ACADEMIC INNOVATION

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Moses,

associate professor of religion, presented a paper at the 76th General Meeting of the Society of New Testament Studies (SNTS) in Leuven, Belgium on July 26, 2022.

The paper, titled “Disciplining

an Erring Believer: Matthew and Paul in Conversation,”

demonstrated the commonalities among early Christian approaches to dealing with offending members in believing communities.

The Society of New Testament Studies is an academic society founded in 1939 to advance the study of the New Testament internationally. To become a member, a scholar must be nominated by two current members of the Society. Members of the Society have made, and are expected to continue to make, creative and constructive contributions to New Testament studies in an international forum. Rev. Dr. Moses has been a member of SNTS since 2019. In June, Dr. Adam Winkel, associate professor of Spanish, presented a paper at and helped organize the 10th annual International Conference of the Hispanic Association for the Humanities (Asociación Hispánica de Humanidades or AHH).

The AHH is an academic and cultural nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Hispanic humanities in the United States and other countries. It organizes a biennial conference in collaboration with a Spanish university across different cities in Spain. This year’s conference was held at the Universidad de Málaga, in Málaga.

While attending the conference, Dr. Winkel presented a paper, titled “Fútbol y fascismo

en el cuento español de

los sesenta” (“Football and Fascism in Spanish Short Stories of the 1960s”) as part of a panel on authoritarianism in the Hispanic world.

He has also been treasurer of the AHH since 2017 and was on the organizing committee for AHH conferences in 2018 and 2022. In April, Dr. Claudine Davidshofer, assistant professor of religion and philosophy, traveled to Vancouver to give a presentation at the American Philosophical Society Conference. Her presentation focused on the work of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.

Dr. Davidshofer’s goal was to decode and gather together Kierkegaard’s various critiques of Hegel in order to analyze why he disagrees with Hegel’s dialectical method, and why his critiques are important for understanding both his and Hegel’s larger philosophical projects.

Since Hegel can be a bit difficult to follow, she brought a small whiteboard and dry-erase marker,

which she used to map out the logical structure of Hegel’s dialectical method and Kierkegaard’s critiques

as she spoke. This helped the audience follow along and give good feedback on her presentation. Dr. Davidshofer plans to incorporate that feedback into an article, titled “Kierkegaard’s Critique of Hegel’s Dialectical Method” by next spring.

In April, Director of the Spanish Program & Associate Professor, Dr. Hayden Carron, was invited to three events in the Dominican Republic.

First, Dr. Carron presented “The Historical Fiction in the Dominican Republic” at a conference hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. This lecture was wellattended by graduate students and university officials of the Humanities School.

Afterwards, he traveled to the Universidad Pontificia Madre y Maestra where he spoke to approximately 40 PhD candidates, along with professors and deans from the history and education departments, in a Q and A

session about his awardwinning novel “Orlando, humano y ajeno.”

Before departing the Dominican Republic, Dr. Carron was invited to read from his novel by the Centro Cultural de España as part of the Santo Domingo International Book Fair. In October, Dr. Laura Alexander added another book to her list of published accomplishments. Women

Writing Trauma in Literature

features 16 essayists who explore trauma, literary theory, and psychoanalysis in women’s writing from around the world.

Dr. Alexander, associate professor of English, began researching trauma and women writers in 2003. Since then, she has authored four books and written more than thirty articles appearing in books and journals. This most recent work brings together a collection of scholars who investigate traumatic experiences within the writings of authors such as Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Toni Morrison, Sedef Ecer, and Rupi Kaur. Dr. Alexander has plans for a second collection of essays to be published in 2023.

“This literature can be as healing for readers as for writers. Perhaps that is the true function and meaning of literature, to heal a wounded world and to heal ourselves.” - Dr. Laura Alexander

What are you reading?

Dr. Matthew Schneider, Associate Dean, Director of CITL, and professor of English shares his most recent read.

The Philosophy of Modern Song, by Bob Dylan. Simon and Schuster, 2022.

