News Center

Oct. 4, 2011 – Faculty at Allegheny College have recently authored works or participated in professional activities in a broad range of subject matter.

Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden was an invited speaker at the Eighth North Forest Ecology Workshop, held at Virginia Technological University. The presentation, “Long-term controls on forest soil C quantity and quality: The dirt on the DIRT Experiment” – which included 2011 Allegheny graduate Sarah Wurzbacher and coauthors from the University of Michigan, Oregon State, the University of Hawaii and the University of Pennsylvania — describes long-term investigations of forest soils conducted at several research forests across the U.S. The study quantifies the ability of forests to remove the climate change gas, carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and sequester it in soils. Bowden also presented the seminar recently at the West Virginia University Biology Seminar Series.

Associate Professor of Communication Arts Mark Cosdon is the president of the American Theatre and Drama Society, an international organization with more than 300 members. At the August 2011 conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Cosdon delivered a plenary response on the theme of “Globalism in Local Contexts,” chaired two sessions, and steered a business and board meeting.

An article by Executive Vice President and Treasurer Dave McInally, “Moving Beyond the Payback,” appears in the September issue of the ACUPCC Implementer. He also is featured in two videos on the ACUPCC (American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment) website: “Climate Action and Strategic Planning” and “The ACUPCC Financing Sustainability Committee.” McInally chairs the resources subcommittee of the ACUPCC Financing Sustainability Committee, a group composed of college and university presidents and chief financial officers from across the U.S. In addition, McInally presented a session called “Self-Financing Sustainability at a Private College” at the ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit in D.C. in June. He has also recently been named to the Association of Independent Colleges of Pennsylvania (AICUP) Member Services Committee.

President Jim Mullen and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Dave McInally served on a panel titled “Driving Down Energy Costs with Environmentally Conscious Approaches” at the Council of Independent Colleges Presidents Institute on January 6 in Palm Springs, California.

Associate Professor of French Laura Reeck has published an article, “Lettre ouverte au monde des lettres françaises: Sur ma ligne de Rachid Djaïdani” (Open letter to the world of French letters: Rachid Djaïdani’s Sur ma ligne) in a volume entitled Intrangers with Academia Brulyant’s Sefar series. It examines the author’s self-filmed performative documentary as a response to the accusation by his Seuil publishing house that he was not the author of his first novel. Reeck’s translation of a short story by Mohamed Razane, “So far so close by,” is up on the Brooklyn Rail’s translation site, InTranslation.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English Jeremy Wells presented a paper titled “‘Colonel Higginson’s peculiar humor’: Race and the Reception of Army Life in a Black Regiment” at the Reception Studies Society conference at Northwest Missouri State University on Sept. 9. He will present a paper titled “‘The choked voice of a race at last unloosed’: Emancipation and the Representation of Black Song in Army Life in a Black Regiment” at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History convention in Richmond, Virginia, on Oct. 7. Both papers are part of a larger research project on the representation of African American music in U.S. print culture from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.

Associate Professor of Political Science Sharon Wesoky presented a paper, “Harmony and Critique: Contemporary Chinese Feminist Perspectives, Chinese Modernity, and the ‘Harmonious Society’” in June at the Symposium on China’s Appeal and Its Discontents at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong. Her chapter “Engendering the Local: Globalization, Development, and the ‘Empowerment’ of Chinese Rural Women” was recently published in Women, Gender, and Rural Development in China, edited by Tamara Jacka and Sally Sargeson.

Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu published an invited book review on Minguo nai diguo ye: zhengzhi wenhua zhuanxing xia de Qing yimin [“The Republic is the enemy”: Qing loyalists during a transformation of political culture] in Frontiers of History in China, September 2011.