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Postcards to Emory: Summer travel by faculty, staff

Many faculty and staff members ventured out and abroad this summer for enrichment, teaching or discovery. Here is a sampling of trips that enhance Emory’s academic mission:

Phillip M. Thompson took a modern-day pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, traveling 175 miles in 12 days on foot. "Pilgrimages are back in vogue in the Catholic world over the past decade,"the executive director of the Aquinas Center of Theology says, noting the Martin Sheen film "The Way"(2010).  Thompson has recorded his journey in an essay, "Lessons of a Modern Pilgrim."

Provost Earl Lewis led a University delegation on a trip to Brazil. Joining him were Juan Leon and Dabney Evans, Rollins School of Health assistant professors; John Ford, senior vice president and dean of Campus Life (now retired); Uriel Kitron, chair of environmental studies; Amy Aidman, instructor in film studies; and Evan Goldberg, associate director of the Office of International Affairs and The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning. The group visited four cities and a number of institutions including a school of health and human ecology in Belo Horizonte; the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador; the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, a private and nonprofit Catholic university; and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation for research and development in biomedical sciences also in Rio de Janeiro. The group also visited Sao Paulo and hosted an alumni reception.

Joe Crespino, Sissel McCarthy, Walter Melion, Deepika Bahri, Rong Cai, Allen Tullos, Frank Maddox, Jennifer Gandhi, Joy McDougall, Ruby Lal and Gyanendra Pandey participated in a Halle Study Trip through The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning. They visited three cities in China and went to Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea.

Pamela Scully, chair of women’s, gender and sexuality studies and African studies, and Carla Freeman, associate professor of anthropology, visited Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, for a conference hosted by the Asian Center for Women’s Studies and the Korean Women’s Institute and to discuss future collaborations between Emory’s faculty and graduate students. Scully and Freeman joined in the celebration of Teacher’s Day, which fell during their time there.

Bruce Knauft and Gary Hauk went to Dharamsala, India, the capital of the Tibetan exile community, to help celebrate the "graduation" of the first cohort of 28 Tibetan monks and nuns who completed the five-summer Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Hauk, who is vice president and deputy to the president, said the presentation of Emory certificates occurred on the final day of three days of teaching by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama at the Tibetan Children's Village, where some 2,500 Tibetan students were in attendance. "The high point was standing with His Holiness as the names of the monks and nuns were read and the came across the stage individually to receive their Emory certificates -- their faces simply beaming,"he says. Knauft, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and director of Emory’s States at Regional Risk Project, continued on to Mongolia.

Karla Passalacqua taught "Infectious Diseases, Immunology and Epidemiology" to a cohort of monks and nuns in Dharamsala, India. "We had a great time, and the monks and nuns were very enthusiastic.  We were able to do some very basic microbiological survey experiments,"the Emory lecturer in biology says.

Matthew Bernstein and David Pratt attended the Ritrovato film festival in Bologna, Italy. Bernstein is professor and chair of the Department of Film and Media Studies and Pratt is a lecturer in film studies. Bernstein called it "an overwhelming and incredibly enriching experience…that provides many gifts that enhance our teaching."He says, "I saw several films there for the first time that I will incorporate in my history of film course this semester.”

Sheila T. Cavanagh co-taught "International Shakespeare in a New Media World"for Emory’s inaugural Maymester term, with live videoconferencing between Atlanta, Morocco and several venues in London, including Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Co-director Kevin Quarmby participated from all three countries.  Cavanagh and Quarmby also held an Emory alumni event in London, with special guest Rosemary Magee, vice president and secretary of the university, and welcomed Holli Semetko, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Media and International Affairs, to the Emory British Studies Program in Oxford, U.K., where classes were also offered by Harry Rusche, Emory College English professor, and Eloise Carter, Oxford College biology professor. Quarmby, a London-based actor who is teaching at Oxford College this fall, also gave a keynote speech at Porto University in Portugal.

Lucas Carpenter, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English at Oxford College, went to Paris and Zurich, Switzerland, where he reviewed several major art exhibitions on assignment for Art Papers magazine. In Paris, he reviewed a major show by abstract expressionist Christopher Wool at the Museum of Modern Art and is writing about the R. Crumb retrospective there and the Gerhardt Richter exhibition at the Pompidou Centre. In Zurich he researched Dada painters and poets at the Cabaret Voltaire, where the movement started.

Mike McQuaide, Oxford College professor of sociology, visited five remote towns in Ecuador's Azuay province, where he met and conducted interviews with families whose adult children leave the country to find work elsewhere. McQuaide has been a regular visitor to Ecuador since 1999 but says the phenomenon of the "sending families"was a new phenomenon for him.

Peter Roberts, director of Social Enterprise @ Goizueta, led a collaboration with the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative to assess a business model for an employee-owned lettuce processing facility in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Atlanta. The group, including four students and a Goizueta Business School alumna, used a model successfully implemented in Cleveland, Ohio. The operation would provide locally-grown purchasing options for the major institutions around Atlanta, including Emory.

Jason Francisco, associate professor in the Visual Arts Department, was in Kraków, Poland, serving as lead curator at the Galicia Jewish Museum for an exhibition, "On the Other Side of the Torah: Wartime Portraits from Tübingen." Two World War II-era oil paintings had been discovered to have been made on the back of fragments of Torah scrolls, which, though cut and stretched, are legible. The paintings, which are portraits, will be set in an interpretive environment that includes audio and video commentary from a wide range of perspectives. Visitors will be invited to record their responses to the exhibition, which will be continuously uploaded to a video archive that will expand throughout the two-month duration of the show.


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