Dee Oseroff-Varnell, an adjunct assistant professor in communication, was recently featured in the Winston-Salem Journal. The article focused on the rustic home she shares with her husband, Bob, in Lewisville.

Oseroff-Varnell is the director of public speaking and is an active participant in the Teaching and Learning Center, presenting workshops on oral presentations and classroom skills for faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Before teaching at Wake Forest, Oseroff-Varnell won the World Professional Ice Dance Championships and toured for four years as a principal performer with Holiday on Ice in Europe and South America.

Read more in the Winston-Salem Journal »

Mary Dalton

Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder published “Teacher TV: Iconic Images of Teachers on American Television” in How “the Teacher” Is Presented in Literature, History, Religion, and the Arts: Cross-cultural Analyses of a Stereotype, eds. Raymond McCluskey and Stephen Mckinney. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 225-236, 2013.

Mary M. Dalton also published the article “Conquer or Connect: Power, Patterns, and the Gendered Narrative” in The Journal of Film and Video, Volume 65, Nos. 1-2, Spring/Summer 2013, pp. 23-29.

Sandy Dickson, Cindy Hill, Cara Pilson, Mary Dalton and Peter Gilbert hosted the screening of their documentary “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” here at Wake Forest. They also screened “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” at The Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman University; at the 16th UK Jewish Film Festival in London; and at the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival in Hong Kong and Macau.

Nate French and the Magnolia Scholars program received a $6.5 million gift from Dr. Steven and Becky Scott (read more).

Steven Giles, Pankratz, M.M., Ringwalt, C., Jackson-Newsom, J., Hansen, W.B., Bishop, D., Dusenbury, L., & Gottfredson, N. worked on “The Role of Teacher Communicator Style in the Delivery of a Middle School Substance Use Prevention Program,” which will appear in Journal of Drug Education, 42 (4). Continue reading »

Congratulations to Todd Johnson, president of WFU Charlotte Center Board of Visitors, whose proposal entitled “Regenerative Medicine: Current Concepts and Changing trends” has been funded by the NC Biotechnology Center.
 
Congratulations to Ron Von Burg, assistant professor of communication, whose proposal entitled “Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Institute” has been funded by the US Department of State.

The following faculty had writings published in April 2013:

Bardon, Adrian, & Heather Dyke, Eds. (Philosophy). A Companion to the Philosophy of Time (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series). Wiley-Blackwell. April 2013.

Fisher, Louis, & Katy J. Harriger. (Politics & International Affairs). American Constitutional Law, 10^th ed. Carolina Academic Press. March 2013.

Hyde, Michael J., & James A. Herrick, Eds. (Communication). After the Genome: A Language for Our Biotechnological Future (Studies in Rhetoric and Religion series). Baylor University Press. April 2013.

Pressley, Lauren, Craig Fansler, Kevin Gilbertson, Rebecca Petersen, Kaeley McMahan, Gretchen Edwards, & Audra Eagle Yun, Eds. (Z. Smith Reynolds Library). Research like a Librarian: Accessing Information in the 21^st Century. WFU Digital Publishing. April 2013.

Whaples, Robert M., & Randall E. Parker, Eds. (Economics). The Routledge Handbook of Modern Economic History (Routledge International Handbooks). Routledge. March 2013.

Three faculty members — Jeanne Simonelli, Ananda Mitra and Polly Black — received awards on April 11 at the annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards banquet, co-hosted by the Entrepreneurship Society and the Center for Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship (CICE).

Read a full summary of the event, which celebrates the achievements of students, faculty and staff, and the keynote speech by Jean Case, CEO of The Case Foundation »

Simonelli, a professor of anthropology, received the Russell D. and Elfriede Hobbs Faculty Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Simonelli taught one of the first cross-campus entrepreneurship classes called Free Trade, Fair Trade: Independent Entrepreneurs in the Global Market. She also took the entrepreneurial torch to Nicaragua and helped to teach the principles of entrepreneurship to small business owners there.

Mitra, a professor of communication, received the David and Leila Farr Award for Course Development and Research. Mitra has published a series of 10 books on the effects of digital technology on the world and coined a new term, the NARB, an item of personal information posted online. Mitra and his new digital technologies are shaping everyday life practices from how we teach to the way in which the marginalized can gain a voice through the use of Internet.

Black is an instructor in the School of Business, an affiliate professor with the Documentary Film Program and the assistant vice president and director of the CICE. She won the Faculty Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the students for the impact she is making on their lives through her teaching and mentoring. One student said, “She has given so many students the opportunity to pursue their dreams while developing a skill set no other department at Wake Forest can teach you. Through her I’ve learned to be a better leader, visionary, and creative thinker.”

Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder published “Teacher TV: Iconic Images of Teachers on American Television” in How “the Teacher” Is Presented in Literature, History, Religion, and the Arts: Cross-cultural Analyses of a Stereotype eds. Raymond McCluskey and Stephen Mckinney. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 225-236, March 15, 2013.

Dalton is a professor of communication, film studies, and women’s and gender studies and the co-director of the Documentary Film Program.

As the N.C. General Assembly considers compensation for victims of a state-run forced-sterilization program, Wake Forest will host “Scarred for Life: The Legacy of Forced Sterilization at Home and Abroad,” April 4-5 in Annenberg Forum in Carswell Hall on the Reynolda Campus.

The interdisciplinary event is sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies, the Journalism Program, the Office of the Provost, the Center for Bioethics, Health and Society, the Department of History, the School of Law, the Department of Politics and International Affairs, the Department of Communication, the Film Studies Program, the Center for International Studies, the Documentary Film Program, the Humanities Institute, and the Writing Program.

The conference will examine the history of the eugenics movement and its expression in North Carolina and Central Europe, and examine what lessons can be learned from the past as the world heads into the genomic revolution.

Genes for breast cancer, kidney disease and mental illness are being identified. How will this information be used? How might knowledge of an individual’s DNA profile affect reproductive decisions, medical insurance and employment? Continue reading »

Mary Dalton published “Conquer or Connect: Power, Patterns, and the Gendered Narrative” in the Journal of Film and Video, Volume 65, Nos. 1-2, Spring/Summer 2013, pp. 23-29. Dalton is a professor of communication, film studies, and women’s and gender studies at Wake Forest, as well as the co-director of the Documentary Film Program.

The Provost and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions invite faculty and staff to Thursdays at the Porter B. Byrum Welcome and Admissions Center on March 7.

A wine and cheese reception will run from 4-4:30 p.m., followed by a program from 4:30-5:15 p.m. that will feature Laura Aull, Michaelle Browers and Alessandra Von Burg.

Aull, an assistant professor of English, will discuss her current book project, “Genre-based Rhetorical and Linguistic Approaches to University Writing,” which proposes a combined social and language-level framework for analyzing academic discourse. Aull will especially discuss this proposed framework in light of patterns of overstatement and understatement in early university writing.

Browers, an associate professor of politics & international affairs, will discuss her use of the “Reacting to the Past” pedagogy and how role playing and historical simulation can provide a means of exploring classic texts in the history of ideas.

Von Burg, an assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in communication and interim director of American ethnic studies, will discuss the “Where Are You From?” Project, a series of video interviews about migration and mobility with citizens, residents, and immigrants who are part of Wake Forest and the surrounding community.

Atchison

Jarrod Atchison presented the papers “Open Source Evidence: An Analysis of the First Year”; “Spectrum of Interrogation: Developing a New Vocabulary for Affirmative Cases in Intercollegiate Policy Debate”; and “The Role of Evidence Production, Consumption and Communication in an Era of Digital Information.” Jarrod participated in the panel “Creating Community in Forensics: Roundtable Discussion with DOFs” and the Cross Examination Debate Association business meeting at the National Communication Association Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Michael D. Hazen participated in the panel “Celebrating the COMMunity of Japan-U.S. Communication Scholarship: Past, Present, and Future of Theory and Practice.” He also participated in the business meeting for the Eurasian Communication Association of North America division and chaired the Intercultural Competence and Variations in Cultural Patterning division at the National Communication Association Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Candyce Leonard published a review of the book “El teatro de los hermanos Álvarez Quintero” [The Theatre of the Alvarez Quintero Brothers] for the theatre journal Estreno 38.2 (2012): 128-130. She also organized and chaired a session titled “The Discourse of Time and Space in Contemporary Spanish Theatre” at the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference, Oct 18-20. She also presented the paper “Federico Garcia Lorca and Artistic Freedom: La casa de Bernarda Alba” in a session title “Spanish Theatre at the Global Crossroads” at the same conference.

Michael Hyde participated in the panel “Confronting the Hermeneutic Imaginary: Author Meets Critics”at the National Communication Association Conference in Orlando, Florida. He also published the book ‘Openings: Acknowledging Essential Moments in Human Communication’ (Baylor University Press, 2012). “Openings engages philosophy, science, the arts, theology, and popular culture, all to demonstrate the profound importance of the possibility of openness to the human experience. In every situation, Hyde contends, this posture of conscious openness to the individuals, events, and places that surround us has noticeable effects on the way we — and others — experience the reality of existence.”

Continue reading »