NAUGLOBAL - Northern Arizona University · PDF fileterms of its global reach and its role ......

NAUA Publication of the Center for International EducationSpring 2010

GLOBAL

Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Social Sciencesat Auckland University of Technology

For the first time ever, NAU has made an explicit commitment to intentionally infuse global perspectives throughout the undergraduate curriculum. On January 19, 2010, the Faculty Senate adopted the recommendations of the Global Learning Subcommittee of the Task Force on Global Education. This decision climaxed almost two years of deliberations in the subcommittee, developing and refining these recommendations and then having many more conver-sations with faculty, students, and administrators across the campus community. The process offered very useful insights, and many of the suggestions from various constituents were incorporated into the final draft recommendations and sup-porting language that was placed before the Faculty Senate.

The subcommittee defined global learning as embracing diver-sity, environmental sustainability, and global engagement. Further, the recommendations call for making these themes the university’s thematic student-learning outcomes for all undergraduates at NAU. As novel as this approach to global learning is, these themes are consistent with long-standing values at NAU. In fact, these elements are reflected in four of the seven strategic goals of the university.

This new and ambitious engagement with global learning re-flects NAU’s recognition that the education we afford our stu-dents must take into account the realities of the 21st century and must be aligned with the challenges that our students will face upon graduation. In a recently completed national survey sponsored by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, 63 percent of employers believe that recent college graduates do not have what it takes to survive in the global economy. Additionally, 90 percent of the general public be-lieves that it is important or very important to prepare future generations of Americans for a global society. The intercon-nected and interdependent nature of our world, in terms of trade, communication, environmental degradation, disease, human conflict, and human well-being, mean that these is-sues are now and will be the common currency of everyday life, a reality very different from the world a mere thirty years ago. This means that increasingly our students will have jobs that involve collaborating with counterparts located in differ-

ent countries, speaking different languages, and seeing the world through different cultural lenses, yet brought together by the need to succeed at the development of a single prod-uct or idea. This means that increasingly the quality of our air, our access to clean water, and the demand for the goods we produce will be less determined by the actions of our city, state, or even national governments and more by forces and phenomena that occur way beyond our borders.

The Global Learning Recommendations therefore affirm the view of a wide cross-section of the campus community and of the American public that our undergraduates must be prepared to be globally competent. NAU has taken this belief one step further by saying that global learning, deeply embedded in the academic majors, the liberal studies program, and the co-cur-riculum, is the surest way to achieve this goal. It is our hope that students will have multiple and substantive encounters (as opposed to merely a one-course requirement) with these perspectives. We also expect that these recommendations, when implemented, will build on the significant coursework and experiences that currently exist that will effectively ex-pand global learning experiences for our students.

The adoption of the Global Learning Recommendations marks a watershed in NAU’s evolution as an institution of higher education. We believe that this new commitment will further refine NAU’s identity as an institution that offers not only a sound education, but one that is relevant to its under-graduates as they prepare to lead successful lives as global citizens.

The Blome building on NAU’s historic North Campus is the new home for the Center for International Education

While watching the Academy Awards a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that film might very well be America’s most successful art form, at least in terms of its global reach and its role in shaping the perspectives of oth-ers about Americans and American culture. Regardless of one’s coun-try of origin, historically, access to the television has meant access to a world beyond one’s local commu-nity. Invariably, that world has been dominated by images of American life through movies and sitcoms because of the power and ubiquity of Hollywood. The messages that have been communicated via these media run the gamut, from the easy-going, fun-loving American personality, our commitment to rule of law, and our efforts to perfect our democracy, to our struggles with racism, with overconsumption, and with the deeply rooted American sense of exceptionalism, born of our power and privilege. Travel to any remote corner of the globe and you will find that anyone with access to a television will feel quite confident in articulating their ideas of who an American is and what America is all about. As an art form, film tells a convinc-ing story about how global in scope art can be, and how it can give us both insight and inspiration about

the world outside our local and na-tional communities. In fact, I believe that this can be accomplished by all forms of art. If art is the interpreta-tion of the human experience and an expression of the human spirit, it means that at one level we can all be artists, and in many ways art can be a medium through which we can more clearly articulate who we are and what it means to be human. Be it prehistoric cave drawings, to-tem poles on South Pacific islands, or pyramids scattered across conti-nents, or the newly released iPad, 3-D movies, or designer eyeglasses, each of these instances of art com-municates the passions and preoc-cupations of their authors, and more importantly, offers glimpses into the human experience and the particular worldview at the historical moment in which the works were created. Art is therefore a portal by which we can access and interpret (albeit imperfectly) human culture, and a passage through which we can have cross-cultural encounters. Notwithstanding these impor-tant virtues associated with art, we have repeatedly witnessed its mar-ginalization, particularly in times of economic stress. Some think that art is not sufficiently instrumental to justify the expenditure of scarce resources. Others think that it is the province only of the well-heeled, the weak-minded, or the indulgent. And yet time and time again, art demonstrates beyond doubt its vir-tues in extremely disparate circum-

stances. Art is used quite effectively as therapy in helping to heal chil-dren traumatized by war. Art is em-ployed as an ice breaker in political disputes between nations, a way to begin the process of mending polit-ical fences. Art is used to celebrate the highest human ideals, as wit-nessed in the Olympic Games. Art is used to reflect national aspira-tions for greatness, as in skyscrapers and iconic structures. In all of these ways, we find in art something of a common denominator that reminds us of our humanity, that offers us a common language to communicate, that reifies our status ultimately as global citizens. Art is central to the work of many faculty at NAU. The articles in this issue of NAU Global demonstrate the global dimension of the work of some of these faculty members, and more importantly, how this particu-lar dimension engages students and expands their vision of life in ways that take them beyond Arizona and beyond the United States to the wider world. It is work that helps them to become more reflective, more conscious of their individual contributions to the landscape of human experience, and more aware of their responsibility as global citi-zens. Art, then, must be part of the toolbox that helps students under-stand the interconnectedness and interdependence of our world, and in the end, fosters their becoming globally competent human beings.

Vice-Provost Harvey Charles

The Global Dimensions of Art

Harvey Charles, Ph.D., Editor

Angela Roberson, Assistant Editor

NAU Global is published twice yearly by the Center for International EducationNorthern Arizona UniversityPO Box 5598Flagstaff, AZ 86011e-mail: [email protected]: http://international.nau.edu/Tel: 928-523-2409 Fax: 928-523-9489

NAU GLOBAL

2 NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010

FROM THE VICE-PROVOST

By Dr. Harvey Charles

Historical ceramic objects from many cultures have long been my inspiration. Although I find inspiration from Persian, French, and English ceramic history, the most di-rect influence stems from the East Asia Pacific Rim. Ancient Japanese, Chinese, and Korean ceramics have influenced my decisions in terms of form and function, while the finished surfaces of these wares have influ-enced my choices of ceramic firing processes. I am particularly enam-ored with wares from the Momoya-ma Period in Japan, the Silla Dynasty in Korea, and the Song Dynasty in China. I am a potter and my current work involves the wood-fire process. Wood-burning kilns were developed in Asia, and so it was in this region that high-temperature stoneware and porcelain were first fired, ac-counting for the vast majority of all ceramicware from Asian antiquity. The wood-fire process involves burn-ing wood as fuel, often over a period of many days to achieve the desired temperature, 2,300 degrees Fahr-enheit or higher. During the firing, ash from the burning wood travels through the kiln, landing on the ce-ramicware; at high temperatures this ash reacts with clay and forms a nat-ural glaze. It is this result that seems to interest contemporary potters the most. Placement of an object within the kiln, its physical orientation, the duration of the firing, the type of clay used, and the kind of wood burned as fuel all play a role in the aesthet-ics of the finished object. Because

of the number of variables involved, the process is to a certain degree in-effable. Each firing seems to lead to a new set of experiments and ques-tions. The ancient cultures of Japan, China, and Korea had such an amaz-ing mastery and command of this process, producing objects that were both highly controlled and extremely varied. My interest in this process lies in the fact that wood-fired objects are in

a sense allegorical of their creation. With rudimentary knowledge of this process, it is possible to deter-mine: how an object was made, how it was oriented within the kiln, and the path of the flame. I find it in-triguing that an object can tell the story of its final aesthetic. For years I have been working on a series of tall ceramic bottles. These individual pieces are thrown on the potter’s wheel and then placed on their sides, within the kiln, in groups of 18 to 20. They are fired for 36 to 72 hours and then finally displayed in groups of five or seven, lined up closely together. The result

