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| Jan. 15, 2008
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SBU to mark Martin Luther King Day with lecture on 'The Real MLK' The St. Bonaventure University community is invited to join together to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a dinner and evening program on Monday, Jan. 19. A special dinner will be available in Hickey Dining Hall from 4:30 to 7 p.m. The cost to those not on a meal plan is $9.20 plus tax. Following dinner, students, staff and faculty are encouraged to walk together from the Damietta Center in Francis Hall to the John J. Murphy Professional Building for the 7:30 p.m. program. The walk will begin at 7:15 p.m. and community members are encouraged to join the movement at the following locations: Damietta Center (east
side of Francis Hall) Glow sticks will be provided to walkers. “The Real MLK” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. in Dresser Auditorium by St. Bonaventure faculty members Dr. Barry Gan, professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Nonviolence, and Dr. Mark Huddle, associate professor of history and board member of the Association for the Study of African American History and Life. The lecture is free and open to the public. “Each year we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., but we celebrate only a small part of his life, making him a hero without recognizing that people become heroic by overcoming their own shortcomings and weaknesses,” said Gan. “In this presentation we will explore the real Martin Luther King Jr., the man few Americans ever learn about, who, despite his failings, rose to greatness because he battled with them, and who, despite being sanitized by mainstream America, offered insights, critiques, and analyses that we still ignore at our own peril. And we will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr., heroic because he is in the end a human being like all of us,” added Gan. Also on Jan. 19, “We Have A Dream” wristbands will be available in the Reilly Center from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Click here to return to the top of the page _____________________
Inauguration program to give St. Bonaventure students behind-the-scenes perspective on politics Earlier this fall when 14 St. Bonaventure students signed up for a special Washington, D.C., academic seminar about the new presidential administration, they didn’t even know who the 44th president of the United States was going to be. It didn’t matter; they knew it was going to be an opportunity of a lifetime. For 10 days starting Saturday, Jan. 10, the students will participate in a unique course that will examine the issues and implications of the Obama administration and study the role the media plays in the political process – all under the backdrop of the nation’s capital. The seminar ends Jan. 20, Inauguration Day. “This is one of the most historic elections in American history and in a time with so many troubles, Barack Obama has promised us so much, so I would like to be a part of this history,” said SBU junior Dan Volkosh of Middleport, N.Y. The St. Bonaventure students and professor Dr. Danette Brickman, who will serve as a faculty leader and instructor for the course, will join college students from across the country for The Presidential Inauguration program sponsored by The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. The seminar program is taught as a course and will examine the issues and implications of the Obama administration. The students’ days will be split between small seminars in the morning and afternoon speakers and visits to sites including embassies, news agencies CNN and Fox, the Brookings Institute, Pew Research Center, Amnesty International and the Democratic and Republican national committees. Tentative speakers include ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, the Discovery Channel’s Ted Koppel and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Volkosh, who is president of the College Democrats, is looking forward to being “in an optimistic atmosphere for 10 days with millions of other Americans and to experience living history in our country’s capital.” The Presidential Inauguration program will host more than 700 college students from institutions such as Ball State, Loyola Marymount, Miami Dade and the University of Florida. “I think it’s going to be a great experience for our students because they’re going to be interacting with students from all over the country,” Brickman said. As part of the course, the students will have the opportunity to visit the Newseum, the new Capitol Visitors Center, attend a U.S. Chamber of Commerce cocktail party/social, and enjoy a special performance by satirist Mark Russell at George Washington University. Although they don’t have tickets to the inauguration of president-elect Obama, Brickman said the Bona’s contingent “will be trying to get as close as possible” to the inauguration festivities on Jan. 20. With estimates ranging from 1 million to 5 million people descending on Washington, D.C., to mark the inauguration, Brickman said, “this is going to be the biggest thing we’ve seen in years. The students are beside themselves. I think it’s going to be a great experience. Most have never been to D.C. before.” As part of their
coursework, the students will be videotaping and photographing their
experiences for presentations to the university community and local
high schools when they return. Click here to return to the top of the page _____________________
SBU prof co-authors Civil War article Chris Mackowski, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at St. Bonaventure University, has published an article in a Civil War history journal. “From Foxcroft to Fredericksburg: Captain Sewell Gray of the Sixth Maine Infantry” appears in this year’s volume of Fredericksburg History & Biography, an annual journal published by the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust. This year’s volume — volume seven — was released in mid-December. Mackowski co-authored the article with Kristopher D. White, a historian who works at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, which encompasses four major Civil War battlefields in central Virginia. Mackowski works at the park one weekend a month as a battlefield guide and interpreter. Their article focuses on an officer, Sewell Gray of Foxcroft, Maine, who served with the Sixth Maine Infantry. Mackowski and White based their article on Gray’s diary, which recently came to light. “Sabbath and a lovelier day never overtook a soldier,” Gray wrote in his diary on May 3, 1863. Hours later, he was killed while his regiment stormed a heavily fortified Confederate position known as Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg. However, Gray’s unit, the Sixth Maine, successfully captured the position, although their success was short-lived. The Federal advance was halted just a few hours later after the Battle at Salem Church. The action was one of several engagements related to the Battle of Chancellorsville. “After Gray’s death, his diary had been recovered by someone in his regiment, and it was passed down through his family. His great-great-grandnephew has it today,” Mackowski says. “He was kind enough to provide a transcript, which Kris and I then used as the basis for the article. We did additional research to flesh out Gray’s story even further. He was an interesting guy to get to know.” Mackowski’s father lives in the area in Maine where members of Gray’s regiment were recruited into service. “I spent part of my life growing up and going to school in the same towns where some of Gray’s comradescame from,” Mackowski says. “It was important to me to do justice to Captain Gray’s story because of that connection.” The article by Mackowski and White appears alongside articles by noted Civil War historians Eric Mink, Donald Pfanz, Noel Harrison and Russell P. Smith. Click here to return to the top of the page _____________________
