Recent Accomplishments
by CLASS Faculty

June 2008
Nidhi Mahendra, assistant professor of communicative sciences and disorders (CSD), will begin a 2-year term (2008-2010) as the incoming chair of the Diversity Issues Committee of the California Speech Language Hearing Association (CSHA). In February 2008, she was selected by the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) as one of only 25 junior faculty nationwide in Communication Sciences and Disorders to attend an NIH-sponsored training and research mentoring institute titled Lessons for Success: Developing the Emerging Scientist. Since Fall 2007 she has published three peer-reviewed articles and has presented her research at four national conferences.

May 2008
Jacqueline Doyle, professor of English, wrote "The Stories Her Body Tells: Judith Ortiz Cofer's 'The Story of My Body.'" a/b: Autobiography Studies 22.1 (May 2008): 46-65. (A version of this paper was presented at the American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, May 2006.) Other recent presentations include "Individual and Collective Autobiography in Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli," presented at the 34th Annual National Association of Ethnic Studies Conference, San Francisco, March/April 2006, and "Thinking Back Through Her Mothers: Judith Ortiz Cofer and Virginia Woolf," presented at the 12th Annual Women's Studies Conference, Marquette University, Milwaukee, March 2006.

May 2008
Susan Gubernat, associate professor of English, has written the libretto to Korczak's Orphans, an opera in three acts with prologue by composer Adam Silverman, that was performed for the first time in its entirety on May 3 by the Opera Company of Brooklyn at the Simon Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan. The tragic opera, based on the life of Holocaust martyr and children's advocate Dr. Janusz Korczak, was performed as part of Holocaust Remembrance Weekend. Gubernat's poetry has recently appeared in such journals as The Michigan Quarterly Review and The Yalobusha Review (Ole Miss).

April 2008
Dee Andrews, chair/professor of history, and her co-author, Emma Lapsansky-Werner of Haverford College, participated in April 2008 in an international conference on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, with their paper “Thomas Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade: The Trans-Atlantic Biography of an Antislavery Classic.” The conference was held at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in Philadelphia. Dr. Andrews has also received the $2,000 Fellowship in North American Bibliography from the Bibliographical Society of America for further research on this project.

April 2008
Wesley Broadnax, assistant professor of music and director of bands/instrumental music education, recorded composer Robert Litton's Inaugural Fanfare with the CSUEB Symphonic Band at Skywalker Ranch, Marin County. The piece was part of the inaugural celebration of President Mohammad Qayoumi, and the work was one of two recorded by the Symphonic Band as part of a promotional CD to help celebrate the university's 50th anniversary. In addition, Broadnax presented the consortium premier performance of composer Michael Senturia's Divertimento for Band with the CSUEB Symphonic Band.

Spring 2008
Stephen Gutierrez, professor of English, has had his short story "Clownpants Molina" appear in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, ed. Daniel Olivas (Bilingual Press, 2008). He has recently published stories in Fiction International, Tattoo Highway, Paterson Literary Review, Nerve Cowboy, pacific REVIEW, and personal essays in River Teeth, Third Coast, West Magazine (Sunday Los Angeles Times), Digital Paper, and Epoch. His most recent one-act plays were produced at the Claremont Theatre in Berkeley by Brookside Repertory Theatre, the San Francisco Theatre Festival by New Works West Theater Company, and at the Fringe of Marin Festival.

Spring 2008
Carlos Salomon, assistant professor of ethnic studies and director of the Latin American studies program, has published Secularization in California: Pio Pico at Mission San Luis Rey, in the Southern California Quarterly (Winter 2007-08). In March 2008 he also presented a paper from a new oral history project titled Protecting Civil Rights and Promoting Mexican Culture: Mutualistas and Maria Luisa Gallego's Reign as Queen, at the Third Annual Audrey-Beth Fitch Women's Studies Conference at the California University of Pennsylvania.

Spring 2008
Valerie Smith,lecturer in communication, has published the chapter "Female Heroes at Ground Zero: Verbal and Visual Accounts Reconceptualize the Heroic" in Heroes in a Global World. The chapter demonstrates how the media often recognized only male rescue workers and features in-depth interviews with two female police officers. In 2007, she also published the article "Aristotle's Classical Enthymeme and the Visual Argumentation of the Twenty-First Century" in Argumentation and Advocacy, the flagship journal of the American Forensic Association. She shows how the original conception of Aristotle's enthymeme is often misconstrued and how a broader understanding can apply to visual arguments.

