Faculty News

• Dr. Raymond Cormier, Visiting Professor of French, has written an article in a new French publication. The article, “Valeurs paiennes dans un roman d’antiquité du XII siècle: Métempsycose vs. au-delà chrétien,” appears on pages 199-216 of Romans d’Antiquité et Littérature du Nord: Mélanges offerts à Aimé Petit,” edited by Sarah Baudelle-Michels, et al., and published by Champion of Paris. The article deals with a problematic passage in an Old French romance, Le Roman d’Eneas, an adaptation of Virgil’s Roman epic The Aeneid. The publication is a collection of nearly 50 essays in honor of Aimé Petit, professor of Old French at the University of Lille, and was prepared by a group of his former students. 
• Dr. Larissa Smith Fergeson, Associate Professor of History, published an article, “Race, Labor, and Democracy: Brownie Lee Jones and the Southern School for Workers in Virginia during the 1940s,” in Making a New South: Race, Leadership, and Community after the Civil War, edited by Paul A. Cimbala and Barton C. Shaw. Making a New South, published in August by the University of Florida Press, is a 328-page collection of essays.
• Dr. Esther Godfrey, Assistant Professor of English, published “Feminizing Casaubon: Gender and the Aging Husband in Middlemarch” in the 2007 issue of Topic: The Washington & Jefferson College Review (Volume 55, pages 55-66). Topic is a scholarly journal that publishes annually on certain thematic topics, and Dr. Godfrey’s article appears in the marriage issue. Also, Dr. Godfrey was a guest on the statewide National Public Radio program With Good Reason that was broadcast during the week of Oct. 6-12. Dr. Godfrey was a guest on the segment “He’s Old Enough to be Your Father!” which explored why Americans are both titillated and repulsed by relationships between much older men and younger women. Dr. Godfrey, a specialist in British Romantic literature, has a book coming out next year on what she called “January to May marriages.”
• Dr. Ramesh Rao, Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre, wrote an op-ed piece for the Oct. 4 issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the upcoming presidential election in Pakistan. The article, “Musharraf: The Devil We Know,” can be found online at http://tinyurl.com/33kk8b
• Frances Reeve, Associate Professor of School Library Media, was recently named the Media Educator the Year by the Virginia Educational Media Association (VEMA). She received the award Oct. 12 during VEMA’s annual conference in Williamsburg. The award recognizes “outstanding contributions in developing educational media and technology programs and for professional leadership in the field.” Reeve, who chairs VEMA’s Publications Committee and once was head of Reader Services in Greenwood Library, was one of several Longwood faculty members who presented sessions at the conference on various topics related to school libraries. The others are Audrey Church, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the School Library Media Program, a past VEMA president; Cindy Schmidt, Assistant Professor of School Library Media; and Dr. Gerry Sokol, Assistant Professor of Education and Coordinator of the Educational Leadership Program. Also at the VEMA conference, a Longwood graduate student in the School Library Media Program, Kathleen Riopelle Roberts, received the Dickinson Scholarship Award, given to one who is in or preparing to enter the library media profession. Criteria for the award include “sound scholarship, potential for excellence in the profession, and character.” Longwood’s School Library Media Program, which has more than 200 students, is one of only two graduate-level school library media programs in Virginia that are accredited.