Faculty and Staff Notes

Stiliana Milkova, associate professor of comparative literature, published an article in the scholarly journal "Gender / Sexuality / Italy." Titled "Side By Side: Female Collaboration in Ferrante Fiction and Ferrante Studies," the article proposes that a double creation of female genealogies is at work within Ferrante’s novels and in the critical field that studies them.

Yveline Alexis, associate professor of Africana studies and comparative American studies, was a guest speaker for Bloomfield College's Holley/Humanities Series on "Looking Back and Looking Forward: Discussions about Race, Gender, Voice and Power." She delivered a lecture about resistance in the Americas during the United States invasion of Haiti.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring uprisings, which swept the Middle East in 2011. Professor of History Zeinab Abul-Magd participated in the events in Egypt as a political activist and researched its outcomes as an academic. She has just published an article titled "Diaries of a Surveilled Citizen after a Failed Revolution in Egypt," reflecting on her experience with what she describes as a failed a revolution at the latest issue of the International Journal of Middle East Studies . The cover image of the same issue is a photo of her own, portraying the children of Cairo's slums after a new military regime moved them to desert areas in the outskirts of the discontented city.

In the same issue of the journal, Abul-Magd also published another article, "When Upper Egypt Spoke: Dramatized Rebellion," about subaltern revolts in south Egypt. 

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published an article titled "Sex and the City" in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils and Dylan Rogers (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Ormand's article gives an overview of the legal, literary, archaeological, and art-historical evidence for marital and extramarital sexual activity in the city of fifth-century BCE Athens. He analyzes the regulations and social expectations governing marriage, sex-work, and the relation of sexual activity to civic membership.

Associate Professor of Piano Pedagogy Andrea McAlister has been selected as a Yamaha Master Educator. She is one of only five keyboard educators chosen from across the country.

Assistant Professor of History Danielle Terrazas Williams gave a public lecture at the University of Oregon titled "Who Dared to Question the Word of a Priest?: Free Black Women and Capital in 17th-Century Mexico."

This March, music education professor Jody Kerchner will participate in two panel presentations on the Choral Commons month-long series titled "Gather—Community Music Conversations." The Choral Commons is sponsored in part by the American Choral Directors Association and Chorus America. 

The first discussion, on Wednesday, March 10 at 8:00 p.m., features Kerchner's work with the Oberlin Music at Grafton Choir (OMAG). She will be joined by restored citizen and OMAG "founding father" Jerome Thompson. 

On Wednesday, March 17 at 8:00 p.m., Kerchner joins prison singing facilitators Cathy Roma, Mary Cohen, Amanda Weber, and Andre DeQuadros to further discuss prison music engagement.

The sessions are moderated and produced for Facebook by Emilie Amrein and Andre DeQuadros. These webinars are held live and recorded for later viewing on the Choral Commons website. 

The fifth book by Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies Carl McDaniel, Beauty Won Me Over: A Scientist's Life, was published in February 2021 by Austin Macauley. The book is a memoir about his life as a scientist. 

Assistant Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder was interviewed and quoted in an article in WIRED, commenting on astrophysical research: "Twinkling Black Holes Reveal an Invisible Cloud in Our Galaxy."
 

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Stiliana Milkova edited a special issue for Reading in Translation on the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg that features 15 essays, interviews, and two first English translations of works by Italo Calvino and by Natalia Ginzburg. Milkova co-translated Italo Calvino's essay "Natalia Ginzburg or the Possibilities of the Bourgeois Novel."