Faculty News

Peter M. Beattie: is Associate Professor of History. He is in Recife, Brazil in 2008 concluding the research for his book manuscript, Crime and Punishment in Slavery and Freedom: The Penal Colony of Fernando de Noronha Island, Brazil, 1830-1900.

Professor Jeff Charnley developed a new AMS310 course for Spring 2008 entitled, World War II on Film, with 42 students. This development related to his continuing AMS work in Study Abroad. He took 30 students to Europe for 4 weeks following a two week on-campus phase of The United States and World War II Europe:Memory and Memorials. AMS.D. student Kelly Myers served as his program assistant. Charnley continued his scholarly work related to the life and career of Gerald R. Ford by presenting an invited paper at the Johns Hopkins University Scouting Centennial Symposium in February 2008.

Aime Ellis's first book, If We Must Die: From Bigger Thomas to Biggie Smalls is forthcoming with Wayne State University Press in Summer 2009. Aime has a forthcoming essay (2009) with African American Review entitled "Singing Love Songs to Mr. Death: Racial Terror and the State of Erection in D'Angelo's 'Untitled." In July 2008, the MSU Board of Trustees announced his tenure promotion to associate professor.

Jennifer Fay received the MSU teacher-scholar award in the fall of 2007. Her book, Theaters of Occupation: Hollywood and the Reeducation of Postwar Germany, came out with University of Minnesota Press in March 2008. She is currently co-writing with her colleague Justus Nieland a book on film noir and the cultures of globalization. This project is under contract with Routledge Press.

Lisa M. Fine, Professor of History, has spent the last two years working with faculty from throughout the university to help create the new Center for Gender in Global Context located in International Studies and Programs. currently co-directs, with Anne Ferguson, this Center. Center's curriculum committee has worked hard this past year to revive the Women's and Gender Studies major with a global/comparative/interdisciplinary focus at MSU and this Fall, 2008, this major will be available again for students. Center has sponsored dozens of talks, forged strategic relationships with gender centers overseas, developed and maintained programs and courses related to gender.

Sally Helvenston Gray is the new editor of Dress, The Journal of the Costume Society of America. The latest issue, Vol. 33, has just been published and features articles on the origins of Somali folk dress, Scottish textile designer Bernat Klein, Natacha Rambova fashion designer (1928-1931), eighteenth century English patterned silk, fashioning gender and Jewishness, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman and dress reform.

Gordon Henry's book of poetry and short prose, The Failure of Certain Charms: And Other Disparate Signs of Life, was published by Salt Publishing. He also served as Senior Editor for the American Indian Studies Series for Michigan State University Press. Through the series he has helped release two volumes: Shedding Skins, an anthology, edited by Adrian Louis, of poetry by four Sioux poets and Writing Home, a work of literary criticism, by Michael Wilson, on American Indian Literature. This past summer Gordon lectured and gave a poetry reading at the University of Leiden in Holland, as part of the Multi-Ethnic Studies Europe and the Americas Conference. Gordon was also a keynote lecturer for a Trauma in Literature course in Cursos de Verano in El Escorial, Spain. He served his first year as Director of Creative Writing in the English Department.

Michael Largey: Professor and Chair of Musicology in the College of Music, was a co-winner of the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize for his book, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism (University of Chicago Press, 2006).The Alan Merriam Prize is awarded annually by the Society for Ethnomusicology for the "most distinguished, published monograph in the field of ethnomusicology."

Marilyn Frye: gave the 2008 Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Lectures, a series of three. Per the requirements of the lectureship, these were public lectures delivered on the professor's home campus (in this case, of course, MSU). The title of the series was "Kinds of People: Ontology and Politics." The lectures will be revised for publication in an anthology of her articles and essays about social categories, work that is prompted by the unease, common among feminist theories, about using the category WOMEN as an analytic category in feminist theory and politics.

Sheng-mei Ma's new book, East-West Montage: Reflections on Asian Bodies in Diaspora was published by Hawaii in 2007. Sheng-mei has completed another book manuscript Death Rehearsal and East-West Modernity, currently under review.

Scott Michaelsen, with David E. Johnson, published Anthropology's Wake: Attending to the End of Culture (Fordham UP, 2008).

David Stowe completed a book manuscript entitled No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Rock and the Rise of the Religious Right. He is currently working on a documentary version of the same project with filmmaker Jim Jabara and AMS grad student Shawn Young. They recently shot footage and interviews at the Cornerstone Music Festival in Illinois. was also invited to give presentations at Calvin College and at the annual meeting of the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. MSU David was accepted to participate in the Inclusive Excellence Teaching Commons seminar sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters.

Sam Thomas: In late 2007, Alexander St. Publishers published its digitized collection entitled "The Gilded Age." Sam authored one of the four major multimedia essays, "Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age." This summer he published "Episcopal Authority and Theological Dissent: Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. and Humanae Vitae," American Catholic Studies, Summer 2008, 35-69. In late August, he will launch an MSU Museum exhibit entitled "No Holds Barred: Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age" in the West Gallery.

Sheila Contreras's book, Blood Lines: Myth, Indigenism and Chicana/o Literature, University of Texas Press, 2008, is now in print. She delivered papers at the 2007 American Studies Association Meeting in Philadelphia and the Indigenous Studies Conference in Athens, Georgia. Currently, Sheila is on the Executive Committee of the Division of Chicana/o Literature of the Modern Language Association.

Paul Thompson: Paul's main American Studies activity for the year was in playing host to the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy here at Michigan State in March. Next year, he will be teaching a seminar on John Dewey.

Ken Waltzer: delivered the Weinman Lecture at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on his work on the rescue of children and youths at Buchenwald in May 2008, and was one of 15 senior and junior scholars selected by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studiesexplore the newly opened Red Cross International Tracing Service archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, for new research possibilities during June 2008.