Faculty & Staff Notes Archives :: Winter/Spring 2007

May 2007
In a Silent Way, an installation by Johnny Coleman, Oberlin associate professor of art, is on view in Storage Space, a “Powerful exhibition” at Cleveland’s Spaces gallery now through August 3. Coleman’s work “triggers memories and connects viewers to a world outside the gallery” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In Storage Space, eight artists approach memory as a vehicle for recapturing the essence of a moment, real or imagined. Through the use of photo-based media, sculpture, video and mixed media installation, each artist develops a stage for recreating an experience filled with personal, yet often universal themes.

The Ohio Arts Council (OAC) chose Coleman’s Untitled Birdhouse: from A Promise of Blue in Green, for Celebration of Creativity: OAC Fellowships 1980-2005, a show honoring “artists who have not only earned at least one OAC grant during their career but have continued to develop their work and contribute to Ohio’s cultural landscape.” Fellowships are one of the ways the OAC supports artists. Now called Individual Excellence Awards, these grants are awarded to artists to help them develop their body of work. A panel of arts professionals review portfolios for these highly competitive fellowships, which are awarded once a year. The awards are based on the review of work previously created, not on a proposal for a project or future work. Celebration of Creativity: OAC Fellowships 1980-2005 is on view July 26-October 7 at OAC’s Riffe Gallery in Columbus.

Frances Hasso, associate professor of gender & women's studies and sociology, gave an invited presentation titled “Economies of Desire: Governance in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates” in May at Dartmouth College and Rice University; the lecture was based on a book-length research project. At Dartmouth on May 10, she delivered the Susanne Zantop Annual Memorial Lecture sponsored by the Comparative Literature Program and a number of other College departments and programs.  The address at Rice was given at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy on May 22 as part of the Inaugural Conference of the Kelly Day Endowment on the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East.

Associate Professor of History Pablo Mitchell was presented the 2007 Ray Allen Billington Prize for best book in American frontier history by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Mitchell’s book, Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880-1920, analyzes the link between bodily comportment and American citizenship in turn-of-the-twentieth-century-America. The OAH recognized Mitchell’s work for its depth of scholarship, theoretical rigor, careful reading of textual source, and narrative elegance. According to the prize committee, Coyote Nation is “a dazzling history of the body in the context of colonial conquest: New Mexico’s territorial incorporation into the United States.” “Mitchell moves beyond the black/white narrative of race relations in the U.S. to show how the mechanisms of differential inclusion were organized largely on the basis of bodily evaluations.”

February 2007
Associate Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand gave an invited talk on February 23 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, titled "Testing Virginity in two Greek Novels." Ormand is currently writing an article on the concept of virginity in the novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, to be published in a collected volume, The Impenetrability of Desire, edited by Susan Deacy and Mary Bachvarova.

Associate Dean Patricia deWinstanley and Director of Institutional Research Ross Peacock were invited to give a presentation on Oberlin’s assessment activities at the Higher Learning Commission Assessment Workshop in Lisle, Illinois, February 8-10. The title of the workshop was “Making a Difference in Student Learning: Assessment as a Core Strategy.” The HLC selected Oberlin as one of the schools to highlight during the conference because the College has implemented assessment measures which are “home-grown and consortially developed” direct measures of student learning. Conference organizers view Oberlin’s assessment strategies as “refreshing” and note that “too often there is a rush to use standardized tests.”

On February 1, 2007, Frances S. Hasso, associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Sociology, participated in a panel discussion at Columbia University and was invited to present her paper, "Empowering States and Neo-Liberal Transnational Governance Rather than Women: Comments on the Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World." The panel discussion, "Empowering Arab Women?: Assessing the Arab Human Development Report," was co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia. Other presenters were Azza Karam, senior Policy research advisor at the United Nations Development Program, Regional Bureau of Arab States and Fida Adely, visiting assistant professor of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. The panel was moderated by Lila Abu Lughod, professor of anthropology and director of the Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender.