An essay by Anastasia Pease, senior lecturer in English, was published in Quintessential Wilde. “Two Mysterious Portraits: Gogol and Wilde on Art and Artists,” is a comparative literature project that focuses on two stories of haunted portraits — Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” and Nikolai Gogol’s “The Mysterious Portrait.” Through a close textual analysis, the essay explores how Gogol’s and Wilde’s stories reflect on the power of art, the role of artists, the relationship between art and money, and the mysteries of talent and inspiration. Pease will also give a talk, “The Many Words for Love: A Literary Journey,” at the Torch Club in Schenectady on Feb. 9.
Angela Committo, visiting assistant professor of classics, presented a paper, “Extensive Survey in the Region Around Vani,” at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Toronto. She detailed the results of an archaeological survey of the landscape around Vani, one of the most important ancient sites in the western Republic of Georgia.
An article by Stacie Raucci, associate professor of classics, was published in the volume, “Starz Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen.” The piece was titled “Social Dynamics and Liminal Spaces.”
Jillmarie Murphy, associate professor of English, was recently awarded a Maine Women Writers Collection Research Grant. She will travel to the University of New England's Josephine S. Abplanalp Library, where she will conduct archival research on her project, "Gendered Place Attachments and Nature as a Restorative Environment in Celia Thaxter's Among the Isles of Shoals." During her stay, Murphy will also visit Thaxter's childhood home on Appledore Island, the largest of the Isles of Shoals, located off the Maine/New Hampshire coast.
Scott Kirkton, associate professor of biology, was an author on a poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in New Orleans. “The Secret Societies Living Within an Acorn: Temnothorax Ant Colonies Visualized with X-ray Microtomography" was a collaborative project with researchers from Providence College, using Union’s new micro-CT machine.
Two faculty from the Department of Physics and Astronomy presented at the January 2017 American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas. Rebecca Koopmann '89, professor and chair of the department, presented, "Star Formation in Undergraduate ALFALFA Team Galaxy Groups and Clusters," and Gregory Hallenbeck, visiting assistant professor, presented, "The Gas in Virgo’s 'Red and Dead' Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies."
Submit your news to gowanc@union.edu.