People, Papers, Presentations

Matthias
Henze, assistant professor, Dept. of Religious Studies,
has had published his book “The Syriac Apocalypse of
Daniel” (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). This book is
the first critical edition and translation of a rare Syriac
text related to the book of Daniel.

Werner H.
Kelber, the Isla and Percy Turner Professor of Religious
Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Cultures,
presented a paper titled “Memory’s Desire and
the Ordeal of Remembering: Judaism and Christianity”
at the international conference on Ontology of Dialogue
held at St. Petersburg, Russia, June 16-21. The conference
was dedicated to the United Nations Year of Dialogue among
Civilizations and to the 300-year anniversary of St. Petersburg
and sponsored by UNESCO and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Kelber also presented a paper titled “Roman Imperialism
and Early Christian Scribality” at a colloquium on
Orality, Literacy and Colonialism held at the U. of Natal,
South Africa, Aug. 28-30.

Ussama Makdisi,
assistant professor of history, will have his book, “The
Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence
in 19th Century Ottoman Lebanon,” translated into Arabic
by Dar al-Adab, one of the leading Arabic-language publishing
houses in the Middle East.

Joe Manca,
professor of art and art history, has had published his
most recent book, “Moral Essays on the High Renaissance:
Art in Italy in the Age of Michelangelo” (University
Press of America, 2001). In this work, Manca compares Michelangelo
unfavorably to Raphael and attacks many other shibboleths
of modern art criticism.

Atieno Odhiambo,
professor of history, has had published the festschrift
to Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, which Odhiambo organized
and edited. Ogot is a founding pioneer of African history
based on the analysis of oral narratives and recently celebrated
his 70th birthday. The book is titled “African Historians
and African Voices” and was published by P. Schlettwein
Publishing of Switzerland.

Nanxiu Qian,
assistant professor of linguistics, has had her book, “Spirit
and Self in Medieval China: The Shih-Shuo Hsin-Yu and Its
Legacy,” published by the U. of Hawaii Press. This
work is a study of “A New Account of Tales of the World,”
which is one of the most significant works in the Chinese
literary tradition. Qian’s study is the first thorough
study in any language of the origins, evolution and impact
of this work and suggests that contrary to Western assertions
of a timeless Chinese “tradition,” an authentic
understanding of personhood in China changed continually
and often significantly in response to changing historical
and cultural circumstances.

Gale Stokes,
the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History, professor of
German and Slavic studies and dean of the School of Humanities,
has been elected president-elect of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the interdisciplinary
association for those interested in subjects relating to
Russia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He will
serve as president in 2003.

Graduate student
Angela Criswell Turner, Jordan Konisky, vice
provost for research and graduate studies, and George Phillips,
former Rice professor of biochemistry and cell biology,
received the Pauling Award at the recent annual meeting
of the American Crystallographic Association in Los Angeles
for their presentation entitled “Structural Analysis
of Methanococcus Adenylate Kinases: Thermostability and
Ligand Binding.” Turner is a doctoral candidate in
the Dept. of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, where Konisky
is professor of biochemistry and cell biology. The Pauling
Award was awarded to the five poster presentations judged
most outstanding among 300 presentations.

Edith Wyschogrod,
the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious
Thought, Dept. of Religious Studies, discussed her books
on saints as ethical exemplars and on the topic of memory
and history with faculty and students at Dartmouth College,
where she also delivered the Dickinson lecture, the concluding
event of a trimester course on her work in spring 2001.
Her talk was sponsored by the Religious Studies Department,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., May 2-5.

Entries
for People, Papers, Presentations should be submitted to
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fax, (713) 348-6380; or campus mail, MS-300. Entries will
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