Allegory and Ceramics: The Influence of Time, History, and Culture

Seven Tall BottlesWoodfired Stoneware, 2007

(Continued on page 20)

CERAMIC ART NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010 3

By Prof. Jason Hess

is a dynamic display of color and tex-ture generated by the making and fir-ing process, which leads the viewer’s eye through a set of multiples. No glaze is applied to these pieces; the surfaces are generated by careful con-trol of as many variables as possible. In the past few years, I have become interested in creating a different al-legory, one that is generated in a less process-oriented manner. I was awarded a one-semester sab-batical for the spring of 2008. Dur-ing this time I traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and China to study the ceramics of these cultures. I was particularly interested in learn-ing about the overglaze enamel tra-dition. This process involves painting glaze pigments onto a fired ceramic surface and then refiring, to a much lower temperature, to melt the glaze material into place. It is possible to render highly ornate and exacting imagery/pattern through the use of a brush and a huge variety of luscious glazes. While in China I did an artist residency in Jingdezhen, the porce-lain capital of the world and a major historical center. I took lessons from several master artists who paint with overglaze enamels as well as those who decorate with cobalt blue (blue and white) imagery and pattern. I practiced using these processes in China and also collaborated with several artists to see how these new colors and glaze materials would fit aesthetically with my work. The pro-cess is quite challenging and involves a completely different approach to the ceramic process in terms of mak-ing and firing. The tradition of over-glaze enamels has a rich history, not unlike the wood-fire process. I am excited by the idea of creat-ing allegory through the use of more literal imagery on a series of multiple forms displayed together. My intent and hope is that the series of mul-

It is a valid question: How can one justify the making of books today in light of the fact that you have to cut down quite a few trees to sustain the idea? This is indeed true, lamentable, and perhaps a strong case for the elec-

tronic book, but it can be counter-balanced by the fact that books have also served as a window on the world for centuries. They have defined his-tory, ideas, memory, and place. They continue to be our avenues of escape into another reality, inculcate into our consciousness the tide marks of our civilization through poetry and literature, and introduce us to new paths we never trod. They lead us down roads we may wish we never entered; perhaps serve to switch on lights in one of our dark attics. And these are the models slowly being physically replaced by computerized technology. The field of book art could be con-sidered the extension of the literary tool. It is a viable, visual medium that can provide links and meeting points

Book Art: A Window on the World

BOOK ART4 NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010

By Jennifer Storey

Across the university, so many of us, as students, scholars, and teachers, are meaningfully engaged in the aes-thetic, political, and socially transfor-mative aspects of the arts. As an au-thor of literary fiction and nonfiction for children, I’d like to suggest a few ways that children’s books transcend and challenge conventional ideas of “the foreign” vs. the “familiar” and open up children’s minds to new ideas about migration, movement, and global citizenship. While my words challenge these conventions, they do so at the conflu-ence of literature and art. Children’s authors write “illustratable action.” Most picture books are between 500 and 1,000 words, so each word counts, and I rely on the artist to cap-ture the rest visually. The language of the story must inspire art that—to-gether with text—inspires children. In the picture books I have published to date, I believe that lyricism, musi-cality, and the language of social jus-tice come together with the visual to explore a sense of presence that tran-scends borders.

As a member of the Latino/a community, I’m committed to rep-resenting the indelible mark we have left on the Américas, North and South. I explore these contri-butions and this creativity in my collaborations with illustrators. My writing evokes a sense of presence and place, while acknowledging the sense of displacement that can be a part of the immigrant experience in America. Ultimately, my goal as a creative writer and cultural worker is to affirm the connectedness of us all as global citizens—in other words, affirming a social citizenship

between many art disciplines, such as print, painting, and sculpture. It is by its very nature tactile and hands-on. It would lose its essence if book art had to be computerized into digital im-ages. The written language frequent-ly reveals subjective interpretation, but it can also be a platform for cur-

How Picture Books Make Children into Citizens of the World

NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010 5

PICTURE BOOKS

By Prof. Monica Brown

Amber Jensen: Alphabet Book of Endan-gered Species. Photo © Jes Lee Shimek, courtesy Minnesota Center for Book Arts

rent issues and global concerns, such as the near extinction of species, the decimation of forests, the alienation of communities, the constructive use of energy resources, sustainable life practices, and biodiversity losses. The format can take many faces: it can be whimsical, fantastical, and frivolous, but through its unlimited artistic li-cence—with regard to structure, me-dium, size, and form—it can empha-size a single, strong message through creative vivacity and imagination. Art is personal. It has to be; oth-erwise, we wouldn’t be able to tell a Picasso from a Rembrandt. Book art is a subjective interpretation of lan-guage in an art form. It is an expres-sion of theme through use of the idea of a book, coupled with artistic verve. The book artist must be conversant

first with his theme or idea; have an ability to express this idea artistically, literally, and structurally; and then assemble it in a book form, which may or may not be traditional, that is, having two covers, one front, and one back, with pages in between. This book may concertina out of a box, it

may take the form of stone tablets or catapult out of a nest of papers, be hidden in an image, or need human intervention to interleave folios; it may take a totally unbooklike form as in a statue, a shoe, a cigarette packet. It has to strike the viewer with sur-prise, astonishment, wonder. Is book art then a means to pro-mulgate new ideas, push the barriers back to what is acceptable artistic ex-pression? If nothing else, it is a dia-bolical marriage between the written word and Art, with a capital A. And book with a capital B.

Jennifer Storey is a Lecturer in Book Art at the Siena School for Liberal Studies.

children’s books transcend and challenge conventional ideas of “the foreign” vs. the “familiar”

that transcends national and political borders. In my nonfiction picture book My Name is Gabito, a young Gabriel García Márquez becomes aware of the working conditions of the labor-ers on the banana plantations for the first time: “Even to little Gabi-to, it didn’t seem fair that those who worked so hard were so poor and this made Gabito sad. He tried to imagine a world where no one was poor and where everyone could sit with their grandfathers under the shade of a tree, holding hands and crunching ice.” Raul Colón captures the contrast between Gabito’s happy adventures with his grandfather with the realities of hard labor in a way that children can un-derstand. In Chavela and the Magic Bubble, my work of magic realist fiction for children, the young protagonist dis-covers “magic rainforest chicle” and takes a magic bubblegum ride across


Below: from Chavela and the Magic Bubble (Clarion, Spring 2010)

Above: a page from My Name is Gabito

The theatrical art form opera was born in Italy (1597) from the idea that the antique Greek tragedy and comedy needed to be revived, but in a way that reflected 16th century European developments in music. It found its way first to Germany and France in the early 17th century and then into the rest of Europe. Indeed, the 19th century was more famous for opening up the entire world to new developments and inventions than for its cherishing of Romanti-cism. The opera lived its own life. In the 19th century it became very success-ful outside Europe in areas such as the United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The same happened with symphonic music, classical ballet, and other musical forms. These European art forms not only found their way to all corners of our planet, but they also fertilized other cultures, which either brought their own creativity into what already existed, or started new directions. The performing arts live by their universality. They also live by the need (from the performer’s point of view) and the expectations (from the audience’s standpoint) to produce moments of exaltation and unfor-gettable experiences. Any performer therefore needs to “taste” this uni-versality by experiencing studying and performing, not just in the safe

and protected environment of home, school, and college/university, but also away from home and under dif-ferent cultural and historical circum-stances. A well-known TV documentary features world-famous violinist Isaac Stern visiting a conservatory of mu-sic in China. The students—many of them around five to seven years old—all played some music of Mo-zart for him; it was technically at a very high level of musical sophistica-tion, but it did not at all sound like Mozart. With this historical film,

