News & Views

Bestselling British Author Visits

The University kept author Chris Cleave of London busy as a writer-in-residence this spring teaching classes, running creative workshops, and giving public lectures at the Kingston and Feinstein Providence Campuses.

His book, Incendiary, is an international bestseller that was published in 20 countries. A movie based on the book and directed by Sharon Maguire (director of Bridget Jones’s Diary) will be released this year.

Cleave’s visit was a result of his participation in an online forum that was part of an honors seminar last year taught by Alain-Philippe Durand, associate professor of French, film media, and comparative literature. The course explored the 2001 terrorist attacks through a selection of post 9/11 literature and film, including Cleave’s novel.

“Not only did Cleave write a compelling and prescient novel, but he graciously and thoughtfully responded to every point the students made,” says Naomi Mandel, associate professor of English and comparative literature. “Not all the students liked the book, but Cleave took their reservations as grist for an engaging dialogue.”

Mandel and Durand joined forces in the spring to teach an honors seminar, Novels of the Contemporary Extreme, that explored emerging global literature set in an often apocalyptic world invaded by popular culture, permeated with technology, and dominated by destruction. The two professors edited and wrote chapters for a book, Novels of the Contemporary Extreme, published by Continuum in 2006.

Students found Cleave engaging. “Chris Cleave is a wonderful person and very genuine,” said Megan Coral. “He was open to listening to viewpoints that didn’t agree with his and said that some of the comments had actually persuaded him to see things in new ways.”

Katie Collazzo agreed. “I thought his book was haunting and original,” she said, noting that she and Coral gave Cleave a campus tour. During the tour, Cleave mentioned that his two sons asked him to bring back American candy. The students later surprised the author with bags of gummi worms.

“What an incredible, life-affirming experience it was for me to be surrounded by such intense intellectual engagement—and such fun and kindness too,” the author emailed shortly after returning to England. “I will never forget it. In fact it has had an immediate effect on my writing. I sat down this morning and threw away the manuscript I was working on and started something much more fun and a whole lot weirder instead!”

Let’s Book It!

Here’s a recipe for summer reading: Take some little known papal history, add an insightful biography of a press secretary, sprinkle a powerful coming-of-age novel set in British-occupied India, and stir with love. The result is four new books “cooked up” by URI professors.

Jody Lisberger

Remembering Love

Count the ways Jody Lisberger knows about love and they’ll add up to at least 10—the same number of short stories in her collection, Remember Love (Fleur-de-Lis Press).

Her first book reveals different kinds of love—searching, wishful, deluded, young, old, aching, discovered, honest, and enduring.

The interim director of our Women’s Studies Program doesn’t have a favorite. “They are all my favorites, I suppose, but for different reasons,” she says.

Written over the last decade, the stories aren’t autobiographical, but Lisberger suggests that all stories have traces of the writer in them. Her stories begin with an idea, but once she starts writing, she focuses on character development. “The plot will then take care of itself,” she says.

She doesn’t keep a journal, although she did when she was younger. “As I see it now, we each have a limited number of words in us and a limited time for writing, so I don’t want to expend my words or time in doing any writing other than fiction,” she says. “I’m reminded of a renowned French jazz pianist who once stayed at our house. When I asked her how many hours she practiced, she looked up from her seat at the keyboard and said, ‘Practice? I never practice. I always play!’”

Padma Venkatraman

Climbing the Charts

Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel Climbing the Stairs (Putnam) climbed the charts before its official May publishing date. Although this is her first novel, she has penned 20 other books on a variety of subjects for adults and children. She has plenty of story ideas, just not enough time to write them.

Writing isn’t her only vocation. In addition to being an adjunct chemical oceanography professor, she’s the director of the Office of Graduate Diversity Affairs. And she and her husband, Rainer Lohmann, an assistant chemical oceanographer at URI, are new parents.

Although she has degrees in oceanography and engineering, her novel isn’t about either. It’s about a young female adolescent growing up in British-occupied India where Gandhi is leading a nonviolence movement to Indian independence while World War II rages on. It’s loosely based on her mother’s experiences.

Everyone told the novelist not to take the time to title the book since publishers always change it. She did and they didn’t.

