Posted on May 13, 2005

Christine Henseler, assistant professor of Spanish, has written an article accepted for publication in the Spanish journal Revista de Literatura titled “El fenómeno Lucía Etxebarria: ¿A qué viene tanto jaleo?” (“The Lucia Etxebarria Phenomenon: What is All the Fuss About?”) She also delivered a paper at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in April, “The Pornography of Punk: Virtual Embodiment of Nonspace in Mañas' Historias del Kronen.”

Posted on May 13, 2005

David Gerhan, professor and head of public services and reference at Schaffer Library, has co-authored (with Stephen M. Mutula of the University of Botswana) a research paper, “Bandwidth bottlenecks at the University of Botswana: complications for library, campus, and national development,” in the latest issue of Library Hi Tech (January, 2005, vol. 23, no. 1). When Gerhan taught at the University of Botswana as a Fulbright Fellow in 2002-03, he became aware of problems in performance of the World-Wide Web that were peculiar to his location. He teamed with Mutula to trace the causes and recommend remedies for Internet delays and interruptions in the southern African country. They continue to look collaboratively at the nature of the role played by information and communication technology in national development.

Posted on May 13, 2005

Wilfried Wilms, assistant professor of German, presented a paper at Cambridge University, “'Military Targets Only!'- The Air War on American Celluloid,” as part of a panel that investigated how Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1990s have misrepresented aspects of World War II that generally receive little attention as they pose challenges to the 'good war' myth. Wilms organized the panel titled “Combatting the Non-Combattant: America remembers the Air War in Europe and Japan” for the British Association of American Studies. 

Posted on May 13, 2005

Nixi Cura, instructor of visual arts, gave a presentation, “Lost in Translation: Tibetan Inscriptions in the Tomb of the Qianlong Emperor,” as part of a panel on “The Meanings of Nonsense: Imaginations of Linguistic and Social Disorder in Chinese Literary and Visual Culture” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual meeting recently.

She examined the Buddhist texts and images on the stone walls of the tomb of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95). Unreadable as text, the Tibetan syllables appear as auditory and visual patterns, combining with the images to form a seamless palimpsest of a necessarily incomprehensible otherworld, she said. She also delivered a presentation on “Faculty and the Adoption of Advanced Technologies” at the biannual meeting of Mid-Atlantic and New England Instructional Technology Leaders in Middlebury, Vt. Her talk focused on the application of 3-D modeling and animation software in teaching and research. She has used the programs Maya and 3D Studio Max in the Asian Garden Design seminar (AAH 70) and in constructing a virtual reconstruction of the tomb of the Qianlong emperor.

Posted on May 13, 2005

Martin Benjamin, professor of visual arts, is showing “Photographs of Cuba” at Untitled Art Gallery in Florence, Italy, through June. The photographs were part of his sabbatical research in 2003.