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Monday, December 6, 2010

Beyond the Average Divorce, by Professor David Demo


Divorce is frequently in the news as we learn about the new demographics of divorced couples or read about celebrity divorce cases. Quite recently, The Huffington Post even started a new section on its blog devoted to divorce. But what is typical when it comes to divorce? In his new book, UNCG Professor David Demo, Human Development and Family Studies, posits that there is no "average" divorce and explores the diversity of how people experience the dissolution of a marriage.

According to the publisher's webiste, Beyond the Average Divorce "provides marriage and family scholars and students a rich depiction of how children and adults of all ages respond to diverse divorce experiences. Rather than emphasizing means and averages in looking at 'typical' family reactions to divorce, authors David H. Demo and Mark A. Fine (University of Missouri Columbia) emphasize variability and change over time in the pre-divorce, divorce, and post-divorce process."

The book explores in depth what a family might look like both before and after a divorce, and how divorce is experienced as much more than a single transition. As the authors describe in the book's introduction, "There has been a strong tendency in previous work to treat divorce and other family structure changes in a static manner (i.e., either they happen or they do not; an individual either is in a single-parent family or is not), whereas the more complex reality (and more difficult problem to research) is that children and parents tend to experience a variety of changes in family composition over time."

The book concludes with recommendations for future studies and a consideration of the policy implications of the research.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Check out these press releases about faculty authors



Check out the press releases on the following authors! Dr. Omar Ali, African American Studies writes about black populism in the post-Reconstruction South. Dr. Bob Wineburg, Social Work, describes the unlikely friendship between a Jewish professor from New York state and an African-American trucking manager from Charleston,SC, and the success story of a grassroots nonprofit, the Welfare Reform Liaison Project, founded and grounded in Greensboro. And Dr. Geoffrey Baym, Media Studies, is in the news again as his book wins a political communications prize.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Who Owns School--New Book by Kelly Ritter

In Who Owns School: Authority, Students, and Online Discourse, Dr. Kelly Ritter, Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition, explores the online forums in which college students discuss their learning experiences. Dr. Ritter argues that there are three fundamental ways in which the Internet has changed the relationship between students and educators:

1) "The Internet has changed the relationship between students and texts, altering how they read, how they value the act of reading, and how this affects or is affected by the texts themselves" (4).

2) "The Internet has changed how students view writing, and how they define 'writing' versus 'authorship,' which are no longer viewed as inextricably linked" (4).

3) "The Internet has changed the relationship between students and teachers--specifically the methods by which students value and evaluate teaching, and how that information might now be disseminated publicly to other students, so as to make public what most educators prefer to think of as a private, local act of intellectual rather than commodified, free-market exchange" (4).

Check out Campus Weekly's recent interview with Dr. Ritter for her take on sites like Rate My Professor and others that students frequent.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color


Professor Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll's recent book, Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color has been receiving a lot of attention. Leimenstoll, who teaches in the Interior Architecture program, co-authored the book with Patricia Phillips Marshall, curator of decorative arts for the N.C. Executive Mansion and the N.C. Museum of History. The book focuses on Thomas Day (1801-61),a free man of color from Milton, North Carolina. Long admired as a furniture maker, Leimenstoll examines his architectural woodwork, still found today in many Greek Revival homes in Caswell County. The book also documents how Day was able to succeed in the antebellum South.

UNCG's press release on the book can be read at here, but also be sure to catch the interview on "The State of Things" and the review in The New York Times.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Faculty Book Talk on Monday, October 18-"The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art"


Join Ann Millett-Gallant on Monday, October 18, as she discusses and shows images from her recently published book, The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art. The talk is scheduled for 3 pm in the Gatewood Studio Arts Center, rm. 204, with a reception following. Dr. Millett-Gallant is a lecturer in UNCG's Department of Art as well as an instructor in the Bachelor of Liberal Studies program.