Context Matters: Opera and Its Global Traditions


By Profs. Nando Schellen and Debbi Raymond

During the past few years, NAU and the Flagstaff community have been able to view the cinemas of French, German, Indian, Spanish, and Na-tive American filmmakers through campus festivals and film series. Film scholars, students, and the film-going public have increasingly shown an interest in various forms of national and transnational cinemas extending beyond the offerings of mainstream Hollywood. Students at NAU are of-fered a range of film studies courses that refract dimensions of national identity and culture. And the in-creasing global circulation of cinema makes tangible the concept of cultur-al diversity by providing viewers with many windows to view a vast march of characters muddling through life’s struggles and complexities in a con-tinually transforming world. Scholars, students, and the view-ing public are also turning to another lesser-acknowledged form of cinema, produced by amateur filmmakers. Amateur films provide a historical chronicle that offers a wide range of global perspectives. At nearly the same time that professionally produced motion pictures were en-tertaining audiences, amateur film-makers were acquiring home movie cameras and documenting the expe-riences of their families and friends, and recording the ways people moved through their worlds. Over the past three decades, scholars, filmmakers, students, and artists have begun ex-ploring amateur film collections and finding a reservoir of images, often revealing small stories of cultural life both lived and imagined. Amateur films, particularly those made during the first half of the 20th century with 16mm and (later) 8mm

home movie cameras, provide an experience akin to time travel. They are documents that bear witness to how people framed themselves, their families, and the worlds where they lived and visited. To be sure, home movies have their fair share of ideal-ized scenes, but such films also offer images of how people traveled into the worlds of others. Travelogues of foreign destinations are testimony to a curious gaze and fascination with differences between cultures, and while such films are rife with issues of representational politics and sur-veillance, they also offer evidence of modern mobility, politics, and the historical transformations of places and people. Czech Republic documentary filmmaker Jan Sikl offers one of the most profound examples of why am-ateur films matter. In the mid-1990s, Sikl began collecting old home movies from ordinary Czech fami-lies, shot between 1920 and 1960. Sikl selected footage from these otherwise private films of ordinary families and created a series of eight episodes titled Private Century. The episodes were broadcast on Czech television and eventually found their way to various international film fes-tivals. Narrated by the recollections found in letters and stories from family members, the episodes fol-low the paths of Czech individuals and families through the first half of the 20th century. Their stories depict people confronting and responding to the circumstances of their times, and, collectively, they document how politics, culture, and historical events give shape to otherwise unknown individuals. For example, we watch as a musician joins the Communist

Party and allows its ideology to permeate his life. Another episode features two cousins in Prague en-amored with Hollywood westerns. They have their film collection con-fiscated by the Nazis and decide to make their own amateur versions of the films they love. Another install-ment tells of a couple that moves to Czechoslovakia to escape the Bol-sheviks of czarist Russia and we have the privilege to see how the next two generations of their family adapt to life in their new country. These are but a few of the scenes recorded by the cameras of ordi-nary people. Private Century gives us a cinematic glimpse of a culture and nation of shifting populations, redrawn borders, occupations, in-carcerations, and escape maneuvers. In all, these amateur films evoke the details of ordinary lives as they were lived and played out against the panorama of cultures swirling in perpetual motion. Sikl’s Private Century is but one extraordinary example of the po-tential of amateur film. Since 2003, film archivists have been holding an annual “Home Movie Day” in an effort to collect amateur films and show them at public screen-ings. Over the past seven years, the movement has grown internation-ally. In 2009, Home Movie Day was observed in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy,

Stern made his point that you need to travel and expose yourself to other cultures to learn! Many American universities today sponsor study abroad programs that help to further underscore Mr. Stern’s point of view and message. The gen-eral lack of facility in modern lan-guages and ignorance in world his-tory among American students could be substantially reversed if students elected to participate in study abroad and thereby have direct cross-cul-

Discovering Amateur Cinema Around the Globe

OPERA AMATEUR CINEMA


By Prof. Mark Neumann

Nando Schellen and Deborah Raymond are Associate Professors in the School of Music.

tural encounters. Fortunately, NAU sponsors a number of interesting and exciting study abroad programs, the “Flagstaff in Fidenza” program being one among them. As the initiators and founders of this Summer Op-era program, we are pleased that it is now in its fourth year of operation. Participants come from all over the world and they consistently report how unique and enriching this pro-gram is. Apart from the world-class instruction and outstanding perfor-mances, one of the chief advantages of the program is that it takes place

Still image from Jan Sikl ’s PRIVATE CENTURY.

Finale of Act 2 of Le nozze di Figaro.

in Italy, home to a long and highly developed operatic tradition. What better way to learn more about this art form than to do so in a society where it has deep roots and offers an authentic experience. We invite you to learn more about this program at nau.edu/fidenza and read the com-ments from students and faculty. It is a program that makes NAU and us very proud.

The performing arts live by their univer-sality...Any performer therefore needs to

“taste” this universality

We might say that the world started thinking globally when theater products started travel-ing from their place of “birth” to other coun-tries.


Art director and design critic Ste-ven Heller once said, “Consider the contemporary debate about design’s social role and designer’s social re-sponsibilities. Today’s designers are sometimes blamed for contributing to the wasteful excesses of our glo-balized consumer society.” Heller’s quotation is a powerful one, because many outside the design profession do not realize that there is more to design than the logo on your cup or the advertisement on the wall. De-sign can also be used to improve lives and make the world a healthier place. As visual communicators, graphic designers have the responsibility to consider first the needs and then the wants of society. We also have to un-derstand just how influential our de-signs become; beyond printed matter and digital interfaces, designers can actually assist people in remaining active, independent individuals in society. Throughout our lives, we often find ourselves in less-than-ideal situations, whether it be traveling to a foreign country where there is a steep language barrier, getting lost in a library because of poor or non-existent wayfinding*, or struggling to put together an entertainment center because the directions are more con-fusing than helpful. The needs are different, but they’re there, they can all exist on a global level, and they can all be resolved through design. In his book The Design of Every-day Things, acclaimed psychologist and engineer Donald Norman argues that humans sometimes feel they are to blame when understanding eludes them. He explains that all too often it’s the simple things of everyday life, such as opening a door, using a light switch, or turning on a water fau-cet, that are the most difficult. And this is where a designer can make

a product with a poor design func-tion better. Some people may be afraid to turn on a faucet in fear of being burned. They may be unsure of which direction is hot and which is cold, and oftentimes the faucet is not marked. But many faucets de-signed today now have red and blue icons to help clarify the information. This simple advance in information graphics was more than likely cre-ated by a designer. In the world of “globalization,” ver-bal and written language can quickly become barriers; this is where visual communication can offer solutions to universal problems. For years, design-ers have been working diligently to create universal “wayfinding” systems to help people navigate their way to destinations. Together with five en-vironmental graphic designers, the Professional Organization of Design (AIGA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) devised a sys-tem of 50 universal passenger/pedes-trian symbols for global use. Prior to this collaboration, universal symbols existed but there was no cohesive sys-tem of signs that “communicated the required range of complex messages, addressed people of different ages and cultures and were clearly legible

The Art of Graphic Design in a Globalized World


By Prof. Kimberly Melhus

Ever since the invention of pho-tography, people have been using it to describe the world around them. One of the most inspiring examples of this was the “Family of Man” exhi-bition in 1955, which demonstrated “the art of photography as a dynamic process of giving form to ideas and of explaining man to man; proving that photography is the only ‘language’ un-derstood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures.” 1 This exhibition contained photo-graphs that offered a global record of the human experience, displaying universal experiences of birth, love, and joy, along with the devastation of war, illness, and death. As a young photographer, I was empowered by the magic of my little black box; just a slight push of my finger on the button and I became a sorcerer, capturing a moment in time, visible for all to see. This sense of magic inspired my initial attraction to photography. As I gained com-petency with its technical aspects, I realized that the practice of photo-graphing meant more than produc-ing beautiful images. The need to engage more deeply with the world fueled my real attraction to using this “magic” technology. I felt connected to the captured images as well as to the people in them. Plunging more deeply into this medium of expression, I discovered a community of others who enriched the field with their insights. In his book Why People Photograph, Robert Adams, a pillar of the trade, wrote, “At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given some-