“I think the title works on many levels,” the author says. “The 15-year-old protagonist lives in a restricted household and is forbidden to go upstairs to the library because she is a female. She sneaks into the library anyway. Her climb is to womanhood and personal freedom. It’s also about India’s freedom from colonization to independence.”

Linda Lotridge Levin

Presidential Press

Stephen T. Early was not a household name during the Depression or World War II, yet he was one of the most influential men in the mid-20th century.

As press secretary for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Early was responsible for getting FDR’s messages out to the press, employing print journalism, newsreels, and radio broadcasts. He helped the Harvard-educated, wealthy president communicate a robust strength and confidence in a language his fellow countrymen and women could not only understand but embrace.

Until now, little was known about Early. Linda Lotridge Levin, professor and chair of our Journalism Department, gives readers an unobstructed view of the man behind the president in her biography, The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary, published in the spring by Prometheus Books.

Early’s role as press secretary and presidential image maker kept the president in the spotlight, which helped boost the president’s policies and popularity. Roosevelt became the longest-serving president in U.S. history.

Levin spent more than a dozen summers and winter breaks researching at the FDR Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., where Early’s papers are housed; at the Baker Library at Dartmouth College; the Alderman at the University of Virginia; and at local historical libraries in Virginia and Washington, D.C. She also interviewed Early’s daughter and grandson several times.

“The friendship between the two men made the book both fascinating to research and to write,” says Levin.

Joëlle Rollo-Koster

Pulling Back Papal Mourning Curtains

When Pope John Paul II died, tens of thousands of mourners filled St. Peter’s Square to express their sympathy.

What a difference a few centuries make, according to Joëlle Rollo-Koster, professor of history, whose latest book, Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism, has just been published (Leiden and Boston). During the Middle Ages, it was common to pillage and sack the goods of a dead pope.

“Basically, throughout the history of Christianity when a pope or a bishop died, crowds rushed to his dwellings and emptied them of all moveable goods,” says Koster, one of a handful of medieval historians who deal with cultural anthropology, which means she applies anthropological methods to her analysis of events and behaviors.

“People are usually interested in papal history, but very few are aware of this practice, which is recorded in ample documentation,” says the historian.

“Many Catholics do not realize that the election of the pope was once in the hands of the congregation. After the people were marginalized and pushed out of the papal electoral process, the pillaging began,” says Rollo-Koster.

Chemical Life after Graduate School

Twenty-one chemistry graduate students participated in an intensive three-day seminar designed to get them ready for life after graduate school and into industrial employment or careers in academia.

Sponsored by the American Chemical Society, the workshop was a primer for job-seeking skills including mock interviews, résumé critiques, and one-on-career counseling. The presenter and career consultant was Daniel Eustace, a retired physical organic chemist whose industrial career in applied research, development, manufacturing, and management at Exxon Mobil and Polaroid Corp. spans more than 33 years.

Eustace is shown conducting a mock interview with Christina Liuzzi ’03, ’07, a URI organic chemistry graduate student. Neil Pothier, Ph.D. ’94, director of Analytical Services for Chemic Laboratories, was also on hand to share his industrial experience with the group.

The seminar, Preparing for Life after Graduate School, was the result of a 2002 ACS survey of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who found that despite terrific research training, many doctoral programs fail to offer pertinent career information or guidance.

Maj. Robert Edwards

Army’s Best Instructor

During the spring, the U.S. Army acknowledged URI’s teaching excellence by selecting Maj. Robert Edwards for its most prestigious teaching award, the Col. Leo A. Codd Memorial Award, which is presented each year to the most outstanding ROTC instructor from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

“It’s the best job in the world,” says an exuberant Edwards, who recently concluded his three-year assignment to URI ROTC’s Cramer Saber Battalion where he taught URI, Roger Williams University, and Salve Regina University students enrolled in URI ROTC. “And it’s the most important. There are many ways to serve one’s country.

“All the staff and instructors in URI ROTC, as well as the administrators at URI, deserve to share this great honor,” he adds.