SBU professor writes book on Argentina's struggle for democracy in early 1900s Joel Horowitz, Ph.D., a noted scholar on Argentina and professor of history at St. Bonaventure University, has written a new book about Argentina’s government in the early 20th century. “Argentina’s Radical Party and Popular Mobilization, 1916-1930” examines democracy’s first appearance in a country that appeared to satisfy all the criteria that political development theorists of the 1950s and 1960s identi?ed as crucial. This experiment lasted in Argentina from 1916 to 1930, when it ended in a military coup that left a troubled political legacy for decades to come. “This book sheds new light on a crucial chapter in the struggle for democracy in Argentina. Drawing on approaches from political and labor history, Horowitz’s study examines the complex negotiations between party leaders, state officials and working people that shaped public life during the heyday of Radical Party rule,” said Eduardo Elena, history professor at the University of Miami. “In the process, it questions familiar assumptions regarding cronyism and popular politics associated with the Argentine republic in the early 20th century.” Horowitz, who spent more than 15 years working on the book, has studied Argentina’s government and society since he was in graduate school more than 30 years ago. “It is intriguing to try to understand how a democracy works or, in fact, fails,” Horowitz said. “It is usually assumed in the United States that all you need to do is have elections and there will be a democracy that works. Unfortunately, sometimes it fails and it is important to try to discover why.” Horowitz challenges previous interpretations that emphasize the role of clientelism and patronage. He argues that they fail to account fully for the Radical Party government’s ability to mobilize widespread popular support. Horowitz compares the administrations of Hipólito Yrigoyen and Marcelo T. de Alvear he shows how much depended on the image Yrigoyen managed to create for himself: a secular savior who cared deeply about the less fortunate and the embodiment of the nation. Later successes and failures of Argentine democracy, from Juan Perón through the present, cannot be fully understood without knowing the story of the Radical Party in this earlier period. Published by Penn State University Press, the book will be released in January. Formerly a contributing editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, which is prepared by the Library of Congress, Horowitz has been a member of the St. Bonaventure faculty since 1989. He was promoted to full professor in 1999. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. Click here to return to the top of the page _____________________
Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble to perform at Quick Center The Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble will open the 2009 world music series at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts with a performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22.
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Dr. Neal Carter, associate professor of political science, was recently interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s morning radio program “The Current” to discuss his research on Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper. The research, published in Inroads: The Canadian Journal of Opinion, presents a personality at a distance profile of Harper, comparing him to other heads of government. Carter also presented “Does Leading a Minority Government Change Leadership Traits? The Case of Jean Charest” at the American Council for Quebec Studies in Quebec City in November 2008, and lectured on “Leadership Trait Analysis: Profiling Canadian Party Leaders” at the University of Southern California’s Center for International Studies. Further, Carter has received a Program Enrichment Grant from the Canadian Government to enhance Canadian studies at SBU. As part of the grant, he took his Canadian Politics class to Toronto and the students were able to visit the Canadian Consulate in Buffalo, the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, and attend Question Period at the Ontario Legislative Assembly. In addition, Carter published a review of a book on Canadian constitutional politics in Quebec Studies, and The Journal of Political Science Education has accepted his article on the Model United Nations Consortium that he and two colleagues created. He will be taking St. Bonaventure students to New York City for a major Model UN conference this semester. Dr. Carl J. Case, professor of management science, and Darwin L. King, professor of accounting, had their paper “The Undergraduate Blogosphere: Academic Class Activity and Perceptions” selected as the Best Paper for the MIS II Track of the 2009 American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences National Meeting to be held in Las Vegas, Nev. Dr. Diana Lawrence-Brown, chair of Inclusive Graduate Programs; Dr. René Wroblewski, assistant professor of special education; and Anne-Claire Fisher, assistant professor of education, presented papers on Dec. 5, 2008, for a session titled "Promoting Social Justice through Critical Perspectives in Inclusive Teacher Preparation" at the annual meeting of TASH in Nashville, Tenn. TASH is an international association of people with disabilities, their family members, other advocates, and professionals fighting for a society in which inclusion of all people in all aspects of society is the norm. Carole McNall, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, had an article, "Is Formula Journalism Good Journalism," published in the fall 2008 edition of "Media Ethics" magazine. The article considers news coverage of the rape charges against members of the Duke lacrosse team and of the death of Washington Redskins football player Sean Taylor and suggests that many reporters jumped to conclusions before doing needed reporting. It is based in part on a discussion held in the spring 2008 media ethics class at St. Bonaventure, which was taught by McNall and Chris Mackowski. Dr. Carol
Wittmeyer, assistant professor of management sciences, and
colleagues from Loyola and Kennesaw state universities, presented the
workshop Best Practices of Self-Sustaining Family Business Centers,
which was nominated for a Best Workshop Award at the 2009 U.S. Association
for Small Business and Entrepreneurship international conference held
in Anaheim, Calif.
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