thing perfect—a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.” 2

After years of work as a profes-sional photojournalist in the mass media—which tends to objectify the content of whatever is portrayed—I could not ignore the nagging suspi-cion that a more personal reason lay behind what I was doing. Follow-ing this notion, I decided to take a sabbatical and enroll in a graduate program to pursue a different per-spective behind the camera. For my thesis, I chose to photograph a Men-nonite community that had migrat-ed to West Texas from Mexico and Canada, a subject of interest because of my own Anabaptist ancestry. I was motivated to learn more about my heritage and the Mennonite cul-ture beyond the stereotypes perpetu-ated by the popular media. Traveling to Seminole, Texas, where my project was located, I found myself in a completely unfa-miliar environment among people speaking a different language. How-ever, over the months spent there taking photos and interviewing sub-

jects, I began to feel like a part of their community instead of an ob-jective observer. I enjoyed the luxury of having time to get to know my subjects, which rarely happened in my media job. Going to their farms every day, sharing meals, attending weddings and church services, ask-ing them questions and answering theirs, I felt included in their lives. Working with these families was not the usual photography job, and the images showed it. The photos that emerged were quiet ones, like the people themselves. Sarah Funk, whose image accompanies this arti-cle, looks at us with an inner strength and grace that belies her nine years of life. At that moment in time, her face reflects the inner strength and grace of a whole culture, based on strong family bonds, a sense of to-getherness, and a deep spirituality. Being with the Mennonites taught me a lot about connection and about photography. More than 25 years after first picking up a camera, I still find that photography is a tool for under-standing the unfamiliar. The observ-er’s gift of seeing and recording can show us how we are all included in the “essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.”3 One of my goals as an educator is to broaden my students’ vision. Through a pho-tographer’s eye, they can learn to see more deeply into the human condi-tion and into themselves.___________________________

at a distance.” Today, these symbol sets are used across the entire world and have helped join disconnections due to language barriers. Design is everywhere. Design is everything. From product design to identity design to information de-sign, the possibilities in which infor-mation can be conveyed are endless. While it is true that some forms of visual communication could be con-sidered “wasteful excesses of our glo-balized consumer society,” there are also many more beneficial contribu-tions designers make than one may realize. In the end, what is the role of a graphic designer in a world that is constantly changing? As problem solvers, designers must be present with current information. Most im-portant, designers must be vigorous thinkers, as design is a process of investigation and inquiry. We must stay informed about cultural trends and issues. With research and col-laboration, the designer is then able to use this information to produce meaningful solutions, like creating a successful universal symbol system to help people from all over the world navigate in unfamiliar areas. The quality of research and understand-ing of the problem is vital in the end, and so is appreciating the power of design.

Kimberly Melhus is Assistant Professor of Visual Communication.

GRAPHIC DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY

By Prof. Laura L. Camden

1Edward Steichen. The Family of Man, 3. 2Robert Adams. Why People Photograph, 179.3Edward Steichen. The Family of Man, 3.


Photography as Sorcery: Making Accessible the Commonalities of the Human Experience

(Left: Mennonite Sarah Funkin Seminole, Texas 1999)

Laura L. Camden is Assistant Professor of Photography.

No Smoking Signage in Hong Kong Photo Credit: Paul Bruski

1 Steven Heller. “A Cold Eye: Critical Lapse” in Print. (New York: F&W Publications, July 2003), 24.2 Thomas Fisher. “Design in Your Future.” Posted in Winter 2007 www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Design_in_your_future.html.3 Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things. (New York: Basic Books, 1988), viii.4 “Symbol Signs” from www.AIGA.org/con-tent.cfm/symbol-signs


NAU Hosts Art Exhibition featuring work done by students of Tohoku Seikatsu Bunka University in Sendai, Japan

Professors Norihiko Seto and Junichi Sato led the group of students to NAU.

When it comes to education and life-style, most people see art as a luxury, a means to demonstrate affluence, or a hobby to escape the rigors of daily life. Nothing would illustrate this idea more than looking at the cur-rent situation in the Flagstaff Uni-fied School District and the budget crisis in Arizona. As a parent of kids in grades K through 12 and one who stays abreast of community develop-ments, I assume that the first things to be cut from schools are those ar-eas that are considered “luxuries” to education: sports, music, theater, li-braries, and “art.” If global education is a priority, however, it seems to me that we should provide a cross-dis-ciplinary approach to education that encompasses both arts and sciences. A good education goes beyond a narrow focus within a given field of study and should include exposure to learning on both the left and right sides of the brain. It was my hope to develop a course that would utilize the aesthetics and conceptual com-ponents of art, but also challenge students to think about the kind of world in which they live. I have been an artist for as long as I can remember, making drawings before I even entered a formal school system. I love working in various me-dia and always want to experiment with things I have not yet tried. Go-ing hand and hand with this love for art making is my desire to stay with materials that I consider the safest for my body. I painted with water-soluble materials for years and when I started teaching painting, I tried to make sure that my students were aware of what appeared to be the more-expensive alternatives, which would be safer for their bodies and

the environment. However, I wanted something more than that, and when I was given the opportunity to de-velop an art course for honors, I im-mediately wanted to work with and teach a course involving recycled and found materials. Recycled art is not a new idea. There are web sites and exhibitions even here in Flagstaff that cater to the notion of creating art from trash or expendables. My focus was sus-tainability: We consume and use to the point of excess; we throw out what we think is no longer usable and we don’t think about what we do until it harms us. For this course it was important for me to have stu-dents take ownership of the materi-als they chose for their art. They had to research them, understand where they came from, identify the cost to produce them, and recognize the


impact to the environment and/or to our bodies. Along with a comprehension of their materials, students were ex-pected to attach this knowledge to a concept that had meaning to them. Wherever possible, they had to find that connection between idea and materials so they could immerse themselves in all aspects of their

By Debra Edgerton

Building on the momentum of the global learning recommendations and their adop-tion by the Faculty Senate, the Provost ap-proved events in the Provost’s Speaker Series that would continue the conversation and fur-ther educate the campus community on this important institutional commitment. Global learning is defined here at NAU as embrac-ing environmental sustainability, diversity and global engagement.


Art as Pedagogy for Self and a Sustainable World

SUSTAINABLE ART Provost Speaker Series Focus on Global Learning Themes

work. To engage a student you must tap into a place in them where they care about their subject. They need to make art that moves them first before it moves someone else. Some students used this type of emotional reasoning in choosing industrial, in-organic, or fabricated materials for their art. From the burning of plas-tics in rural areas to the consump-tion of drinks in aluminum cans to the deposit of trash from the forest areas around Flagstaff, these phe-nomena often inspired their choices and served as the catalyst for serial projects with common threads link-ing ideas to recyclables. In the construction of her piece titled Apprehensive, for example, J. Williams stated that she created “a pregnant woman from bottles and pack-aging to emphasize the effects of plastic as hormone disrupters. We expose our-selves to plastic polymers daily through plastic food packaging, where migration of these chemicals occurs.” The book Our Stolen Future, which describes the ef-fects of plastics on the development of unborn children, inspired the cre-ation of her piece. Sustainability is not only about get-ting the maximum use out of materi-als we have manufactured; it is also about not wasting the resources we have at our disposal. My students were allowed to choose either organ-ic (natural or “found”) or inorganic (fabricated) materials. When people think about “recycling,” they should be thinking about the idea of “reuse.” Natural materials like wood scraps, dried plants, or even food products can fall into this category. As defined

by Flagstaff ’s Recycled Center, “re-use” is when something consumed in a certain way is later reconstructed for a new purpose. Under this de-scription, organic substances can be natural resources that may later be reconfigured into art. When C. Dufek created her piece Pheasant: Tinder, Campfire and Mem-ories, she was inspired by her love for the outdoors. She used natural mate-rials such as wood, twigs, bark, dried leaves and grass to construct her pheasant. One of the few art students in the class, and one who has always paid exacting attention to details, she carried this personal aesthetic through to her recycled work. This first attempt at teaching a class in recycled art engaged a broad cross-section of NAU students, from freshmen to postgraduates and from engineers and forestry majors to art education and honors students. There were very few art majors. In this same way, the larger issues of global educa-tion and sustainability should touch every student, regardless of major or level of study. This class was also a model of student collaboration in terms of collecting materials, giving critiques to work in progress, sharing web sites and other recycling and art information, and most importantly, acting as sounding boards to ideas disseminated in class. This turned out to be a successful experiment in students learning about the effects of our own consumption and the small things we can do to make a positive difference where we live. I believe connecting art to our en-vironment taps into a place where art is no longer that inaccessible subject that only a few understand. Taking materials we see or use on a daily ba-sis adds familiarity and makes it eas-ier to relate to what art can be. And in doing so, we add another link to the way we can communicate about and within our communities and our world.