Teaching comes naturally to Edwards. A native of Fairfax, Va., he earned three degrees from Virginia Tech—a bachelor’s degree in business, a master’s degree in education, and an M.B.A. He was a teacher and coach in the Fairfax County public school system for eight years while in the Army Reserves before beginning active duty in 2003, which has included a tour in Iraq.

“Soldier, scholar, teacher, and mentor, he does it all with excellence and character. Robert is an outstanding representative of our Army and our University,” commented Lt. Col. Paul Yager, commanding officer and department chair of military science.

Filling the GAP for 20 Years

“It’s every parent’s dream that their children do better than themselves,” confided Luis Palencia who, with his wife, Rosa, comes from Guatemala.

URI is helping make the Palencia family’s dream come true. Their son, Chris, a junior at Rogers High School in Newport, was one of 147 high school students from seven urban high schools who signed a contract with Guaranteed Admissions Program this spring at our Feinstein Providence Campus. It was the largest group of students to sign the contract since Marcia Marker Feld of URI’s Urban Field Center and David Taggert, former dean of Admissions, developed the program two decades ago.

The program provides URI with a way to recruit and encourage students of color and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Most are the first in their families to consider college as an option.

Students sign contracts in which they agree to take college preparatory courses, maintain B- averages, participate in summer programs and after school workshops, take college tours, and meet all URI admission requirements. In return, URI promises them places in the freshman class.

Cynthia Bonn, dean of Admission (right), the student’s high school principal, and the student’s parent or guardian also signs the contact.

URI’s Talent Development Program took GAP under its wing in 2004. Today, more than 500 students are in the GAP/TD program, which recently expanded to urban middle schools.

The core staff includes Gerald R. Williams, director; Joanna N. Ravello, assistant director; Marc D. Hardge, Sara Potter, Kevin A. Smith, and Debra L. Veloso; GAP/TD coordinators. In addition, GAP/TD recruits 35 to 40 Talent Development students to serve as mentors during fall and spring search weekends.

Global Environmental Change

Global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and biological extinctions are among the topics that will be addressed during this fall’s Honors Colloquium, People and Planet, Global Environmental Change.

Coordinated by oceanography professors Steve D’Hondt and Art Spivack, the series will feature bi-weekly public lectures by internationally recognized experts and a film series designed to promote discussion of human-induced global change viewed through the prism of popular culture.

The colloquium Web site (uri.edu/hc) will include streaming video of the lectures, a list of recommended readings, maps and images designed to promote deeper understanding of the issues, and an Ask a Scientist section that will allow visitors to ask questions.

Andy Warhol at URI

Some 150 original Andy Warhol polaroid and gelatin silver prints were donated by the Photographic Legacy Program, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, to our Fine Arts Center Galleries last spring. URI is one of only 180 academically affiliated galleries/museums nationwide to receive such a gift, which was given due to the galleries’ prominence as a contemporary art showcase.

Warhol (1928-1987), a central Pop Art figure, was particularly prolific during the ‘60s when he created his famous images of a Campbell’s Soup can and Marilyn Monroe.

Using a Polaroid Big Shot and a Minolta SLR automatic 35 mm camera, the artist often captured a person or event with both cameras, cropping one in Polaroid color as a “photograph” and snapping another in black and white as a “picture.”

URI’s Warhol collection includes images of celebrities such as Carly Simon, Jack Nicklaus, and Giorgio Armani as well as celebrities’ animals, urban landscapes, and more.

The prints are available for public viewing and study in the Special Collections Unit of the University Library in its permanent collection. For more information visit http://uri.edu/library/special_collections/.

Hillel Building Enthusiasm

More than 100 students, faculty, alumni, and Jewish community leaders welcomed a $1 million gift from the family of the late Rhode Island business leader and philanthropist Norman N. Fain ’36, Hon. ’67. The gift will help build a permanent Hillel center on the Kingston Campus that will serve as a meeting place where students can celebrate Jewish life, explore Jewish and universal issues, build life-long friendships, and enrich their personal growth. Jonathan Fain, son of Norman and Rosalie Fain, is shown talking about his father’s legacy of support for the University and the Jewish community. For more information go to uri.edu/news/releases/index.php?id=4403.