Professor of Religion Emeritus ARTHUR BELLINZONI'S "Ancient Apostates," a review of Stephen G. Wilson's Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity, appeared in the December 2005 volume of The Expository Times, published in London. At its meeting in December, the Board of Directors of People For the American Way elected Arthur Bellinzoni to a third three-year term on the Board.
BRUCE BENNETT had poems published in Tar River Poetry, Hummingbird, and on the on-line journal Enskyment. A review of his book of poems, Grief and Love, appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Tar River Poetry.
Cambridge University Press has chosen to include CATHERINE BURROUGHS' book--Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840 (2000)--in its program of paperback reprints within the Humanities and Social Sciences.
CANDACE COLLMER was an invited participant in a Gene Ontology (GO) Content meeting held at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, on November 15-16, 2005. Major topics included expansion of the terms previously developed by the PAMGO (Plant Associated-Microbe Gene Ontology) group, of which she is a member, to meet broadened demand as a result of new, federally funded initiatives for annotating genomes of important animal pathogens. Another major topic was the integration of terms for defense responses in plants into the broader area of immune response, which also includes the animal immune system. The PAMGO group recently received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue work on the annotation of genes in important plant pathogens. The grant includes funding for Professor Collmer to work full time on this project during the next three summers.
JEANNE GODDARD performed her 2003 solo, "Aria" and spoke briefly about choreography, dance and healing, at the annual meeting of the Ithaca Suicide Prevention and Crisis Center on October 19. On October 29, she performed her 2002 solo, "Something about a lamp...," with score by Professor Emeritus of English Hugo Theimer, edited by Aurora composer Ethan MacCormick, at the Second Ithaca Choreographer's Showcase produced by Wide-eye Dance Company. With a group of Wells College students and Ithaca dancers, Professor Goddard re-staged and performed a segment of her summer 2005 work, "Re:cycling" as part of American Recycles Day at the Pyramid Mall in Ithaca. Finally, on December 3 and 4, Professor Goddard danced at the annual holiday concert of the Hudson Valley Arts Chorales choir, at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Kingston, New York.
JOSEPH HOFFMANN has been named a life trustee of the NAC, a human rights organization based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, comprising non-governmental organizations, groups, and people from across the globe who are working to stop religiously-based abuse of children, women, and minority non-citizen residents and refugees. http://nac1.bravehost.com Professor Hoffmann will deliver a plenary session paper at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Esotericism entitled "Julianus Platonicus: Reconstructing the 'Apostate's' Religious Thought" at the University of California-Davis in June 2006. In late October, he chaired the CSER section of the international congress of the Academy of Humanism in Amherst, New York, "Toward a New Enlightenment." The conference was a coordinated response to the threat of the religious Right to public policy, education, and values-formation. In late January he will videotape a series of six lectures at the Center for Inquiry with a grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, "The New History of Jesus."
CYNTHIA J. KOEPP was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support a year of writing on her current project entitled, "The Forgotten Best-Seller of Eighteenth-Century Europe: the Abbe Pluche's Spectacle de la Nature and the popular enlightenment." The study focuses especially on a new fascination for science and progressive ideas about education and experiential learning that emerged in the decades before the French Revolution.
LESLIE MILLER-BERNAL's chapter, "Diverse Responses to Coeducation: Women's Colleges in the U.S.," has appeared in the recently published book, Girton: Thirty Years...in the life of a Cambridge College, edited by Marilyn Strathern and Val Horsler (Third Millenium Publishing, UK, 2005). She was an invited contributor to this work.
VICTORIA MUÑOZ gave a presentation for the New York Sociological Society Association Conference, October 14, 2005, Aurora, New York titled, "Translating Gender: Transgender Narratives of Race, Class, and Sexuality Or The Grand Narrative and Its Discontents"
JILL HILL, VICTORIA MUÑOZ, MILENE MORFEI, and DEB GAGNON had their symposium proposal titled, "Transforming the Standard: How We’re Making the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum Culturally Inclusive and Relevant for an Interdependent World" accepted for presentation at the 23rd Annual Winter Roundtable on Cultural Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. The Winter Roundtable is the longest running continuing professional education program in the United States devoted solely to cultural issues in psychology and education. This year, the Winter Roundtable continues its tradition of bringing together scholars, practitioners, researchers, social change agents and students interested in the intersections between race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation in psychology and education. The theme of the 2006 conference, "Empowerment and Social Justice in Cultural Psychology and Education," underscores the Roundtable's commitment to recognizing the multiple and complex effects of culture and social location in psychological and educational matters. For more information go to http://www.tc.edu/roundtable/
LAURA PURDY’s article "Genetics and Reproductive Risk: Can Having Children Be Immoral" will be reprinted in Michael Cummings, Human Heredity: Principles and Issues, Wadsworth, 7th edition. She presented a paper entitled, "Sex, Lies, and the Religious Right: How the 'Culture of Life' Leads to Misery and Death," to the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, The New Enlightenment, Center for Inquiry, Buffalo, New York, October 29, 2005. Professor Purdy reviewed an article submitted to the journal Bioethics.
NIAMH O' LEARY was a co-organizer of the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network's outreach and public education event: 'Something's Fishy in Cayuga Lake', held at Wells College in November.
WILLIAM ROBERTS had five paintings featured in an invitational exhibition, "As The Crow Flies" at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York, during November and December. He had two drawings auctioned at the Maryland Racing Association's annual fund raising dinner in November. Professor Roberts photographed the Army Navy Game in Philadelphia on December 3. He also photographed the Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans game in Baltimore on December 4, 2005.
On November 19, CRAWFORD THOBURN conducted the Wells Concert Choir in two twenty-minute performances of holiday music for the tree-lighting ceremony at the Bass Pro Shop in the Auburn Fingerlakes Mall. On December 4, he conducted the Wells Concert Choir and Chamber Singers in their 46th annual Holiday Concert in the Barler Recital Hall. The Concert Choir was accompanied in this performance by pianist Nancy Gilbertson and the featured work on the program was Benjamin Britten's "A Ceremony of Carols," opus 28. As has been the custom in the past, a sizable amount of food was donated by members of the audience, which will be forwarded to the Cayuga County Food Pantry. During the holiday season, Professor Thoburn’s published choral compositions and arrangements are being widely performed from California to Virginia and points in between. In early December, his original setting of Christina Rossetti's poem "In The Bleak Midwinter" was sung by the Choir of Allegheny College in their concert at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, and later in their Christmas Concert on the college campus.
CHRISTIINA WAHL is currently attending the American Society for Cell Biology Annual meeting in San Francisco, where she is participating in a workshop on science teaching strategies. Professor Wahl has completed a chapter entitled "Periocular Mesenchyme: Neural Crest and Mesodermal Interactions" for Duane's Archives of Ophthalmology. It has been accepted by the editor and will be published in 2006.