These themes are not new to NAU and in fact are deeply embedded in the culture of this institution. What is new is how we have packaged them to advance global learning in the academic experience of students. The first event in the Provost Speaker Series this year welcomed Grant Cornwell, President of the College of Wooster, who presented a talk titled “Every-body’s Business: Globalization and Liberal Learning in the 21st Century.” More than 100 faculty, staff and students turned out for this presentation. Prior to this talk, President Cornwell was hosted at a luncheon by the Pro-vost Academic Leadership Council and later met with the Implementation Committee for the global learning recommendations.

The second event in the Provost’s Speaker Series occurred on March 22 when Van Jones and Billy Parish spoke to a packed audience in the DuBois ballroom in a presentation titled “Challenging America: Achiev-ing Sustainability and Justice Through the Green Collar Economy.” Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He is the best-selling author of the defini-tive book on green jobs, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. Jones co-founded the non-profit in-stitutions Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Green for All, and Color of Change and served as the Green Jobs advisor for the Obama administra-tion in 2009. Parish is a leading youth organizer on climate change. As founder and coordinator of the Energy Action Coalition, he has traveled throughout the nation, organizing over 50 diverse, youth-led organiza-tions into a joint campaign called The Campus Climate Challenge.

The Center for International Education, a co-sponsor for both these events, will continue to find ways to bring to campus influential scholars and thinkers who can continue to enlighten us on what it means to commit to global learning in the academy.

Van Jones

Billy Parish

Grant Cornwell

Pheasant: Tinder, Campfire and Memories, by C. Dufek. Natural materials.

Debra Edgerton is a lecturer in the Department of Art.

Apprehensive, by J. Williams. Plastic packaging.

Recommendations from the Student Development Subcommittee

1. Increase the international student population to 5% of the NAU student body by Fall 2012

2. Assign a minimum of five funded graduate student positions for use by the Vice Provost for International Education to assist in strategic recruitment of international graduate students

3. Increase study abroad participation (in semester or academic year programs) to 5% of the NAU student body by Fall 2012

4. Implement an education abroad fee of $1 - $3 that is assessed to all NAU students and will be used to support student travel scholarships for education abroad

5. Continue to promote cross-cultural programming via collaborative work with academic departments and student organizations

6. Support international student engagement in providing cross-cultural education experiences for K-12 students in the Flagstaff area schools

7. Build a new facility that will house the offices of the Center for International Education and can be used for co-curricular cross-cultural experiences

8. Continue to support faculty leading short-term study abroad programs and recognize faculty and students for their leadership activities in this regard

9. CIE will collaborate with Student Affairs to ensure that global learning occurs in the co-curriculum and that this compliments similar efforts in the curriculum

10. Engage with the international dimension local ethnic/indigenous communities and encourage student engage-ment with international learning associated with the Grand Canyon

Commercial popular music has long comfortably accommodat-ed the mixing of various global musical styles. Western popular music expropriated sounds, mixes, melodies, and imagery from the music and song of various cultures as early as the mid-19th century. Like many popular music perform-ers around the world, by 1960 Ja-maican musicians were inverting the process by taking American rhythm and blues and altering it through the addition of distinctive elements of Jamaican religious or political music. Early 1970s Jamaican dub—reggae vocal recordings stripped down to bare instrumental tracks dominated by bass and drums with elements of the original recordings reinjected into the mix—were layered under the influential vocal styling of DJs who toasted new lyrics while referencing the now-absent reggae vocalist’s song text. These early intertextual efforts, which stratified the recording’s mix and generated meaning concurrently in each stratum, would continue to be expanded upon, while DJ mixes and vocal stylings influenced the early rap scene in the United States. In my First Year Seminar, Jamai-can Music–Jamaican Identity, students explore the aural and visual spaces in Jamaican popular music, where cul-tures mix in the process of structuring meaning and identity. Before digital music editing became widespread—fueling remix from the mid-1990s onward where previous and new mu-sical sound sources are continually modified and intercut—Jamaican re-versioning crested with crossover hit recordings of dancehall DJ superstars such as Shaggy (b. 1968). While re-versioning was common in the 1980s through the 1990s (more than a cov-

er recording, re-versions often funda-mentally restructured the original), Shaggy would create dazzling and virtuosic DJ recordings that pushed Jamaican re-versioning and intertex-tuality to its limits. As part of our seminar, first-year students closely examine the as-semblage and musical strata in key recordings from the early 1990s of Kingston-born and Brooklyn-raised Shaggy in a series of important re-

versions of classic and iconic Jamai-can material. One example is his 1993 re-version of the Folkes Broth-ers’ groundbreaking 1960 Jamaican hit, “Oh Carolina.” While “Oh Car-olina” was performed in classic r&b style, the Folkes Brothers added a layer of strikingly distinctive nyab-hingi (Rastafarian) drumming and it became the first commercial Ja-maican popular music hit recording to feature overtly Jamaican musical elements.

By Prof. Blase Scarnati

MUSIC

Jamaican Dancehall Re-versions: Introducing Freshmen to Global Music

Ancient Art History and Its Implications for Contemporary Global Art

When I first came to NAU 12 years ago, I started ask-ing my art history students to analyze cartoons published in the New Yorker that featured works of art from a variety of historical time periods. I wanted the students to consider what contemporary matter was being ridiculed and why the car-toonist had chosen the specific work depicted to make fun of the issue in question; I also wanted to see if they would have understood the cartoon had they not been enrolled in the class. Some of my choices (e.g., Tom Cheney’s July 25, 2005, Paleolithic cave painting scene accompanied by the caption, “So—are you ready to re-veal your sources?”—a commentary on the Valerie Plame scandal) were im-possible for the students to decipher, but others, such as Robert Mankoff ’s February 16, 2004, museum scene titled “That’s right, honey—it was a wardrobe malfunction” in reference to the partial nudity of the main char-acter in Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) had mes-sages that were easier for them to comprehend. More recently, I have started to supplement this assign-ment with others that introduce stu-dents to the themes of world cultural heritage and repatriation, mainly as a way to increase their exposure to some of the controversies affecting the global art world (especially, the illegal antiquities trade). Last summer, New York Times writ-er Michael Kimmelman succinctly described the events which culmi-nated in the present-day display in Rome’s Villa Giulia Museum of the famous Euphronios krater, a sixth-century B.C.E. Attic red-figure “hot pot” stolen from an Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri and purchased by the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972. Near the end of “Stolen Beauty: A Greek Urn’s Underworld” ( July 8, 2009), Kimmelman writes that the krater is now “divorced from the spot where the looters discovered it, not to mention from its Greek origin. . . . [It is] displayed . . . alongside other artifacts recovered from American museums with labels identifying not the archaeological legacy of these objects but the institutions that gave them back. What matters to the Ital-ians, it would seem, is not simply straightening out the archaeological record; it is also providing caution-ary tales for prospective collectors in the illegal antiquities trade via tro-phies like the krater.” In his descrip-tion of the history of the Euphronios krater, Kimmelman further observes that it represents a “Greek pot sold to an Etruscan buyer and stolen from an Italian site [which ended] up in New York . . . [now it is] . . . a Greek pot in a Roman museum dedicated to Etruscan art.” This apt assessment represents a perfect springboard for contempo-rary writing assignments with an international flavor since it begs the question: To whom does the vase

really belong? Should it be the Ital-ians, because an Etruscan purchased it and later used it as a tomb gift, or the Greeks, because Euphronios, an Athenian pioneer in the field of red-figure vase painting, decorated it? Because the answers are neither sim-ple nor clear-cut, these are excellent questions for students of ancient art history to consider. As they explore who the rightful “owners” of works of art are, students must research both their modern and ancient contexts, studying not only who currently has possession of them, how they were acquired, and what evidence exists to indicate that they were stolen from their prior owners or improp-erly removed from their “original” locations, but also when they were first produced, who made them and why, who owned and/or used them, and where and how they got to their original findspot. On this investiga-tive journey, students also become familiar with the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention and the contemporary debates involving a number of well-known art museums with collections of antiquities that may have been illegally looted from other nations or acquired in suspi-cious circumstances (in addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the latter include the J. Paul Getty Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, Yale’s Peabody Muse-um of Natural History, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the British Museum in London). In the end, students leave my class with a global awareness that they did not have at the beginning of the semester, ready to debate whether the Parthenon’s sculptures belong to Greece or the world, or if the Getty’s statue of a victorious youth—pro-duced by the Greeks and looted by the Romans—should remain in Los Angeles or be repatriated.

