Student Spotlight: Iliana Anapolsky Earns Scholarship to Summer Institute

Junior Russian and East European Studies / Political Science major Iliana Anapolsky was recently selected to receive the Russian and East European Institute Scholarship for Summer 2016. Iliana will use this award of more than $5000 to take summer intensive classes in Russian at the Indiana University Summer Language Workshop (Bloomington, IN). 


Established in 1950, the program is one of the oldest in the country--and one of the most prestigious. Over the years, the Summer Language Workshop has enabled thousands of students and professionals to intensively study languages critical to academic research, economic development, human rights, diplomacy, national security, cultural exchange, scientific advancement, and other global issues.

Upon graduation, Iliana plans to apply to law schools and eventually to become a lawyer specializing in international law. During the Winter 2015 semester, she travelled abroad to Poland and the Czech Republic, where she studied at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland).

Recently, Iliana participated in the CoLA Symposium, where she passionately talked about her majors to the audience of BU students. She is an active member of Russian Conversation Club and BU Linguistic League. In addition, in April, Iliana was an organizer and a presenter at the Tongue Fest, an event that brought together students interested in matters linguistic and intercultural.

Dr. Mykola Polyuha, assistant professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures, provided this entry. 

White House "Correspondence" in Summer US Gov't Class

Two students from Dr. Sheng Ding's summer US Government class recently received letters from the White House in response to a writing assignment. Says Dr. Ding: "I have always encouraged my students to apply their classroom learning to real-world politics and develop their independent thinking and communication skills. In my US Gov’t class, I require my students to complete an essay 'Letter to President Obama.'"

The assignment asks students to "Write a letter to President Obama telling him what he has done right and what he has done wrong in his five-and-a-half-year presidency." Students are encouraged to mail their completed essays to the White House.

English major Mary Heffner wrote to the president about the conditions of Veterans Administration Hospitals, based on the experiences of her brother, a Vietnam-era veteran. President Obama's response reads in part as follows: "Where we find misconduct, it will be punished. Those responsible for manipulating or falsifying records at the VA-and those who tolerated it-are being held accountable, and some have been relieved of their duties. At the same time, we are working to get every one of our veterans off wait lists so they receive the care they have earned."

Ashley Rivera, a student in the Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology program, wrote to the president expressing her concerns about the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare," welfare reform, and the NSA scandal, writing in part, "... my own government doesn't trust its own citizens enough to let them have their own privacy to the luxury of the Internet and social media. In my eyes, this is in direct violation of the fourth amendment ..."

Thanks to Mary Heffner, Ashley Rivera, and Dr. Sheng Ding for providing the above.

Political Science students visit PA's Coal Region

Dr. Peter Doerschler's First-Year Seminar on the PA Coal Region, which looks at the history and culture along with recent social and political issues of the coal region, went on a field trip on Saturday, Nov. 9 through the southern and eastern coal fields that stretch as far south as Pottsville up to Hazelton, PA.

Students are standing with tour guide Bob Zimmerman (Class of 1968) at Eckley,
courtesy of Dr. Doerschler

Along the way, Doerschler and his students took a walking tour of Mount Carmel and toured Centralia, where an underground mine fire has been raging for over 50 years, forcing all but a handful of the 2,000 or so residents to abandon the town.

Students also discussed religious and ethnic communities with Fr.Frank Karwacki in Mount Carmel, learned about the mining history of Shenandoah from several local citizens, and took a walking tour of Eckley Miners’ Village in Eckley, PA, a former “patch town” that has been converted into a historical site where visitors can observe how miners lived and worked in the mid- and late 1800s.

Students with Fr. Karwacki (Class of 1967)
and Kyle Grybos (Class of 2010) in Mount Carmel,
courtesy of Dr. Doerschler

Human Rights Activist Ajamu Baraka to Speak

Liberal Arts notes

• Dr. Chris Podeschi, Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice, was recently featured in an article on the Mother Jones website titled "How Do You Teach Your Kids About Climate Change?" His video interview is partway down the page.
• An article by recent Political Science grad Zachary K. Pearce titled "What Lies Ahead for the Modern Dragon" appears on the Huffington Post website. 
• Dr. M. Safa Saraçoglu, Department of History, was an invited speaker at the 16th Annual International Workshop of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Israel Science Foundation (June 4-6, 2012, Beer-Sheva, Israel). The title of the workshop was "Socio-Legal Perspectives on the Passage to Modernity in and Beyond the Middle East." He presented a paper titled “Historicizing Düstur: A Preliminary Look at the Early Compendia of Laws in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Empire.” The workshop was discussed in an op-ed piece in one of the most circulated English dailies in Israel, the Jerusalem Post. The participants' response to the op-ed article was published on June 11, 2012.
• Dr. Amarilis Hidalgo de Jesus, Department of Languages and Cultures, recently published the critical anthology La escritura de mujeres en Puerto Rico a finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI (The Writings of Puerto Rican Female Writers at the end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st Century) (editor and co-author). The anthology is a collection of essays written by Latin American studies scholars and Dr. Hidalgo de Jesus (Part III: six essays)  teaching in American and Puerto Rican universities, among them Dr. Patricia Dorame-Holoviak, also of the Department of Languages and Cultures. 

