Carol Ann Bassett (M.A. Journalism, University of Arizona) is an associate professor in the UO School of Journalism and Communication, where she teaches magazine writing, environmental journalism, and literary nonfiction. She directs an on-going summer program through the UO Office of International Affairs: “Environmental Writing in the Galápagos” (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Danger). Bassett’s specialties are indigenous cultures and the environment. She is the author of A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of A Changing World, a finalist for the 2002 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction, and Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge (Desert Places series). Her essays have been anthologized in the American Nature Writing series (twice) and The Mountain Reader: A Nature Conservancy Book. Bassett was a full time freelance journalist for 16 years and a regular contributor to The New York Times and Time-Life Incorporated. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Mother Jones, Condé Nast Traveler, on National Public Radio, and in many other national publications. She has won numerous awards for print and broadcast journalism. Her new book, Galápagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists, and Creationists Battle for Darwin’s Cradle of Evolution, is due out May 19th with National Geographic Society Books.
Frances Bronet, is the dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Prior to her arrival at the UO in 2005, Bronet was a professor and associate dean of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and had also served as the principal designer for her own architectural firm, Frances Bronet Associates. She has worked with a number of Montreal-based architecture and engineering firms. Bronet holds several diplomas and degrees in architecture and engineering, all from McGill University. She received a master of science degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1985. Bronet was named the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE New York Professor of the Year in 2001. That same year she received Rensselaer’s William H. Wiley Distinguished Professor award and served as the president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
Rick Colby (Ph.D. Duke University, 2002) is an assistant professor of Religious Studies with a focus on Early Islamic Thought, Qur’an and Hadith Studies, Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), Islamic Ascension Narratives, and Popular Islam. Since joining the Religious Studies department in 2008, he has taught “Introduction to Islam” and “Qur’an and Interpretation”. Colby received a Summer Fulbright-Hays “Silk Road” Project award to China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey in 2006. He is author of Narrating Muhammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ‘Abbas Ascension Discourse (SUNY Press, 2008), translator of Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman Sulami’s The Subtleties of the Ascension (Fons Vitae, 2006), and co-editor of a forthcoming series of recent essays on Muhammad’s ascension (Indiana University Press, 2009).
James Crosswhite (Ph.D. University of California, San Diego, 1987) is an associate professor of English with a focus on Literary Theory, Literature and the Environment, and Rhetoric and Composition. His interests include philosophy, rhetoric, nature writing, theories of wilderness and the wild. His book, The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the Attractions of Argument (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) won the Modern Language Association’s 1997 Mina P. Shaughnessy Award. Some of his articles and book chapters include: “Nature and Reason: Inertia and Argumentation”; “Rhetoric and Cultural Studies: Arguments and Argument-Analogues”; “Mood in Argumentation: Heidegger and the Exordium”; “Is There an Audience for the Argument? Fallacies, Theories and Relativisms”; and “Being Unreasonable: Perelman and the Problem of Fallacies.”
Patricia Dewey (Ph.D. in Art Education / Arts Policy & Administration, The Ohio State University, 2004), an assistant professor, coordinates the performing arts management area of concentration in the University of Oregon’s Arts and Administration Program, and serves as Associate Director of Cultural Policy with the UO Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy. In her research, Patricia Dewey seeks to understand complex interactions among governments, arts organizations, and the cultural sector of societies. Dewey’s main research interests focus on international cultural policy, cultural development, and arts administration education; her two major research initiatives currently underway are titled European Union Cultural Policy and Cultural Development in the Pacific Northwest. She has published articles in the International Journal of Arts Management, the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, and Studies in Art Education, and she is currently developing a book-length manuscript on EU cultural policy. Her numerous awards include a Fulbright research grant and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.