March 2008
Jesús Díaz, assistant professor of Latin American literature and Spanish in modern languages and literatures has published his article: "Incaismo as the First Guiding Fiction in the Emergence of the Creole Nation in the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata" in the international Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (Vol.17, 1, March 2008: 1-22) based in London. He also presented a research paper on the genealogy of Creole patriotism and mestizaje in the writings of Cuban thinker Jose Martí at the international conference "Literaturas mestizas en América Latina. Estética e ideología" (Poitiers, France, October 2007).

March 2008
Marc Jacobs, assistant professor of theatre and dance, has won the Bay Area Drama Critics Circle Award for directing the musical “Show Boat” at the San Mateo County Performing Arts Center. His original musical, "All the More to Love," will premiere April 4, 2009 at Laguna Playhouse, and his other musical, “How to Make a Musical,” is being marketed throughout the country by Dramatics Publishing. The 50-minute script teaches the musical theatre structure to middle and high schoolers by contrasting scenes from a classroom day as seen by a nerd, versus as presented in a musical.

February-March 2008
Luz Calvo, assistant professor of ethnic studies, has published “Racial Fantasies and the Primal Scene of Miscegenation” in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (February 2008; Volume 89, No. 1: 55-70). She also presented her research on Chicana artist Alma Lopez at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Conference in Austin, Texas (March 19-22, 2008).

 

February-July 2008
Gwyan Rhabyt, associate professor of art, has received a Fulbright Scholar Grant to teach new media design and engage in collaborative new media art projects with a number of Croatian (and hopefully, Serbian and Slovenian) artists. The Fulbright Scholar Program sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year to lecture and conduct research in 144 countries.

 

January-March 2008
Allen Shearer, lecturer in music, created the music for Blue Lias or the Fish Lizard's Whore, a solo play written by Claudia Stevens for her own performance. Now in its second year of touring, Blue Lias has been presented seven times during 2008, at Willamette University (OR), Occidental College (CA), the University of Oklahoma, Ursinus College (PA), Transylvania University (KY), Stetson University (FL), and the University of Kansas.

 

January-March 2008
Gerald S. Henig, emeritus professor of history, has received the Alumni Achievement Award for 2008 from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He published “The First Black Battlefield Reporter," in Civil War Times (January 2008); and "Susie King Taylor: Civil War Nurse," in American Legacy: The Magazine of African-American History & Culture (Spring 2008). On March 18, 2008, he spoke to the Peninsula Civil War Roundtable. The topic of his talk was "William Tillman: The First Black Hero of the Civil War."

January 2008
Melissa Michelson, associate professor of political science, is utilizing a $435,000 James Irvine Foundation Grant to continue evaluation of voter mobilization activities from the California Votes Initiative. She co-wrote “Diagnosing the Leaky Pipeline: Continuing Barriers to the Retention of Latinas and Latinos in Political Science," PS: Political Science and Politics 41, 1 (Jan.): 161-166; "All Roads Lead to Rust: How Acculturation Erodes Latino Immigrant Trust in Government," Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; "Mobilizing the Latino Youth Vote: Some Experimental Results," Social Science Quarterly 87, 5 (Dec.): 1188-1206; and "Mobilizing Latino Voters for a Ballot Proposition." Latino(a) Research Review 6, 1-2 (Summer): 33-49.

2008
Victoria Robertson, lecturer in Spanish in modern languages and literature since 1995, published an article comparing Les bouches inutiles, the only play by the French writer Simone de Beauvoir, to Siempre busqué el amor, a play by a Spanish writer Lidia Falcón. The article is part of the collection in Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Volume 24, 2007-2008, published by Simone de Beauvoir Society. The article explores issues related to the meaning of human life throughout time.

 

2008
Arthur Storch, percussion lecturer in music, has been in the recording studio performing scores for video games (Uncharted, The Simpsons and the upcoming Star Wars), and recording movie trailers and feature films, including the upcoming In The Electric Mist, with Tommy Lee Jones. Storch is a member of the AF of M Local 6 recording committee, which helps bring projects such as these to the Bay Area.

