|
 Rhonda Y. Williams, associate professor of history, explores issues in urban policy, civil rights, and community activism in her new book, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles Against Urban Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2004). The book traces the development of public housing in Baltimore, from its beginnings under the New Deal to the early 1990s. Williams focuses on the experiences of African-American women who mobilized to demand improved living conditions and achieve class mobility for themselves and their children. Drawing upon dozens of interviews, Williams offers a narrative of political awakening that she regards as an overlooked dimension of the modern civil rights movement.
 Catherine B. Scallen, associate professor of art history, examines the origins of the modern conception of Rembrandt's achievement in her book Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of Connoisseurship (Amsterdam University Press, 2004). Scallen analyzes the writings of nineteenth-century scholars whose judgments regarding the authenticity of paintings attributed to Rembrandt passed largely unchallenged until the 1960s. She also explores the social context of these scholars' connoisseurial practice, chronicling their relationships with museums, dealers, and collectors during a period when the art market was rapidly expanding.
|
  Joe Koonce, professor and chair of biology, and Nancy DiIulio, biology instructor, were named Education Fellows in the Life Sciences by the National Academies and selected to participate in the 2004 Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology, which took place this past August at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Teams from 20 universities assembled for a week of discussions and workshops on interdisciplinary teaching, effective use of information technology in classrooms and laboratories, and the optimal balance between imparting content and providing opportunities for analytical thinking.
 John Ciofalo, associate professor of art history, was one of twelve scholars selected to participate in a Summer Institute in the Humanities at Princeton University, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The six-week institute, "Opera: Interpretation Between Disciplines," examined the pervasive influence of opera on other art forms in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to asking why opera served as a touchstone for so many artists, Ciofalo and his colleagues explored ways to incorporate opera into the teaching of various disciplines.
|