The title of Bob Dylan’s new book—his first since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016—is a bit misleading. Instead of offering a systematic analysis of popular music, Dylan explores the life lessons and practical wisdom contained in more than sixty songs from nineteenth-century lieder to contemporary country and rap. Entertaining and enlightening, The Philosophy of Modern Song confirms what many fans have always suspected: Dylan’s creativity is fueled by an astonishingly wide and deep appreciation for all forms of music.

Pressing Matters

Overlooking Robin Lake in Ameliasburgh, Ontario is an A-frame cottage known for its stories.

Built in 1957 by Canadian poet Al Purdy and his wife, the cottage is home to the Al Purdy A-frame Residency Program. For six months out of the year, selected poets are invited to be writers-in-residence for one to four weeks at a time. During each residency, writers are given space and time to dive deep into their personal projects while being surrounded by Purdy’s books and records.

This year, HPU Associate Professor of English Dr. Charmaine Cadeau was chosen to be the writer-in-residence from June 12 - July 1. For three weeks, Dr. Cadeau worked towards her goal of completing her manuscript. She drafted 25 new poems, fully revised five poems, and created a body of working notes from reading and journaling. Along the way, she collected inspiration from the natural beauty of the land. Soon, images of the resident heron and the sunsets over the lake were making their debut into her work. Before she departed the A-frame, she gifted the program administrators with two sets of 45 editions of mini-broadsides as well as a set of monoprint cards.

The most enjoyable aspect for Dr. Cadeau was the community service component that allowed her to share Purdy’s work in a hands-on way.

For one day of her residency, Cadeau hosted a printmaking event at the Picton Public Library. When she arrived at the library, she discovered that the elevator and ramp leading into the library were closed due to renovations. Improvising, Dr. Cadeau set up her printmaking event on the street in front of the library. As people passed by, she invited them to make prints with her. About 25 people accepted the invitation and created gelli prints using flora and fauna that came from the A-frame’s yard.

On another day, she installed temporary public art in three

Above: Cadeau’s floral gelli prints Below: Cadeau snaps a picture of a work in progress

locations around the county. Inspired by Purdy’s poems about rain, Cadeau created stencils from her cutting machine to quote him. She then used Rainworks, an invisible and water-resistant spray paint, over each stencil. The result was a pleasant surprise of art that only appears when it rains.

“When I think back to the gift of the A-Frame, it became a place where the work of poetry was, more than ever before for me, also the work of being in the world.” - Dr. Charmaine Cadeau

The Al Purdy A-frame Residency built in 1957 by Al Purdy and his wife, Eurithe.

Ritual and Guinea Pigs

Chavín de Huántar dates to 1200 BC and is famous for its labyrinthic galleries and supernatural images carved on stone. As one of the earliest temples in South America, Chavín is an ideal place to study ancient ritual practices. Dr. Silvana Rosenfeld, assistant professor of anthropology, has been working at the site to understand ritual artifacts, differential food access, and how interregional exchange played a role in the expansion of sociopolitical inequality in the ancient Andes.

Pulling from her expertise in ritual, Dr. Rosenfeld applied to and was selected for the workshop Coding the Past: The Challenges and Promise of Large-Scale Cultural Databases at the Santa Fe Institute in October. The Santa Fe Institute is the world’s leading research center for complex systems science.

The workshop was limited to 20 international scholars across disciplines of archaeology, history, and cultural evolutionary theory. For two days, the group provided feedback on a new open source research database for religious history. They explored converting qualitative information into the database as well as pedagogical uses in the classroom. Dr. Rosenfeld is excited to be part of new collaborative projects that will lead to publications, and to introduce the database to students for researching rituals and religions.

Shortly after returning from the workshop, she was notified that her ethnographic project, “Of Guinea Pigs and Mines: Changing Access to Animal Consumption at Chavín de Huántar (Peru),” would be published in The Latin Americanist this March. In this article, Dr. Rosenfeld explores how Chavín community members lost a traditional way of maintaining social ties through a ritual exchange of guinea pigs once a mining company began gifting them as part of their community development project.