On Thursday evening, April 26, Jonathan A. Noyalas ’01, M.A., director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute, received the Henry Kyd Douglas award at a ceremony in Hagerstown, Maryland. The award, administered by the Hagerstown Civil War Roundtable, is presented annually to individuals “who have made contributions to the advancement of the study of the American Civil War through preservation, publication and education.” During remarks made during the ceremony, the presenter specifically cited as reasons for bestowing the honor Noyalas’ publication record (author or editor of 11 books, more than 100 articles, essays, chapter and reviews) as well as the work he is doing as director of the university’s McCormick Civil War Institute in developing significant historic interpretation at the Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield and launching the university’s first-ever academic peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era. Previous recipients of this award include distinguished historians such as Edwin C. Bearss (chief historian emeritus of the National Park Service), Ted Alexander (chief historian at Antietam National Battlefield) and Dennis Frye (chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park).
Assistant Professor of English Sarah Canfield, Ph.D., presented on a paper, “There’s a Woman in There If You’d Take the Time to Look!: Seven of Nine’s Problematic Feminism,” on March 14, at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Casey Eriksen, Ph.D., has had several works published recently. They include “The Aesthetics of Excess: Rococo Vestiges of Tartuffe in Isla’s Fray Gerundio” in “The Eighteenth Centuries: Global Networks of Enlightenment”; “Boscán, Ana Girón and Early Authorial Interventions Surrounding the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega” in Material Poetry, a special volume published by Calíope: The Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry; and “Y assí su alma con su mármol arde: Ovidian Transformations, Renaissance Erotica and New Approximations to the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega” in Iberian Pornographies, 1300-1850: Archiving Flesh, Perversion and the Visceral.
Professor of Comparative Literature (French and German) and Director of Gender and Women’s Studies Petra M. Schweitzer, Ph.D., and Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Casey Eriksen, Ph.D., co-authored “The Unbearable Humanities” in The Unbearable Humanities: Proceedings of the 2017 Virginia Humanities Conference. Dr. Schweitzer and Dr. Eriksen are leading a May Global Experiential Learning trip titled “The Eurozone” and traveling with students to Brussels, Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Barcelona. She and Associate Professor of Psychology Mark Chan, Ph.D., co-taught the course, Psychology and Contemplative Practices. This class is an experimental community in which participants are exposed to different methods of contemplative practices.
Featured photo by Brandy Noyalas