CoLA Scholarship

The Diplomat, " the premier international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region," recently published an essay by Dr. Sheng Ding of the department of Political Science about President Obama's China policy. The article, "Don't Worry About the China Bashing," discusses "China bashing" as an election-year phenomenon.

* * *

Dr. M. Safa Saraçoğlu of the department of History has been awarded an academic-year residency fellowship to conduct research on legal reform in the Ottoman Empire at the Institute for Advanced Study at Nantes, France, for 2012-2013. His recently published scholarship includes “Resilient Notables: Looking at the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire from the Local Level” in Contested Spaces of Nobility in Early Modern Europe, edited by Charles Lipp and Matt Romaniello and published by Ashgate (2011). He also published an article titled “Refugees, Biopolitics and Cattle Theft: Operation of Ottoman Governmentality in Nineteenth Century Vidin” in Toplum ve Bilim 121 (2011).

* * *

Dr. Jing Luo of the Department of Languages and Cultures has been been recommended for  Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Full Tester Certification in Chinese by The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Dr. Luo one of a very select group of language professionals who has demonstrated the ability to administer and rate oral proficiency interviews with a high degree of reliability through a rigorous certification process.

* * *

Dr. Mark Decker of the Department of English just published an article titled “(Re)model(ed) Towns and the Remodeling of American Ideology:  The Expansion of Middle-Class Hegemony in Allan Pinkerton’s The Model Town and the Detectives and Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest” in the spring 2012 issue of the journal Clues. The article argues that Hammett and Pinkerton’s novels helped shape the way the American middle class conceptualized itself.  Pinkerton’s nineteenth century text does this by portraying detectives as members of the propertied bourgeoisie while Hammett’s twentieth century text portrays detectives as the kind of trained experts corporations were increasingly dependent on.

CoLA Notes

Remember Hannah Karena Jones? The May 2011 graduate just announced on her blog that she has signed her first book deal--with Arcadia Publishing. The book, Byberry State Hospital, will be part of their popular Images of America series. Congratulations, Hannah!

***

On March 11, 2012, Dr. Mark Jelinek, professor in the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance, conducted the Southwest Symphony Orchestra's performance of works by Alexander Borodin and Johannes Brahms in his hometown of Hobbs, New Mexico. Dr. Jelinek has served as artistic director of the Southwest Symphony for seventeen seasons; he also conducts the Bloomsburg University Community Orchestra and the Bloomsburg University Chamber Orchestra.

The orchestra's performance featured violinist Lisa Liu, daughter of our respected former dean, Dr. Hsien-Tung Liu.

***

Featured on BU's Internship web page is History and Political Science major Matt Albertson, who recently completed an internship at the National Museum of the United State Navy. The internship was offered under the auspices of the The Washington Center. He writes, "My tasks in the education department at the U.S. Navy Museum showed me how exciting and fulfilling a job at a museum may be."

Poli Sci Grad Leads, Writes

December 2011 College of Liberal Arts top honor graduate Zachary Pearce is putting his Political Science degree to use. He's the youngest-ever member of the Board of Directors of the Delaware Valley School District and the author of two recent articles published on the Huffington Post. Zach's articles can be found here and here.

Here's an excerpt from his most recent piece:

If true reform is to happen in our locally-structured educational system, then it is going to take a real push by all the stakeholders involved: parents, students, teachers, unions, administrators, school boards, and community leaders. These stakeholders can be the true super heroes we need in the United States. I refuse to believe that America is in a state of decline; however, if we do not make real strides towards better educating our students, then that is the reality we face.

Zach graduated from Delaware Valley High School with honors in 2008 and from Bloomsburg University summa cum laude with a BA in Political Science in December 2011.

During his college career, Zach was an active part of the community both in Pike County and in Bloomsburg, holding leadership positions in several different organizations.

CoLA Notes

 A just-published study of children’s literature co-authored by Chris Podeschi, assistant professor of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice at Bloomsburg University, is covered in today's USA Today. The examination of settings in children’s books finds that wilderness and nature are losing ground to man-made settings.  Podeschi and J. Allen Williams of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln discovered the trend while surveying the 296 Caldecott Award-winning children’s books written between 1938 to 2008.  Williams and Podeschi’s research is published in February’s Sociological Inquiry.

***


The American Library Association has named Michael C. Hickey's 2011 book, Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution, Fighting Words, as a RUSA Outstanding Reference Source for 2012.   The ALA RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) award is given to 10 books a year, from among all "reference" books published in all fields. Last year, Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution was given the Outstanding Academic Title designation by Choice, the ALA book review journal; Choice's reviewer described the book as "an amazing collection." Michael Hickey is a professor of History at BU. 



***

Lynda Michaels, Director of Alumni Affairs, provided this link to the announcement of the memorial service for James Walter Percey Jr., who retired from the Political Science department in 2002. A full obituary is included in the link. He is remembered by students and colleagues as a popular instructor.