Melinda Russell, Associate Professor of Music, presented "Oh Say, Can't You Sing? 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and The National Anthem Project in Wartime America" at the Society for American Music Annual Conference in Denver.

The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) and Academic Commons (www.academiccommons.org) announced an inaugural series of awards that recognize exemplary projects which reflect effective uses of technologies and resources in support of liberal education. Andrea Nixon, Heather Tompkins, and Paula Lackie were among the first recipients for Carleton's recent study "Curricular Uses of Visual Materials: A Mixed-Method Institutional Study." The study was selected "because it demonstrates how digital technologies can be used to advance liberal education and provides a relevant example for other colleges and universities."

Susan Jaret McKinstry, Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, had an article entitled "Living Literally By the Pen" published in Margaret Atwood: Essays on Her Works, edited by Branko Gorjup (Guernica Writers Series, 2008).

Gao Hong, Adjunct Instructor in Chinese Musical Instruments, had the world premiere of her composition "Golden Season" for guitar and pipa at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Denmark on April 23, with subsequent performances at Cadogan Hall, London, England, The Nafplion Festival, Greece, The Madeira Festival, Portugal and other venues during an European Tour. The piece was commissioned by Danish guitarist Lars Hannibal and was performed by Lars Hannibal on guitar and Yan Jiang on pipa. The piece will be included in Lars Hannibal's upcoming CD featuring his East Meets West/ Quartet Project.

Jay Johnson, Sr. Lecturer in Percussion & African Drum Ensemble, recently had his new composition for solo marimba, titled "Risas Tambien," published by HoneyRock Publishing (US).

Dr. Harry M. Williams, Laird Bell Professor of History presented the annual Peace Studies Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture, "King's Dream and Obama's Presidency," at Wallenburg Auditorium, Alfred Nobel Hall of Science, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota, on Tuesday, April 21, 2009.

Serena Zabin, Assistant Professor of History, has published a book titled Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York. The book is a history of New York culture and commerce in the first two thirds of the eighteenth century, when Britain was just beginning to catch up with its imperial rivals, France and Spain.

Dana Strand, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of French and the Humanities, recently chaired two sessions at the annual 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, which this year focused on the theme of Seismic Shifts. The first session was entitled "Reverberations of Collaboration and Occupation." At the second, "Tracing the Fault Lines in French National Identity," she gave a paper dealing with the intersection of identity and language in two recent films, "L'Esquive" and "Entre les murs." Her article entitled "Assia Djebar's 'La femme sans sépulture' as Postcolonial Primer" is currently in press at the Journal Sites: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies.

Steven Schier, Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, and Janet Box-Steffensmeier of Ohio State University, have co-edited a new book, The American Elections of 2008, recently published by Rowman and Littlefield publishers. The book includes chapters by John F. Harris '85, editor-in-chief of politico.com, and Robert Boatright '92, a professor of political science at Clark University. Professor Schier also attended the meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, serving as a discussant on a panel entitled "Assessing the 2008 Elections," chaired by Janet Box-Steffensmeier of Ohio State University.

Steven Schier, Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, published an article in The Forum, a peer-reviewed Internet political science journal. Here is the citation and Web link to the article: Schier, Steven E. (2009) "Understanding the Obama Presidency," The Forum: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1, Article 10. See it here.

Charles Priore, Research and Instruction Librarian & Liaison for the Sciences, has published an article entitled "The Academic Underground" in the 30th anniversary edition of the Blue Book of Gun Values, pp. 14-15 (2009), Blue Book Publication Inc., Minneapolis.

Susannah Ottaway, Associate Professor of History, gave a talk on "Families, Societies and the Institutions of the Old Poor Law in Eighteenth-Century England" at the Yale British Historical Studies Colloquium in February, and in March presented a paper entitled "Hunting for Pensions in the Eighteenth Century" at a workshop on the comparative history of pensions at the Ecole d’Economie de Paris.