching and research in literature, Ohio Wesleyan University, May 2004.

Professor Biehl's sabbatical this semester has him fully engaged in two very different activities.  The first is a continuation of a dream project—devising an English curriculum for grades 9-12 that will have some national following and perhaps promote long needed curriculum reform at the high school level across the country.   Currently the project is in its first stage,  namely designing  vertically co-ordinated curriculum manuals for 9-12 Honors and Advanced Placement English.  August 2005 should see the first two manuals ready for marketing to secondary school professionals.   One manual concentrates on modeling reading comprehension tests for English prose and poetry.  The other manual is essentially a teaching guide for a 12th grade Honors/AP English literature course;  it has 5 sections, one each for the epic, short story, novel, poetry, and drama.  Each section is organized in such a way that teachers can adapt it to their own preferences for texts;  each section has discussion questions and suggested answers,  vocabulary exercises for the texts selected,  and extensive instruction on writing about literature, together with suggested writing topics and evaluation criteria.    The second activity has little to do with academia—except that it involves considerable learning and a return to the classroom as student.   As many of Dr. Biehl’s students know,  he has begun the “pre-retirement from teaching” phase of his career at Ohio Wesleyan.  (In the 2005-2006 academic year, for example,  he will teach only two courses fall semester.)   Rather than label this phase of his life as retirement from teaching, Dr. Biehl is changing careers.  In the past several months he has returned to the classroom to supplement the knowledge he acquired many years ago as an apprentice/journeyman carpenter building residential housing.   This classroom work has enabled him to earn his national certification as a residential housing inspector, licensed wood-destroying pest inspector, and certified mold inspector.   With these credentials in hand,  he will begin easing into a new career as one of central Ohio’s professional housing inspectors.   Once his retirement from Ohio Wesleyan is complete,  this new career will be a welcome complement to the solitary activity of fashioning the English curriculum described above.

Professor Cook, amidst various research projects, is busy reviewing his past study of the art of packing.  He is departing, with some regret, from the confines of Sturges Hall and the department he has called home for these five years and migrating to the wave-swept shores of the Pacific Ocean where he will unpack his books in a new office in the Department of Classics and Humanities (!) at San Diego State University.  Included in all those boxes of books he takes with him many fond memories of his students and colleagues.  For those of you who attended his talk on Philip II of Macedon, back in October ('04), his publication of that research is scheduled to appear in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies later this year.

Professor Elias' recent interests center on Indian cinema, notably how Bollywood film responds to and helps shape changing ideas of national identity in India itself and especially for the expanding international audience of diaspora Indians.

Professor Fratantuono's most recent article, "Diana in the Aeneid", will appear in the May 2005 issue of "The New England Classical Journal".  An older article, "Virgil's Camilla, Ovid's Atalanta", will appear in "Latomus" later this year.  Though most occupied with finishing two book projects  (one on Virgil and the other on the Medieval sermon writer Peter Lombard), he is also drafting two additional articles, one on Camilla's Vorleben  (Penthesilea) and one on her Nachleben  (the Carthaginian warrior woman Asbyte), before he says farewell to lupine virgin soldiers and turns to the equally rich pastures of Aristophanes.

Professor Lateiner Finishing a commentary (with introduction and bibliography) on a translation of Thucydides for Barnes and Noble. Reading proof on an article to be published by Cambridge University Press: "Pity in Herodotus and Thucydides". Expecting proof for an article on "The Sneeze in Homer and later ancient Literature" for University of Wales Press. Writing an article on Thucydides' presentation of that tragic yet foolish Athenian leader, Nicias. Pondering completion of his article on "Doubling in the Metamorphoses," especially in the "Ceyx and Alcyone" Idyllic Farce. Writing book reviews on one very heavy coffee-table book and one vast  commentary on Apuleius' "Cupid and Psyche" inset tale. Thinking of changing texts in Latin 225.

Professor Karina Ross's most recent paper was written for the December 2005 Slavic Conference in Philadelphia. It explored expressive abilities of iconic syntax in a Russian short story. The investigation of such patterns as various forms of repetitions as well as incomplete sentences revealed that an idiosyncratic syntactic arrangement has the ability to produce the effect of disturbance and anxiety, which is the atmosphere that the investigated text attempted to convey to the reader and the emotions it sought to evoke in response.

Professor John Stone-Mediatore is presenting a paper, “The Psychology of Fascism in Contemporary American Literature and Culture,” this August at the New Directions in Humanities Conference at the University of Cambridge, England. He is preparing an expanded version of the essay for submission to the International Journal of the Humanities. He looks forward to spending time in Paris while abroad this summer and to continuing work on his doctoral dissertation, Oedipus Wrecked: Postmodernism and Schizophrenia.

 
 
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