Alexandra A. Carpino is Chair of the De-partment of Comparative Cultural Studies

and Associate Professor of Art History.

ART HISTORY

This famous Greek vase, painted by Euphronios in the late 6th century BCE, is now on display in Rome’s Villa Giulia

Museum.

By Prof. Alexandra A. Carpino

NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010 1514 NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010

From the opening piano sample of the Folkes Brothers’ original, Shaggy carves up the regular musical form of the original into distinctive blocks or segments of music that he juxtaposes and variously reassembles to structure his version. In addition, rather than adding a layer of Jamaican nyabhingi drumming into the mix as in the original, Shaggy reverses the process by layering in a guitar line quoting the theme from the United States hit TV series Peter Gunn (1958–1961), which dates from the time of the Folkes Brothers’ recording. Working in groups, my First Year Seminar students use Shaggy’s re-version of “Oh Carolina” as a model to both further re-version the work (or reverse the process yet again), or employ similar strategies to re-ver-sion other classic Jamaican hits. Usu-ally, enough students have experience with basic music-editing software that they can collaborate with their colleagues to further re-versioning the musical mix, or create a new mu-sical rhythm track. Other students in the group collaborate to write new or re-versioned DJ lyrics, record them, and add them to the mix. Students in the seminar are able to work more deeply with the concept of Jamaican re-versioning by actually creating it for themselves. Research on active pedagogies has overwhelm-ingly demonstrated that when stu-dents “do” or actively apply concepts, rather than just think through them, they assimilate and retain the mate-rial at a strikingly higher rate. Additionally, exposure to these global forms of music and musi-cal creativity in their freshman year serves as one instance among what should be many more encounters students have with global perspec-tives during the undergraduate years.

Blase Scarnati is Associate Professor of Historical Musicology and Director of the University First Year Seminar

Program.

Shaggy

Rajasingam Rajaratnam, other-wise known as “Raj,” is an NAU alumnus who now makes his home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Raj attended NAU from 1986 – 1990 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Admin-istration. He says that he is still in touch with many of the friends he made at NAU and stays in touch through social media tools like Face-book. Raj credits NAU with providing him with a comprehensive university experience that included excellent classroom instruction coupled with unique student life opportunities. His time on campus included a com-plete cultural experience that intro-duced him to student life in the USA as well as opportunities to learn from Native American, Hispanic and in-ternational students from around the world. When he first arrived at NAU in August 1986, he lived in South Quad, which was an apartment-style residence hall with cooking facilities. He fondly remembers using food as a way to bond with other students and share his culture with peers. “Be-cause of NAU, no matter where I go

in the world, my educational experi-ences will go with me. Possessing a degree from NAU has provided me with wonderful opportunities to ex-plore different cultures and [having a degree] has taken me to Jakarta, Indonesia and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I interacted with many international students during my time at NAU, and it has helped me understand and communicate better with foreigners, which in turn has helped me succeed in my various jobs and career path.” Raj couldn’t say enough about the wonderful professors he had in the College of Business. He says that “the professors at NAU cared about how I was doing and were willing to do far more than what was expected of them.” He believes that the best part about being a student at NAU was the ability to apply the theories he learned in the classroom. Raj indicated that his studies were demanding, but that the effort and stresses he experienced as a student have helped him manage the pres-sures found in the work place. Raj currently works in higher education and directs the American Degree Program at KDU College in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Students in Malaysia have the opportunity to pursue higher education tracks in Malaysia based on American, Australian and/or United King-dom systems. He works directly with students that are pursuing an associate’s degree and wish to trans-fer to the United States to complete their bachelor’s degree. Raj reports that NAU is at the top of his list as a destination for his students. Work-ing with students and advising them on study in the USA permits him to share his experiences as a student at NAU. His focus on U.S. education offers some insight regarding U.S. universi-ties’ role in preparing students to be-

come global citizens. He feels that most U.S. universities adequately prepare students with a curriculum that includes hands-on learning. However, he cites the importance of having coursework that is infused with global perspectives. He feels that this should not only include reading and studying about inter-national issues, but should provide students with the opportunity to experience other cultures through study abroad, internships or even group activities with international students on campus. Specific to business majors, he believes that it is important to understand and expe-rience various business cultures and the work ethic of other countries as it will prepare graduates with strong intercultural skills which are im-portant when embarking on a job search in the US and overseas.

By Mandy HansenNAU Alumnus Advocates More Global Learning Opportunities for Students

ALUMNI PROFILES

Mandy Hansen is Director of Interna-tional Admissions and Recruiting at the

Center for International Education

Alumnus Profile: RajasingamRajaratnam

NAU Faculty International Activities, 2009/10

Alison Adams, Associate Professor of Biology, and Catherine Ueckert, Pro-fessor of Biology, gave a series of lec-tures at Soochow University in Suchow, China. Dr. Adams presented lectures on the biology of cancer and the use of yeast in cancer research. Dr. Ueckert lectured on the beginnings of biological thought and the molecular basis of selected hu-man genetic diseases.

Mark Beeman, Professor of Sociol-ogy, had a paper accepted by the 2010 International Conference on Humanities, Historical and Social Sciences held in Singapore. Titled “From Asiatic to Asian American: Insights into the Social Con-struction of Race,” the paper will be pub-lished in the conference proceedings.

Jonathan D. Bergeron, Assistant Pro-fessor of Music, was the featured artist and lecturer at the National Festival of Winds in Szczecin, Poland, last Decem-ber. He gave a lecture on the history of the American wind band, taught saxophone lessons during the week, and performed a concerto for saxophone with the band of the National Festival of Winds.

Doug Biber, Professor of Applied Lin-guistics, published a book, a journal ar-ticle, and chapters in six different edited volumes. He gave plenary lectures at five separate international conferences and presented eleven other invited lectures at various venues around the world.

Elaine Brown, Lecturer in Philoso-phy, hosted three faculty members from McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, at a conference at NAU that she organized and that was sponsored by the Richard A. Wood Fund for the Teaching of Philosophy. Professor Brown also pre-sented at McGill University Philosophy Department’s Workshop Series last year, and is a recipient of the Dow-Hickson Research Fellowship from McGill.

Stephen Brown, Assistant Professor of Music, will have his article “Ic1/Ic5 In-teraction in the Music of Shostakovich” published in the British journal Music Analysis.

Edith Copley, Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies, conducted an

international honor choir at the Associa-tion for Music in International Schools meeting, in Ankara, Turkey.

Aaron Denham, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, is currently conducting ethnographic research on the discourse and practice of infanticide in northern Ghana.

Stephen Dunn, Associate Professor of Music, traveled to the Trento State Con-servatory of Music in Italy to teach the trumpet students for a week, to play a recital (which included the premiere of his composition “Suite for I.A.”), and to record that composition with the Ital-ian trumpet soloist and recording artist Ivano Ascari for inclusion on his sev-enth CD of new music for trumpet. He will also travel to China in May with the NAU faculty brass quintet (Elden Brass) to give concerts and to teach at a num-ber of NAU partner universities in that country.

Susan M. Deeds, Professor of History, recently published an article on gender and witchcraft in an edited volume in Mexico and presented at the 53rd In-ternational Congress of Americanists, in Mexico City. Currently, she is coor-dinating (along with her Mexican coun-terpart) the 13th Reunion of Mexican, United States, and Canadian Historians, which will be held in Querétaro in Oc-tober. This meeting is particularly note-worthy since it commemorates Mexico’s two great revolutions of 1810 and 1910. She has also been invited by the Insti-tuto de Cultura de Chihuahua to present a lecture in March on the history of the Jesuits in colonial northern Mexico, as part of the state’s cultural activities cel-ebrating Mexican history in this 2010 anniversary year.