 

November-December 2007
Michelle Caimotto, lecturer in flute performance in the music department, performed with the San Francisco Symphony at the Edinburgh, Luzern, Berlin, and Frankfurt International Festivals and at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England. She also appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival with the Terence Blanchard Quintet in Blanchard's piece, "When the Levees Broke, Requiem for Katrina."

 

October-November 2007
Amy June Rowley, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures, was the keynote speaker in October at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education 70th Annual Conference in Phoenix, AZ, and at the “Making Education Work for Every Child” opening section of the Education Law Association 53rd Annual Conference in San Diego in November. It has been 25 years since she was the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court Decision that mainstreamed children with hearing loss in public education.

October 2007
Jan Avent, professor of communicative sciences and disorders, in conjunction with her client, Wilson K. Talley, and his wife Helen, made a presentation on aphasia to the White House Fellows Foundation and Association in Washington, D.C. “Dealing With A Stroke” incorporated observations by Talley, a renowned nuclear physicist and namesake of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Wilson K. Talley Fellowship for graduate science education, who suffered a debilitating stroke in 1998 after decades of scholarly work as a nuclear physicist, and Avent's evaluation of a new approach to working with aphasia patients. Talley is the perfect example of Avent's research showing that Reciprocal Scaffolding Treatment, based on natural language use between experts and novices during shared learning activities, can result in dramatic improvements in as little as six weeks of treatment.

October 2007
Eric Kupers, assistant professor of theatre and dance, has received two national grants, a Multi-Arts Production (MAP) fellowship, and a Princess Grace Foundation Award. He will use $15,000 MAP funds to co-producing a performance with his company, Dandelion Dancetheater, for the San Francisco International Arts Festival (IAF) May 9-25 at CELLspace. The $10,000 Princes Grace award, plus money from the Zellerbach Family Fund and CSUEB Faculty Grants, will help create “Spinal Fluid,” an unconventional dance work that can withstand cast replacements among performers with widely diverse abilities/disabilities.

October 2007
Jennifer Eagan, chair/associate professor of philosophy and public affairs and administration, is a member of the new editorial team for the journal Administrative Theory & Praxis. She recently published, “Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference: Luce Irigaray, the War on Terrorism, and International Peace,” in Philosophical Perspectives on the War on Terror, Rodopi Press, 2007 and, “Unfreedom, Suffering, and the Culture Industry: What Adorno Can Contribute to a Feminist Ethics,” in Feminist Interpretations of Theodor Adorno, Penn State University Press, 2006.

September 2007
Anne Pym, professor of Communication, “Drivin' a Big Truck on the Big Road: Oral Tradition in Community Building.” Explorations in Media Ecology, September, 2007. “Writing Oral Traditions: Clash Between Worlds.” Review essay based upon Katherine Kelleher Sohn. Whistlin, and Crowin, Women of Applachia: Lierary Practices Since College. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. Review of Communication. July 2007. Book Review. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. An Ong Reader. Journal of Media Ecology, August 2006.

August 2007
Richard A. Garcia, professor of history, published Ethnic Community Builders: Mexican-Americans in Search of Justice and Power: The Struggle for Citizenship Rights in San Jose, California, with co-authors Francisco Jimenez and Alma M. Garcia. Published "Religion as Language, Church as Culture: Changing Chicano Historiography" in Reviews in American History 34, no. 4 (Dec 2006).

 

August 2007
Dianne Rush Woods, chair/associate professor of social work, contributed to the new book, Women of Color as Social Work Educators: Strengths and Survival, published by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Other publications: Scholarship, administration, teaching and the junior faculty administrator in Reflections-Spring 2006; with P. Phan, and T. Jones, and Program Development During Fiscal Crisis: a Community and University Response in Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, June 2006; Expanding Tenure Requirements in Thought and Action, fall 2006, pages 135-142.

August 2007
Maxine Craig, Maxine Craig, associate professor of sociology has been appointed to the editorial board of the American Sociological Association's Rose Monograph Series. She presented a paper co-authored with KPE Prof. Rita Liberti entitled, “Forging Community and Shaping Gender in a Women's Gym” at the American Sociological Association annual meeting. She also presented the paper, “Complexion (and all of that)' in Miss Bronze 1961-1968,” at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her article, “Race, Beauty, and the Tangled Knot of a Guilty Pleasure,” was published in the August 2006 issue of Feminist Theory.

