Faculty NotesClassical Studies Professor Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow received the American Philological Association Outreach Award for the program Ancient Greek Studies in the Schools, taught at Brandeis for teachers (K–12 in all subjects) in the Greater Boston area. Professor Leonard C. Muellner’s The Anger of Achilles: Menis in Greek Epic was recently reprinted in paperback. Professor Cheryl L. Walker recently published Hostages in Republican Rome. English and American Literature Professor Caren Irr recently coedited On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization. Professor Sue Lanser recently completed a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Professor John Plotz was awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship for 2005–06. Professor Dawn Skorczewski recently
published Teaching One Moment at a Time:
Disruption and Repair in the Classroom. German, Russian, and Asian Languages
and Literature Professor Sabine Von Mering (with George Ross) received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service to sponsor programs on the Young Berlin Republic and Responsibilities of a Mature Democracy. Professor David Powelstock recently published Becoming Mikhail Lermontov: The Ironies of Romantic Individualism in Nicholas I’s Russia. Professor Robin Feuer Miller recently appeared on National Public Radio’s What’s the Word? to discuss Dostoevsky’s fools. She was also interviewed for two documentaries, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, for the Biography Channel. Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Professor Marc Brettler ‘78, PhD‘86, received a Jewish Book Award for The Jewish Study Bible, coedited with Adele Berlin. He also authored How to Read the Bible. He has discussed these books and their implications in a variety of op-eds, and appeared on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Professor Bernadette Brooten is serving as Croghan Bicentennial Visiting Professor in Biblical and Early Christian Studies at Williams College. Her op-eds on the Vatican statement on gay men in seminaries and on the election of Pope Benedict XVI were widely published. Professor ChaeRan Freeze recently edited Polin Volume 18, Jewish Women in Eastern Europe, with Paula Hyman and Antony Polonsky. She also received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Laurie Foundation. Professor Kanan Makiya returned to Brandeis after working on constitutional and remembrance issues in Iraq as founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation, and writing an updated edition of his The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Professors Vardit Ringvald, Bonit Porath, Esther Shorr, and Sara Hascal (with Yaron Peleg) completed Brandeis Modern Hebrew, which has instantly become the standard college Hebrew textbook in the United States. Professor Jonathan Sarna ‘75 was selected by
the Forward newspaper as one of the “Fifty
Most Influential American Jews.” His American Judaism: A History earned many
honors, including the Jewish Book of the Year
Award. He spoke widely across North America
on the 350th anniversary of American Judaism. Philosophy Professor Marion Smiley received a grant from the European Union to pursue a cross-country study of normative foundations of the welfare state. Professor Palle Yourgrau’s A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein has been translated into many languages.
Professor Richard Lansing was elected managing editor of Dante Studies and was named editor of Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America. A Geography of Hard Times: Narratives about Travel to South America, 1780–1849, by Ángela Pérez-Mejía, was recently published. Professor Paola Servino wrote (with Mary
Green) and performed the audio course Italian III. New Faculty Lutf Al-Kibsi, Arabic language Matthew Fraleigh (PhD, Harvard), East Asian literature and culture Marion Hourdequin (PhD, Duke), environmental ethics and philosophy of biology Joseph Lumbard (PhD, Yale), classical Islam Sarah McGrath (PhD, MIT), ethics and metaphysics Marisol Negron, Latino studies Harleen Singh (PhD, University of California, San Diego), South Asian literature and women’s studies |
It’s one thing to learn about history, and quite another to actually touch it. That’s the idea behind the new Classical Studies Ancient Artifact Study Center, located in Golding 15. The collection of more than eight hundred objects— some dating back to 1500 BCE—has been in storage at The Rose Art Museum for the last twenty years, but now will be more easily accessible to students, faculty, and others. “You can’t go to a museum and touch these types of things,” says Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, chair of the Classical Studies Department and the unoffi cial curator of the study center. “Now, students will be able to put on rubber gloves, hold the artifacts, and study them. Such experiential learning adds a valuable dimension to seeing something in a museum.” The collection includes everything from vases, lamps, and jewelry to pots, Holding History weapons, and tongue depressors. The largest number of objects comes from the Graeco-Roman period. Not only will students have the opportunity to develop the skills required to research objects, but they will discover the relevance of the piece in everyday life. “I want them to know how this was used in antiquity,” Koloski-Ostrow says. “I want them to get immersed in the object.” Koloski-Ostrow packed up the items for storage twenty years ago when a suitable display space could not be found. A few months back, she was back at it, readying the collection for the journey to Golding. “It was a little like an archaeological excavation— you don’t know what you’ll fi nd inside the packing material,” Koloski-Ostrow says. Koloski-Ostrow hesitated to put a value on the collection. “To us,” she says, “it’s priceless. It’s a fascinating collection, and I want to get the students excited about it.” |