Daniel K. Falk (Ph.D., Cambridge 1996) is an associate professor and department head of Religious Studies. Professor Falk’s interests lie in the history and literature of ancient Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity, especially the development of prayer and liturgy, interpretation of scripture, and the formation of religious communities. His research focuses particularly on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which he is involved in translating and reconstructing. He is the author of Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 1998) and Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2007). He is co-editor of several other books: Sapiential, Liturgical and Poetical Texts from Qumran (Brill, 2000) and a 3-volume series on the history of penitential prayer entitled Seeking the Favor of God (SBL/Brill, 2006, 2007, 2008). Among numerous articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he published the official editions of two manuscripts from Qumran, “4QWorks of God” and “4QCommunal Confession,” (in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 29; Oxford University Press, 1999). Falk is a member of: The International Team of Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Editorial Board of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, the Editorial Board of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament; the Society of Biblical Literature; Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.
David Frank is professor of rhetoric and the dean of the Robert D. Clark Honors College. His research features the study of rhetoric and argumentation as expressions of reason offering alternatives to violence in human conflict. His research program begins with the rhetorical theory of Chaïm Perelman and his new rhetoric project, the most important twentieth century recovery of rhetoric. Drawing from Perelman’s rhetorical theory and those of other writers, Frank has published and taught courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the conflict in Northern Ireland, African-American rhetoric and forensic education (intercollegiate debate and individual events speaking). He has published six books. His most recent book is Frames of Evil: The Holocaust in American Film (Southern Illinois Press 2006), with Carolyn “Kay” Picart. His other books include Shared Land/Conflicting Identity: Trajectories of Israeli and Palestinian Symbol Use (Michigan State University Press, 2002) with Robert Rowland (winner of the Recipient of Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism); Nonpolicy Debate, Debating Values and Lincoln Douglas Debate, with Michael Bartanen, and Creative Speaking.
Lisa Myobun Freinkel (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley, 1993) where she completed a dissertation with Stephen Greenblatt on Renaissance literature. Among the grants she’s received are awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, and humanities centers at both Berkeley and the University of Oregon. Freinkel is a recipient of the UO’s Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her publications include Reading Shakespeare’s Will: The Theology of Figure from Augustine to the Sonnets (Columbia, 2002), and articles on topics ranging from fetishism to usury, and addressing authors as diverse as Shakespeare, Dante, Luther, Immanuel Kant and the 13th-century Japanese monk, Dogen Zenji. Along with Renaissance literature, her ongoing interests include Shakespeare, psychoanalysis, theology, the philosophy of money, performance studies, and literary theory. She’s currently embroiled in two long-term and tangentially related projects: a book that situates Shakespeare’s work in the context of early modern encounters with Buddhist Asia, and a series of articles on the literary trope called “catachresis” (or, “the figure of abuse”).
John Gage (Ph.D. in Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, 1976) is a professor of English and Rhetoric. His publications include Free Time and Independent Lunch: Travel Writing from Siena, The Shape of Reason; In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism; “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives;” and “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Robert Frost’s ‘A Masque of Reason’.” Gage has served as a member of Task Force on Dual Credit, Joint Board of Articulation Standards, OUS System (2007), a member of “Writing” Team to define outcomes and course criteria for state-wide general education courses, Joint Articulations Board, OUS System (2006) and as a English Department Program Review consultant, Brigham Young University (2003) and University of Hawaii, Hilo (2003). He has served as the Editorial Advisor to The Northwest Review since 1993 and Founder and Steering Committee member: Oregon Spring Conference on Rhetoric and Composition (1990-present).
Dennis Galvan (Ph.D. in Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, 1996) is the department head of international studies and an associate professor in International Studies and Political Science. Galvan’s work centers on comparative analysis of development, the politics of cultural identity, political legitimation, and the search for locally meaningful and sustainable models of social change in the “third world.” He conducts field research in West Africa (especially Senegal) and Indonesia (especially Central Java), with increasing interest in comparative projects involving Latin America (especially Argentina). His work examines how ordinary people adapt markets, law, local government, and natural resource management systems when “traditional” cultures are incorporated into “modern” political and economic systems. Recent publications include The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal, University of California Press, 2004, winner of the 2005 Best Book Award from the African Politics Conference Group. He has also published articles and chapters on peasant transformation of free market property relations, social capital and democratization, and sustainable development. Galvan’s 2007 co-edited volume, Reconfiguring Institutions Across Time and Space: Syncretic Responses to Challenges of Political and Economic Transformation offers a new analysis of the syncretism concept developed in The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, extended to a range of cases across the developing world.