July 2007
Jessica Weiss, associate professor of history, organized the panel “Pedal Pushers, Wings, and Apron Strings: Representations of Teenage Girls, Homemakers, and Stewardesses in the Cold War” and presented the paper “An Answer to the Feminine Mystique: The Housewife and Domesticity in Phyllis McGinley's A Sixpence in her Shoe” at the Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association 100th Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI, July 2007.

 

July 2007
Stephen Morewitz, lecturer in public affairs and administration, has written, Aging and Chronic Disorders with M. Goldstein, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, on assesses the impact of chronic disease on aging and the latest treatment innovations, and Chronic Diseases and Health Care (2006), Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., which evaluates trends in diabetes mellitus, arthritis, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, low back pain, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

 

June 2007
Robert Phelps, associate professor of history, has been chosen Distinguished Professor of the Year for the university's Concord Campus by students who attend classes there. Phelps was selected from among more than 100 instructors who teach at the Concord campus. He was instrumental in having the history major introduced there and was a member of the concord Campus Advisory Committee.

 

May 2007
Benjamin P. Bowser, interim dean of CLASS/professor of sociology, two new books: The Black Middle Class: Mobility and Vulnerabilities, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007; When Communities Assess their AIDS Epidemics: Results of Rapid Assessment of HIV/AIDS in Eleven U.S. Cities. Lanham: Lexington Books, with E. Quimby and M. Singer (eds.)(2007).

 

 

May 2007
Deborah Eicher-Catt, lecturer in communication, published six major items so far this academic year. (She has four more in progress). The most significant of these publications was her guest editorship of the special issue of a major international, interdisciplinary journal. The issue was dedicated to the work of Gregory Bateson in “The American Journal of Semiotics.”

 

Spring 2007
Lonny J. Brooks, assistant professor of communication, presented the lecture, “Performing the Social Future of Ubiquitous Media and Computing Spaces as a Grammar of Design: Constraints and Unintended Consequences for Social Freedom” at the Futures of LIfe Workshop: Acquiring and Creating Anticipatory Knowledge at Cornell University, Science & Technology Studies Department. He also wrote a review of the book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (by Fred Turner) for website publication on the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies.

Spring 2007
Karina Garbesi, associate professor of geography and environmental studies and chair of the Committee on Budget and Resource Assessment, chaired two special sessions on renewable energy at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, where she and her students also presented three papers. Her university web-course module, Assessing Energy¹s Footprint and Carbon Emissions, was launched on the Redefining Progress website. She championed the adoption of sustainability commitments as a member of CSU's Sustainability Advisory Committee's Education and Research Subcommittee, as a delegate to the system-wide Access to Excellence Meeting, and as the East Bay representative to several regional sustainability planning groups.

Spring 2007
Rebecca Kelly, assistant professor of communicative sciences and disorders (CSD), raised $132,000 through a combination of grants from the Thomas J. Long Foundation, the Eden Township Healthcare District, and Wells Fargo Bank to fund a new mobile audiology van designed to improve the work CSUEB does in detecting childhood hearing loss. The university already provides low-cost hearing tests to about 900 preschool and grade school children annually. The van — the first of is kind in the East Bay — will allow CSD to increase the number of community youth it screens and to be more effective.

 

May 2007
Frank La Rocca, chair/professor of music, will have his work “Cantate Domino” recorded by the Prague Radio Orchestra and Chorus for commercial release in November 2007. His work for women's choir, “Magnificat,” was accepted for publication by Boosey & Hawkes, the world's leading publisher of classical music. Another work for women's choir, “Echo,” commissioned by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, appears on their most recent CD “Voices of Hope and Peace,” recorded at Skywalker Ranch.

May 2007
Darryl V. Jones, assistant professor of theatre and dance, directed “Spunk,” a play with music, based on three tales by Zora Neale Hurston for the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco—Northern California’s premier African-American theatre company.

 

 

 

April 2007
Nina Haft, assistant professor of theatre and dance, performed her new solo, “36 Jewish Gestures (for Joe Goode, with love),” at the Conney Conference on Jewish Art, Culture and Identity at University of Wisconsin, Madison on April 23, 2007.