Read what people are saying about the book:

“There is little if any systematic work on the intersection between art history and disability studies. When a theory is broached, it usually comes down to the accusation that art has participated in the history of discrimination against disabled people. Millett-Gallant is able to discuss troubling aspects concerning disability in the history of art, and yet she finds a way to describe how these same troubling aspects resist discrimination. Hers is a complex idea of aesthetic representation, and her analysis does not fail to respect this complexity but, rather, dwells in it by providing a dense articulation of works of art, their allusions, and meanings. The book is of critical importance. It is the first of its kind.”—Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan

“An important contribution to the growing field of disability studies, Millett-Gallant brings art history into contact and collaboration with the perspectives of disabled models, artists, and critics. A must-read for everybody who is interested in cultural representations of disability.”—Petra Kuppers, University of Michigan and author of The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Faculty Book Talks Scheduled in the Multicultural Resource Center


We want to help get the word out about all local faculty book talks, so if you or a colleague has a talk scheduled, drop us a line!

The Multicultural Resource Center, part of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, is continuing its tradition of highlighting faculty research and has announced its schedule of faculty book talks for 2010/2011. All talks take place in the Center, which is located on the first floor of the Elliott University Center.

Unfortunately, we missed the first talk last week when Dr. Tara Green of the African American Studies Program discussed A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives on African American Men. But here's the list of the MRC's upcoming talks we hope to get to:

October 5, 2010 at 4 pm: Dr. Mark Elliott, Department of History, discussing Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson and Undaunted Radical: The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée.

November 9, 2010 at 4 pm: Dr. Andreas Lixl, Department of German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese Studies, discussing Memories of Carolinian Immigrants: Autobiographies, Diaries, and Letters from Colonial Times to the Present.

January 25, 2011 at 4 pm: Dr. Svi Shapiro, Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, Strangers in the Land: Pedagogy, Modernity, and Jewish Identity.

April 5, 2011 at 4 pm: Dr. Sally Ann Ferguson, Department of English, Nineteenth-Century Black Women's Literary Emergence: Evolutionary Spirituality, Sexuality, and Identity.

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Global Cybercrime Industry


In The Global Cybercrime Industry: Economic, Institutional and Strategic Perspectives, Dr. Nir Kshetri an Associate Professor in UNCG's Bryan School of Business and Economics, explores the world of cybercrime. Dr. Kshetri sets out the five main goals of his research in the book's preface:

1) "to examine economic processes associated with the cybercrime industry . . . [and] help us better understand cybercrime as a form of economic activity and . . . inform the development of strategies for crime prevention."

2) "to understand institutional processes in the cybercrime industry."

3) "to provide insights into the entrepreneurial aspect of firms engaged in cyber-criminal activities."

4) "to explain the global variation in the pattern of cybercrimes . . . economic factors facing cyber-criminal and cybercrime victims are significantly different in developing and developed countries."

5) "to understand threats and countermeasures taken by key actors in this industry."

Dr. Kshetri is also well-known on campus for his teaching and was the recipient of the Bryan School Teaching Excellence Award in 2008.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Postcommunism, Postmodernism, and the Global Imagination


English Department Professor Christian Moraru edited this volume which explores "how post-Cold War accelerated globalization has been reshaping Central and East European literatures, cultures, and theoretical-ideological debates" (Moraru, V). Professor Moraru also contributes an essay on Nostalgia, a novel by Romanian author Mircea Cartarescu. The volume, which features essays by an international group of scholars, also includes an introduction by Aaron Chandler, of the English Department, and an essay by Phyllis Whitman Hunter of the History Department.

For more information on Professor Moraru, please visit his website.

Friday, September 10, 2010

From Cronkite to Colbert by Dr. Geoffrey Baym




From the publisher's website: "In a time when increasing numbers of people are tuning out the nightly news and media consumption is falling, the late-night comedians have become some of the most important newscasters in the country. From Cronkite to Colbert explains why. It examines an historical path that begins at the height of the network age with Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, when the evening news was considered the authoritative record of the day s events and forged our assumptions about what the news is, or should be. The book then winds its way through the breakdown of that paradigm of real news and into its reinvention in the unlikely form of such popularized shows as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. From Cronkite to Colbert makes the case that rather than fake news, those shows should be understood as a new kind of journalism, one that has the potential to save the news and reinvigorate the conversation of democracy in today's society."

Geoffrey Baym is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at UNCG. To learn more about this book and Dr. Baym, please check out his website.