Pauline Entin, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, had a paper she authored presented at the Third Inter-national Symposium on Physiology and Pharmacology of Temperature Regula-tion, in Matsue, Japan.

Peter Fulé, Associate Professor, Eco-logical Restoration Institute, is working with colleagues in Greece to investigate the relationship between climate and fire

occurrence in black pine. He is also in-volved in ongoing research with a large integrated project of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union on forest fires and climate change in Tuni-sia.

Willard Sakiestewa Gilbert, Professor of Education, visited Turkish universi-ties on two separate occasions in 2009, presenting papers on Native American education and on Hopi traditional dry farming methods. He recently published on the subject of Native American edu-cation and was instrumental in establish-ing bilateral student-exchange agree-ments between NAU and two Turkish universities.

Regents’ Professor Bill Grabe and Professor Fredricka Stoller, from the TESL/Applied Linguistics area in the Department of English, were invited to Qatar University, in Doha, Qatar, to give presentations/workshops to its Foun-dation English Program faculty. Grabe spoke on second language reading and second language reading instruction, and Stoller addressed integrating proj-ect work into the Foundation Program curriculum. Grabe and Stoller were also plenary speakers at the Teaching English as a Foreign Language Conference, in Indonesia, in December 2009, and gave EFL teacher-training lectures and work-shops at six universities in Indonesia (on the islands of Sulawesi and Java) at the behest of the U.S. State Department.

Norman Grim, Professor of Biology, Emeritus, recently published an article in the European Journal of Protistology titled “A re-description of the ciliate ge-nus and type species, Balantidium ento-zoon.”

Chad Hamill, Assistant Professor of Music, presented a paper at the 31st American Indian Workshop “Transfor-mation, Translation, Transgression,” held in Prague this past March. He will also continue studies of Hindustani vocal music in Mysore, India, under the direc-tion of Rajeev Taranath this summer.


(Continued next page)

“Because of NAU, no mat-ter where I go in the world, my educational experiences

will go with me.”

Raj hopes that the NAU com-munity will continue to welcome and offer support services for in-ternational students. The support he received helped him succeed in his studies and he recommends that international student programming continue as it assists with the emo-tional well-being of students, and helps with issues such as culture-shock. Raj hopes to one day return to NAU and see “the majestic San Francisco Peaks” as well as the changes that have been described to him during recruitment and alumni events in Kuala Lumpur sponsored by the Center for International Ed-ucation.

NAU GLOBAL Spring 2009 3NAU FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS

NAU GLOBAL Spring 2009 19NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010 19

16 NAU GLOBAL Spring 200916 NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010

NAU Faculty International Activities, 2009/10 NAU Faculty International Activities, 2009/10

Michelle Harris, Associate Professor of Sociology, has been involved in devel-oping a dual master’s degree program between NAU’s Sociology Department and the Department of Development Studies at the University of Botswana. In summer 2010, she will convene a working group of scholars in a multidis-ciplinary examination of identity forma-tion and articulation among indigenous groups in five countries.

Jason Hess, Associate Professor of Art, will present a paper later this year at the First European Woodfire Conference, in Bröllin, Germany, where some of his work will also be exhibited.

Nancy Johnson, Professor of Envi-ronmental and Biological Sciences, is involved in numerous international ac-tivities, including lecturing in Belo Hori-zonte, Brazil, and at the Botanical Soci-ety of Mexico in Zacatecas, Mexico. She is currently working on collaborative research at IVIC in Caracas, Venezuela, and at UNAM in Mexico City. Next fall, she will host the sabbatical of Eom Ahn, a professor from South Korea.

Debra Larson, Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, Forestry & Natural Sciences, recently published an article in the International Journal of Engineering Education titled “Ten Years of ExCEEd: Making a Difference in the Profession.”

Alan Lew, Professor of Geography, is currently organizing two conferences, one to be held in China and the other in Martinique. He serves as an external examiner for the Universiti of Teknologi MARA in Malaysia. He is also vice chair of the Tourism Commission of the Inter-national Geographical Union. Recently, he lectured for four weeks at Jinan Uni-versity in Guangzhou, China.

Kooros Mahmoudi and Warren Lucas, both Professors, Sociology, presented a paper at the Business & Economics So-ciety International (BESI) conference in Antibes, France. The paper was then expanded into an article and published in The Global Business & Economics Anthology.

John Masserini, Assistant Professor of Music, was invited to perform in an eve-ning concert at the International Clarinet Association Conference in Porto, Portu-gal. He also presented two evening-long performances (playing original pieces that combine dance, music, and various other forms of media) in the professional Dance @ Night series at the University of Calgary in Canada.

Mary McGroarty, Professor of English, gave an invited colloquium, “Choice and Chance in Planning for Bilingualism,” at the University of Ottawa, Canada, In-stitute on Official Languages and Bilin-gualism.

Dave McKell, Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Work, utilizing his extensive travels in and research on Is-rael and Palestine, gave two brown-bag talks at NAU on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ishmael Munene, Associate Professor of Education, recently presented a paper at the Annual Conference of Third World Studies. His edited book, Transforming the Academia: Exploring African Uni-versities in a Comparative Context, was published by Nova Science Publishers in their series on African Political, Eco-nomic, and Security Issues.

Sheila Nair, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, spent fall 2009 teaching in the University Studies Abroad (USAC) program in San Sebas-tian, Spain. She recently published a co-edited volume titled International Rela-tions and States of Exception: Margins, Peripheries, and Excluded Bodies. In ad-dition, she has a chapter in an edited vol-ume by Lim Teck Ghee, Alberto Gomes, and Azly Rahman titled Multiethnic Ma-laysia: Past, Present, and Future.

Kiisa Nishikawa, Regents’ Professor, Biological Sciences, was awarded a grant for collaborative research with a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia (Canada) on “Neural and Mechanical Basis for Motor Primi-tives in Voluntary Frog Behavior.”

Michael Ort, Professor, School of Earth Sciences & Environmental Sustainabil-

ity, has been involved in numerous inter-national projects that include scientific research on volcanoes, publishing papers in international journals, and organizing a volcanological congress in Malargüe, Argentina, last year. He is currently working on an NSF project in collabora-tion with scientists from the University of Oregon on Crystal and Lithic-rich Fallout at Quilotoa Volcano, Ecuador.

Karen Plager, Professor of Nursing, re-cently published an article and presented a paper addressing nursing in Madagas-car. She traveled to India to study com-munity-based primary health care and to Tanzania to provide primary health care at a dispensary on the slopes of Mt. Kili-manjaro.

Greg Prater, Professor of Educational Specialties, serves as the associate edi-tor (and was the editor for the past five years) of the Journal of the International Association of Special Education, which is distributed in more than fifty coun-tries.

Marilya Reese, Associate Professor of German, has had many of her transla-tions of work by India-born German poet Anant Kumar published in a variety of online journals in numerous countries. Her bilingual anthology of Kumar’s po-etry and short prose is currently in press with the Wiesenburg publishing house in Germany. Additionally, she received a grant from the German government to complete a book-length translation of Turkish-German writer Kemal Kurt’s novel Ja, Sagt Molly.

Scott Reese, Associate Professor of History, presented a paper at a meeting convened by a multi-institutional proj-ect called the Indian Ocean as Visionary Area. He will also be a Visiting Fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin in summer 2010 to continue his work on Islam and Empire in the Indian Ocean.

Randi Reppen, Prof. of Applied Lin-guistics, recently published a book, along with two co-authors, titled Basic vocabu-lary in Use 2nd Edition with Cambridge University, as well as book chapters in three edited volumes. She also presented papers at two professional meetings and at a university, all in Taiwan.

Emilie Rodger, Associate Professor, Teaching and Learning, and Karen Seal-ander, Professor of Educational Special-ties, are consulting editors for the Jour-nal of the International Association of Special Education, which is distributed in more than fifty countries.