 

 

 

April 2007
Evaon C. Wong-Kim, associate professor of social work, is president of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure (formerly The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation), San Francisco chapter, for 2007-2008. Professor Wong-Kim’s goals include increased awareness of breast cancer, increased fundraising efforts, and improved health education among high-risk women. Professor Wong-Kim's interest in breast cancer advocacy started when she worked as an oncology social worker serving many late-stage cancer patients who were not aware of the value of early detection. She also chaired the National Asian and Pacific Islander Advisory Council for Komen National from 2003-2007.

March-April 2007
Debra Barrett-Graves, associate professor of English presented “Elizabeth I and Court Display” as the keynote speech for the Queen Elizabeth I Society at the South Central Renaissance Conference, San Antonio, TX. She also contributed several entries in a new feminist collection: Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England (published by ABC-CLIO), received the annual Robert A. Miller award for “Edmund Spenser’s Use of the Poison-Tipped Tongue in The Faerie Queen”; and presented the paper “The Stage Life of Riddles and Triumphs in Pericles" for the annual Shakespeare Association of America meeting, San Diego, CA.

March-April 2007
Robert Terrell, professor of communication, Panel Reviewer for the Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowships Program at the dissertation and postdoctoral level 17 March 2007 in Washington, D. C.; guest speaker at the Hiroshima Peace project 20 April 2007 at CSUEB.; “Racist Culture and Student Failure: The Case of the Oakland Unified School District,” 7th International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations Amsterdam, Holland, June 07.

 

March 2007
Laurie Price, professor of anthropology, presented her paper, “California’s Solar Initiative 2006: What Can Anthropology Contribute?” at the Society of Applied Anthropology meeting in Tampa, FL.

 

 

 

March 2007; Summer 2006
Laura Nelson, associate department chair/assistant professor of anthropology, published the book chapter, “South Korean Consumer Nationalism: Women, Children, Credit and Other Perils,” was published in Summer 2006 in Sheldon Garon and Patricia Maclachlan, eds., Consumer Culture and its Discontent ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press), and she presented early results of her low-income women research at the Society for Applied Anthropology in Tampa, FL in March in a paper entitled, “Microenterprise Update: Long-term Narratives.”

March 2007
Barbara Paige, chair/professor of ethnic studies, has published the article “The Difference, Power, and Discrimination (DPD) Seminar: A Pedagogical Model for Negotiating Difference” in the anthology, Teaching for Change: The Difference, Power, and Discrimination Model, edited by Jun Xing, Judith Li, Larry Roper and Susan Shaw (Chapter Four, pp. 49-64, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2007). The article grew out of her experience as Director of the DPD Program (Oregon State University), a program that training faculty across the university to develop diversity classes (1995 and 1997).

March 2007
William Alnor, assistant professor of communication, won a significant freedom of speech court case in California after a controversial Christian ministry filed a defamation law suit against him in 2005 over an article he wrote exposing a religious organization’s alleged deceptive fundraising practices. The California Superior Court ruled that the organization, The Christian Research Institute (CRI) and its host “The Bible Answer Man,” Hank Hanegraaff, violated California legislation by initiating a Strategic Lawsuit Against Participating Party suit against Alnor. Hanegraaff and CRI were ordered to pay all legal fees. Details are at: http://tinyurl.com/3a84xj. This article also links to the court’s ruling.

February, 2007; Summer 2006
Ulises Alcala, costume shop manager and theatre and dance lecturer, was on the design panel for Region VIII of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Cedar City, Utah. He directed “Scapin, the Cheat” for Aces Wild and The Highland Summer Theatre here at CSUEB in the summer of 2006. The show eventually traveled to Scotland where it was part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

 

January 2007; Summer 2006
Isaac Catt, chair/professor of communication, has, since coming to CSUEB in July 2006, published two articles in juried international journals. He was also Guest Editor for a special issue of an international interdisciplinary journal, The American Journal of Semiotics, Vol 22, 1-4, a special issue on Pierre Bourdieu. He has just completed a manuscript on cultural dialogue for the International Journal of Communication, which the editors solicited him to write. He has begun a co-edited book (with Dr. Eicher-Catt) entitled, “Communicology: The New Science of Discourse.” The editors of Fairleigh Dickinson University Press invited Dr. Catt and Dr. Eicher-Catt to do this book.

Summer-Fall 2006
Thomas Hird, chair/professor of theatre and dance, co-authored an article on stage technology of the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Production, Lights, and Sound News Magazine. He also produced “Scapin the Cheat” for Aces Wild Theatre.