Evlyn Gould is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of French at the University of Oregon. Her work focuses on 19th century French literature, culture, and the performing arts, as well as issues in Jewish and European Studies. She is the author of Virtual Theater from Diderot to Mallarmé (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), The Fate of Carmen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996; 2001; and co-author and co-editor of Engaging Europe: Rethinking a Continent in Change, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006; 2007. A manuscript under consideration, “Turning around Dreyfus,” explores four authors’ dramatic encounters with the “Jewish question” during the Dreyfus Affair in France. Her latest work engages influences of the Kabala on late 19th century French poetry.
Robert Kyr (Ph.D. Harvard, 1990) is professor of composition and theory and has been on the UO music faculty since 1990. He is chair of the composition department, and director of the renowned Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium (www.iwagemusic.com), as well as the Music Today Festival, a biennial series of concerts and events that celebrate new music from around the world. He also directs the innovative Vanguard Concert & Workshop Series, and the UO’s Pacific Rim Gamelan. Kyr has composed nine symphonies, three chamber symphonies, three violin concerti, and numerous works for vocal ensembles of all types. His ninth symphony—The Spirit of Time for four soloists, chorus and orchestra—was performed as part of an international project titled “Waging Peace in the New Millennium,” which he directed through the Carlton Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace at the University of Oregon. Through this program, he created an international initiative for the composition of choral music in 2002, offering composers of all ages an opportunity to create new music on peace-related texts. From 2000–04, Kyr was composer-in-residence with the Oregon Repertory Singers, for which he created four large-scale works that have been recorded and will be released on CD.
Massimo Lollini (Ph.D. Yale, 1992) is a professor of Romanace Languages. The scope of Lollini’s work is broad, ranging from the 18th Century philosopher Giambattista Vico through contemporary testimonial literature. He is the author of two monographs, including the well-reviewed Il vuoto della forma, and Scriturra, testimonianza, e verità (Genova: Maarietti 1820, 2001), for which he received the American Associate for Italian Studies book award. He has co-edited five volumes, including the 2006 Reason and Its Others: Italy, Spain and the New World (Vanderbilt University Press) and Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Vincenzo Consolo (Toronto University Press). Lollini is currently at work on a book manuscript titled Europe and the Autobiography of a Survivor: An essay on the European idea of autobiography. He has received the UO Thomas Herman Faculty Achievement Award for Distinguished Teaching and has been named to a second term as Hatzantonis Distinguished Fellow in Italian; he also received the UO Norman H. Brown Faculty Fellowship Award in Arts and Sciences.
Mark Unno (Ph.D. Stanford, 1994) is Associate Professor of East Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. Professor Unno’s primary research is in Classical Japanese Buddhism, and he also has strong research interests in modern Japanese religious thought, comparative religion, and Buddhism and psychotherapy. He is the author of Shingon Refractions: Myoe and the Mantra of Light (2004), a study and translation of the medieval Japanese Buddhist practice of the Mantra of Light. He has also edited volumes on Buddhism and psychotherapy including Buddhism and Psychotherapy Across Cultures: Theories and Practices (2006) and is the translator of Hayao Kawai, The Buddhist Priest Myoe-A Life of Dreams (1992). He is the author of over a dozen articles in English and Japanese including: “Questions in the Making – A Review Essay on Zen Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Buddhist and Comparative Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics (1999); “Myoe Koben and the Komyo Shingon dosha kanjinki: The Ritual of Sand and the Mantra of Light,” study and translation, in Re-visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, edited by Richard Payne (1998); and “Divine Madness-Exploring the Boundaries of Modern Japanese Religion,” Zen Buddhism Today 10. Unno is a member of: the Editorial Board, Journal of Religious Ethics; former Executive Board member, ASIANetwork, and is a member the American Academy of Religion and the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies.
Peter Laufer Journalist and author Peter Laufer’s areas of interest include borders, migration and identity. He is the James Wallace Chair Professor in Journalism at the School of Journalism and Communication. For more about his work visit peterlaufer.com.