George Rudebusch, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, presented papers at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting in Vancouver as well as at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. He also hosted two visiting scholars at NAU, both of whom made presentations on important issues in philosophy.

Steve Schaeffer, Assistant Professor of Art, had one of his ceramic sculptures selected for exhibition at the Florence Biennale in Florence, Italy, last Decem-ber.

Erik Schiefer, Assistant Professor of Geography, in collaboration with a French colleague, recently published an article in the journal Nature Geoscience that quantifies the rates of glacier melt in Alaska and assesses associated contribu-tions to sea-level rise.

David Schlosberg, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, presented a pa-per as part of a workshop series on The EU, Climate Change and Global Envi-ronmental Governance organized by the Europa Institute and the Law School at the University of Edinburgh. He will also present a paper on animal rights, environmental and ecological justice at a workshop sponsored by the Just World Institute and the University of Edinburgh Department of Politics. He will serve on the faculty of an environmental politics summer school for PhD students spon-sored by the European Consortium for Political Research at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

Steven Sesnie, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sus-tainability, has published two articles in scholarly journals in the past year and has a third currently in press. All three articles focus on environmental issues in the Costa Rican rain forest.

Stephen Shuster, Professor of Biologi-cal Sciences, was the 2009 Symposium Speaker at the 46th Animal Behavior So-ciety Meeting in Pirenópolis, Brazil. He is also involved in three separate NSF grants in which he is collaborating with international scholars.

Timothy Smith, Professor of Music, recently read a paper on Bach’s Passion Music at the University of Glasgow. In conjunction with this visit to the United Kingdom, Smith was invited to present subsequent lectures on various aspects of Bach’s compositional approach at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, Queen’s University of Bel-fast, Sheffield University, and the Uni-versity of Durham.

Abe Springer, Professor and Direc-tor of the School of Earth Science and Environmental Sustainability is col-laborating with a team of researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada to study springs in order to bet-ter understand them as a resource and to develop a more sustainable management plan for them. This study is funded by a $200,000 grant from the Imperial Oil Foundation

Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Assistant Pro-fessor and Graduate Coordinator, Politics and International Affairs, is currently on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Diplomat-ic Academie in Vienna, Austria. She will also be an invited presenter and chair at the 8th Annual International Conference on Politics and International Affairs in Athens, Greece, in June 2010.

Bruce Sullivan, Professor of Compara-tive Cultural Studies, has had three ar-ticles published in the journals Cross-Currents, Journal of Hindu Studies, and Method & Theory in the Study of Re-ligion. He also presented a paper at the American Academy of Religion confer-ence in Montréal, Canada.

Aregai Tecle, Professor of Forestry, is currently serving as a senior Fulbright lecturer/researcher in the Graduate Pro-gram in Environmental Science at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He is teach-ing graduate courses, advising graduate

students, and helping to develop new courses and a new doctoral program in environmental science at the university.

Tad Theimer, Associate Professor, Bio-logical Sciences, along with Catherine Gehring, Associate Professor, Biologi-cal Sciences, returned to the tropical rain forests of far northern Queensland, Aus-tralia, in fall 2009 to continue their thir-teen-year study of the role of terrestrial animals in maintaining rain forest tree diversity. This summer they will present their most recent findings at the Ecologi-cal Society of America, in Pittsburgh, as part of a special symposium honor-ing their long-term collaborator, Joseph Connell.

Chih-Hsiung Tu, Associate Professor in Educational Specialties, was the keynote speaker at two international conferences, one in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and the other in Taipei, Taiwan. Professor Tu was also an invited workshop presenter at the Annual Conference of the International Council for Educational Media.

Catherine Ueckert, Professor of Biol-ogy, co-presented a paper on “Learning Biology Out of the School Classroom” in November 2009 at the annual Na-tional Association of Biology Teachers Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Peter Vadasz, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, has published in numerous international journals, and has collaborated on research projects with Professors Josua Meyer and Milan Carsky at the Universities of Pretoria and KwaZulu Natal in South Africa.

Nicole Walker, Assistant Professor of English, and her husband, Erik Sather, interviewed faculty and students and then filmed at the Siena School for Liber-al Arts. Sather then edited and produced a short film on SSLA for the Center for International Education.

Bill Wiist, Special Assistant to the Exec-utive Dean of the College of Health and Human Services, co-taught two courses in the January 2010 summer session at the University of Chile. Earlier, he wrote a proposal for a new global health pro-gram and collaborated with faculty and administrators in helping to plan and


NAU GLOBAL Spring 2010 PAGE 20Center for International Education [email protected] http://international.nau.edu/

International Visiting Scholars at NAU, Spring 2010

CIEJIANG, YunzhenYANG, XiaojunLIANG, JuweiTENG, XuemingWANG, MeilingZHU, Feng

FULBRIGHT GREIF, TatjanaPOATA-SMITH, Evan ZHANATAEVA, Zalina

DEPARTMENTFLORES, LluviaHOIJER, IdaPAN, Fan

PENICKOVA, Daniela

PEREZ PAREDES, PascualSCHMITZ-PERRIN, RudolfSREEDHAR, Yuvraj HarshaWANG, WenruiZHANG, Hongxin

EnglishEnglishGeologyEnglish LiteratureEnglishBusiness

AnthropologySociologyModern Languages- Rus-sian

Biological SciencesBiological SciencesEnglish

Humanities, Arts, and Re-ligionEnglish

Liberal Arts and Studies

Astronomy

GeographyAstronomy, Lowell

William CrawfordSteven RosendaleGretchen McAllisterGretchen McAllisterPaul FerlazzoGretchen McAllister

Kelly Hays-GilpinMichelle HarrisAnne Slobodchikoff

Amy WhipplePaul KeimDouglas Biber and Randi ReppenAlexandra Carpino

Douglas Biber and Randi ReppenSandra Lubarsky

Andrew Odell

Alan LewKathy Eastwood

Beijing International Studies University, ChinaHunan Univ. of Science & Technology, ChinaXi’an University of Science and Technology, ChinaBeijing International Studies University, ChinaBeijing International Studies University, ChinaShandong University, China

University of Ljubljana, SloveniaAuckland University, New ZealandKabardino-Balkar State University, Russia

Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, MexicoUppsala University, SwedenHuazhong University of Science & Technology

none

Universidad de Murcia, Spain

none

Institute of Astronomy, Austria

Purple Mountain Observatory, China

VISITING SCHOLAR HOST FACULTYDEPARTMENT HOME INSTITUTION

Allegory and Ceramics(continued from page 3)

Amateur Cinema(continued from page 7)

Jason Hess is Associate Professor of Art.

tiples together will reveal some sort of new story that will in all likelihood reflect the rich influence of cultural traditions and a sophisticated as-ethetic that has survived the passage of time.

Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. As the movement expands, the archive of amateur films continues to grow and provide eye-witness accounts, scenes, and com-pelling stories that provide intimate glimpses into how people have con-fronted their lives at home and far away from home. Mark Neumann is Professor and Director

of the School of Communication.

time and space, journeying south “past the mountains of California, across the deserts of Arizona, and past the rivers of Texas. Then the wind blew Chavela and her magic bubble south toward Mexico . . .” where she “floated above the jungles of the Yucatán, bouncing along the tops of the lovely sapodilla trees,” before reconnecting with her grandmother as a young girl and her great-grandfather the chiclero. So often in discussion and debate around immigration, the public dia-logue is marked by fear and racism. In my picture book Butterflies on Carmen Street, I wanted to tell a dif-ferent story about immigration and migration in a way that was beauti-ful and true to my lived experiences as a daughter of an immigrant. April

Ward’s vibrant illustrations capture the beautiful monarch butterflies, which act as a metaphor for the cy-clical nature of immigration. As a writer, it is my goal to pro-mote of visual and cultural litera-cy through stories written against shame and toward pride, history, and the praxis of what Paulo Friere calls concientización and an ideal of global citizenship. My hope is that my read-ers—children and adults alike—in finding a sense of place and presence in the arts, will recognize that they are citizens of the world, not only in-dividual nations.

Picture Books(continued from page 5)

Monica Brown is Professor of English with a Specialty in U.S. Multi-ethnic

Literature.

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