Posted on Jan 29, 2009

Brenda Wineapple, the Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, is among the finalists recently announced for the National Book Critics Circle prizes.

Wineapple is a nominee in the biography category for “White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.”

Other finalists in the category include Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello,” winner of the National Book Award last fall; Patrick French’s “The World is What It Is,” an authorized biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul; Paula J. Giddings’s “Ida, A Sword Among Lions”; and Steve Coll’s “The Bin Ladens.”

Winners will be announced March 12.

Wineapple joined Union in 1976. Her books include “Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner;” “Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein”; and most recently, “Hawthorne: A Life,” which received the Ambassador Award of the English-speaking Union for the best biography of 2003 and the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Book Club.

Wineapple’s essays, articles and reviews have appeared regularly in national publications such as The American Scholar, New York Times Book Review and The Nation. She has served as chair of the nonfiction panel of the National Book Awards.

Wineapple has been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University and twice a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

Wineapple will teach a junior seminar on Dickinson and a course on Modern Poetry during the spring term.

The book critics circle is a nonprofit organization with more than 900 members.

For a complete list of nominees, click here.

Posted on Jan 28, 2009

Teresa Meade, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture and chair of the Department of History, has been elected president of the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) for 2009-2010. NECLAS is the regional association of professors in college and university Latin American Studies’ programs in the Northeast. Union College will be host to the 2009 annual meeting of NECLAS this fall. 

Three new papers by Raymond Martin, the Dwane W. Crichton Professor of Philosophy and department chair, have been published. They are: “The Empiricist Roots of Modern Psychology,” in the “Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology” (Routledge, 2009, John Symons and Francisco Calvo Garzón, eds.); “Memory and Meaning: Reflections on Memento,” in Philosophers on Memento (Routledge, London, in “Studies on Philosophy in Film,” Andrew Kania, ed.,) and “What Would It Matter If There Were No Selves?,” in “Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy,” an anthology drawn primarily from papers originally presented at Cambridge University in 2005 (Oxford University Press, 2009, Tom Tillemans and Jay Garfield, eds.) In addition, Martin’s “The Essential Difference Between History and Science,” originally published in History and Theoryin 1997, recently was translated into Portugese by Gustavo Pereira. It will be reprinted in the Brazilian journal, Revista de Historia des Ideias (Esup, 2009).

Lewis Davis, assistant professor of economics, served as associate editor of the Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy (Princeton University Press, February 2009). The two-volume encyclopedia addresses a wide range of issues related to globalization and international economic transactions and is intended to be accessible to a wide audience. Davis had editorial control over all aspects of entries related to economic development. 

“Rapid Exhumation of Ice-Covered Rocks of the Chugach-St. Elias Orogen, Southeast Alaska,” a paper by John Garver, Department of Geology chair, has been published in the journal “Geology.” Co-authors are E. Enkelmann and T.L. Pavlis. The paper details a new finding in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska, the discovery that the mountains are growing at an extremely rapid rate and that much of that growth is driven by the erosion caused by glaciers. Garver’s group is part of the National Science Foundation project called the St. Elias Erosion/Tectonics Project (STEEP). This multidisciplinary study addresses the evolution of the Earth’s highest coastal mountain range, the St. Elias Mountains of southern Alaska and northwestern Canada. 

Posted on Jan 28, 2009

Students, faculty, staff and alumni are invited to submit original artwork that explores issues surrounding the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community at Union and beyond for the College's second annual LGBTQ juried exhibition.

The submission deadline for “LGBTQ: A Union Perspective” is March 13.

The show will be held April 16 – June 1 in the Wikoff Student Gallery. Prizes will be awarded.

Applications for submission can be found at the Mandeville Gallery, the Visual Art Department office, the Schaffer Library circulation desk, the Office of Student Activities and the Becker Career Center.

Or download an application here. 

Questions? Contact: Courtney Seymour at seymourc@union.edu or Kara Jefts at jeftsk@union.edu

Posted on Jan 28, 2009

Tyrone Hayes, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research focuses on the role of steroid hormones in amphibian development,will speak on “From Silent Spring to Silent Night” Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 7 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.

Hayes’ talk is the second in the 2009 Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering Winter Seminar Series, “Achieving Environmental Sustainability: The Role of U.S. Higher Education.”

Next up is Geoff Garver, an environmental consultant and lecturer in law at Laval University, Quebec, speaking on “Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy” (Feb. 11). 

James Howard Kuntsler, urban planning expert, social critic, journalist and author of “The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency” and other books, will conclude the series with his talk on “Urban Planning, Design, Peak Oil and Sustainability” (Feb. 18).

All talks are free and open to the public.

Posted on Jan 28, 2009

Brenda Wineapple, the Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, is among the finalists recently announced for the National Book Critics Circle prizes.

Wineapple is a nominee in the biography category for “White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.”

Other finalists in the category include Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello,” winner of the National Book Award last fall; Patrick French’s “The World is What It Is,” an authorized biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul; Paula J. Giddings’s “Ida, A Sword Among Lions”; and Steve Coll’s “The Bin Ladens.”

Winners will be announced March 12.

Wineapple joined Union in 1976. Her books include “Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner;” “Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein”; and most recently, “Hawthorne: A Life,” which received the Ambassador Award of the English-speaking Union for the best biography of 2003 and the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Book Club.

Wineapple’s essays, articles and reviews have appeared regularly in national publications such as The American Scholar, New York Times Book Review and The Nation. She has served as chair of the nonfiction panel of the National Book Awards.

Wineapple has been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University and twice a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

Wineapple will teach a junior seminar on Dickinson and a course on Modern Poetry during the spring term.

The book critics circle is a nonprofit organization with more than 900 members.

For a complete list of nominees, click here.