Publications, honors and creative works: Faculty
Alex Bloom, professor of history, published Takin’ It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader (Fourth Edition) (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Delvyn Case, associate professor of music, had his original holiday overture “Rocket Sleigh” performed by 14 orchestras, including the Atlanta, Toronto, Roanoke, Toledo, Grand Rapids and Pacific symphonies. It also received its U.K. premiere by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (December 2015).
Michael Drout, professor of English, published Tolkien Studies: Volume 12 (West Virginia University Press, 2015). He was interviewed in December 2015 by National Public Radio and the New York Times as an expert on Tolkien in regard to the case in Turkey in which a physician faces a two-year prison sentence for insulting the Turkish president by comparing him to the character Gollum,from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He also was an on-air expert in several episodes of the History Channel’s “True Monsters” series—”Devils and Hell,” “Gods and Monsters,” “Giants and Beasts” and “Cannibals and Killers.”
John Grady, professor of sociology, and Michael Gousie, professor of math/computer science, presented “The Social Composition of an Imaginary World: The Star Village in Hollywood, 1927–2013,” an identification and analysis of the social types generated by a visualization of the most popular movie stars on the Quigley Poll, at the International Visual Sociology Association Conference, in Tinos, Greece, on June 27, 2015. Professor Grady also was a co-organizer of the Visual Methods Seminar 2015, with attendees from 20 countries at the University of Antwerp. The seminar, held Aug. 24 through Sept. 4, 2015, focused on defining interpretative issues in the design of visual social research and examined best practices in conducting an investigation.
Karen McCormack, associate professor of sociology, published the book chapter “Home-Making” in Popular Culture as Everyday Life (Routledge, 2016). She also co-wrote the article “Understanding Foreclosure Risk: The Role of Nativity and Gender,” with Iyar Mazar ’09 in Critical Sociology (2015).
Cheryl Mrozowski, professor of dance, in September 2015 was recruited as a partner for Island Moving Company to consult and offer community support to the organization. Island Moving Company is a professional dance company located in Newport, R.I.
Lisa Lebduska, professor of English, published the short story “Elephant Dog” in the Gateway Review (January 2016). She also published the flash fiction piece “Mercy Mouse” in Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine (November 2015).