Category Archives: collaboration & leadership

New KSAS women faculty lunch today

collaboration & leadership, Events, Institutional Climate

Many thanks to Melanie Mossman and her colleagues at the KSAS deans’ office for arranging an invigorating gathering for new women faculty today. We were delighted that Betsy Bryan, vice dean for humanities and social sciences, could host the lunch.

fleming, mikulski, weaver april 2018

Looking forward to seeing everyone next week at the Faculty Happy Hour, also sponsored by the deans’ office and graciously arranged by Ilene McCoy.

The happy hour is Thursday, May 3, 4-5:30, in the Mudd Atrium. Bring a friend! Faculty from Whiting & Krieger of all genders, ranks, and tracks are welcome.

Children are welcome too! We will have jumbo-size Legos and coloring supplies. Our casual, entirely un-enforced discussion topic is Student Evaluations of Teaching.

Professors Karen Fleming, Barbara Mikulski, and Vesla Weaver.

Public knowledge: “Black Womanhood” syllabus & women’s studies on wikipedia

collaboration & leadership, teaching

Black Womanhood syllabusCongratulations to professors Jessica Marie Johnson & Martha S. Jones, whose public syllabus for their course “Black Womanhood” is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education! The syllabus is on Professor Johnson’s blog,  Diaspora Hypertext.

Here’s an excerpt from the Chronicle article:

“Within days of the syllabus being posted, some commenters suggested readings to add. . . . Since then, the syllabus has spread beyond academe. . . . Some people outside of higher education have expressed surprise that such a course exists at all. Some said they wish the subject had been taught in grade school. Successfully reaching a broader audience, Jones said, is ‘powerful stuff.'”

Please note also that the Faculty Forum is back, and Professor Jones is one of the presenters on Monday, April 9. Hope you can come!

Also, “Women’s-Studies Students Across the Nation Are Editing Wikipedia” features an interview with Allison Kimmich, executive director of the National Women’s Studies Association, about a partnership between NWSA and the Wiki Education Foundation. Kimmich says:

“Wikipedia is the fifth-most-visited website in the world. It’s a major source of information globally. . . . There is pretty obviously a gender bias in terms of featured articles on Wikipedia: The most numerous featured articles are articles on war and militarism. And that’s a particular view of the world that I think women’s- and gender-studies students can contribute to correcting and balancing. The other thing I’ve heard when I hear faculty talk about having participated in this initiative is that students are incredibly motivated by doing this work because they can see it has a real impact.”

Image credit: http://dh.jmjafrx.com/teaching/black-womanhood/

 

Emily Wilson, the Odyssey, and “the human cost of differences of mind”

collaboration & leadership

. . . “Throughout her translation of the ‘Odyssey,’ Wilson has made small but, it turns out, radical changes to the way many key scenes of the epic are presented — ‘radical’ in that, in 400 years of versions of the poem, no translator has made the kinds of alterations Wilson has, changes that go to truing a text that, as she says, has through translation accumulated distortions that affect the way even scholars who read Greek discuss the original. These changes seem, at each turn, to ask us to appreciate the gravity of the events that are unfolding, the human cost of differences of mind.”

Wyatt Mason, “The First Woman to Translate the Odyssey into English” (NYT Magazine 11/2/2017