Liberal Arts Insider: December 2008

Arturo Arias

Samuel Baker

H.W. Brands

Terri Givens

Don Graham

Ian Hancock

Geraldine Heng

Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture awarded Arturo Arias (Spanish & Portuguese) the nation’s highest literary honor, the Miguel Angel Asturias National Literature Prize, for lifetime achievement.

Samuel Baker (English) earned a Digital Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the eCommentary Machine Project in the Department of English.

H.W. Brands’ (History) book “Traitor to His Class” was chosen as a main selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club.

Terri Givens (Government) testified in a Congressional hearing about critical languages Sept. 23. Givens spoke about the university's collaboration with the National Security Education Program to meet the critical need for advanced Hindi, Urdu and Arabic speakers.

The West Texas Book and Musical Festival honored Don Graham (English) with the A.C. Greene Literary Award for 2008.

Ian Hancock (Linguistics) spoke at the Sixth World Dharma Congress in Chicago on the Hindu roots of Romani spiritualism.

The Global Middle Ages Project co-directed by Geraldine Heng (English) is one of three humanities projects to share a $250,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant spearheaded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

John Higley (Government) organized a conference at Monash University's Centre for Research in Prato, Italy, to discuss the flow of immigration between Australia and the United States. Higley also joined the international advisory committee for the U.S. Studies Center at Sydney University.

Robert Hummer (Sociology) was elected to chair the Population Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). This section is one of the largest at ASA, with more than 1,000 members.

The Hispanic Faculty/Staff Association named José Luis Montiel (Spanish and Portuguese) Faculty Member of the Year for 2007-08.

The National Science Foundation awarded Chandra Muller (Sociology) a $365,000 grant to examine the educational experiences of K-12 students with learning disabilities.

“The Rhetorical Presidency” by Jeffrey Tulis (Government) was the subject of a special issue of the journal Critical Review (Spring 2008) to mark the 20th anniversary of its publication.

Chandra Muller and Debra Umberson (Sociology) were invited to join the Sociological Research Association.

Emeritus Professor Denise Schmandt-Besserat (Middle Eastern Studies) won the $10,000 grand prize at the Hamilton Book Awards for “When Writing Met Art: From Symbol to Story,” published by UT Press.

Hamilton Award runners-up from the College of Liberal Arts were James Loehlin (English) for “Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard” and Kurt Weyland (Government) for “Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America.”

The Eyes of Texas honored Michael Stoff (History) with the Eyes of Texas Excellence Award for Spring 2008. Also, the Organization of American Historians named Stoff a Distinguished Lecturer for 2008-09.

John Higley

Robert Hummer

James Loehlin

Chandra Muller

Michael Stoff

Jeffrey Tulis

Kurt Weyland

• Rebecca Bigler’s (Psychology) “Politics of Race and Gender” study was featured in several media outlets, including Agence France Presse, The Houston Chronicle and Science Daily.

• Numerous media outlets reviewed H.W. Brands’ (History) new book “Traitor to His Class,” including Publishers Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, PBS NewsHour, CNN and The Economist.

• Several media outlets tapped Bruce Buchanan’s (Government) expertise for stories about the presidential election this fall, including the Houston Chronicle, the Star-Telegram, The Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

• Janet Davis (American Studies) discussed the cultural significance of jukeboxes in American history in a Nov. 21 segment on NPR’s Morning Edition.

• James Galbraith’s (Government) political expertise was tapped by the New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the New York Daily News, for stories about the U.S. financial crisis.

• Sam Gosling (Psychology) discussed his book “Snoop” and decoded the psychology of stuff for stories in Slate, the Houston Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine and The Alcalde.

• The New York Times reviewed Jacqueline Jones’ (History) new book “Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War.”

• Jamie Pennebaker’s (Psychology) investigation of the psychology of song lyrics was featured in an Oct. 14 story in The New York Times.

• The London Times reviewed Peter MacNeilage’s (Psychology) book “The Origin of Speech” Sept. 12.

• Poll findings from Jim Henson and Daron Shaw’s (Government) Texas Politics Project were published in the Houston Chronicle, the Associated Press, Time and Forbes. USA Today tapped Henson’s expertise for an Oct. 27 story about Texas’ shifting political landscape.

• The New York Times tapped Sean Theriault’s (Government) expertise on partisan polarization for an Oct. 5 story.

• Several media outlets covered Eric Stice’s (Psychology) recent obesity research, including NPR’s All Things Considered and Good Morning America.

“Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt” by H.W. Brands (History). Doubleday, Nov. 2008.

“Shakespeare and the Power of Performance: Stage and Page in the Elizabethan Theatre” by Robert Weimann and Douglas Bruster (English). Cambridge University Press, Sept. 2008.

“Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868-1940” by Erika Bsumek. University Press of Kansas, Oct. 2008.

“Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War” by Jacqueline Jones (History). Knopf, Oct. 2008.

“The Vietnam War: A Concise International History” by Mark Lawrence (History). Oxford University Press, Aug. 2008.

“Early Soyinka” by Bernth Lindfors (English). African World Press, Aug. 2008.

“Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature” by Julia Mickenberg (American Studies). New York University Press, Nov. 2008.

“Cosas de Hombres” by Gabriela Polit (Spanish & Portuguese). Beatriz Viterbo, 2008.

“Imagined Families, Lived Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan” edited by Akiko Hashimoto and John Traphagan (Religious Studies). State University of New York Press, Dec. 2008.

“Chicano Students and the Courts: The Mexican American Legal Struggle for Educational Equality” by Richard Valencia (Center for Mexican American Studies). NYU Press, Oct. 2008.

“Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Cesaire, Dorothy West” by Jennifer Wilks (English). Louisiana State University Press, Dec. 2008.

Elizabeth Fernea

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, professor emerita of comparative literature and Middle Eastern studies who taught for 24 years at The University of Texas at Austin, died Dec. 2 at the age of 81. Known as "B.J." to her friends and family, Fernea was a noted writer, filmmaker and scholar of women's issues in the Middle East. Her bestselling memoir "Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village" (1965), details her cultural immersion into the lives of the women of Al-Nahra when she accompanied her husband Robert there for his doctoral field study.

Share a memory of Professor Fernea at ShelfLife@Texas