Lisa Ohm has completed her monograph, Johanna Heusser Spyri’s Double Bildungsroman Heidi & Her Literary Oeuvre: The Swiss-German Writer’s Contributions to Late 19th-Century Literature and Thought. She gave two presentations on Spyri at the Midwest MLA in Cincinnati in November, and she will attend the 2013 MLA in Boston, thanks in part to a Faculty Development travel grant, to meet with acquisition editors of several publishing companies. She also received a Fellowship for spring 2014 to complete a scholarly introduction to and translation of Spyri’s Sina: A Story for Young Girls, first published in 1884 and never translated into English. This book contains one of the first discussions in European literature of women studying at the university level.
Wendy Sterba has just submitted her manuscript, Photos of the Reel: What the Photograph in Contemporary Film Tells us about Art and Truth in the Age of New Media for publication. Wendy will also attend the International Film Studies Conference Melancholia: Imaging the End of the World in Marburg, Germany, thanks to a Faculty Development travel grant. The title of her talk is “The Corporate and Corporeal: Min(d)ing the Body - Conscience and Consumption in Early 21st Century Hollywood Dystopia." She presented a paper in September at the Film and History Conference in Milwaukee entitled, "What Would Medusa Do? Psychology, Photography and Pegasus Envy in Films about 19th Century Monstrous Women." She has received a Fellowship for Fall of 2013 to pursue the topic of Aesthetic Issues Concerning Film in the Age of Electronic Media for her new book which explores film related aesthetic theories of Manfred Frank, Theodor Adorno, Walther Benjamin and the Frankfurt School.
Andreas Kiryakakis is deeply involved in translating Der letzte Mönch von Tibhirine by Freddy Derwahl. This book recounts the same events as the award-winning film, Of Men and Gods. Here is a description of the book from amazon.de:
In der algerischen Wüste harrt eine kleine Schar von christlichen Mönchen im Kloster Tibhirine aus. Im durch Revolutionen aufgewühlten Nordafrika werden sie, im Spannungsfeld von Christentum und Islam, mehrfach von Rebellen bedroht. Nach intensiver Beratung beschließen die Mönche dennoch zu bleiben. Sie haben sich entschieden, für die Menschen da zu sein. Sie wollen ihre Krankenstation weiterhin öffnen, für Versöhnung eintreten und mit ihrem Leben dem christlichen Glauben Gestalt geben. Am 26. März 1996 kehren die Rebellen zurück. Sieben Mönche werden nachts entführt und später enthauptet. Die Umstände und Hintergründe der Morde sind bis heute ungeklärt. Dieses Buch erzählt das Leben von Frère Jean-Pierre Schumacher, den die Terroristen damals nicht entdecken. In seinen Erzählungen spiegelt sich, was damals wirklich geschah.Mark Thamert is working on a translation of Die Benediktsregel: Eine Anleitung zu christlichem Leben, a commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict written by the Abbot Georg Holzherr of Einsiedeln Abbey, Switzerland. This translation will be published by Cistercian Publications in 2013 or 2014. He is also working on a translation of Anselm Grün's Zeit der Erfüllung. Ein Begleiter für Advent und Weihnachten to be published by the Liturgical Press in 2013. Anselm Grün is Abbot of Münsterschwarzach Abbey in Germany. Mark will also give a presentation at the American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages Conference in Orlando, November 2013, on "Recent Research on Best Practices for Teaching Writing in Foreign Languages -- and Computer-Assisted Feedback that Works."
